Experts rethink good study habits. Ask someone for tips on proper study skills, and you’re likely going to get an answer that ranges from “study in a quiet, sealed room” to “drink a sip of water each time you need to remember a fact.”
But from folksy suggestions to ideas based in actual science, study skills are just about how well you train your brain to absorb information. The New York Times reports that scientists have determined a few simple techniques that can enable a student to absorb more information. Many of these new findings contradict commonly-accepted study habits. One might think that focusing on a particular subject for intense, long stretches makes the most sense. Or putting yourself in a closed room with no distractions enables the best mental retention. Retaining information is all in how the brain operates. Nate Kornell is a psychologist atWilliams Collegewho has studied how the brain absorbs information. For further reading: Forget what you know about good study habits. Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits. The Power of 48 Minutes.
Is there magic in the number 48?
Does this number hold any significance in your future success? Speaker Don Crowther suggests that there is. In his presentation at the NSA Summer Symposium, Don told the audience that 48 minutes is the magic number. Here’s how it works… Set a timer for 48 minutes. Close out all distractions and work continuously for 48 minutes.
Don reports that this technique repeated four times a day allowed him to write a 200 page book in just two weeks. How to Stay Focused So the question comes up, If this solution works well how can I use it in planning out my daily schedule and applying it to future goals. My usual morning schedule has about 2 hours of productive time available. There does seem to be magic in the number 48! This technique does require a little planning and it helps to have a coffee cup warmer on your desk. With large numbers and a loud alarm. If you find yourself getting distracted on your projects give this simple technique a try.
Vragen stellen. Leer de kunst van het goede vragen stellen.
Onze kinderen voeden we op met de aanwijzing om toch vooral nieuwsgierig te zijn. Om te blijven vragen als ze iets niet begrijpen. Van menig manager wordt juist niet verwacht dat hij vragen stelt. Hij weet toch alles al? Over de kunst van het stellen van vragen. Vraag anderenBij het terugvinden van informatie zoeken slimme mensen vooral met behulp van anderen. Twee vragenWe worstelen met de vraag: ‘Wat moet ik nu echt weten voor mijn werk?’ The New Way Doctors Learn. Turning a medical student into a doctor takes a whole lot of knowledge.
B. Price Kerfoot, an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, was frustrated at how much knowledge his students seemed to forget over the course of their education. He suspected this was because they engaged in what he calls “binge and purge” learning: They stuffed themselves full of facts and then spewed them out at test time. Research in cognitive science shows that this is a very poor way to retain information, as Kerfoot discovered when he went looking in the academic literature for answers.
But he also stumbled upon a method that really is effective, called spaced repetition. (MORE: Couch Potatoes Rejoice! The theory behind spaced repetition is simple: when we first learn a fact, our memory of it is volatile, subject to change or disappear. (MORE: The American Hopsital: The Most Dangerous Place?) How can you learn like one of Kerfoot’s Harvard Medical School residents? Study strategies of college students: are s... [Psychon Bull Rev. 2012. Study Tips and Productivity Advice to Help Students. Developing Good Study Habits Really Works.
Knowledge is the essence of smart thinking. No matter how much raw intelligence you have, you are not going to succeed at solving complex problems without knowing a lot. That's why we spend the first 20 (or more) years of our lives in school. Robert Bjork and fellow PT blogger Nate Kornell have explored some of the study habits of college students in a 2007 paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review . Research on memory provides a number of important suggestions about the most effective ways to study. One of the most important tips is that students should study by testing themselves rather than just reading over the material. Of course, guidelines from memory research come from studies in idealized circumstances. To address this question, Marissa Hartwig and John Dunlosky related the study habits of college students to their grade point average (GPA) in a 2012 paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review . All college students tend to focus their study on upcoming assignments.