When we look at successful people, we usually look at what they did right. We forget to take into account what they don’t do, which can be even more important. Therefore before learning about fantastic study skills to apply, it is incredibly useful to inform yourself about the poor study habits that bring many learners down. Harmful habits are universal. There are some common mistakes made by students that will always lead to more pain and waste more time than necessary. You may be using these techniques without realising how detrimental they are for you. By identifying them and simply discarding them, you will already become a more active learner (without even doing anything else). It will be like driving an automatic car. The toxic study habits are listed below:
1) Studying After Midnight
Do you frequently study well past midnight? If so, you’re in good company as a
surprisingly large percentage of university students think that the proper way to study is to chill until 10 pm and only hit the books afterwards. I know countless of my friends that do this. However, there are two strong arguments as to why this is completely wrong:
It’s much harder to concentrate late at night. We all know how not having a good night’s sleep negatively affects us the next day. You constantly yawn, feel low on energy, your health and fitness decrease, etc.
2) Rote learning material
I used to do a lot of rote reviewing in high school. Now, I have seen the light, and I am a changed man (cue angel music). Reviewing constantly wastes time and is terribly inefficient especially if you already know the bulk of the work. Don’t worry; there are many more efficient learning techniques that I will introduce you to later in the Presto Study Hacks guide.
3) Multi-tasking
If multi-tasking were in Star Wars, it would be on the dark side. This is a terrible habit that students pick up. You may think that Facebooking, Youtubing, Snapchatting, Instragramming and internet surfing only has a slight impact on your studying, but studies have shown that this decreases your study efficiency significantly. It is estimated that every time you look at your phone, it takes your brain around 60 seconds to return to ‘the focus zone’ in which you can effectively learnt the material you are attempting to study.
This has been an excerpt adapted from the book Presto Study Hacks. For more amazing content and matric study guides click below.
Shivad Singh