guest written by Michelle Deets Haynes of Clarity Learning

Have you considered whether your own study methods are working for you or against you? Study methods that consume too much time and don’t prepare you well can leave you feeling frustrated and too unmotivated to continue. Whether you’re a busy middle or high school student, a new college student, or a working adult who is juggling classes with family demands, there’s no time for ineffective study techniques.

I consider weak study techniques to be those that leave you feeling rushed, drained, overwhelmed, or bored. They leave your eyes watering while your brain wanders off. However, active, effective study methods leave you saying:

• I really don’t mind studying this way.
• I know this, this, and this.
• I need to review these things here.
• I still have time to master this material.

Here are three ways to set up and employ active, confidence-building study methods:

1. Plan ahead and study in chunks. Don’t cram. Cramming leads to mixed-up terms, forgotten steps, and that awful fog of self-doubt that settles on you during the test. It’s better to find several small chunks of time to commit a few concepts and terms to memory than to wait until you “have enough time.”

Smartphones can easily carry around your notes. Review a few pieces of material as you ride to school, wait for your parents, or wait for your own children to finish an activity. That having said, make sure you study everything together at some point in case there are terms or steps that are similar and easily confused. You’re a busy person; utilize your breaks to spread out your study sessions and avoid cramming.

2. In order to retain information, you must be alert and have the intent to retain. Get your body involved in the game. Just reading text off a website, flashcard, or page lacks the impact and retention of DOING SOMETHING with that text. Use an active website like www.quizlet.com to enter terms and manipulate them with the online drag-and-drop games or the voice recognition software.

Also, I prefer matching cards to standard flashcards. Rather than front and back cards, write the terms on one card, the definitions on another. Spread the terms out on the table. Then, similar to dealing cards, match the terms and definitions by placing the correct cards on top of each other. Between scanning for the partner cards, physically setting one card atop another, and checking the answer, you’re actively participating in your study session.

If you zone out while reading, create your study materials as you go to keep yourself tuned in. Read a paragraph and then think of two or three questions and answers. Write them on your cards or type them into your online flashcard system. Presto! You’ve become an active, alert student! No more sleepily reading and re-reading the text to absorb the data. You don’t have time for that!

3. Quiz yourself as part of your study program. Don’t be lured into that over-confident feeling of knowing something without quizzing yourself to see if you truly do know it. As noted in my blog post “Test Yourself Before You Take a Test,” research has shown that self-testing aids retention.

Flashcards can give you that, “Sure, that’s what I meant to say!” feeling. Take the next step. Read the question on the card and then write your answer on a tablet-sized white board to see if you really committed the information to memory. Digital flash cards are just as “fudge-able” and static as the old, 3-by-5 species. Pull up your digital flashcard and write your answer on a white board. Or, speak your answer into the notes recorder of your phone. Hesitations in your recording will expose any uncertainty and point to the areas that need more reinforcement.

Be active when you study. Stay alert through motion, drawing, and voice. Get creative and ask yourself, “How would I make a six-year-old do this?” Then set that up for yourself. Most importantly, ask yourself, “Am I working actively, or am I drifting?” Once you drift, you’re wasting time, and your time is too precious to waste!

About the author: Michelle Deets Haynes is the founder and owner of Clarity Learning, an in-home tutoring service that has served Orange County, CA since 2001.

There are tons of articles online about improving your memory.  A quick search will bring up pages and pages of results.  I spent a few minutes clicking at random and then a few more sorting through the articles I chose.  Here are three of my favorites:

• Discovery Health has a good piece about improving general memory that should help with aspects of your life outside of your studies.  I am including it at the top of the list because it provides a good base (and also because their first tip is to drink a glass of wine, which is both unorthodox and totally awesome).
• For a quicker read that involves less clicking, try this WikiHow article that has 15 good tips and links to a bunch of other articles that may be helpful to your more specific situation.
• If you want to know more about what memories are and how your brain works to create lasting memories, check out this article on HelpGuide.org.  It spells things out scientifically in ways that are actually comprehensible to people without much psychological training like myself.

But what about improving your memory specifically for your studies?  Learning things for school is a particularly difficult task because it involves a certain amount of precision and recall that is not normally required in “real life.”  After all, we can almost always hop on the internet and look up something when we’re not in a classroom taking a final exam.

The best way I found to make sure I actually remembered something in school was to make studying an active process.  Reading and highlighting your text book or paying close attention in class may help create a base from which you can work, but it’s unlikely that you’ll remember quite enough to ace your exams just from reading.  To make lasting memories, you need to make your studying something you do rather than something that just happens to you.  I touched on this in another post, but let’s go a little deeper this time.

Your process for test preparation should place your mind in a state similar to the conditions of the test itself.  In other words, you need to test yourself repeatedly before the test begins.  If you know that you will be required to do certain types of math problems then don’t just look over the formulas — try doing sample problems without referencing your text books or class notes.  If you know you’re going to have to write an essay explaining an idea or historical event then don’t just read about it — try writing about that idea or event.  This way you won’t just be remembering the starting point (the equations or the basic facts) but the act of using the ideas you have taught yourself.

If there is one central idea to take from the myriad of articles on improving your memory available online, it’s that lasting memories make their home in more than one place in your brain.  The human brain is a complex thing, with hallways and passages leading every which way.  The more anchors that you can link an idea to, the easier it will be to remember it.  That’s why actively engaging your brain (and optimally the brains of your classmates) in the study process is so essential.  So study often, study actively, and study with others whenever you can.

Last week, I mentioned that my study system in college involved not studying in advance for tests and quizzes to see how much of the class material I had actually internalized.  That’s not the whole story, though, and since I don’t want to mislead anyone (this is, after all, a site devoted to helping you study more effectively) I thought it might be a good idea to note a few of my study tips.

While it may be true that I tried to avoid cramming for every quiz or test that came along, it wouldn’t be the whole truth to say that I “didn’t study.”  Of course I studied.  Studying is part of college life.  I did, however, study differently than everyone else I knew.  Here are a few of my rules:

1) Read your textbooks, go to class, and take notes.  It may not be required but it is important nonetheless.  You need to keep up with reading, pay attention, and have meaningful notes to look back on when it comes time for the final.  Of course, it helps to have interesting classes that won’t put you to sleep when you show up or sit down to read the text book.  Thankfully, many colleges give you a lot of latitude when it comes to selecting classes, so do your research beforehand.

2) Review your notes regularly and randomly.  There’s a lot of down time in college between classes — so use it!  A few minutes here and there add up, and will do wonders for reinforcing the core concepts in your brain (in fact, that’s the basic idea behind TestSoup, except they’ve made the notes and quizzes for you).

3) Ignore the quizzes beforehand but spend as much time as you need on them after they’ve been graded.  This one may seem counterintuitive, but in most cases quizzes don’t even count for a very large percentage of your final grade so it’s no biggee to sacrifice a few points here.  I did this to test how well I was keeping track of the course material.  Once I got the quizzes back I would review them to make sure I now understood everything I missed.

4) Use your quizzes to study for tests.  In most cases, quizzes are a good indicator of what material is most important to the class.  So I would use them, along with my notes, to study for tests.  Since I had already marked up my quizzes with extra notes explaining what I had previously gotten wrong, these were very helpful study guides.  I would then do pretty much the same thing with my tests once I got them back to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks.

5) Make a detailed study guide for the final.  Professors will usually distribute a list of stuff you should know for the final.  These are massively helpful, but even without one you can usually use your syllabus to list all the important topics.  Once you know what to look into, use your notes, quizzes, tests, and textbook to write yourself a “mini-textbook” of several pages explaining all the core concepts in your own words.  This active studying will reinforce everything you’ve been learning about.

6) Start studying in advance.  Like I said before, I would look over my notes regularly so that I didn’t need to cram for quizzes.  For tests, I would review my notes and old quizzes briefly the afternoon or evening before.  For exams, I would make my study guide two or three days in advance and then review it the day before like I would prepare for a test.

So the truth comes out.  It’s not that I never studied — it’s that I would spread out my studying throughout the semester so that I never had a crunch time.  When other students would discuss how long they had studied for their final exams, I was inevitably on the lowest end of those who actually had taken the time to study, and yet I would generally hold my own when the grades came.

Why?  Because I had been paying attention, reviewing, and studying throughout the course of the semester instead of slacking off.  This prolonged repetition allowed my brain to truly process and comprehend the information it took in and turn it into a long-term memory rather than a short-term fact that would disappear soon after the course ended — and all without sacrificing my social life.

1. In order to manage your time effectively (and to reduce stress), invest in a 15-minute or hourly planner.  This will enable you to set a rigid study schedule for months ahead of time! I know it seems intimidating at first, but trust me it will change the way you live your daily life (for the better!)

 2. Establish a routine (this goes along with the idea of the planner); get up around the same time everyday and get to bed around the same time. When scheduling your study time, try to make it around the same time each day, for the same amount of time.

 3. Post-Its are my best friend. I believe they are a necessity to life. Post-It flags come in very handy when studying for big standardized tests such as the GMAT. You should flag* the pages, questions, and/or topics that you need to review and write tips, tricks and notes you thought of while studying. This way you do not waste time figuring out what you already discovered! *Make your life even easier…utilize TestSoup’s flag for review feature on their web and mobile based flashcard system!

4. Stay focused. If your planner says to study for 3 hours; study, and study ONLY. That means turn off and displace your cell phone, and disable your facebook. Isolate yourself from all distractions and keep it that way until you are done! That also means no snack breaks…come prepared to “preparation site” with a bottle of water and eat a healthy snack/meal beforehand!

 5. Keep “tabs” on where you left off in your previous day’s studying. The best way to keep track would be to create a comprehensive study guide and check it off with the date completed when you feel confident enough. The topics that continue to trouble you, circle and review them until you master them. It is important to outline the main ideas of each topic and record equations on a formula sheet so as you are doing your final review, you can quickly go over everything and dive deeper into the areas that do not jog your memory as quickly.

Test anxiety is a horrible thing. However, I have found some ways to overcome it:

1. The source of your anxiety is likely the extra adrenalin you have in your system. The more you have the more you will worry. Thus, working out is a great way to rid yourself of extra adrenalin and make you tired enough to go to sleep early. If you find yourself getting anxious during your practice/studying take a minute and go run up and down the steps or do jumping jacks. I know it sounds ridiculous but it really works. It took me too many years and too much stress until I finally figured that out. Once I implemented the above strategies, my grades went up and my stress levels came down.

2. Try to get up and get to sleep early. Your body is up and functioning for 16 hours. Try to make your sleep schedule work accordingly. Try to get up no later than 8:30AM and bed no later than 11:00PM.

 3. Make sure you know the basics. The core concepts are the key to your success on the exam. Flashcards are the best way to review I find. I would try TestSoup-you can even study with BlackBerry and iPhone apps, on the go, to keep your mind busy. Best of all, TestSoup is affordable at a cost of only $9.95/year.

4. When you are studying, if you are easily distracted, turn your phone on silent and put it away (unless of course you are using the TestSoup mobile apps!). Something that helped me was listening to classical music; I created my own station on Pandora and just listened wherever I was to stay focused.

5. Get PLENTY of sleep the night before. Also, the night before, do not touch a book or any exam prep materials. Schedule your time so that you have completed all of your studying and reviewing prior to the night before! The night before you need only to RELAX. Take your mind off the exam. By that time, you either know it or you don’t. So just try to keep your anxiety to a minimum by watching your favorite movie or tv show. This helps, trust me!

 6. Eat a big healthy breakfast before the exam…the last thing you need is an empty growling stomach before or during the exam!

 7. Visit the test center at least a week ahead of time so you are familiar with it and its location. On test day, make sure you allow yourself plenty of time to arrive. I would arrive to the test site at least 30 minutes early.

One of the most common mistakes made by many standardized test-takers is that they fail to pace themselves on test day. Standardized tests are timed tests so you must pace yourself! Here are two simple tips to help you beat the clock:

1. Practice Like You Play.  Get into the habit of simulating the actual test environment. This means no food, no drink, no paper and pencil (if your test is computerized), etc. Find out where the test center is and scope it out. We are creatures of habit so get comfortable and KNOW the routine.

2. Study With Flashcards.  One of the biggest regrets of many test-takers is that they failed to study with flashcards from day 1. Get into the habit of reviewing flashcards at least two-three times per week. Because your test is timed, don’t waste time pondering a formula, vocabulary word, idiom, etc. This is the beauty behind TestSoup. Our system is designed to give you the MOST important core concepts, test strategies, and test hacks to help you ace your test. For GMAT test-takers, this is critical to maximizing your score.