How to Study Smarter and Maximize Your Productivity in 20 Steps

Studying can be a daunting task, whether you’re preparing for a big exam or researching a topic for a paper. You might feel overwhelmed by the pressure to boost your performance and unsure where to start. But studying doesn’t have to be hard! Instead of focusing solely on how much time you can dedicate to studying, learning how to study smarter is more effective. From mastering memory techniques to discovering how to write paper fast without sacrificing quality, small changes in your approach can make a big difference. This blog will teach you how to study efficiently, boost your productivity, and achieve better academic or personal results with less time and effort.

You can also use Conch’s AI writing tool to help you achieve your objectives. This AI-powered tool can help you write faster and more intelligently, so you can spend less time on writing tasks and more time studying for exams.

How to Study Smarter, Not Harder in 20 Easy Steps

students studying - How to Study Smarter

Many students believe that reading and re-reading their class notes or the textbook is sufficient for exam preparation. But this method of studying is ineffective and leads to poor performance. Why? Class material is often organized arbitrarily, making it difficult to learn.

Transitioning from Consumption to Cognition

Simply reading and re-reading texts or notes is not actively engaging in the material. It is merely re-reading your notes. Only ‘doing’ the readings for class is not studying. It is simply doing the reading for class. Re-reading leads to quick forgetting. Reading is essential to pre-studying, but learning information requires actively engaging with the material.

Active engagement is constructing meaning from text, which involves connecting to lectures, forming examples, and regulating learning. Active studying does not mean:

Highlighting or underlining text
Re-reading content
Rote memorization

True Active Learning

Though these activities may help to keep you engaged in the task, they are not considered active studying techniques and are weakly related to improved learning. Ideas for active studying include:

Creating a study guide by topic
Formulate questions and problems
Write complete answers
Create your quiz
Become a teacher

Active Inquiry

I figure out the big ideas for non-technical classes (e.g., English, History, Psychology) to explain, contrast, and reevaluate. For technical courses, I work through the problems and explain the steps and why they work. I study in terms of question, evidence, and conclusion:

What is the question posed by the instructor/author?
What is the evidence that they present?
What is the conclusion?

Structured Review

Organization and planning will help me actively study for my courses. When studying for a test, I organize my materials and begin my active review by topic. Often, professors provide subtopics on the syllabi. I will use them as a guide to help manage my materials.

For example, I will gather all the materials for one topic (e.g., PowerPoint notes, textbook notes, articles, homework, etc.) and put them together in a pile. I will label each pile with the topic and study by topic.

Understand the Study Cycle: Get to Know the Stages of Studying

The Study Cycle, developed by Frank Christ, breaks down the different parts of studying: previewing, attending class, reviewing, studying, and checking your understanding. Although each step may seem obvious, students often try to take shortcuts and miss opportunities for good learning.

Missed Modalities

For example, you may skip a reading before class because the professor covers the same material in class; doing so misses a key opportunity to learn in different modes (reading and listening) and to benefit from the repetition and distributed practice that you’ll get from both reading ahead and attending class.

Understanding the importance of all stages of this cycle will help ensure you take advantage of opportunities to learn effectively.

Spacing Out is Good: The Benefits of Distributed Practice

One of the most impactful learning strategies is “distributed practice,” spacing out your studying over several short periods over several days and weeks. The most effective practice is to work for a short time on each class every day.

The total amount of time spent studying will be the same (or less) than one or two marathon library sessions, but you will learn the information more deeply and retain much more for the long term, which will help get you an A on the final.

Optimizing Study Time for Retention

The important thing is how you use your study time, not how long you study. Long study sessions lead to a lack of concentration and thus a lack of learning and retention. You need control over your schedule to spread out studying over short periods across several days and weeks.

Daily Tasks for Consistent Learning

Keeping a list of tasks to complete daily will help you to include regular active studying sessions for each class. Try to do something for each class each day. Be specific and realistic regarding how long you plan to spend on each task. You should not have more tasks on your list than you can reasonably complete during the day.

The Power of Incremental Learning

For example, you may do a few problems per day in math rather than all of them the hour before class. In history, you can spend 15-20 minutes each day actively studying your class notes. Thus, your studying time may still be the same length, but rather than only preparing for one class, you will be preparing for all your courses in short stretches.

Spaced Practice for Sustained Success

This will help you focus, stay on top of your work, and retain information. In addition to learning the material more deeply, spacing out your work helps stave off procrastination. Rather than facing the dreaded project for four hours on Monday, you can face it for 30 minutes daily.

The shorter, more consistent time to work on a dreaded project will likely be more acceptable and less likely to be delayed to the last minute. Suppose you must memorize class material (names, dates, formulas). Make flashcards for this material and review them periodically throughout the day rather than one long memorization session.

It’s Good To Be Intense: The Benefits of Short, Focused Study Sessions

Not all studying is equal. You will accomplish more if you study intensively. Intensive study sessions are short and will allow you to finish work with minimal wasted effort. Shorter, intensive study times are more effective than drawn-out studying. One of the most impactful study strategies is distributing studying over multiple sessions.

Maximizing Intensity in Active Study

Intensive study sessions can last 30 or 45 minutes and include active studying strategies. Self-testing is an active study strategy that improves studying intensity and learning efficiency. Nevertheless, planning to spend hours on end self-testing is likely to cause you to become distracted and lose your attention.

Balancing Intensity and Attention

On the other hand, if you plan to quiz yourself on the course material for 45 minutes and then take a break, you are much more likely to maintain your attention and retain the information. Furthermore, the shorter, more intense sessions will likely put the pressure on that is needed to prevent procrastination.

Silence Isn’t Golden: Find Your Best Study Environment

Know where you study best. The silence of a library may not be the best place for you. It’s important to consider what noise environment works best for you. You might find that you concentrate better with some background noise. Some people find that listening to classical music while studying helps them focus, while others find this highly distracting.

Finding Your Optimal Study Environment

The library’s silence may be just as distracting (or more) than the noise of a gymnasium. Thus, if silence is distracting, but you prefer to study in the library, try the first or second floors where there is more background ‘buzz.’ Remember that active studying is rarely silent, requiring saying the material aloud.

Problems Are Your Friend: Get Comfortable With Course Material

Working and reworking problems is essential for technical courses (e.g., math, economics). Be able to explain the steps of the problems and why they work. Working issues are usually more critical in technical courses than reading the text. In class, write down the practice problems demonstrated by the professor in detail.

Active Engagement for Mastery

Annotate each step and ask questions if you are confused. At the very least, record the question and the answer (even if you miss the steps). Compile a list of problems from the course materials and lectures when preparing for tests. Work the issues and explain the steps and why they work.

Reconsider Multitasking: Focus on One Thing at a Time

Much research indicates that multi-tasking does not improve efficiency and negatively affects results. To study smarter, not harder, you must eliminate distractions during your study sessions. Social media, web browsing, game playing, texting, etc. will severely affect the intensity of your study sessions if you allow them!

Prioritizing Focus for Effective Learning

Research is clear that multi-tasking increases the amount of time needed to learn material and decreases the quality of the learning. Eliminating distractions will allow you to engage fully during your study sessions. If you don’t need your computer for homework, don’t use it.

Use apps to help you limit the amount of time you can spend at specific sites during the day. Turn your phone off, reward intensive studying with a social-media break.

Switch Up Your Setting: Change Your Study Environment

Find several places to study in and around campus, and change up your space if it is no longer a working space. Know when and where you study best. Your focus at 10:00 PM is not as sharp as at 10:00 AM. You may be more productive at a coffee shop with background noise, or in the study lounge in your residence hall.

Cultivating Productive Environments

When you study on your bed, you fall asleep. Various places in and around campus are suitable study environments for you. That way, you can find your perfect study spot wherever you are. After a while, you might find your spot is too comfortable and no longer a good place to study, so it’s time to hop to a new spot!

Become a Teacher: Explain the Material Aloud

Explain the material in your own words, as if you are the teacher. You can do this in a study group, with a partner, or alone. Saying the material aloud will highlight where you are confused and need more information, and help you retain the information. As you explain the material, use examples and connect concepts.

Active Recall

It’s okay to do this with your notes in my hands. At first, you may need to rely on your notes to explain the material, but eventually, you can teach it without my notes. Creating a quiz for yourself will help you to think like your professor. What does my professor want me to know? Quizzing myself is a highly effective study technique.

Targeted Review

Make a study guide and carry it with you so I can review the questions and answers periodically throughout the day and several days. Identify the questions I don’t know and quiz myself on only those questions. Say my answers aloud. This will help me retain the information and make corrections where needed.

I will do the sample problems for technical courses and explain how I got from the question to the answer. I will also re-do the issues that give me trouble. Learning the material in this way actively engages my brain and will significantly improve my memory.

Take Notes by Hand: Why Writing Notes by Hand is More Effective than Taking Them on a Laptop

If you want to learn how to study efficiently, write your notes by hand. Scientists recommend this, not just because you’re more likely to give in to online distractions when using a laptop. Learning is less effective even when laptops are used only for note-taking.

Handwriting vs. Digital Transcription

Students who take notes by hand tend to process and reframe the information; in contrast, laptop note-takers write down what the teacher says word-for-word without first processing the data. Students who take notes by hand perform better in tests and exams. An efficient note-taking strategy will reduce your investment time to achieve the same result.

Take Control of Your Calendar: Get Organized and Stick to a Schedule

Controlling your schedule and distractions will help you accomplish your goals. If you are in control of your calendar, you will be able to complete your assignments and stay on top of your coursework. Plan out your schedule for the week on the same day each week.

Weekly Prioritization

Go through each class and write down what you’d like to get completed for each class that week. Look at your calendar and determine how many hours you have to complete your work. Determine whether your list can be completed in the amount of time that you have available.

Strategic Adjustment

Make adjustments as needed. For example, if it will take more hours to complete my work than I have available, I will likely need to triage my readings. Completing all of the readings is a luxury. I must decide about my readings based on what is covered in class. I should read and take notes on all the assignments from the favored class source.

Daily Scheduling

This may be the textbook or a reading that directly addresses the topic for the day. I can skim supplemental readings. I pencil assignments into my calendar when I plan to complete them. Before going to bed each night, I plan for the next day. Waking up with a plan will make me more productive.

Use Downtime to Your Advantage: Get Ahead When You Can

Beware of ‘easy’ weeks. This is the calm before the storm. Lighter work weeks are a great time to get ahead on work or to start long projects. Use the extra hours to advance on assignments, start significant projects, or papers. You should plan to work on every class every week, even if you have nothing due.

Daily Distribution

Doing some work for each of my classes every day is preferable. Spending 30 minutes per class daily will add up to three hours per week, but spreading this time out over six days is more effective than cramming it all in during one long three-hour session. If you have completed all the work for a particular class, use the 30 minutes to get ahead or start a more extended project.

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Musicians practice their instruments. Athletes practice sports skills. The same should go for learning. “If you want to be able to remember information, the best thing you can do is practice,” says Katherine Rawson. She’s a psychologist at Kent State University in Ohio.

In one 2013 study, students took practice tests over several weeks. On the final test, they scored more than a full letter grade better, on average, than students who studied the way they usually did.

In a study done a few years earlier, college students read material and then took recall tests. Some took just one test, while others took several tests with short breaks of several minutes in between. The second group recalled the material better a week later.

Test Yourself: Retrieval Practice is Key

That 2010 study backs up one of Nebel’s preferred study habits. Before big tests, her mom quizzed her on the material. “Now I know that was retrieval practice,” she says. “It’s one of the best ways you can study.” As Nebel got older, she quizzed herself. For example, she might cover up the definitions in her notebook.

Then, she tried to recall what each term meant. Rawson and others showed in an August 2020 study in Learning and Instruction that such retrieval practice can help nearly everyone. This research included college students with an attention problem known as ADHD, which stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Retrieval helped students with ADHD and those without the disorder equally well. “Create a deck of flash cards every time you learn new information,” Sana suggests. “Put questions on one side and the answers on the other side.” Friends can even quiz each other on the phone, she says.

“Try to quiz yourself the way the teacher asks questions,” Nebel adds. But grill yourself and your friends, she says. And here’s why. She was part of a team that asked students to write one quiz question for each class period. Students would then answer a question from another classmate.

Quiz Complexity

Preliminary data show that students did worse on tests afterward than when the daily quiz questions came from the teacher. Nebel’s team is still analyzing the data. She suspects the students’ questions may have been too simple. Teachers often dig deeper, she notes. “They don’t just ask for definitions. Often they ask students to compare and contrast ideas. That takes some critical thinking.”

Mistakes Are Okay: Learn From Test Results and Keep Practicing

It’s crucial to test your memory. But it doesn’t matter how many seconds I spend on each try. That finding comes from a 2016 study by Kornell and others. But it’s essential to go the next step, Kornell adds: Check to see if you were right. Then focus on what you got wrong. “If you don’t find out what the answer is, you’re kind of wasting your time,” he says.

Error-Driven Learning

Conversely, checking the answers can make your study time more efficient. You can then focus on where you need the most help. Making mistakes can be a good thing, argues Stuart Firestein. A Columbia University biologist in New York City, he wrote the book on it. It’s called Failure: Why Science is So Successful. Mistakes, he argues, are the key to learning.

Mix It Up: Interleave Your Practice

In many cases, it helps to mix up your self-testing. Don’t just focus on one thing. Drill yourself on different concepts. Psychologists call this interleaving. Your tests usually will have questions mixed up, too. More importantly, interleaving can help you learn better. If you practice one concept repeatedly, “your attention decreases because you know what’s coming up next,” Sana explains.

Conceptual Integration

Mix up your practice, and you now space the concepts apart. You can also see how concepts differ, form trends, or fit together in some other way. Suppose, for instance, you’re learning about the volume of different shapes in math. You could have lots of problems with the volume of a wedge.

Then, you could answer more batches of questions, with each set dealing with just one shape. For example, you could figure out the volume of a cone, followed by a wedge. Next, I might find the volume of a half-cone or spheroid. Then, I can mix them up some more. I might also mix in some practice on addition or division.

Rawson and others had groups of college students try each approach. Last year, the researchers reported in Memory & Cognition that those who interleaved their practice questions did better than those who did single-batch practice.

Use Pictures: Visual Aids Help Boost Memory

Pay attention to diagrams and graphs in your class materials, says Nebel. “Those pictures can really boost your memory of this material. And if there aren’t pictures, creating them can be really, really useful.”

“I think these visual representations help you create more complete mental models,” McDaniel says. He and Dung Bui, then also at Washington University, had students listen to a lecture on car brakes and pumps. One group got diagrams and was told to add notes as needed to the diagrams.

Visual Learning Boost

Another group got an outline for writing notes, and the third group just took notes. The outlines helped students who were otherwise good at building mental models of what they were reading. These tests found that visual aids helped students across the board. Even goofy pictures might help.

Cartoon-Enhanced Retention

Nikol Rummel is a psychologist at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. In one study in 2003, she and others gave cartoon drawings to college students and information about five scientists who studied intelligence. For example, the text about Alfred Binet included a drawing of a race car driver wearing a bonnet to protect his brain. Students who saw the drawings did better on a test than those who got only the text information.

Reward Yourself: Treat Yourself for a Job Well Done

Studying can be exhausting, especially during exam season. It is essential to reward yourself for your hard work! One way to do this is to set goals for yourself. When you achieve a goal, treat yourself to something special that you enjoy.

This could be watching an episode of your favorite show, going for ice cream, or doing a fun outdoor activity. Even during a stressful time, taking care of yourself is essential. You’ve earned it.

Use Technology Wisely: Make Smart Choices About Digital Resources

Using technology wisely involves making smart choices about when and how to use digital resources during study sessions. Technology can be a valuable aid for research, online courses, or organising your notes. But avoiding distractions and staying focused on your study goals is crucial.

Think of technology as a helpful assistant that can boost your learning when used wisely. Harness its potential, but stay disciplined and keep your study sessions productive.

Sleep at Least Eight Hours a Night: Don’t Pull All-Nighters

When considering how to study efficiently, don’t neglect sleep. I’ve spoken to and worked with 20,000 students so far. Not one has told me that he or she consistently gets eight hours of sleep a night. “There’s just so much to do,” I hear students say, again and again. Sleep often seems more like a luxury than a necessity as a student.

But what does the research have to say about sleep? The study shows that if you get enough sleep, you’ll be more focused, learn faster, and improve your memory. You’ll also deal with stress more effectively. This is a recipe for excellent grades. So sleep at least eight hours a night.

Optimized Study Efficiency

This way, you will have more productive study sessions and you won’t need to spend as much time hitting the books. In addition, sleep expert Dan Taylor says that learning the most challenging material immediately before going to bed makes it easier to recall the next day. So whenever possible, arrange your schedule so that you study the most complex topic right before you sleep.

Lastly, don’t pull all-nighters. As psychologist Pamela Thacher’s research shows, students who pull all-nighters get lower grades and make more careless mistakes.

Ask for Help if Needed: Recognize When You’re Struggling and Reach Out

Recognising that everyone faces challenges in their learning journey is essential, and seeking assistance is a smart move. Don’t hesitate to contact your teachers, tutors, or classmates if you struggle to grasp a concept or need clarification. Remember, asking for help shows maturity and a commitment to understanding the material thoroughly.

So, when you encounter difficulties, be proactive and ask for help; it’s a sign of your dedication to learning and can lead to better outcomes.

Be Kind to Yourself: Don’t Stress Out About Learning How to Study Better

Try to stick to a routine. And get enough sleep, not just the night before the test but for weeks or months. “Those things are really, really important for learning,” Nebel says. Exercise helps as well, she says. She adds, Don’t stress out if all of this seems like a lot. Add one new study skill each week or two if something seems new, or at least space out my study sessions and practice retrieval for the first few months.

As you get more practice, you can add more skills. And if you need help, ask. If you struggle to follow the advice above (such as you can’t keep track of time or find it very hard just to sit and focus on your work), you may have an undiagnosed condition, such as ADHD. To find out, check with your doctor. The good news: It may be treatable.

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