How to Study With Concentration | Intelligently
How to Study With Concentration: Why is it that some students study hard and yet they are not the best when we compare them with other students corresponding to their age and “only” get average marks? And why is it that there are other students who do not even spend half of the amount of time and effort in their studies but achieve good or even outstanding results?
- A) Preparation
- B) Mindset
- C) The main part of “studying intelligently”
Intelligence certainly plays an important role but: The way you study can make you succeed or not in school, college or university.
My recommendation is to study intelligently; this can help you save a lot of time that you could have lost in your unfocused attempts to “study hard.” This article, however, is not intended as an excuse for students not to have to study anything. You will have to invest an adequate amount of time for the study and there is no way around it.
However, this article will guide you on how to make the most of the time you spend studying. Its objective is that you be able to reduce unnecessary parts of the studies and focus on the important.
When I started studying, I was surprised to see many of my classmates rush into the library just to leave with seven or more books in their hands. This is what I call being ambitious. Many of them had borrowed each of the books recommended by our teacher – sometimes up to 4 different books for each topic.
All this became a huge mountain of learning material (for them). For a very short period of time, I was a little scared by their anxiety but I held on to the decision to keep my focus on the important thing. I kept it simple, I just borrowed one or two books that I really needed and in the end, I had the same results. How did I do it? I studied intelligently and only intensely occasionally.
How to study intelligently and not hard? And how to avoid studying for a long time:
This article is divided into three parts. Part A) Preparation and part B) Mindset focuses on organizing the information in a way that is easier for you to remember. Part C) is the main part of the concept of “studying intelligently.”
Table of Contents
A) Preparation
1. Create a study plan
You want to study intelligently, don’t you? Therefore it makes no sense to study in an unfocused way or in a non-directed way. Do not immerse your head fully in the subject. That is the way that would really waste your time. Instead create a study plan in which:
- Specify the day you start preparing for your exams.
- You create a daily schedule of tasks that you want to carry out during your preparation for these exams.
- Details the various tasks and exercises you want to do to prepare.
How does this make it smart?
A clear objective pursued little by little with a plan will help you avoid many extra hours and also allow you to direct your focus towards what is important.
2. Create summaries
I have had many reviews on the content of an entire book, most of these books in the range of 500-1200 pages. And even if you only have a few chapters of a book to read for the test.
I recommend that you create summaries while working on that book. In this way you establish what is essential, this you can take advantage of during the next phase of study without having to read the book again. You can also train yourself to quickly identify key points in long texts that are very likely to be evaluated in exams.
As a result, it will be easier for you to skip a lot of irrelevant data while thoroughly reviewing the really important part of the book.
3. Separate the wheat from the straw
While (How to Study With Concentration) listening to a class or reading a textbook, try to give the following an opportunity: Continuously separate the information that is important from what is not important.
Take notes of the important points that your teacher/teacher says and add notes in the class notes. Making these important additions will help you at a later time to capture key points. You can also highlight important phrases or passages in the text so you can easily avoid reading large amounts of unimportant information in your notes.
B) Mindset
1. When you study, give 110%
When I went to school I almost always had to study for long periods of time in order to memorize and understand the contents given. The big mistake I made was studying hard and for a long time but without always being focused on what I was doing.
I got distracted by television, radio, telephone, friends or any other fun one could imagine.
Nowadays, when I study I always give 110%; I can reduce distractions to a minimum and do my best to avoid procrastinating. I may have a time limit of 1-2 hours but I want to make the best use of that time. After that, I have even more free time.
How to do it intelligently?
When studying, do it in a focused and appropriate way, avoid any kind of distraction and use the time you have the most.
2. Continuity
Making you spend the night a few days before your exams not only drains you to a great extent but also forces you to run through a lot of information instead of studying properly.
Instead of spending the night consider the possibility of spending half an hour after each day at the university with a kind of post-study, that is, reading a chapter of the book by summarizing or doing some exercises.
All this preliminary work will help you make better use of time when you study (during the exam preparation period), instead of having to perform all kinds of inefficient tasks such as extracting information from books, trying to understand the operations arithmetic, etc.
Why is this smart?
If you have already done the preliminary work during the course, you will be able to concentrate much more on other intelligent forms of study.
C) The main part of “studying intelligently”
1. Don’t try to memorize, understand!
One of the main mistakes I had – when studying hard not intelligently – was to learn by heart, which is really a very intensive study time. Memorization is fine if an upcoming test requires you to reproduce what you have learned the word for word. But the higher the educational system rises,
the less important the memorization will be and the more important it will be the understanding and the ability to draw conclusions from the subjects of study.
In most cases, memorization corresponds to studying strongly and not intelligently. Focus your attention on understanding and understanding the knowledge they are teaching you.
How to understand complex issues?
Establish links and associations:
Information becomes knowledge through connections. If you cannot relate a complex issue, it will be very difficult to understand.
But when you discover similarities and when you establish a connection between new knowledge with concepts that you have already understood then understanding the subject becomes easier. Try to identify the links between different topics and establish links between the overlapping concepts.
Imagine the subject as real as possible. Instead of recognizing the fact that the study material consists of numbers, words and sentences, think of images (visual thinking). By doing this, you direct a movie in your mind that will help you memorize the facts faster and longer.
What you basically do is associate emotions (in the form of images) with data devoid of emotions. It is difficult to memorize the numbers “483215”, but if you link each number with an image and create a funny story of it, it will be very easy for you to memorize that combination of numbers for a longer period of time.
This is the way that artists who do number memorization tricks can memorize combinations of them seemingly indefinitely
Emotions:-Connecting emotions with a subject will be of great help to internalize the subject. Have fun while you study! It is a fact that we remember things that we associate with intense feelings.
Also, if you are really interested in a subject, learning will become something much more joyful. Once you get curious about the subject and develop an interest in it, you will have taken an important step towards a smarter way of studying.
Simplify through analogies:- In school and university, you will have to face various complex facts and circumstances. Make use of the analogies [= comparisons] and try to compare a very complicated topic with a simpler one, which will make it easier for you to understand the overview of what you are taught.
Pattern Simplification:-While studying, be sure to pay attention to the continuous patterns within the theme that are repeated over and over again.
By perceiving and understanding these recurring patterns, you begin to understand the framework in which the theme is built. Once you have a good overview of this framework, the acquisition of new information that is based on the same model will be much less difficult.
Make use of acronyms:- If you are faced with difficult words, specialized words or formulas, an acronym can be an excellent aid for memorizing those words or formula. Acronyms work incredibly when you can form easy-to-remember acronyms such as NLP (which means Neuro-Linguistic Programming).
The more likely you are to remember the acronym, the more likely it is to be able to remember the words associated with it.
2. Keep a general perspective in your mind
Building a car can serve as an example of the learning process. Your teacher provides the “technical knowledge” during your classes,
for example, detailed knowledge of how an engine works. Textbooks and other teaching materials provide you with the chassis, frame, wheels, and screws.
But it is the student who makes use of said “technical knowledge” in order to use it to combine it with all the material delivered. It is the student’s job to put all the parts of the car together and keep a wider view of what is taught in the mind.
If the student stubbornly tries to memorize the position of each part in the car, he or she will not be able to (re) build a car of a thousand individual parts. Memorizing the different names of each part does not help either.
Only by keeping in mind that “technical knowledge” and materials is what you have available for the creation of a car, will you be prepared effectively for an upcoming test.
3. Perfect the way you study
There are basically four basic types of study: visual, auditory, kinesthetic and emotional.
Visual Students: Visual students learn more effectively when the learning material is represented visually, for example: in the form of graphs, maps, tables, etc.
Auditory students: An auditory student studies more effectively when he hears information, for example in a class or by recording his own words on a tape recorder.
Emotional students: An emotional student learns more effectively by associating feelings, emotions and vivid images with information.
Kinesthetic Students: A kinesthetic student studies more effectively when information can be experienced and felt, that is, through “learning by doing it.”
In order to study in the most intelligently possible way, you need to discover which way of studying you prefer.
Once you know what works best for you, line up your learning process so you can get the most out of it.
Students who are mathematically talented should put their notes on spreadsheets, graphs, and tables; Kinesthetics should imagine the learning material as real as possible, auditory students should discuss the material with others or record their voice while reading the subject aloud, etc.
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