In life, there is often just as much, if not more, value in knowing what not to do, as opposed to knowing what to do. The same applies to school, where most students use strategies that don't work well (and never will).
Introducing the villains:
- Speed reading
- Rereading
- Highlighting
- Underlining
- Passive note-taking
- Cramming
- Brain games
Speed Reading
Kim Peek, the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman’s character in the movie Rain Man, is the only confirmed speed reader in history. He was a savant who could read multiple pages at once and had near-perfect recall.
Now, I understand the allure of being able to breeze through whole books in one sitting. Who wouldn’t want to be able to absorb information that quickly?
Unfortunately, like everything that seems too good to be true, the effectiveness of speed reading is a lie. What? All those popular websites and online courses that promise you can read upwards of one thousand words per minute with near-perfect comprehension are scams? Yes.
According to eye-movement expert Keith Raynor, the real limit seems to be around five hundred words per minute. After that, your eye muscles can’t keep up. Your brain’s limited mental RAM can’t hold on to all of the material. Comprehension plummets.
If your goal is to learn, speed reading is useless. Just like with any other skill, the best way to become a better reader is to read. No other way around it.
Rereading
This is another insidious technique, although it has a far more powerful and legitimate grip on the public’s mind.
The thinking behind rereading is simple: if you read a text enough times, you’ll be able to cement it in your memory.
While there is evidence that rereading a piece more than once may aid comprehension, it’s a terribly inefficient route to take. It is expensive time- and energy-wise and leads to the illusion of mastery. You should avoid this strategy whenever possible—we’ll get to efficient ways of reading later.
I will say this though: I understand that some people like to reread books for pleasure, and that’s perfectly fine. Rereading a fictional book is like watching a favorite movie for the second time. But if your goal is to learn and retain information without wasting time and energy, rereading is an awful choice.
Highlighting
Even though a textbook full of colored streaks looks like progress, highlighting is a dreadful time killer.
Look, I get it. Your first thought: “If it’s marked, I’ll be sure to remember that little nugget of knowledge!” Incorrect. The simple act of highlighting just isn’t enough to move information into long-term memory. You’re way better off making flashcards. It’ll take a little longer, but you’ll actually learn.
Underlining
Same as highlighting.
Passive Note-taking
Take extensive notes. Write down every little thing the teacher says. Don’t reformat. Don’t illustrate. Don’t make any attempt to simplify. Don’t do anything to the information presented (otherwise you might lose a critical piece of knowledge). This is how almost every student is encouraged to take notes. But this approach is wrong.
Why? Well, complexity makes learning more difficult, not less. Think for a moment: what happens when you try to remember what you just took notes on? Can you recall most of what you wrote—the main ideas—or do you feel you have to pull out the notes and look at them? I’m guessing the latter.
Don’t get me wrong, writing things down is a great way to retain information. And there are ways of taking notes that are incredibly worthwhile. But if you’re filling up notebooks with pages and pages of information and then never looking at them again, you’re really doing yourself a disservice. Finding what you need when you need it is also going to be near impossible.
Cramming
We’ve all done it. Whether it’s because of procrastination, laziness, unavoidable circumstances, or just a naive belief that it works, cramming is something we’re all guilty of (at least once). The reasoning behind cramming is as follows: if you jam everything into your memory right before you need it, you’ll remember it more easily.
Tragically, that’s just not how memory works. Your brain needs time to process new information and make sense of it, and multiple review sessions are required to effectively transfer something into your long-term memory.
Cramming is like overpacking a cheap suitcase—you pack it full for a flight but it bursts upon arrival.
It’s also like waiting until the night before a marathon to start training, or cooking a threecourse meal with only milk, carrots, and beans, or trying to host the Olympics with only a few weeks of preparation.
But it’s perhaps most like making a house by just stacking bricks on top of one another and then hoping it will survive a hurricane. Sure, it might survive a Category 1 or a Category 2 storm, but it’s bound to topple at some point. The same goes for studying—cramming will give
you a quick boost for the imminent exam, but you’ll lose nearly all of the information shortly after.
Effective studying relies on two things: brief study sessions where neural “bricks” are laid, and time in between for the mental mortar to dry. Binging and purging have no place in the successful student’s toolbox.
Another issue with cramming is that it almost always goes hand in hand with sleep deprivation. Getting enough zzz’s is critical to learning and memory. All-nighters wreak havoc on your body and brain. Don’t sabotage yourself. You are better off going to sleep and waking up early for a short, targeted review.
Brain Games
Brain training websites like Lumosity don’t work. Sure, you might end up getting really good at rapidly clicking on a spot or categorizing items a certain way, but you won’t become smarter.
What brain games do is make you good at those specific games, and that’s all.
If you like playing games as a way to have fun and relax, then please, go for it. However, you shouldn’t fool yourself into thinking that improving your crossword or sudoku skill translates into anything meaningful. Doing so only creates an illusion of competence, and any perceived gains in intelligence are almost certainly delusional.