
How to Study: A Brief Guide - chaitanyav
https://www.cse.buffalo.edu//~rapaport/howtostudy.html
======
terminalcommand
I think that this kind of advice can be detrimental to people like me. It
basically says force yourself to study 5 hours a day no exceptions. If you get
a job or other extracurricular activities don't count it as work time.

Well, I lived that lifestyle in high school. I studied 4 hours a day, limited
every extracurricular activities to not interfer with my study time. At the
end I believe I have missed a great portion of my life and it was not worth
it.

Studying everyday is a great goal to aspire for, but no way you _need_ to
study that much every day. Go to classes with the textbook, mark the areas the
teacher lectures about. Take notes during class. Once in a while review the
book and your notes. In the meantime make thought experiments, try to apply
the information you learned on imagined cases you made up for fun.

There is only so much willpower you can tap into. Once that is over you
basically drift not being able to do anything. It is much better to live a
balanced life and never put yourself into impossible workloads for a prolonged
time.

Another point is that these kind of study hacks work for people who can
already study. If you are a procrastinator in soul (a deep procrastinator in
Newport's terms), this advice won't help you. If you're procrastinating
heavily your mind is trying to tell you that what you're doing is pointless.

One powerful weapon to fight it is to keep an agenda. Plan your day before
(for example using org mode or a simple paper agenda). Set very small goals
and always reschedule if you need to. For example 22 Jan Monday: place the
notes taken during X class in a file. 23 Jan Monday: Buy the book required for
Y class etc.

If you can keep your study material somewhat organized, you will find it much
easier to begin studying. It is all about tooling like programming.

One last note: studying in a silent place does not always work. Especially
when I'm bored, can't start studying or mentally overwhelmed, it helps a lot
to put on headphones and blast some talkshow in the background. The change in
the tone and volume of the host and occasional jokes and laughter feed my
stimuli seeking brain. After 30-40 minutes I can continue without listening
anything.

These reflect my hard-earned experience and intensive soul-searching :) YMMV

~~~
Spooky23
I think the point is you need to have time set aside as part of your normal
process to study if you are serious about your education. It's time that you
should be focused on your academic pursuits, not drinking, working, gaming,
girls, etc.

I didn't follow this sort of advice, and paid the price. I sailed through most
classes on my wits, but hit a wall when more advanced classes had time demands
that I couldn't meet due to work or other obligations. When I tutored high
school and undergraduates in math, I saw smart/lazy kids making the same
mistake... they would pick up the material in class and never learn how to
read a math textbook. Life was good until it wasn't, usually when they hit
Calc 2 or 3. It was hard to watch.

~~~
bg4
Same, regret it to this day.

------
TheAceOfHearts
This focuses on how to study when you're in school and taking classes. But
that likely only represents a small number of years in your life, while the
rest will be spent outside of school! IMO, learning how to study when you're
outside of school is just as important.

Here's two comments I wish I'd been told earlier:

1\. In the context of Computer Science, many books and research papers between
the 70s and 90s cover a huge amount of fundamental topics. Newer doesn't
always mean better! People were just as smart 30 years years ago as they are
today. Even if the context has changed, many aspects likely remain applicable.

2\. Many companies publish "white papers" [0] on their technology. These are
(sometimes) similar to research papers, expect that they haven't been peer
reviewed. They can be a good way to acquire certain kinds of industry
knowledge, but be wary of snake oil salesmen. I generally read white papers
with the assumption that the source is heavily biased towards whatever
perspective is most favorable to them.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_paper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_paper)

~~~
ams6110
> be wary of snake oil salesmen

Indeed, and maybe it's just the ones I've read, but it seems to me that most
"white papers" are written in the marketing department.

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
Yup, that's been my experience as well. When I first started noticing their
existence I thought they were always marketing propaganda. But you can
occasionally find good technical white papers, so it's worth at least being
aware of their existence.

------
sixhobbits
My Comp Sci lecturer always said you could get a lot by coming to class 10
minutes early and reading the relevant material and leaving 5 minutes late to
read it again. I tried this method for a third-year compilers course and it
was a very efficient way of getting a high frequency of "Gotcha" moments of
understanding.

As an aside, I really love how responsive and friendly web pages in this plain
HTML style are. It's a pity they're only used by older academics now.

Obviously you've all seen[0], but just in case...

[0] [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

~~~
schuke
text.npr.org is a good example.

~~~
mendelk
On similar lines: [http://lite.cnn.com/en](http://lite.cnn.com/en)

------
pdm55
A key insight, that I got from Barbara Oakley's "A Mind for Numbers", was a
way to avoid procrastination. The secret was to trick your mind. Don't think,
"I have to do two hours of study." Just say to yourself, "I will study for 10
minutes." The mind says, "That's easy, I can do that." Once you are started,
you can then keep going.

With this trick, study becomes a habit, something you really miss if you don't
do it every day.

~~~
chadlavi
Barbara Oakley's great. I wish her "learning how to learn" course had existed
when I was in middle/high school!

~~~
sonabinu
Yes, I wish I knew those techniques way back. But her methods have been great
and I have been able to do a number of coursera and other MOOC classes

------
karles
I went through university not knowing how to study, and as a result, I now
have a "worthless" degree. One thing is, that the university and the degrees I
took was a joke. 3-6 hours of "class" (100+ people crammed into an
auditorium), no graded homework or feedback during semesters, and examns was
just handing in 12-15 pages of analysis, and then getting a grade on my report
sheet. No contact with educators, no counselling, guidance or otherwise
interaction with lecturers, educators or other staff at the university. I
could sit a home 30 hours a week and still get my "degree". Basically no
feedback from the university on how I did, where I was heading etc.

For me, this means I made a lot of stupid choices. For one, I never understood
the degree I took, but relentlessly kept on "fighting", as I thought that it
_had_ to make sense to me someday. It never did. Swapped studies during my
masters, but got into a "soft" IT-programme that didn't resonate with me
either. As a result, I never learned to study, because I would get stressed
out that the material never really made sense to me. I couldn't connect it to
anything in the real world (and perhaps more important to me - no job postings
ever seemed to ask for the skills I was acquiring).

Today, two years after i finished with an A+ (I wonder how...), and average
grades in general, I have a galloping depression, and just wish that I could
do it all over. No doubt I was perhaps immature or used to be a "natural
talent" through high school, and therefore thought University was just passing
examns. That hurts me a lot, and I have a hard time letting that thought go. I
don't think anyone will ever be able to convince me, that the university or
classes I went to was working as intended however. In my mind, education
cannot solely be based on people reading and writing for themselves.

I wish someone would have shown me a guide like that when I started, and
helped me manage my ambitions and performance a bit more throughout
university. I'm now a worthless member of society, even though I have a
degree. I don't think anyone is happy with the outcome, but I'm pretty sure
I'm the only one to blame. At least thats what I keep telling myself.

~~~
UweSchmidt
No one has all the answers as they are starting out.

Your degree probably isn't too bad if you add some practical skills. In IT
people are in demand, you are in demand. Add Programming, QA, or some kind of
analyst, product owner skills and your soft IT degree will be the frame around
the picture.

~~~
MIKarlsen
I'm just stuck with this thought: I spent 6 years "accomplishing" very little.
Others (programmers eg) will have 5 years advantage on me, or even more, as a
lot of people will have been programming from an earlier age.

I realize I've spent too much time playing video games, hanging out with
friends and so on, to realistically be able to compete with someone who has
been on a track and dedicated for 5+ years.

So the thought of "You only just have to start _now_", after I've been through
20 years of education completely paralyzes me. I wouldn't want to hire me. And
I can't concentrate or focus enough to actually learn programming (been trying
for 4 years now), since the negative thoughts just keep returning, and I have
a hard time convincing myself that I'm wrong.

It feels like I'm just waiting for things to get worse, and what scares me is,
that this thought doesn't even bother me anymore, because I feel that my
situation is justified.

~~~
UweSchmidt
Very few people have been "on track" their whole life and workplaces are full
of "average" people (by definition), nothing to worry about. Self study can be
daunting, I know from experience. Maybe seek some counseling for your psyche
(you alread know your own thoughts about yourself are kinda off right now,
right?) , join a coding bootcamp. IT needs lots of people to solve lots of
problems, the vast majority doable by ordinary people. Hope that helps :-)

------
applecrazy
Excellent resource with many study tips. As a high school student, it's hard
to balance school, leisure, and code, and any sort of advice is appreciated.

In addition, I've found Cal Newport's blog both inspiring and also
interesting, as he focuses on "hacks" to get higher quality studying for your
time ("more bang for your buck")

Edit: Cal Newport's blog:
[http://calnewport.com/blog/](http://calnewport.com/blog/)

Edit 2: Another one of my sources of study inspiration is the MIT Challenge[1]
by Scott H. Young. Not only does he finish an entire MIT CS undergrad
curriculum, but does so in 1/4 the time, something that I wish to emulate once
life permits.

[1]: [https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-
challenge-2/](https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-challenge-2/)

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
I wasted tons of time while I was in high school, so kudos to you for aspiring
for more and trying to be productive. Respect.

On the other hand, don't forget to have fun! You have your whole life to be
"grown up", but only a few years to be young and reckless, don't squander em.
I feel old for writing that, but whatever.

Don't overwork yourself, and don't let others take advantage of your
enthusiasm. Burnout is real, so make sure none of your habits put you on the
path towards self-destruction. Avoid the temptation of staying up 1 or n-more
hours just to finish some thing; it'll always be there for you the next day,
so it's usually better for you to get a full night of rest instead.

In my experience, some aspects of school are overrated. It's easy to get
fixated on grades, but they're not always representative of someone's true
skills. Of course, you shouldn't lie to yourself either, so strive to
_actually_ understand whatever subject you're focused on.

~~~
tw1010
Meh, you can be plenty reckless when you're old as well. There's always
parties. I wish I had realized this when I was younger. It would have made me
feel a lot less angsty about "wasting the best years on my life" on coding
(which I really enjoyed) instead of spending my youth on parties.

Also; saying "don't overwork yourself" doesn't really work. It's better to let
a person overwork themselves and learn the lesson the hard way. People told me
that over and over but I never actually took it to heart until I actually did
it.

~~~
ams6110
Yeah but unless you're just a person who never grows up, or you leave all
household responsibilities to your partner, once you have a spouse, family,
and a "real job" the parties are a lot fewer.

~~~
tw1010
Sure, but at least that's a choice. When I was a kid and heard "enjoy it while
it lasts" I imagined being an adult as being chained under some big rock
called "responsibility". But it really isn't. If you're an adult, and you want
to party, and you understand and accept the tradeoffs that is associated to,
usually you can make it happen.

------
e19293001
If you are an emacs user, please take a look at org-mode. Most of the advice
had been implemented in org-mode. I hope someone will find it worthwhile
because org-mode helps me manage everything in just a text file. And, if you
like it, here's an example set-up that I used:

[http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html](http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html)

Please don't be discouraged on the complexity of the tool. Just learn one at a
time and soon you'll be used to it.

~~~
baby
Or just write notes/lists in your favorite text editor, no need to learn emacs
or org-mode to start being efficient :)

------
baby
Taking notes is the worst advice you can give to someone. I've had this
argument here on HN before, but taking notes distract you from the actual
class. The best people I've been studying with were never taking notes, they
were listening. If you need to know something after class, you can just google
it or look in a book for it.

~~~
crististm
I've seen recommendations for not taking notes in class as well.

But your position suggests that taking notes is indeed the worst thing to do
in class. How can that be? No qualifications or downplays like "for most
people" or "bad"?

What I mean is that unless you have the results of Cal Newport or Jordan
Peterson your extreme position does not carry the same weight as theirs.

~~~
baby
> What I mean is that unless you have the results of Cal Newport or Jordan
> Peterson your extreme position does not carry the same weight as theirs.

That point of authority doesn't dismiss the fact that spending time taking
notes takes from your actual attention and interactivity with the class.

I'm in for writing down a few words here and there, but people tend to write
way more and it's actually detrimental to them. We end up in a situation where
"taking note" becomes a bad advice and in most cases is not helping.

My story is just anecdotal, but from what I've seen: the more notes students
took, the more they failed; the less notes students took, the more they were
succeeded. I go to conferences all the time now, and I don't see people taking
notes anymore (and the few who do, do not do it as intensively as I've seen it
being done in university). Isn't that a sign that people who actually
succeeded in becoming PHD students, or postgrads, or professors, or good
people in the industry, ... are all people who do not take notes in
conferences? (which are extremly similar to classes to some extent)

------
BeetleB
I'll add a crazy one:

Don't go to an undergrad program where they inundate you with lots and lots of
homework.

I went to an "average" university for my undergrad and a top one for my grad.
Once I got to the top one, I was shocked at how much the workload was for
undergrads (but not for grad students). The undergrad homeworks and exams were
mostly grunt work - not the type of homework that makes you think deeply about
the material (fortunately, the grad courses gave you that type of HW).

As such, students spent most of their free time solving problems that did not
give them much insight.

My average undergrad didn't give insightful homework either, but the HW wasn't
that demanding so it freed up the time to ponder over the material, etc.

------
kylepdm
A lot of this is absolutely great advice. I struggled a lot in my first couple
years of university having to get adjusted to a much more difficult learning
environment that expects much more of you than what HS required.

The biggest change for me was when I started to take notes by hand, and re-
take them, as a form of studying. Also focusing on understanding the
fundamentals of a class vs trying to ace practice material. I went from a mid
70s GPA to 90s.

But I think a lot of where students struggle is just the acquired discipline
necessary to succeed. Studying isn't very fun or enjoyable - at most it can be
nice to focus and have goals, but most people have tons of anxiety leading
into it and procrastinate a bunch. At the end of the day, there aren't any
study hacks or anything, it's just that you have to put the time into it, and
you have to essentially "learn how to learn".

This was very apparent in my upper year CS classes where I saw a lot of
students struggle to do well in exams for what wasn't terribly difficult
material. I realized a lot of students just weren't willing to sit down and
study the necessary amount of time. I thank my time in microbiology courses
where I had to learn to study every night to memorize tons of different
concepts and be able to apply them all to each other. I think students in life
sciences tend to know how to study more simply because their courses have a
lot more concepts and fundamentals than most CS courses.

If you are in college/university and reading this you have to realize you just
have to put the time in. That amount of time differs from person to person. I
did really well in my CS program, but I put tons of time into it.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
There is more to it than just time..

As a History major all I ever needed to do was read all the material. I
dedicated enough time to do that and was fine in all my history classes. 90%
reading 10% note review.

For CS and Biology, I read the material but that didn't mean I understood it
well enough to map it onto the material that came afterward. I never really
knew when I understood something well enough, or how to know be confident I
knew something well enough to move forward.

Programming eventually came to me through websites like CodeWars, where I
could repeat the easy concepts Over and Over again as simple games. After
months of playing around, I understood them in a more subconscious way.
Although I still don't know how to make this progress efficiently.

------
yamaneko
Past discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14088786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14088786)

------
tekkk
Here's some of my personal experience how I have learned to study better in
university:

While reading through your material, take notes. Moreover take notes that make
sense to _you_. Don't copy something for the sake of it if you don't
understand it, try write it down in a way that reflects your current knowledge
of it and how it makes sense to _you_.

Also I wouldn't probably take everything in that article word for word. I
mean:

 _Do not listen to music or TV: It is virtually impossible to do two things at
once if one of them is studying._

sound just silly, okey I listen to calmer music when I study but should you
always advocate for total ruthless silence? I think there's other aspect
overlooked by the writer(s) that you should try to make studying _enjoyable_
or at least tolerable.

Of course in a way it is similar to straining yourself in physical exercise
and more you do it the better you get at it but at times studying hard leaves
you only depleted and uninspired about the work you do. I used to do studying
in a group which while entertaining didn't really at times help me to
internalize the material. Now when I do mostly self-studying I can internalize
really well but the solitude is kinda boring at times. Until you get into the
flow and really start digging what you are doing at least.

But my advice to anyone who wants to study better is to take it _seriously_.
Take notes from your material. Write down mind-maps or whatever from the
concepts to help you visualize them. Use Youtube to find lessons if you feel
the material is too abstract. Ask questions from people smarter than you (if
there is anyone around). Implement your own solutions about problems you care
about (if applicable). The mental border I see when people study is that some
just want to pass the course and get perhaps a good grade. How I have started
to study is I want internalize the key-concepts so well that I can use them.
That means that I might spend ridiculous amounts of hours on some basic
concept until it makes sense to me. At times that might cause me to miss on
couple other concepts but that's the trade-off I'm willing to make.

After you have studied the subject comes the hard part that is actually
maintaining that knowledge. This is where I think having learnt key-concepts
well really helps as you have those couple key-points to which you can return
to quite easily. On the other hand if I didn't try to apply the concepts to
something concrete I'll probably forget how those abstract ideas were ever
linked to "reality".

EDIT: Downvoted for no reason? Must have been a sore day for someone to have
my comment cause him/her to channel their negative energy into disapproving my
personal opinion on a subjective matter. But I guess this is nothing out of
ordinary in HN. (Was it too long? You didn't agree with me on something?
Please let me know)

