Studying Tricks

General, stuff I learned more or less the hard way courtesy of nearly dying of a chronic illness and having to research my way back to health:

A long time ago I realized something strange. I wasn't the smartest in the bunch of students, nor the fastest learner, and my memory is atrocious. (And lately thanks to Lyme disease my cognition has really taken a hit too; I do not think the clearest and Lyme brain is real; just an fyi for my readers) But I had courage and stubbornness and as it turns out that was enough. Figure out your own assets and use them to your advantage, but you will definitely need courage. Everyone does. Learning is scary, hard, and uncomfortable. Worth it though.
Have your "why" in mind. Why bother learning this? If you can't come up with a good reason, then without motivation, your studying will just crumble. In K-12 this reason is usually to stay under the radar and avoid punishment. One of the many reasons that I think public school needs to end. When you're actually trying to learn something, this reason can be anything at all, but it has to be something that works for you specifically.
Autopilot brain (I have been meaning to mention where I picked up this term for literal years but have brain farted on inputting the link, Blog of Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld - sorry), without really contemplating what you're learning or fully engaging with and focusing on it, is bad. And it's like avoiding the buffet in the next room to munch on your carrot sticks. There are books and resources out there that come into your life like a hurricane or true love, shaking everything up and making certain you are never the same again. Find those!
Reading only goes so far. Find a good book? Experiment with the good ideas you find in it. See if you can treat it like a religious text in that you actually apply its ideas to everything in your life that you can.
If you happen to be reading anything that is important to you then chances are you will come across information you either don't like, or can't use, or just can't stand reading. That is to be expected. It is the quality of the information that matters and not the source or the context (although to be fair you usually won't find quality information from a crap source). Take what you need and leave the rest. If you take notes and make sure to write down in your notes where you got the information, you can always come back to it later.
The internet is overrated for researching things. Look at scientific journals, at printed books in libraries and bookstores, and look to experts in academia and in their career fields. Just because someone has something to say doesn't mean it's useful information, or even non-misleading. In particular seek out books written by people, or the people themselves, with an ass ton of real life experience in their respective fields. People pretending to understand wtf they're doing are a dime a dozen, so seek out those who are overqualified to teach you.
Libraries are criminally underrated for researching things. Use the online catalog, use inter-library loan, ask the librarians for help, explore the full potential of using a library.
Upon finding something you want to study, make a point of finding all the books and resources on the subject that you can, and sifting through them to see which are the best resources for learning it. Then fully immerse yourself in the stuff; live it, breathe it, walk with it in your life for a long time. It's really quite like flinging yourself into a swimming pool and hoping you'll get your bearings. Otherwise, you'll be in a paddling pool and think you can swim with the sharks. This is because in basically every field of knowledge, there is no one right way of understanding it, but there's a whole lot of stuff that's not all that useful. It's like trying to find a million needles in a billion haystacks. You increase your chances of finding useful information by jumping in, instead of just daintily picking at one haystack.
Study less, but more often. A little at a time, over a long period of time, is easier to understand, digest, and remember than marathon reading sessions. Many times, due to conditioning imposed by school that tries to get you to learn way too much, way too fast, and also due to impatience or excitement, you can bite off more than you can chew. This is the exact equivalent of trying to bench press a hundred pounds when you can barely lift the bar. Patience. A little at a time done consistently over time will get you much further than trying to do it all at once and getting crushed by the weight, so to speak. So don't read "just one more chapter" if you don't have to.
Studying alone is generally more effective, but silence can mess with you. Play some music.
If you take notes, keep them neat and clean, double-spaced, and on only one side of paper. It's not wasting paper when your notes would otherwise be indecipherable and you wouldn't be able to read them. Also, highlighting things in different colors in your notes might help. But please don't do it to a library book or one you plan to resell.
Problems understanding something? Hate it with a passion no matter how much you try to force yourself through a college-level or high school-level textbook? Find books that are intended to teach that exact subject... to kids. This is often recommended for learning to read in a foreign language, but it also applies to everything, particularly difficult STEAM stuff. Better than giving up, eh?
Caffeine, or herbal tea. Helpful.
If alone, aromatherapy: also helpful. Perfume, or essential oil on a cotton ball, or a sachet of herbs, whatever - you won't be consciously focusing on the aroma but it's nice to have stimulus aside from words on a page. Don't do this if you're going to be with other people though, because of physical sensitivity issues in people with asthma etc.
Take breaks. Cramming just doesn't work that well. A little at a time will make the mess stick in your brain better.
Don't underestimate how long it will take you to truly understand what you're learning. In general seven years seems to be the minimum, and I mean for every subject or topic.
Get whatever chronic health issues you have under as much control as possible. If you don't have any that you know of, then keep up your mental and physical health care as much as able. See a doctor and a shrink to see if you have anything, anyway. Lots of stuff interferes with proper study habits, be that ADHD, or asthma, or whatever. People underestimate this. That is a big mistake.
Rest is your secret weapon when studying. Do not study every day. Do not study for excessively long amounts of time per day, limit it to 8 hours total if possible. Do not go for long periods of time without taking a day or preferably a week off. And do not study so much it becomes your life!
Having fun is your other secret weapon when studying. Set aside regular periods of time to actually have fun and enjoy yourself. Again, you don't want studying to become your life.
Never, ever skip well-balanced meals when you're trying to learn things. Same for other physical stuff you need to take care of such as drinking enough water and getting enough sleep. Being a sleepless student is seriously, seriously awful. Your friends and other social obligations can wait. If they can't, they ain't real friends anyway. If you have extreme insomnia and just want to have fun and go out every single night, you might consider switching your classes so none are in the morning. Know if you are a morning person or an evening person and time your classes and study sessions with this in mind!
Studying in summertime is underrated.
Specifically for college students: never, ever go above 15 credit hours and preferably 14. It seems fun but burnout is intense and some people like myself never really recover. Be patient and be flexible. Oh, and you will need work experience, so get it as paid internships or just after graduation if possible.
Exercise is underrated for helping with information retention. If you can, make a point of getting aerobic exercise in for 20 minutes to an hour at least four times a week. Overtraining or overexercising, however, is also bad and can lead to burnout, so be careful. Just because you're not in a gym doesn't mean you are not getting a lot of exercise in, particularly if you walk a lot or work a job that requires you to be on your feet. That counts as exercise in your calculations.
Anything that gets an emotional reaction out of you, such as a time crunch, social norms and expectations, social pressure to not fail or screw up, pressure to earn a lot of money or somehow pull a rabbit out of a hat, or anything like that, can make it a lot harder to focus and actually learn. Strive to remove those stressors from your life as much as possible - usually this is done by seeing things from a larger, more long-term perspective of "does this really fucking matter?" Don't drink society's kool-aid. You're still valuable and worthy even if you flunk everything. On another note, if you learn for society's benefit instead of your own, there's a pretty good chance you won't remember what you're learning. If you have chosen that route, that is also disrespectful to yourself and can ruin your life. I suggest you reconsider, and choose things for YOU.
You might have luck using my research method: using both word processing computer documents and written-out logbooks in scientist's lab notebook format or similar, or heck whatever works best for you (mine all look like recipe books in cheap composition books, the ones that look like flattened cows), over a long period of time use these to record whatever you want to remember about whatever it is you're learning. Keep insights in these things that you know you will find useful later, knowing that human memory is fallible. Have one of these for every single subject you're learning, both a notebook and an identical text file on your computer so if you lose one you will still have the other. Also, back up the computer files in "the cloud," and keep your notebooks on a shelf in a dry place away from heat and sunlight. Over the years this is far more useful than just jotting down notes in an attempt to get yourself to remember better. Sadly, if your memory is as awful as mine, it probably will not work beyond the short-term memory needed to pass a test. But the previous method seems to help. So if you need to pass a test, yeah go ahead and jot and cram and purge, but if you want to retain the good stuff, consider also doing this proposed method.
12/27/22 Have recently learned of other methods of help with note-taking and compiling information if these help: notebooks with file folders in them (3-ring binders with file folders), scrapbooking, filing cabinets with paper folders in hanging file dividers (or plastic file boxes with dividers in them) labeled so stuff is easy to find. It is quite a lifehack to be your own secretary.
12/27/22 That research method (2 points ago) is also helpful for all the topics that either get little to no respect or that seem kind of "obvious." Or those that are considered part of adulting, or part of "just girly things." Fun fact: absolutely nothing (that I know of) is simple if you really take a close look at it. Nothing is perfectly understood either. So if you want to start compiling research notes in that way, perhaps starting with a file on a phone or a computer, you could do so for any subject whatsoever. Here are some examples: vehicle repair, housekeeping, cooking, cleaning, good ideas for date night, candlemaking. Seems simple, right? None of these are. And yet such files of notes are very useful. You might begin just by listing all the subjects you are interested in getting good at someday.
One of my dirty tricks for studying that I don't use very often but which keeps me from going crazy is "advance, and the understanding will follow." If I have read the same sentence five times with taking short and long breaks in between re-trying it and it still doesn't fully make sense, I just move on and keep reading. I red-flag the subject in my mind and (if it's really important to me at the time) in my notes, and sometimes with a reminder in my day planner to retry learning the thing on a specific date. Then I later learn the same exact thing again but presented from a different textbook or teacher. Often I find out that the original thing just didn't make sense to me because it was worded poorly, or otherwise approached understandable subject matter using way too much "fluff" aka excessive fanciness. Be aware, however, that not remembering to specifically re-learn the subjects you didn't fully understand can and will bite you in the ass. Or worse, lead to actual catastrophes in a future career where lives depend on you (i.e. failure to remember everything in a food safety certification can kill customers at a restaurant, failure to understand physics as an engineer can bring buildings down, failure to remember just about anything in medicine will actually kill people and it's not a question of "if" but "when") Write it down, and remember to master understanding of these things. And I really don't recommend using this for anything that you have to fully learn in a given period of time, such as when trying to get a degree or certification. If you have unlimited time, yeah, do this, otherwise you're only screwing yourself over.
Try to avoid idle chitchat with anyone who is unoriginal about whatever you're learning. That kind of stuff is usually distracting at best and can put you off the subject at worst. "Hey have you heard about what Dr. Oz said lately about herbalism" No Karen, please for the love of God...
Don't talk about what you've been studying with anyone who clearly isn't interested and just wants small talk. Or with someone who doesn't really "get" the subject and has a chip on their shoulder about it. They'll easily give you backhanded compliments, ridicule you, pretend to ignore you and then not give you service (if they're working in some kind of public establishment), discriminate against you because you are clearly trying to prove you're "better than them when you're really not" and otherwise marginalize you. Even to the point of blatant discrimination and severe abuse and bullying. Usually accompanied by betrayals you never expected. In many locations being seen as dumber than dirt or at least the same level of educated and intelligent as everyone else is seen as virtuous because you're not bucking the trend and not a threat to your neighbors. Why? Because a lot of people think life is a zero-sum game and that by pushing you down they'll be lifted up, cause "you gotta be the best in the competition" but of course they aren't "stupid enough to show they're competitive" so they pretend to love their neighbors and be 'normal and sane and just like everyone else' while stabbing their neighbors in the back to get ahead, and most never, ever turn off that mentality. After all, bullying is nothing more and nothing less than engaging with the social strata to try to force your way to the top, and most of the human population plays that moronic game. Pretending they don't is also part of the game. Many if not most people are so fooled by this that they believe certain areas, political parties, groups and individuals are exempt, particularly their own social group and whatever other tribe they belong to, but that is a lie. The behavior of many people in this pandemic only proves this. To put it in D&D terms, every Paladin is actually a Rogue, and every other class is also a Rogue, and most are murder hobos. Society's polite veneer is just that; a lesson today's Democrats and Communists might take to heart, and no group of people is ever exempt. Alas, the nicest and best people among us are also the most susceptible to falling for this nicey-nice trap cause they just can't understand anyone ever willingly being so evil but hey, most are. Worse, people automatically think you are a ruthless asshole in-it-to-win-at-any-cost too, and that your attempt to become more educated and smarter is only because you want to hurt them for your own gain. Talk about the weather or some other mundane shit instead.
Strive to reduce gullibility in yourself regarding how studying and becoming more educated is "bad." I know I sure was when I was exposing my study habits and intellectual interests to the world. I often got called crazy, bipolar, insane, or some variant on those things. I was really treated like a leper. It did not do good things for my mental health because I didn't believe in myself and I did not know that people often don't know what they're talking about. I soon learned how full of crap they were, though: When I stopped telling anyone about that kind of thing and pretended to be polite and mundane, and to have no interest in learning or being "an intellectual," all of that came to an abrupt stop. Despite the fact that by then I actually had developed mental illness as a result of tickborne disease. Also my life got a lot better as a result of not making so many dumb decisions out of ignorance.
At some point information overload starts to really become serious. Head this off at the pass by learning where to find the information you need later down the late. File it, categorize it. One way of doing this is by having a notebook function as your directory, and by making a folder of bookmarks on your computer as well. Make these into "maps" of a sort, organized by field of interest, with contact information of experts in certain fields, newsletters, blogs, magazines, book series, and so on that might be helpful for later research and digging. If you have found a good goldmine of information, you might find more useful goodies in the same spot. Finding useful information really is like mining in some cases, but in others like fishing; the trick is to keep sending out feelers and improving how well you search for it. Deep digging into any subject can overload your brain; deep digging into a lot of them can really swamp you. Know where to find things. Makes it easier.
One of the really nice things about learning stuff as an adult these days is that we're spoiled for choice with regards to how and where we can learn things. Also, as an adult you might understand a little more about how you learn best. If one textbook isn't enjoyable for you to read, search for others. Keep searching til you have fun with it. Learning doesn't have to suck anymore. For instance, I'm trying to slog through The Art of Problem Solving and quickly coming to realize it's not fun at all, and that math books written for women (such as the Math Doesn't Suck and Algebra Doesn't Suck books by Danica McKellar) were way more fun for me. So I'll search out more textbooks written for the female mind, by women. It's how I seem to learn best and with least frustration. There's a very good chance there's something like that out there for you. Might as well see if something's out there, eh? - Added 11/5/23
Here's a bit of a reversed way you can learn things as an adult or as a teenager fresh out of high school. Instead of learning subjects before you know what you're learning them for, learn them for a specific project or goal. For instance, let's say you want to make a safe solar cooker. Going about finding all the resources for building the thing, learning how it works, learning how to put it together and learning what all goes into it is its own education. Or let's say you want to lay a concrete foundation and build an amphitheater over it. You'll need to learn stonemasonry, concrete pouring, three dimensional calculations to help you determine exactly how much concrete you need from the truck, you'll need to figure out where and how to pour it, and so on. It gets really involved and really educational real fast. And - since you know what it's for it's a lot more interesting than rote memorization. One fairly popular idea these days along these lines is learning how to homestead off the grid, and the learning curve for that is shockingly steep. The only problem is that with this approach you have to bear in mind it will literally take you years to get it done right, because just finding what you cherrypicked to put the thing together instead of understanding all of the things involved with your project (and reading all of the relevant textbooks, doing all the relevant practice problems, understanding say, Statics in Physics and how to lay a concrete foundation as learned from at least one good book) is tempting - but a REALLY BAD IDEA. - Added 10/18/24
Breaking out of your comfort zone can help you learn more than you would otherwise. For instance, chances are good you've learned at least one really useful piece of information from a source that you otherwise hate. Or dislike, or just are uncomfortable with. You don't have to let that kind of stuff into your worldview if you truly are at odds with everything about it, but if you just feel kind of iffy or unsure about it, go ahead and read the book, watch the movie, listen to the music, watch the TV show. See what you learn. Watch the magic happen. - Added 10/20/24
There's this term, "ladder of success," that makes it sound like getting ahead in a career or a field of study is as straightforward as taking steps up. I prefer to think of it like a mountain, a pyramid, a ziggurat, a staircase, and a ladder. If you really think about it, that mountain has way more "stuff" in it that you have to get on top of than everything else in that sequential order. All of the minutiae and small things at the base of that mountain can be likened to giving yourself a strong but easy-to-grow foundation of principles that you can build on later. The less you understand something, the slower you can take it, as long as you are really steady with it. Instead of leaps forward, you can inch forward. Bit by agonizing bit. You can mountain climb. If you have experience with that you know it starts with zigzagging your way up the slope to make it actually walkable, then follow ridges to the top. Same idea. I see the ladder approach as more of a "memorize this and obey some "superior" that" approach. You gotta admit, the view from the mountain is better. As for the others, the pyramid, ziggurat and staircase, they're kinda between the two. I just like the idea of laughably trying to climb up the ziggurat of success. - Added 12/6/24
Why is Wikipedia not a great source? Well, to see for yourself, try a few articles about something you are extremely familiar with, especially one where you actually care about people knowing the truth about it. In my case, that was the Wicca article. Oh boy, oh boy. - Added 1/4/25

Added 10/28/23 >>>

This is one of many reasons why college doesn't teach you nearly enough and why in many cases it is a ripoff. (Other reasons include the wrong people being in charge of colleges, too-large class sizes, lack of hands-on coursework, lack of promotion of individual problem solving capabilities and individual thought as opposed to just rote memorization the list goes on) You must read the textbooks. Every. Single. Page. I am not kidding. Learning fluff from powerpoint presentations and supposed "groundwork preparation" courses in High School will not prepare you for success in any professional field of endeavor. Look around you, what do you see the most of? People with excellent presentation, persuasion, and people skills. Precious little actual knowledge. This is why. Nowhere is this more evident than in medicine, manufacturing, or any other business that requires accuracy. Details are important.

Some ways to potentially boost IQ and cognition

All of these, whichever used, must be done consistently over time to notice any kind of benefit
Supposedly, Dual-n-back can help with memory and even IQ
Games known to keep people sharp as they age and therefore which can be used when younger to possibly sharpen cognition include Sudoku, Chess, Go, Bridge, and Mahjongg
Unproven method: playing any game on impossible mode. Or otherwise tackling a task you think is impossible and seeing if you can wrestle it into the realm of "possible."
Another unproven method: reaching the point of frustration, mental tension, feeling that comprehending something is super difficult, having your brain hurt, or making the 90s dial-up noise in your brain, metaphorically speaking, upon trying to learn something. This seems to mean that you are stretching the limits of your cognition and giving your brain a workout, and therefore feeling this brain pain could be the brain's version of muscle pain when you are working out. This is just my guess though.
Specifically learning about psychology and its related disciplines can assist you because it's the owner's manual for a human brain. That's powerful stuff.
Meditation might assist here, if done daily
Exercise is also said to help, if done daily
A diet that is more plant-based might help
Antioxidants, fresh oxygen-rich air, noncontaminated water, not being stuck in a cycle of inescapable poverty or reliance on someone/something who/that doesn't have your best interests at heart, not being bullied or abused, lack of exposure to chemicals that cause illness, and lack of pollution may also assist, but at the moment these seem to only be for the rich and/or privileged. Putting pressure on governments should assist.
Lack of stress most definitely helps. In 2020-til now certainly isn't a great time to be hoping for a lack of stress. Honestly, people say mindfulness, meditation, therapy, exercise and the other usual suspects are great at reducing stress, but in times like these that isn't enough. So we need to find some better things and soon. I don't know the answer here.
Playing a musical instrument is also said to help, but I have to point out if you don't enjoy it, there's probably a different hobby requiring hand-eye coordination and deep thinking that you can do. I'm really tired of seeing parents force their kids to learn music or really anything else. DIYing stuff from Instructables might actually fit the bill if you think that's something that might interest you.
Anyting that requires original thinking or imagination, even if that's just play, or doing an open-ended creative art or a craft or a hobby, probably makes you smarter even if it doesn't boost your IQ. Einstein actually said imagination was more important than knowledge and given our current lack of creativity and innovation and originality in the US, honestly I think he was right. Fun has become a dirty word and believe it or not, that's wrong because of the practical benefits it provides down the line. Specifically, the benefits of having people think of original solutions to serious problems instead of trying to be slaves to social norms, total perfection, and what is "correct." So either go off and do whatever is fun to you, and/or look at the electives offered by high schools and colleges and engage with whatever looks fun to you.
Open-ended problem solving might really help. I'm talking about problems without a defined question, with a lot of variables, and with complicated real-world conditions. How you solve these? You throw yourself against the "wall of difficult" until you find your own way of tackling the problem, and to hell with the "right way of doing things." Really the "right way of doing things" in these cases is usually whatever works. Often you can find a lot of problems like this in your own life where you find yourself up shit creek without a paddle and need to figure out how to swim. Sometimes, such as with the Scientific Method, you can use that tool you found as a paddle. Most of the time however there's nothing. One very good example of an open-ended problem is "What logical, science-based reason does a human being have for being virtuous beyond mere instinct, aka a person's 'conscience', or the threat of suffering, or punishent from an angry conscious universe (Deity)?" I personally believe science can find a way of solving this one, but it is a difficult problem indeed. One we have to if we aim to get into the next century without the dark side of science showing its ugly face. If I'm wrong and science-based methods can't solve this one, then we'll need something as good or better, and something based on truth instead of blind belief or it won't work. Since science is the best method of approaching the truth we have, then we would need to create a discipline of attempting to find the truth that is even better at it than science itself.
Full-immersion learning of tough subjects might also help, but this has to be consistently sustained at a good level of learning and exposure to new stimuli over time throughout every year of life or you could potentially get Boomer Brain. They haven't been in school for decades and it shows!

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