2 min
Studying is hard, and not always fun. Fortunately for you, there are a number of tips and tricks to make your study more effective, and more fun. Let’s explore some!
What if I told you that you could improve the effectiveness of your study, and procrastinate during your study guilt free!
Most are led to believe that the only way to study is to study at an intense pace for hours on end. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to focus that intently for such a long period of time. Why? Well the average attention span is only around 20 minutes. After that point in time you lose focus, your mind begins to wander, and your study begins to suffer. Often, this leads you down the path of procrastination.
Thus, working beyond your normal attention span leads you to become less productive and will lead you feeling frustrated and exhausted.
To get around this you can use the pomodoro method. This involves putting a timer on for 25 minutes and applying yourself consistently over that time. Once the timer is up, stop working! Give yourself a five minute break, and do whatever you fancy. Message a friend, watch a quick video, whatever! Once your five minutes is up, set the time for 25 minutes again and jump back into study refreshed.
It seems simple, but the method embraces science conducted around concentration, and it really works!
Overwhelmed by all the different concepts you have to study for an upcoming external? Not sure how they all link together? NCEA subjects can be confusing like that unfortunately.
Often an easy solution is to visualise all the content you have to master. One way to do this is to draw a mind map. Here’s some tips to make them effective.
Make sure to use a blank piece of paper, or use a mind map app online
Start in the middle of the page and put the name of the internal or external standard in the middle
List all the sub topics in the standard, and make them secondary headings
Use lots of different colours!
One of the best ways to check your progress is self-quizzing. There are a few ways you can do this effectively.
One way you can do this is by finding NCEA past papers online. You can find them here. A good way to approach this is to try and complete a paper from a past year without looking at the answers. This will show you what questions you can answer, and what your blind spots are.
Another way is through flash cards. A good app for flash cards is Quizlet which can be found here. This can be a good way to learn definitions, and a method that you can do in a group as well.
Of course there are many more techniques that you can apply to your study, and these only touch the surface. However, if you apply these it will certainly increase the quality of your study and make it more efficient.
If you like what you have read, or want to learn more about how to study more efficiently, contact us here.