Top 5 Myths About Studying

Nowadays, in a time of rapid scientific advances, you'd expect that most myths have been disproven and cleared off the table. And while that is true in most cases, there are still a couple myths about studying that steadily persist and are believed by many students worldwide. The aim of this post is to reduce some of the misinformation about studying, thereby resulting in you spending your studying time as effectively as possible.

Highlighting is effective

It definitely looks nice - and it does help with organising the information. However, slowly going through the textbook and giving every sentence a different colour will not help you memorise the information more quickly. Highlighting is an extremely slow and passive studying method - there are plenty of studying techniques out there that are simply way faster and more effective.

Let's say your goal is memorisation, for example. You could either spend two hours highlighting, or half an hour going through flashcards - the results will be roughly the same. This is because when you're highlighting, you're just passively absorbing the information. With flashcards, on the other hand, you're actively recalling the information from your mind, resulting in rapid strengthening of the neural connections which form your memory.

You need to spend ages studying

This is another common misconception. Many studies have shown that the human mind is actually limited to only doing about 4 hours of deep work per day. This means we're quite limited when it comes to for how long we can work at maximum efficiency.

So, instead of trying to pack as much studying volume into a day, it's much more effective to limit yourself to around 4 hours per day and focus on making them as effective as possible. Personally, I've found that 4 hours per day can even be a bit overkill sometimes.

To shift from quantity to quality, it's really important to focus on studying as actively as possible. This may take more effort than simply reading the textbook, but it's much more productive. Try techniques like flashcards, memory palaces, or answering practice exam questions. Brain dumps or explaining the content to a fellow student are also fantastic options.

You need to follow a strict schedule

You may manage to study from 9:30 to 10:30 and 1:45 to 3:15 every day for a week. But you probably won't be consistent with it for a year. Good news: it really doesn't matter at what time you study. What matters much more is consistency: regular, small efforts every day will compound to excellent results in the long term.

How can we be consistent though? I've discussed this extensively in this post but what it mainly comes down to is by turning studying into a habit. To do this, I highly recommend starting small, with only around 20 minutes of studying per day. Get your mind used to studying daily. Then, up the time - 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, etc.

The key here is the initial phase, where you get your mind used to studying. What you'll see that happens over time is that your mental resistance to studying decreases. It'll become less and less of an effort to sit down and study, until eventually your mind accepts it as normal and you just sit down and study without any effort. If that sounds insane right now, and you're used to procrastinating for hours before studying, just try it. Key is to never skip one of these tiny study sessions.

Last minute studying does the trick

You can certainly learn some information last minute. In fact, I have a whole post about how to study effectively last minute - you can find it here.

However, if you have the choice, last minute studying should definitely be avoided. One reason for this is because you'll be stressed - and when you're stressed, your mind doesn't work as effectively. You'll also end up rushing through the information more, resulting in a shallower, less in-depth understanding of the content.

Additionally, you lose the benefits of consistency. When you study a subject in small chunks over the course of multiple weeks, the information enters your long-term memory. You'll also have more time to focus on every topic in depth, and you'll be able to learn all the fine details surrounding a topic.

Writing on paper is a waste of time

Notes on an iPad or on a laptop are definitely faster. But sometimes, you might actually want to write slower. The average typing speed lies at around 40 words per minute. By comparison, the average writing speed is only 20 words per minute - half the speed of typing with a keyboard.

Benefit of writing on paper is therefore that you spend twice as much time with the information in your mind. And, the longer you keep those neural connections active, the stronger they grow. So, you'll retain more of the information if you write it on paper, as compared to typing it digitally.

When taking notes, I do recommend that especially, if you're writing on paper, you write in bullet points. Here, you're not cutting out any key information, but eliminating those filler words does save a bit of time. I've found this to be a healthy middle path between spending enough time on the information and working as efficiently as possible.