[Music] here's the truth school didn't teach me how to study in high school i was forced to go to class i was told to hand write notes and couldn't bring a laptop not that i had one but still then in college suddenly everything moved digitally and learning became self-directed but i didn't realize i had to adapt so i kept studying like i did in high school needless to say my first semester didn't go so well although i was studying long hours it didn't pay off and on top of that my life was a mess last
night's dinner ruminating on the kitchen counter dirty underwear dangling from my ceiling fan i didn't even get there i was miserable my grades were miserable and i wasn't having fun this was not how college was supposed to be so what did i do i wiped my memory card everything i thought i knew about learning it was time to rebuild my entire approach to school and no this change didn't occur overnight it took six years of reinvention before i finally developed a system that fit my lifestyle now it might not fit yours but i want to
share two potentially unpopular ideas that worked wonders for me and how you can apply them in your own life first i stopped attending lecture the problem with class is that you have one professor who understands material a certain way lecturing 300 students who all learn at different speeds front row jimmy's locked in and keeping up i'm somewhere chasing shadows around the corner and karen's just lost in the woods but if i fell far enough behind it was impossible for me to catch back up and then i would just stop paying attention and start daydreaming for
the rest of the hour now i know we're always told there's no such thing as dumb questions but i'm pretty sure everyone got tired of me asking yeah so can you explain all of that again in a way that i can understand please plus huge classrooms are terrible learning environments for me there are way too many distractions i remember one of my buddies would always come to class and watch anime and as much as i tried to resist the urge before i knew it i'd have one of his earbuds in and we'd be geeking out
in the back of the classroom but if it wasn't him it was the kid in front of me who was crawling through reddit or the girl who was eating durians in the class and makes it smell like someone took a dump on the floor admittedly i was never someone who could actually pay attention in class just something about sitting in that cramped seat with a fold out desk listening to a lecture on glycolysis just put me right to bed but instead give me recorded lectures i could pause and rewind a cozy desk setup reliable internet
connection a fresh cup of coffee and a dope playlist oh yeah i can get to work it allowed me to approach studying at my own pace free from unnecessary distractions and remove the pressure of having to keep up with my peers or even the professor i realized that this was the benefit of self-studying you have the ability to control your learning environment to study more efficiently now i'm not saying i never watched the lectures i'm just saying i didn't go to lecture there's a difference now that things have mostly moved virtually most professors will record
their lectures for your viewing pleasure instead i would struggle through the material first on my own using a very systematic approach which i'll cover later in this video and then i'd rewatch the lectures once i had a better understanding of what they were going to be about and only if i was completely stumped and had no idea what was going on or i wanted some brownie points with professor would i attend office hours for more one-on-one coaching so next i want to talk about what i actually do when i self study the main point here
is i don't take notes get that out of here i never take notes i only make flash cards in remnant when i was in high school i took this u.s history class where the daily homework assignment was to take handwritten notes so we can re-read them to study for the exam this took several hours every afternoon and although it ended up with beautiful notes they weren't very useful and a lot of times i never even reviewed them again of course i didn't know this at the time but rereading is actually one of the least effective
study strategies because it amplifies something called the dunning-kruger effect this happens when we believe we're much smarter than we actually are based on poor self-awareness of the situation basically re-reading my notes made me feel like i understood the information but when put to the tests i wasn't able to recall anything just think of the last book you read the last ted talk you watched you're probably left with a feeling of ah and wonderment and might have wanted to start a non-profit but if i asked you to recite the main thesis and arguments could you i
definitely couldn't instead i use a modified version of sq3r which mike and i revamped to employ evidence-based practices it stands for skim question rephrase recall and repetition i first skim through the lecture or chapter and jot down any of the bolded terms or definitions to form an outline of what i'm going to go through this serves as the skeleton for all of my flashcards then i'll go back to the beginning and start the next step rephrase this is also called the teach back method or the findment technique after going through a section i'll pause and
i'll teach back the main ideas or topics at the fifth grade level if i can explain something to a fifth grader that means that i actually have a deep understanding of the topic this was a really important realization for me i used to read chapters and take notes without really knowing what i was writing down and i'd re-read them later to try to just memorize word for word i was more focused on making these aesthetically beautiful study guides rather than trying to understand the information and this is a terrible approach because the main objective of
learning is to understand not to memorize once i had a good grasp on the material i would then transfer that information onto my flashcards to recall flashcards force us to use active recall to study one of the best learning strategies i can't peek at the answers beforehand unlike if i was rereading my notes where everything's just laid out i'm not challenging myself to study and i use remnote to generate flashcards and organize my thinking because it also combines the next step spaced repetition revnote has a built-in algorithm that spaces out your flashcards at strategic intervals
so the harder topics appear more frequently and the easier topics appear less frequently that way you're not wasting time studying things you already know well so after i've generated flashcards for my self-study now i'll go back and watch the lecture usually at two times speed since i already have a good understanding of what the lecture is going to be about i'm just using this time to capture any ideas i might have missed and to appreciate how hard mr j has worked to improve his public speaking skills although flashcards are much less pleasant than just rereading
your notes it's this struggle that actually leads to better learning using more cognitive effort leads to better retention and the cue in the sq3r just stands for doing tons and tons of practice problems so now i'm going to put it all together for you this is still the system i used to study in medical school right now but it only works under one condition the most important factor in determining if your cell study is going to work is if you set clear goals when i first started the self-study i wasted a lot of time trying
to figure out what i had to work on next and also had a hard time balancing learning new information while continuing to review what i already knew clear goals removes any of that stress and anxiety about what to do next and it also allowed me to fully immerse myself in my studies and fully relax when i was off the clock so now i map out exactly which new topics i need to learn how many practice questions i want to do which topics i'm going to review and how long i'm going to spend doing each of
those things for example this friday i have my neurology shelf exam so at the beginning of the week i set up some daily study goals each day i'll do at least 40 practice questions review my week areas from the previous day and obliterate as many of my remnant flash cards as possible and i'll give myself a rough time frame for how long i want to spend doing each of these tasks so while doing practice problems i'll pull up a remnant daily document and i'll portal in topics i answered incorrectly and fill in missing details or
add important information to improve my flashcards these are my weak points for the day then i'll open yesterday's daily document and study those weak points before going back to my main neurology folder to continue burning through the rest of my flashcard queue and then tomorrow i'll do the same thing do more practice questions write down the weak points for that day and then study the weak points from yesterday which would be today i found this way to be the most reliable and effective way to constantly stay on top of my studies so ironically skipping classes
and taking no notes actually taught me to be more disciplined and organized to manage my studies and it helped me set clear boundaries between work time and play time so those are the two pivotal changes i adopted over the years at first it felt really uncomfortable to skip class and resist the urge to take notes because i've been so conditioned to do that since high school but over time i found that taking control of self-directed learning got me better grades and actually brought me to a happier place overall so i hope that my experiences provide
a new perspective so you can avoid some of the mistakes that i've made if you want to chat or just shower me with compliments i'd love to connect so definitely give us a follow on instagram or on twitter and send us a dm and i will see you guys next time [Music] you
