3 tips on how to study effectively
During their training,
medical residents learn countless
techniques, surgeries, and procedures
which they’ll later use to save lives.
Being able to remember these skills
can quite literally be
a matter of life and death.
With this in mind, a 2006 research study
took a class of surgical residents
learning to suture arteries
and split them into two groups.
Each received the same study materials,
but one group implemented a small
change in how they studied them.
And when tested one month later,
this group performed the surgeries
significantly better
than the other residents.
We’ll discuss the secret
to that group’s success,
along with two other highly effective
study techniques
which can be applied both
in and out of the classroom.
But to understand why these methods work,
let's first unpack how the brain
learns and stores information.
Say you're trying to memorize
the anatomy of the heart.
When you’re introduced to a new concept,
the memory is temporarily encoded
in groups of neurons
in a brain area called the hippocampus.
As you continue to learn
about workings of the heart
in class or study its chambers
for an exam,
you reactivate these same neurons.
This repeated firing strengthens
the connections between the cells,
stabilizing the memory.
Gradually, the knowledge of heart anatomy
is stored long-term,
which involves another brain area
known as the neocortex.
How information is transferred
from short-term to long-term storage
is still not completely understood,
but it’s thought to happen
in between study sessions
and perhaps most crucially during sleep.
Here the new knowledge is integrated with
other related concepts you already know,
such as how to measure heart rate,
or the anatomy of other organs.
And the process doesn’t end there.
Each time you recall heart anatomy,
you reactivate the long-term memory,
which makes it susceptible to change.
The knowledge can be
updated, strengthened,
and reintegrated with other
pieces of information.
This is where our first study
technique comes in.
Testing yourself
with flashcards and quizzes
forces you to actively
retrieve knowledge,
which updates and strengthens
the memory.
Students often prefer other study methods,
like rereading textbooks
and highlighting notes.
But these practices can generate
a false sense of competence,
since the information is
right in front of you.
Testing yourself, however,
allows you to more accurately gauge
what you actually know.
But what if, while doing this,
you can’t remember the answers?
Not to worry—
making mistakes can actually improve
learning in the long term.
It’s theorized that as you rack your brain
for the answer,
you activate relevant pieces of knowledge.
Then, when the correct answer
is later revealed,
the brain can better integrate this
information with what you already know.
Our second technique builds on the first.
When using flashcards to study, it's best
to mix the deck with multiple subjects.
Interleaving, or mixing the concepts
you focus on in a single session,
can lead to better retention
than practicing a single skill
or topic at a time.
One hypothesis of why this works is that,
similar to testing,
cycling through different subjects forces
your brain to temporarily forget,
then retrieve information,
further strengthening the memory.
You may also find connections
across the topics,
and better understand their differences.
Now that you know how and what to study,
our final technique concerns when.
Spacing your review across multiple days
allows for rest and sleep
between sessions.
While “offline,”
the brain is actively at work,
storing and integrating knowledge
in the neocortex.
So while cramming the night before
the exam may seem logical—
after all, won’t the material
be fresh in your mind?—
the information won’t stick
around for the long term.
This brings us back to our
medical residents.
Both groups studied the surgery
for the same amount of time.
Yet one group’s training was
crammed in a single day,
while the other more successful group’s
training was spread over four weeks.
The reason all three of these
study techniques work
is because they’re designed
with the brain in mind.
They complement and reinforce
the incredible way the brain works,
sorting through and storing the
abundance of information
it’s fed day after day.
