This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). I only ever recommend products that I have personally used and loved. Thank you for your support!
Are you sick of getting bad grades in return for all your time and effort? From now on, you’re going to study effectively like an A-student!
After years of tweaking and improving my study strategy, I’ve finally reached a point where I study effectively.
A word of caution: Since every subject has different requirements, no one solution fits all.
These tips to study effectively are basic so that everyone can apply them. Still, I encourage you to modify them to your needs.
With that, let’s learn how to study effectively!
Read also: 11 Productivity Hacks For The Modern Woman
1. Speed!
One of the most important things I’ve had to learn was that time is a limited resource.
In my first semesters of studying Law, I spent so much time carefully preparing the study material that I had only a little time left for actual studying, which was proven painfully by my disappointing grades.
While I did put in lots of time studying, I didn’t invest that time into the right tasks. Therefore my grades didn’t represent my effort.
Over the years, I improved more and more. But as there was more material to study, I always discovered I was still way too slow in my preparation.
Nowadays, I rush through my study material preparation and almost immediately jump straight into the studying part.
The goal here is to get through all the necessary material as quickly as possible.
There will be a lot of things that will stick already in the first round. And because I know I have all my material organized already, I can spend more time towards the end on the most difficult things for me.
If I were to obsess over these things straight from the beginning, I often would run out of time to study the rest.
Many of the following tips will show you how to speed up the inefficient parts of studying.
But since this is such an important tip, I wanted to highlight it straight from the beginning.
So next time you see aesthetic Study Inspo images on Insta or Pinterest, enjoy them but don’t feel compelled to create your own.
It might be fun, but most likely not the most effective study strategy.
2. Aim to study better not longer
A few months ago, I stumbled across live study videos on YouTube.
Basically, these are students that film themselves while studying.
At first, as I saw that +6h, 9h, or even 12h study session videos, I felt motivated and a bit envious.
I thought, damn, I want to be a good student like them and put in badass study sessions.
But just as quickly as that thought came up, another flashed through my mind.
I thought: Hold on! I don’t want that. I don’t want that at all! I want excellent grades while studying little. Why would I even want to study 12h a day?! Let’s be honest, not even half of that time would be effective studying!
In fact, I’ve heard multiple times that the top students actually study less than the students slightly worse than them, because they study more effectively.
The amount of time you study does not linearly represent the grades you will get (despite what some professors try to tell you).
Sure, we all need a basic amount of studying.
But if you do it right, you can probably cut down your study time significantly and get better grades while doing it.
Ever since my last study strategy improvement, I now study basically only throughout the morning until lunch.
I get in around four productive hours of studying before lunch and then maybe add an hour or so in the evening on top of it.
Before that, basically, my whole day always stood under the big label of ‘STUDY TIME.’
But to be honest, that “study time” was sprinkled with distractions.
Now, I’m really consequent and intentional about study sessions before lunch. And after lunch, I allow myself to chill or do whatever needs to get done in my life.
And let me tell you, I’ve never been happier or more confident with my study strategy!
3. Ditch textbooks as your primary source for information
So, I don’t know what it’s like in the degree you are studying for, but in Law, pretty much EVERY professor always talks about how we should have a good textbook.
And therefore, that’s what I did throughout my first semesters. I diligently picked a textbook, and then I worked through it from beginning to end, highlighting happily.
The goal was to accumulate my study material out of the highlighted parts of the textbook in addition to the scripts the professors handed out.
The problem with using textbooks as your primary source of information is that they are often broad and cover many largely irrelevant niche topics.
And it takes time to read through this information, of course, and even more, time to convert them into study material.
So, looking at the ‘time-useful information’ ratio, textbooks are not the ideal source to create study material from – at least in my case.
So what do I do instead?
I work with the 80/20 rule and try to focus first on case books that provide the most important 80% of the information.
Only after I studied this information, I turn to additional sources like textbooks and commentaries for the other more specific 20% of the information, if I have time left.
So this tip to study effectively is that you should consider exercise books or the like as your primary source of information instead of textbooks.
I’m aware that this doesn’t work for every degree, but it is worth consideration.
4. Do practice exams even if you don’t feel ready yet!
Practise exams are invaluable!
There is literally no better way to study effectively than using practice exams.
If you have access to them, get yourself the exams of past years and try to solve them even before you feel entirely ready.
For my last exam, I wrote the previous eight exams the professor had created in realistic 5h exam conditions.
I didn’t even have the solutions for these practice exams but simply the act of solving them and seeing where I am struggling helped me immensely.
Also, it is extremely reassuring to realize that you can handle the difficulty level of a real exam.
Sometimes, the other exercises you might practice with are much more difficult or just different from what will be asked of you in the real exam.
Whether you have access to the real tests of the past years or you bought yourself a book full of exercises, make sure to start practicing with them very early on.
I am always hesitant to start doing practice exams or other exercises because I don’t feel I know enough of the subject yet.
However, since I learn the most from doing such exercises, I’ve seen the best results the sooner I started studying with them.
That’s why nowadays, I try to push myself as early as possible into studying with exercises instead of just memorizing the material, and I recommend you do the same.
5. Ditch reading – ask and answer questions instead!!!
For most of my life, I’ve always studied with the rode method. So basically reading the same information over and over again until I finally had punched it into my brain enough for it to stick.
No wonder I didn’t like memorization. It was ineffective and annoying.
On the contrary, I always loved studying for math because I rarely memorized anything; I just jumped ahead and did exercises. During the first few rounds, the results were wrong until I got the system and finally managed to do them right.
Studying for math was more fun and effective because it was a much more active process than rode memorization.
And after three years of studying Law, I’ve learned that active recall is also a much more effective study strategy for this subject.
So now, instead of reading over my notes time and time again, I create digital flashcards that ask me a question before I can see the answer.
The important part here is that you actually try to answer it yourself first before reading the correct answer!!!
This feels effortful and can take far, far more time than just reading the answer and moving on, but that’s exactly why it works so well!
From now on, I recommend your number one study technique to be active recall, be it in the form of flashcards or practice exams.
6. Anki – seriously, how do you even manage without Anki?!
In the previous point, I’ve mentioned digital flashcards. Anki is the program/app I use for these flashcards.
Now, what makes Anki so special?
Frankly, not much. Its value lies primarily in its automization of the intervals in which you should repeat your study material.
It just makes things easier for us students. For example, I have mountains of information I need to get into my head for my law exams.
It would be exhausting to remember which information I should study according to the forgetting curve.
With Anki, I don’t have to worry about that at all.
As soon as I have entered any kind of information into Anki, I can forget about it with the certainty that I will have memorized it until the exam if I do my flashcards daily.
I honestly don’t know how I would manage without Anki.
Depending on which Anki program you choose, the layout may look a bit overwhelming, but there are plenty of introductional YouTube videos to help you.
You can also choose a similar program as long as it uses a spacing effect based on the forgetting curve of Ebbinghaus (or anything similar).
One last word of warning, though: You need to do your flashcards daily, or else you will get entirely overwhelmed because they accumulate.
7. Go digital for organization and speed
Alright, so I’ve come a looooong way through loooootsss of experimentation and improvements to speed up the non-effective parts of my study routine.
As mentioned, I quickly realized that reading textbooks, writing notes, and listening to lectures are pretty much the most ineffective study methods out there.
The only thing they accomplished is wasting my time, and at best, I familiarize myself enough with a topic that I could say, ‘ah, yes I’ve heard about that somehwere before.‘
Another thing that can steal an immense amount of time is the preparation of study material.
I’ve made the process more effective step by step over the years:
- First, I used handwritten flashcards (took AGES, near impossible to edit and takes up loads of space)
- Then I purchased pre-made flashcards (didn’t work for me; often, I didn’t even know what they were trying to tell me)
- Then I started typing out and printing flashcards (faster than writing manually, but still slow, it takes up space, and the printing costs money)
- Then I used my typed flashcards digitally with Anki (much more effective because of the automation, however, typing and formating is still time-consuming)
- Next, I took pictures of the paragraph with the information in my case book and turned them into photo flashcards with Anki (Seems quicker at first, but the uploading into the cloud, downloading on my laptop, labeling, and putting into Anki was still too time-consuming)
- Now, I only type out a question for the front of the Anki flashcard, and on the back, I refer to the book and the page that holds the information. (So far, this is by far the quickest way to start studying without wasting time on preparation. It also doesn’t take too long to find the relevant page in the book)
8. If it feels hard, you’re doing it right!
If so many studies show reading and highlighting texts are fairly ineffective study methods, why do most students still do it?
Because it is easy and makes you feel productive.
But studying is similar to working out. Doing only easy exercises won’t build you those abs you are craving.
To get a sixpack, you have to do what feels difficult and takes up loads of energy.
The same goes for studying. You should spend most of your time studying in a way that takes effort.
This is what I was talking about earlier with active recall.
You also need to realize that you can’t have 9h study sessions filled with energy-draining but effective study methods like active recall.
But the good thing is that you don’t need to study that long if you study this effectively!
9. Know when to think short-term VS. long-term
There are times when it is wise to study only specific information on a subject that are more likely to be relevant.
Lots of students apply such short-term gambling when they anticipate the test questions.
However, other times it might be smarter to apply a more long-term strategy.
This can be in studying topics that might not be relevant for the next exam but for the more important exam in a few months.
I can’t give you a rule of thumb when to apply a short-term vs. a long-term strategy. It depends entirely on the situation you are in.
Just make sure to consider which strategy is the most effective one for you in any given situation.
10. Keep it simple
Don’t overcomplicate your study plan.
I know many students who seemingly do a million things simultaneously in a frantic attempt to get all the information into their heads.
Just hearing about their study plan stresses me out.
For many semesters, I also expected myself to have an intricate study strategy in preparation for the important Law finals that require all the knowledge of six semesters.
Now that I’ve actually reached this preparation stage, I’ve actually settled with a very simple plan. At the core of it are the lectures I plan to attend, one casebook per subject, flashcards, and one or two practice exams a week.
That’s it.
It was such a relief to realize that this simple plan is pretty much everything I need in preparation for my finals.
If you keep your study plan simple, you are avoiding being overwhelmed, and it will be much easier for you to stick with it.
Also, very likely, you don’t need to study in a million different ways to ace your tests. Simplicity is truly key.
11. You do you – dare to walk the path less traveled
Just because most people are studying a certain way doesn’t necessarily mean you should, too.
Take some time to seriously consider your options. And if you decide that this way of studying is not for you, don’t feel pressured to do it.
For example, in Germany, there are commercial preparation courses for the Law finals.
They are pretty expensive, but most students are simply too scared to try studying without these courses since seemingly everyone gets this help.
Even now, that my Uni offers the same kind of preparation without charge, many students rather keep paying a huge sum of money because they are stuck in the herd mentality and scared to break out of it.
Granted, perhaps some of them actually see the commercial courses as superior over the free one, but I can’t help but feel like most of it is due to fear of going against the stream.
Don’t be one of those people.
Choose the option that seems most fitted to you, and that will help you to study effectively.
You do you. Always remember that.
BONUS – Loci Method
If you’ve been interested in study techniques for a while now, you might have come across memorization techniques like the loci method.
Basically, this method is all about creating mind palaces, in which you visualize obscure images for each information you want to learn.
For example, if you want to memorize the periodic table, you create one image for each element and mentally place them around your house.
When you visualize yourself walking through your house, you will see these images and associate them with the element they are connected to. And voila, you can rattle down the periodic table forwards and backward without much problem.
The best part about this technique is its reliability. Once you’ve stacked your mind palace with images that work for you, you will be able to recall them almost effortlessly for a long time.
The biggest downside I’ve discovered is that it takes a lot of effort to tap into your imagination and creativity to create such a mind palace.
Many topics are not easily convertible into an image, and attempting to do so takes up an immense amount of time, which doesn’t help you study effectively.
Depending on what you study, it might be worth a try.
The loci technique works especially well with any kind of list you are trying to memorize.
If you are interested, check out the book Moonwalking with Einstein. I also have it listed on my Reading List for Personal Growth.
Well, what was your favorite tip to study effectively, and do you have some of your own you’d like to share?
Until next time!
Sophie
