Studying Smarter

• Opt for active practice over review. If you are learning a skill, a foreign language or any other topic, practice retrieving it from memory rather than rereading your text or reviewing instructional material. Recalling what you have learned makes the learning stronger and more easily recalled again later.
• Space your practice. Space out your practice sessions, letting time elapse between them. Massed practice (like cramming) leads to fast learning but also to rapid forgetting compared to spaced practice. Spacing helps embed learning in long-term memory.
• Get plenty of sleep. Students think all-nighters are a good way to study, but sleep helps memories consolidate and may make retrieval of learned information better (relative to being sleep deprived).
• Switch between the study of different topics. If you have final exams coming up in a week on history, chemistry and psychology, it is better to study these topics on each day rather than only studying one subject.
• Test yourself. Make up practice tests and take them repeatedly as you study. This step permits you to practice retrieving information from memory, making the article continues after advertisement pathways to the learning stronger so you can recall it easily later when you need it – and it also permits you to assess what you know and what you do not know.
• Take notes by hand and not by computer. When typing, students tend to record information as though they were taking dictation. When they handwrite the notes they write more slowly, so they have to think harder about the material to distill it.

How to Learn a New Skill

The key to improvement is making small, smart changes, evaluating the results, discarding what doesn't work, and further refining what does work.

Give yourself at least six hours so your memory can consolidate.