Smart Study Technique Scientific Tips (10 Tips)

So, what if I told you that you could cover twice as much in half the amount of time and be much more effective. I’m going to tell you how to study smart and not hard and give you 10 proven scientific techniques to do that.

Smart Study Technique Scientific Tips (10 Tips)

Smart technique number one is STUDY IN CHUNKS.

The Pomodoro Technique says you should study for 25 minutes take a five-minute break and then repeat this three times over and then take a longer break. But 25 minutes may not be your perfect chunk of time.

So how do you find your attention span. I would take up a book and start reading and the moment I find myself getting distracted or dozing off, I’ll press that timer and bingo that’s my perfect chunk of time.

Now chances are that when you complete that single chunk of time which could be 25 minutes for example you haven’t totally finished that topic of concept and that’s actually a good thing. Because now the Zeigarnik effect will come into play which states that the human brain tends to remember incomplete and unfinished tasks much better than it does completed tasks.

So, while you take that five-minute break, your brain is going to process that unfinished task or concept. And when you get back to it in the second lot of 25 minutes, you’re going to have much more clarity. 

Technique number two is 20% READ 80% RECITE.

Now sometimes I find that we read the entire day. We go from one subject to the next, but we are either reading from a book or from a laptop. And the brain gets so bone tired that it totally stops paying attention. 

Now how about this? You read a concept, close your book, ask yourself a question and try to answer it without opening that book back in your own words. Perhaps that you’ve learned some time back and the perfect smart study tip is 20% read 80% revise. 

And also try to come up with your own examples to understand every concept. And don’t forget to go back and check with your teacher whether your examples are relevant for that concept. 

Smart scientific tip number three is SPACED REPETITION.

Now instead of spending the entire day going over one single topic how about you study one concept and then change the topic. And you come back maybe later or the next day and go over that concept a little bit and then switch to the next concept. 

So, what will happen is that you’ll repeat that concept over a few days and a few times. And that is what we call spaced repetition. 

Now the mind learns the concept better when you go over it over and over again rather than spending a large amount of time on a single day trying to attack that concept. Also varying topics and even subjects help the brain sometimes to interlink concepts between topics and subjects. 

That’s a great way also to solidify your understanding. 

Smart study scientific tip number four is NOTES.

Now one really clever way to save your time it’s to go over your class notes within minutes of the class getting over. And all you need to do is to just browse over those notes and put whatever is still stuck in your head. You haven’t been able to write it down. 

Put all that information quickly on the paper so when you go back later on and open those notes. They’ll be complete and this is one really special smart study tip that’ll help you save a huge amount of time. 

Smart scientific technique number five is STUDY LIKE A TEACHER.

Now instead of studying like a student and trying to remember tons of information how about you think like a teacher? Now two things will happen when you do that. 

One is you’ll begin to anticipate which are the important questions really from that topic. 

And two, of course science has proven that teaching someone helps you learn better. And the smart study tip here is to teach-test-mix. Teach someone. Test yourself frequently which means take a lot of practice tests or mock tests and mix means mix up your subjects mix up your topics. 

And if you don’t find anyone to teach, teach your favorite stuff toys. 

Smart scientific tip number six is SQ3R.

S for survey. And this is a technique that’s going to help you get the most out of your textbook. So, when you pick up the textbook first survey the chapter. Just go over, browse all the pages in that chapter, go right to the question section. 

Q for questions. Go over the questions, just read them once before you start reading the chapter. 

And the 3 R’s are read, recite and review. Read and recite. Go back to the 20% read 80% recite tip number 2, and review goes back to the spaced repetition. So, when you pick up your textbook, browse, go to the questions, come back, read, shut your book, ask yourself a question and recite and then review over a period of time. 

Smart technique number seven is MNEMONICS.

I’m going to tell you not only to use mnemonics but you can also use coined sayings and image associations. And the smart study tip here is that the weirder the image the stronger the association. 

Let’s talk about coined sayings. Coined sayings for example are SOHCAHTOA. Remember using that in trigonometry to remember your sign, cos and tan.

Smart study tip number eight is PLACE.

Now some people will tell you that you should sit in a fixed place with the table lamp on, in the same place every single time to study. But I don’t believe in that. Some people work better when they study on a fixed place at a fixed time with the table lamp on and some people don’t. 

Some people like to move around, they like to go to different places. They like to have some action when they are learning. So, the important thing is, when it comes to place, it is for you to find out what works best for you. And once you figure out what kind of places you like to study in, just stick to that. Let nobody tell you. Just stick to only a particular type of place. 

Smart tip number nine is TIME TABLE.

There is no smarter tip than planning. Plan your week, plan your day. In fact, even plan down to the last hour. And you’ll come to a surprise at how much you can achieve because the brain is more productive. Because it knows exactly what it has to do and for how long. 

Smart study technique number ten is SLEEP.

Now some of you will ask me, should I study late in the night or should I study early in the morning? And there is no right answer. But the right answer is that sleep is brain food. So, you need at least about 7.5 hours of sleep every day and typically 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. is a great slot. 

So, no all-nighters before your exam. And remember that if you have a theory exam the next day. Science has proven that the earlier you sleep in the night the better you tend to perform. 

So, if some of you feel that you’re wasting time sleeping and instead of sleeping for that one hour. I can just study for that extra one hour, you’ll find it to be completely counterproductive. So, sleep and sleep well before an exam is my super smart study tip. 

And that’s all from me now. If you have any other great tip in your mind, kindly comment below.