Instead of studying, I’m writing this post - yes, not very studious of me, but I think I deserve a break after 5 hours of studying. A technique I use for studying is time blocking. It’s a pretty simple concept, it’s easy to implement yet hard to master. For the longest time I never really had any sort of formula or pattern to my studying. I carried some really bad habits from high school over into my university career and never really learned from them.
My high school studying habits were very unstructured - they consisted of me picking up the text and reading it over once and saying “I know it”. That worked fairly well as most of the concepts where quite simple to pick up. Doing that in university as most of you know, simply doesn’t work. For me, it didn’t not work, but it didn’t work either. For several terms most of my academic performances were mediocre with a few bright spots here and there.
In the last two academic terms (I’m in school right now), I’ve been taking a far more serious approach to studying. The current way I study is simply to allocate periods of time to whatever I have to study. My studying process for soft courses (that is, courses that require no technical/computation skills whatsoever, but require in depth knowledge of material and memorization), is passive read once, active read once, make notes once, passive read notes, active read notes and group study. I find that this formula of passive, active, write, passive, active and interpersonal dialogue works best for me.
An example would be currently I’m studying for an Organization Theory and Design midterm that I have on Saturday. It takes me about 30 minutes to passive read through a single chapter which consists of ~50 pages. To active read, that is, repeat things in my head, connect various theories and concepts together and actually ingrain concepts into my grey matter, that usually takes 50-60 minutes a chapter. Making notes takes about an 1 hour to 1.5 hours per chapter, usually I like to make diagrams that aid in visualization of concepts (I’m a visual learner). Passive reading of notes per chapter takes about 10 minutes, and active reading takes about 30 minutes. Adding all of that up gives us a total of about 3 - 4 hours of studying per chapter to effective retain the material. The test I have on Saturday covers the first 6 chapters, so that gives me a total of 18-24 hours of pure studying time necessary to learn and retain everything. Finally, I have a group study session, which will probably last 3-4 hours. So in total I should spend 20+ hours for 6 chapters or ~300 pages of material.
Sure 20+ hours of pure studying sounds pretty difficult to get accomplished, but I started a week ago, so 20 divided by 7, gives me ~3 hours a day. 3 hours a day isn’t that bad, considering I only have about 25 hours of lectures a week. So I blocked out that time a week ago, and stuck to my schedule and here I am, today, feeling pretty confident and accomplished. I haven’t written the exam yet but I feel like I could do it half-baked, half-drunk and with a half-functioning hand.
Even though I planned like 28 hours, I actually only studied for about 15 hours and as of right now I feel extremely confident going in. Tomorrow, I’ll go to my group study session and have no problems with explaining concepts and theorems to different people and get feedback on my knowledge. That interpersonal dialogue is usually the most important part of my studying process. It serves 2 purposes, it ensures you haven’t missed any important factoid or issue and gauges how well prepared the rest of the class is. If you leave the session feeling you’re 10x more prepared than anyone else than you’re in all likelihood going to do really well. If you leave the session feeling like you don’t know anything, then in all likelihood you know too little and you have about 24 hours left to cram. But if you did the readings and note making you shouldn’t have too much left to learn.
Time Blocking Studying (TNSTAAFL Studying Algorithmn)
- Figure out how much you need to study - ie how many chapters? how many pages?
- Calculate/Estimate the amount of time needed on a chapter to chapter basis or page to page.
- Now using Outlook or Google Calendar, or a trusty whiteboard write down your studying schedule on the basis of the above calculations.
- Stick to your damn schedule. If you don’t, stab yourself in the leg, Will Ferrell style.
- Read Passively - read normally, don’t skim, but don’t force yourself to remember anything - the goal here is to get a general sense of organization and structure of the content.
- Read Actively - now remember those damn concepts!
- Make Notes - write those concepts, definitions and important doodads down. Draw diagrams if they help.
- Read Notes Passively - again, there should be structure and organization to your notes.
- Read Actively - internalize everything you’ve read and make the necessary interconnections.
- Group Study! - quiz the hell out of people and get them to do the same to you, you’ll thank them when you’re writing your test and you encounter a question that you only remember the content on because your idiot friend said something stupid during your study session.
In all likelihood you will be over prepared if you actually stick to your schedule and will have loads of free time at the end. This is a good thing. It is infinitely better to have extra time nearing your exam/test than to have no time at all if you decide to put off your studying.
If this works for you, you owe me lunch.
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