Useful Study Tips You Didn't Think Of!

Tips

• Keep a water bottle/snack/both near your study desk or where ever you choose to study so that you don't have to keep getting up every time you are thirsty and/or hungry. This will just disrupt your flow and concentration and you probably don't want that to happen if you want to remember what you read.
• If you have trouble concentrating for a long duration, try out the Pomodoro Technique, click here to go to the post on my other blog about the technique if you don't know what the Pomodoro Technique is. Personally, however, the Pomodoro technique didn't quite do the thing for me, click here to see what I thought were the pros and cons of the technique and why the technique may not be for everyone.
• Make your own notes if you have the time to do so! Writing your own notes will help you understand better and remember better compared to just reading online notes or someone else's notes.
• Make your notes neat and clear so that when you are revising, you actually feel like studying.

And finally, the biggest lesson I've learnt, is that if you are unsure whether something will appear on your exam, do it! Most of the time, something related to what you thought could be unimportant, will come! There is nothing as worse as the feeling that you could've just spent another minute reading the text but didn't do so and lost a mark or more on your test. Unless you have a very straightforward syllabus, you should definitely listen to this tip! (Also note that the syllabus may be straightforward but it may not mention every single detail you need to know in a concept, so learning a little extra, even if not helpful, won't hurt!

Pomodoro Technique: is it for everyone? - Pros and Cons \\ Study Techniques

I put up a post a long time ago outlining what the Pomodoro technique and why it is effective. But is it for everyone?

Don't know what Pomodoro Technique is? Click here to see my short post outlining the method

The Pomodoro technique is quite popular on the internet and is known to be an effective method that works with your brain's attention span in a way. 

4 reasons why the Pomodoro technique could be great for you:

1. Because of the short time intervals, you don't totally zone out and if you have a very small attention span, a little bit more will power is all that's needed to get through the 25-minute study sessions. Great for those with a small attention span.

2. The small 5 minute breaks are like little rewards for studying for 25 minutes. It's gratifying and you feel like you've crossed a checkpoint after every interval.

3. Your brain is more likely to absorb information if you study in portions. 

4. You can grab a snack or get up to drink water while your timer is on and not completely get distracted because you know you only have 5 minutes. The 5-minute timer almost prevents you from procrastinating, unless you don't have any willpower that is - you gotta work on that shiz.

reasons why the Pomodoro technique didn't work for me

1. I personally like studying in batches. I like to study chapter-wise or module-wise or even according to the number of pages. If you don't like being interrupted before completing a task, this technique isn't for you! When my chapters were larger it just felt like I was doing less work because of all the breaks in between

2. It may get annoying to set all the timers - simple as that. It takes some time just to set them up and you'll lose some time in that; not significant time, but it can be annoying when you really want to get work done.

3. I, personally, don't have attention span issues most of the time, so if you're like me and can handle 1-hour study sessions with small/medium breaks in between you should be good without this technique.

4. When I don't have any time, this isn't the best technique. If I'm trying to revise plenty of chapters in one day before an exam or simply trying to get work done because I have to go somewhere, this isn't the most time-saving technique. 

Basically, it depends from person to person if the Pomodoro Technique is effective or not. It doesn't harm to try out different studying techniques in the beginning of a semester. I did use the Pomodoro technique in the beginning of high school when I had less intense studying to do but as the difficulty level increased throughout high school, it just didn't work for me.

I hope this post helped you understand the Pomodoro technique better! Happy Studying xx