Self-sabotage when studying:
Identify what YOU do to waste your time and what to do instead!
1. Passive rereading – rather recall the main ideas without looking at the page, rereading is a waste of time.
2. Letting highlights overwhelm you. A little highlighting here and there is okay—sometimes it can be helpful in flagging important points to also get it into your brain.
3. Merely glancing at a problem’s solution and thinking you know how to do it. You need to be able to solve a problem step-by-step, without looking at the solution.
4. Waiting until the last minute to study. Rather do a limited amount of work on one subject at a time.
5. Repeatedly solving problems of the same type that you already know how to solve. Do a variety of problems.
6. Letting study sessions with friends turn into chat sessions. Checking your problem solving with friends, and quizzing one another on what you know, can make learning more enjoyable, expose flaws in your thinking, and deepen your learning.
7. Neglecting to read the textbook before you start working problems. Before you begin to read, however, take a quick glance over the chapter or section to get a sense of what it’s about.
8. Not checking with your teacher or classmates to clear up points of confusion. Teachers are used to lost students coming in for guidance - it’s their job to help you.
9. Thinking you can learn deeply when you are being constantly distracted. Set your timer to make it a short period (25 minutes) of focus.
10. Not getting enough sleep. Your brain pieces together problem-solving techniques when you sleep, and it also practices and repeats whatever you put in mind before you go to sleep. You need to sleep 7-8 hours per night to think quickly and well. It makes all ELSE YOU HAVE DONE MATTER.
B. Oakley and T. Sejnowski, Learning how to Learn (UC San Diego,
2014)
B. Oakley, A Mind for
Numbers: How to excel at Math & Science (Even if you flunked Algebra)
(Penguin, 2014)
