Study Hard? Study Smart..

Why is it that some students study really hard, but arent the best in
their age group or get

only average grades? And why is it that there are other students who
do not even invest half the amount of time and effort into their studies,
but get good or even outstanding results? Heres how you can study
smart instead of wasting countless hours of your valuable time. Also,
be sure to have a look at How to Get Motivated to Study as motivation
plays a crucial role in studying smart.
Intelligence certainly plays a role. But: The way you study can make
or
break
your
success
at
school/college/university.
My
recommendation is to study smart, which can help you to save a lot of
time that would have been lost with unfocused attempts of studying
hard. This article is, however, not intended as an excuse for students
not to study at all. You will have to invest the proper amount of time for
studying, theres no way around. But, this article guides you on how to
make the most out of the time you invest for studying. This articles
goal is to enable you to reduce the unnecessary parts of your studies
and to focus on the important.
Whenever you study, strive to study in a smart way.

When I started studying, I was shocked to see many of my fellow

students rushing into the library only to leave with seven or more
books in their hands. Thats what I call ambitious. Many of them had
lent every single book ou12r professors had recommended sometimes
up to 4 different books per subject. Inclusively the script for each
subject, it became a massive mountain of learning materials (for
them). For a very short time, I was a little frightened by their
eagerness, but I held on to the decision of keeping my focus on the

important. I kept it simple, lent two books I really needed, and in the
end I got the same and often better results in the examinations than
the overachiever-crowd. How did I do it? I studied smart and only
periodically hard.

How to study smart not hard?

And how to avoid studying for so long?
This article is partitioned into three parts.3 Part A) Preparation and part
B) Mindset focus on the organization of information that makes it
easier for you to recall. Part C) is the main part of the concept of
studying smart.
A) Preparation
1. Get a study game plan

You want to study smart, right? Hence, it makes sense not to approach
your work in an unfocused, undirected way. Dont dive head first into
the topic. Thats the way that would actually cost you a lot of time.
Instead, create a study game plan where you

specify the day you begin to prepare for your exams

create a daily schedule of tasks you want to accomplish during

exam preparation

create a detailed to-do-list, (keep a close eye on what is really

important)

enumerate the books you need to read (better: just the important
sections you really need to know for the test)

itemize the various tasks and exercises you want to do for

preparation

Depending on the difficulty of your exams and how many weeks and
months you have for studying, you could also categorize the
weeks/months for preparation into different phases, from I. basic
refreshment of knowledge, II. studying, revision and exercise to III.
intensive cracking down social life on hold.

How to do it the smart way?

A clear goal that you pursue gradually with your plan helps you to
avoid many extra-hours, but it also allows you to direct your focus on
the important.
2. Summarize

Ive had many exams about the content of an entire book, most of
these books in the range of 500-1200 pages. And even if you have only
some chapters from a book/journal to read for the test, I highly
recommend you to create summaries, while working through the book.
That way, you establish the fundament on which you can build upon,
during the upcoming study phase, without having to read the book all
over again. But you also train yourself to quickly identify the key
statements in large texts that are very likely to be tested in the
exam. As a consequence, itll be easier for you to skip large amounts of
irrelevant data while sifting through the book.
3. Separate the wheat from the chaff

While you listen to a lecture or read through a textbook, give the

following a try: Separate continuously information that is important
(Could this knowledge be tested in an exam?) from the unimportant
(Is my teacher digressing or listing irrelevant data?). Take notes of
the important points your professor/teacher talks about and add
annotations to your script or lecture notes. Making these important
additions to your script will help you at a later time to grasp important
coherences. You can also highlight important sentences or passages
from the text so that you can easily avoid reading through large
amounts of unimportant data in your script.
B) Mindset
1. When you study, give 110%

When I went to school, I almost always had to study for long periods of
time in order to memorize and understand given contents. The big
mistake I made was to study hard and for long periods of time, but I
was not always focused on what I did. I got distracted by my mobile
phone, the internet, TV, radio, telephone, friends or any other
amusement one can think of. Nowadays, when I study I always give a
110%. I reduce distractions to a minimum and give my very best to

avoid procrastination. I may have a time limit of 1-2 hours, but I want
to make use of that time as much as possible. Thereafter, I have even
more leisure time.
How to study smart:
When you study, do it in a focused and proper way, avoid any kinds of
distractions and use the time you have to the maximum!
2. Continuity

Doing all-nighters some days before your examinations will not only
exhaust you to a large degree but will also force you to rush through
the data, in place of studying properly. Instead of opting for allnighters, consider spending half an hour after each day at university
with post-treatment, i.e. reading a chapter in the book, making a
summary or doing some exercises. All this preliminary work will help
you to spend more time with studying (during your exam
preparation period), instead of having to engage with all kinds of
inefficient tasks, such as extracting data from your books, trying to
grasps (arithmetic) operations and building an understanding etc.
Why is that smart?
If you already did the groundwork during the term, youll be able to
focus a lot more on smart ways of studying.
C) The main part of studying smart
1. Dont try to memorize, understand!

One of the major mistakes I made when studying hard not smart
was to learn by heart, which is really time-intensive. Rote
memorization is fine and dandy if an upcoming exam requires you to
reproduce what you have learned word for word. But the higher you
rise in the educational system, the less important will it be to
memorize and reproduce, as your understanding and the ability to
draw consequences will be tested instead.
In most cases, memorization corresponds to studying hard, not smart.
Focus your attention on the understanding and comprehension of the
knowledge that is taught.

But: How to understand complex topics?

Establish links and associations
Information becomes knowledge through connections. If you cannot
relate to a complex topic, itll be very difficult to understand it. But,
when you discover similarities and link new knowledge with concepts
that you already comprehend, understanding the matter becomes
easier. Try to spot ties between different topics and establish links
between concepts that overlap.
<img class="size-full wp-

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src="http://files.planetofsuccess.com/blog/wpcontent/uploads/2012/08/Smart-studying.jpg" alt="Smart"
width="340" height="262"
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Studying smart can help you to save a lot of time

Imagine the subject matter as vivid as possible. Instead of recognizing

the fact that the material you study consists of numbers, words, and
sentences, think in pictures (headword: visually thinking). By doing so,
you direct a movie in your mind that will help you to memorize facts
faster and for a longer period. What you basically do is the association

of emotions (in the form of pictures) with rather unemotional data. It is

difficult to memorize the numbers 483215, but if you link each
number with a picture and create a funny story out of it, it will be very
easy to memorize the number combination for a longer period of time.
[By the way, this is THE memory trick artists use to memorize
seemingly indefinite number combinations.]
Emotions
Connecting emotions with your subject will greatly help you to
internalize the topic. Have fun while studying! Its a fact that
remembering things we associate intensive feelings with is by far
easier. Also, if youre really interested in a subject matter, learning
becomes a lot more joyous. Once you manage to become curious
about your subject and develop an interest in it, youve made an
important step towards a smarter way of studying.
Simplification through analogies
In school and university, youll be confronted with various complex
facts and circumstances. Make use of analogies [= comparisons] and
try to compare a very complicated issue with a more simplified one,
which makes it easier to understand the bigger picture of that which is
taught.
Simplification through patterning
While you study, make sure to pay attention to continual patterns
within the subject matter that occur again and again. By noticing and
understanding these reoccurring patterns, you begin to understand the
framework on which the topic is constructed. Once you have a good
overview of such a framework, the acquisition of new information that
is based on the same pattern will be a lot less difficult.
Make use of acronyms
If youre confronted with difficult, specialist words, names or formula,
an acronym can be an excellent aide-memoir for the memorization of
the word or formula. Take for instance the rather simple name
Enhanced Health and Usage Diagnostic System. Its acronym is
EHUDS, which sounds like e-huds or e-hats. All you have to do
now is to think about electronic hats and youll most likely be able to

come up with the acronym EHUDS, from which you can rebuild the
original name.
2. Keep the bigger picture in mind

The constructing of a car can serve as an example of the learning

process. Your professor supplies the know how during his lectures, for
instance, the detailed knowledge how an engine works. The textbooks
and other learning materials supply you with the chassis, frame, tires,
and bolts. But, it is up to the student to make use of the know-how, in
order to use it for the combination of the delivered material. Its the
students job to put the car together and to keep the bigger picture
of what is taught in mind.
If the student stubbornly tries to memorize the position of each part in
the car, he/she will not be able to (re-)construct a car from a thousand
of individual parts. Memorizing the different names of each part will not
help either.
Only by keeping in mind that the know-how and material are at ones
disposal for the creation of a car, the student can effectively prepare
for an upcoming test.
3. Perfect your type of studying

There are basically four basic types of studying: Visual, Auditory,

Emotional, and Kinesthetic.
1. Visual Learners: A visual learner studies most effective when
the learning material is depicted in a visual way, e.g. in the
form of charts, maps or brainstorming.
2. Auditory Learners: An auditory learner studies most
effectively by hearing the information, for instance in a lecture
or by recording their own words.
3. Emotional Learners: An emotional learner studies most
effectively by associating feelings, emotions and vivid images
with the information.
4. Kinesthetic Learners: A kinesthetic learner studies most
effective when the information can be experienced and felt,
i.e. via learning by doing.

Read more on the different types of studying on Effective Study

Methods
In order to study in the smartest possible way, you need to discover
which type of studying you prefer. Once you know what works best for
you, align your process of learning to make the most out of it. Students
that are mathematically talented should put their notes into
spreadsheets, graphs, and charts; kinesthetic learners imagine the
learning material as vivid as possible; linguistic learners discuss the
material with others or record their voice while reading the subject outloud, etc.