how to study less and get higher grades

there are two kinds of students in the

world here we have student a who has

been studying for 6 hours is on their

third coffee cup and has been

highlighting their notes rereading the

textbook and doing flashcards all night

long and here we have student B student

B has a very calm 2hour study session

they know exactly what to review how to

review it and barely waste any time

highlighting their notes or rereading

the textbook come exam day I think you

know who gets the better grade if you

couldn't tell it's me by the way wait

how I studied four times longer than you

in this video I'm going to teach you how

to study less and get higher grades so I

graduated as the valid dictorian of my

high school and I went on to double

major at MIT and I'm not saying that to

flex instead I want to provide some

context so back in high school I took 11

AP classes peing at five my junior year

and then at MIT I decided to double

major pretty late which required me to

stack up on a bunch of classes all at

once so as you can imagine I had to be

very efficient with my studying and the

entire time I had to keep my GR grades

up so my first tip is to disconnect

yourself from the number of hours that

you study as a student it's very easy to

get fixated on the amount of time you

spend studying instead of how you

actually study and I get it right

because it's very hard to measure the

effectiveness of a study session but

something like the amount of time you

spend is a very concrete measure though

it usually masks the true nature of the

study session for example let's say I

study for 5 hours now did I spend those

5 hours rereading my notes and

highlighting everything I possibly could

or did I quiz myself pretend to teach

others and Tackle my weakest Concepts

first those two behaviors would yield

drastically different results all right

so now that you're in the right mindset

let's move on to tip number two read

backwards this sounds really weird I

know but bear with me this is a very

valuable tip especially if you're

cramming for an exam at the last minute

so the night before an exam you're

probably tempted to pull out your

textbook and read the chapter the test

is on but there's a problem the chapter

is probably very long and you don't have

enough time so what you're instead going

to do to start at the end of the chapter

you're going to start by looking at the

chapter summaries and the key points and

then work your way to the beginning and

now that you're back at the start you're

still not going to read the chapter

normally you're going to do what I like

to call a first pass you're going to

look at all the headings all the charts

all the bulit terms all the colorful

boxes to get a high level understanding

of what the chapter is about but of

course you're still missing some of the

key details so now you're going to do a

second pass and no you're still not

going to read the chapter normally

instead you're going to go Section by

section and read the first paragraph

skim the body paragraphs and read the

last paragraph So now after the second

pass you should have a decent

understanding of what the chapter is

about but if you still have time to

study now you can go back and read every

single word individually all right and

with that let's move on to tip number

three batch your tasks so a huge problem

that a lot of students deal with and

maybe even you is something called

context switching so for example the

mindset that you have while reading

something is different from the mindset

you have while writing something which

is different from the mindset you have

while solving math problems switching

from one form of thinking to another

takes time something I like to call the

transition cost for example let's say

you spend an hour answering some brutal

calculus problems and then you have to

write an essay for your English class

both of those tasks require very

different forms of thinking it's

probably going to take you a good 10 to

15 minutes just to get into the groove

of the essay writing process so to save

time while studying you have to minimize

the number of transitions through a

technique called batching and the

premise of batching is very simple

you're going to group together similar

tasks and Tackle them together so for

example instead of doing some math

problems then an English essay then some

science problems and then a history

essay you're instead first going to do

the math and science problems first

together and then you're going to do the

two essays this way you only have one

mental transition instead of three now I

use batching all the time in fact I'm

using it right now once I finish filming

this video I'm going to go ahead and

film another one because I already have

the light set up I have the camera set

up I have the background set up if I

were to film these videos at separate

times I would just waste time taking

everything down and then putting it back

up oh and I have another quick tip for

batching tasks once you batch your tasks

you might notice that within a batch

different tasks have different degrees

of difficulty I always recommend that

you tackle the easiest task first within

any given batch this way it's much

easier for you to transition into that

new mental state that you might need to

be in so for example if you bash

together a bunch of writing tasks like

write an essay work on a presentation

and write a discussion post you should

probably do the discussion post first

because that'll take the least amount of

effort and then you can follow this up

with the outline and then the essay tip

number four is to give yourself

constraints now one of the easiest ways

to spend less time studying is to give

yourself less time to study and no I'm

not being factious I'm 100% serious so

there's an old adage called Parkinson's

law that goes as follows work expands so

as to fill the time available for its

completion now this idea sounds fancy

but it's simple however much time you

give yourself to do a task is however

much time you're going to take for

example if you give yourself 3 days to

work on an essay you're going to take up

the full 3 days but if you give yourself

only 3 hours you might be surprised to

see how fast you can actually finish

that essay so now while it's nice to

space out your deadlines you don't want

to give yourself too much time to work

on an assignment because then you're

just going to have the mental comfort of

telling yourself oh I have hours or days

or even weeks to complete this task and

then you'll just work at a slower Pace

now the easiest way to take advantage of

Parkinson's law is to set a timer before

you start an assignment first ask

yourself how long is this assignment

going to take then reduce that number by

10 to 20% and set your timer accordingly

again you might be surprised by how fast

you can actually finish that work so

this technique is something that my apsy

teacher actually used at the start of

the school year he only gave us 30

minutes for each exam towards the middle

of the school year he only gave us 25

minutes and then towards the end of the

school year he only gave us 20 minutes

minutes now Believe It or Not by the end

of the school year most students were

able to finish the exams even when only

given 20 minutes I remember at the start

of the school year he told us he was

going to do this and we all thought that

it was nuts but turns out he was on to

something DeMarco if you're watching

this shout out to you you helped me

learn how to take test effectively all

right and my next tip is to leverage AI

now one of my favorite ways to cut down

on study time is to use AI tools like

grammarly who's the sponsor of this

video so many of you know grammarly as a

spelling and grammar tool but do you

know that does way more than that let's

say you have to write an essay you're

staring at the prompt but have no idea

what to write about this is where

grammarly can help just open up

grammarly and ask it to help you to

brainstorm topics then tell grammarly

what your essay is about and almost

instantly it'll give you a handful of

topic ideas oh and it doesn't stop there

once you have your topic grammarly can

also help you draft a research plan and

even give you an outline now once you

have the outline you start writing your

essay and along the way grammarly

ensures that your writing is clear and

concise it'll check for common mistakes

like passive voice subject verb

disagreement and misplaced modifiers but

it'll also analyze your piece as a whole

and provide suggestions for cohesion

flow and tone in fact with grammarly Pro

you can indicate the exact tone you'd

like to go for whether it's personable

confident empathetic engaging witty or

direct oh and once you're done writing

you can also use grammarly's plagiarism

detector to ensure that you can submit

your essays with confidence grammarly is

a must have for all students sign up and

upgrade to grammarly Pro for 20% off

using my link and now now back to the

video so tip number six is don't idle

and this again comes from an AP psych

teacher so while you're working through

an exam or doing some homework problems

you are inevitably going to come across

some problems that stump you and I'm not

talking about problems that are just a

little bit challenging I'm talking about

problems that you legitimately do not

know how to answer no matter how hard

you try now the best thing that you can

do in this scenario is to swallow your

ego and move on and this was a huge

issue for me back in school if I had

spent 20 or 30 minutes trying to solve a

problem I would feel terrible if I moved

on without figuring out the answer but

this ties into a psychological

phenomenon known as the sunk cost

fallacy now if you're not familiar with

the sunos fallacy it is the phenomenon

whereby a person is reluctant to abandon

a strategy or course of action because

they have heavily invested in it even

when it's clear that abandonment would

be more beneficial in other words just

because you put a lot of time and effort

into solving a problem that's going

nowhere does not mean that you need to

waste even more time in most cases

you're better off tackling other

problems first and then coming back to

the ones that stumped you and this

requires being comfortable answering

things out of order so if you're doing a

homework assignment maybe you answer the

last problems first and the middle ones

and then make your way to the start and

if you're working through an exam the

same principle holds don't ever feel

compelled to answer all of an exam's

questions in order unless they build

upon each other just try to find a

foothold somewhere work off that and

then tackle everything else so tip

number seven is to do mindless work

first so there are two kinds of tasks

you have fixed tasks and then you have

variable tasks fixed Tas tasks are

usually mindless work like working on

flashcards or trying to find images for

a presentation variable tasks usually

require more mental energy for example

writing an essay or brainstorming ideas

for a group project now you should do

your fixed tasks first and here's why so

this bar represents the amount of time

that you have for studying if you drop

in your variable tasks first they're

going to follow Parkinson's law in other

words they're going to inflate and take

up all of your available time and now

you won't have time to fit in your fix

tasks now fixed tasks on the other hand

don't inflate like variable tasks

something like create 20 flash cards is

always going to take the same concrete

defined amount of time so by doing your

fixed tasks first you create a

constraint for your variable tasks so

when you drop them in yes they're going

to inflate again but this way you manage

to fit everything so this is a concept

that's much easier to understand

visually and shout out to my editors who

I know have done an amazing job showing

you how it works oh and by the way this

is a concept that I came up with and

have been following for years let me

know in the comments how you feel about

it and if it makes sense because I'm

down to craft more productivity rules

but I just want to make sure I don't

sound like I'm crazy up here okay and

the eighth and final tip is to tag your

notes so students waste a ton of time

rereading notes I have wasted a ton of

time rereading my notes and this is

usually because in the days leading up

to an exam we don't really know what to

focus on we just tell ourselves oh my

God there's an exam coming up for unit 3

time to read everything I have about

unit 3 but the reality is within any

given unit there are topics that we know

like the back of our hand hand and

others that we're not super familiar

with so if you want to spend less time

studying you have to spend less time on

the topics you're already comfortable

with and that's why you should tag your

notes during lecture while your teacher

is speaking if they say something you're

not too familiar with just put a star or

some other symbol next to the bullet

point this way when it comes time to

review your notes your eyes are

automatically drawn to the areas that

you need to focus on now if you forget

to tag your notes during lecture don't

worry you can also do it after class

just pull out your notes skim them as

quickly as you can and tag any points

that you're not super familiar with so

that wraps up today's video hopefully

you enjoyed it and by the way comment

below to let me know how the school year

is going for you so far are you enjoying

it is it tough I would actually love to

hear more from you guys and of course if

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