Here's the thing about efficient and effective studying. It depends on two things: how active (engaging in higher order thinking) you are when learning, and the way you retrieve or recall this information over time. Studying should be getting more information than what you did previously. That's the trend that each study session should have, and that's how I see studying. I'll break down the two things I said.
Here's the thing about efficient and effective studying. It depends on two things: how active (engaging in higher order thinking) you are when learning, and the way you retrieve or recall this information over time. Studying should be getting more information than what you did previously. That's the trend that each study session should have, and that's how I see studying. I'll break down the two things I said.
"How active you are when learning". There's this pyramid scheme that's used in educational psychology that happened to stand the tests of time and science. It's called "Bloom's Taxonomy" and there's another similar model called "SOLO's Taxonomy", and these two models are about "Knowledge Mastery" (look these up, the pictures in and of themselves explain a lot). These are easy ways to sort of conceptualize this idea of "higher order thinking", ie what things to start thinking about and mentally playing around with more when you're studying, listening to lecture, reading a textbook, or learning in general. Technically, what I mean by "activity" is the higher order thinking from Bloom's and SOLO's taxonomy, but also the amount of "cognitive load" or confusion, or mental/intellectual pressure you have when you're learning. Anything that makes the information just a bit harder to consume. Failure is a good example of this mental pressure. When you answer a practice question wrong, you feel like this pressure of "I didn't get that right... why?" That WHY is good. How and Why questions will generally get you into this state of mental pressure better, and this is cognitive load. Increasing cognitive load to a optimal level will help you learn and study much much better and much faster. How do you know the optimal level of cognitive load? Think of it like a video game: what games do you tend to find THE most fun? It's games that challenges you JUST a little bit. If you can approach each studying session like it's a challenge, and you start thinking about relationships, links between facts and concepts, big picture stuff, patterns, hypothetical applications of knowledge that you're receiving, and the like, you'll increase your chance of getting high quality information, details and concepts, into your long-term memory.

All that summarized: You need to feel very active, and you need to contemplate relationships of facts, concepts, and ideas when you're learning. Learning, true learning, is a very active and investing act. If you're not awake while you're studying, you're doing active learning wrong. That's the fact of it. On the other hand too, sometimes you will need to remember facts, but they're not as common as one would feel or think. That's where the second part of what I said earlier can come in.

Second: "Retrieval or recall of the information over time." THIS is where you can go to the internet and find things like active recall, spaced repetition, acronyms, and etc. These techniques emphasize that you recall your information FROM MEMORY (no looking at notes or rereading), and if you can, recall the information in a variety of ways. If you used diagrams or mind maps, use written word instead. If you used written word, try lecturing about the topics to people, and answer their questions. Again, you want to build up activity, the "this is kind of challenging and engaging, AND I'M UNDERSTANDING, THINGS MAKE SENSE" mental feeling. All the study techniques mentioned before are effective techniques, but they're repetitive and boring, and that's not active, that's not higher order thinking, so find ways to make them active such that you build on previous knowledge. Each study session shouldn't necessarily be a review, but a build-up on previous knowledge. That CAN INCLUDE review, AND it needs to include new knowledge build-up.

This is the "study or learn to UNDERSTAND," saying that people talk about. That's what they mean. How can this be applied? Analyze the information you're learning. Which situations would these concepts be most effective in? Evaluate the information. Potentially even create new hypothetical scenarios, if you want to go that crazy.

That's the principles in which to guide your studying. Personalize this because the cognitive load is like a goldilocks zone for people, and it differs per person. You need to experiment and find out what techniques best suit your mind for being engaged during learning. Also, sleep well, and consistently every night. That's a very important thing for learning. You'll undo everything you learned if you do all nighters.

There's also biology of learning stuff that I can go over too, but that'll make this post even longer, so if you're interested, ask, otherwise, I wish you the best luck!  Traduci in italiano