hello and welcome back to the bliss bean this is part two of the back to school series last time
we talked about time management especially when it comes to online classes we cover time blocking
multitasking for teens setting up your study space etc in this video we're going to talk about
science backed tried and tested guaranteed to work within 90 days or your money back
studying techniques to help you learn more efficiently because especially when you're doing
online classes from home it's very easy to let school work fill up your entire day like
parkinson's law states work expands to fill the time that you have available for it so instead if
you set yourself little goals if you set yourself little time limits and you implement techniques
to help you get stuff done within those time limits then you will win at school and at life
so hopefully you took notes on last week's video and studied up the pomodoro technique is just one
way that you can structure your study time it is 25 minutes of super intense focused distraction
free work time alternating with five minutes of break time if you trust mit they recommend hour
long sessions for anything that's super focused like solving problems or writing papers and
then shorter sessions for memorization and review different studies will all say different things so
you do you and experiment to find the intervals of time that work for you for different kinds of work
set yourself a little goal for what you want to get done during that interval of time
and then once the timer goes off enjoy your break and try to power off your brain in some way
what is active recall well first of all active recall is not passively studying just reviewing
your notes staring at them and hoping they'll burn into your retinas it's not sleeping with your
textbook under your pillow hoping to absorb the information through osmosis sorry honey it doesn't
work like that active recall is basically when you quiz yourself when your brain has to come up
with the answer on its own so in this study done in 2013 practice testing just another way to say
active recall basically received a high utility rating while other techniques like summarization
rereading and highlighting received low utility ratings so if you're doing flashcards this
sounds pretty obvious but try to guess the answer before you flip the card if you're reviewing notes
cover them and try to remember as much as you can before you go back and fill in whatever you missed
or pretend you're a teacher and you're explaining stuff out loud to a class
if you visualize how your brain retains learned information over time it would look like a curve
this is called the forgetting curve when you first learn something as more time passes the
more you forget however every time you review that information you bring yourself back up to here and
reset the forgetting curve but now the decay happens slower now you remember it for a whole
week before you reach that point again you review it again now you remember it for a whole month
space verb addition is basically how you beat the forgetting curve reviewing more frequently
at first and then less and less frequently as the information becomes solidified in your brain
so this applies to note taking and reviewing your notes so for example you take your notes in class
you copy and condense them that evening and then you review them the next day in three days
in a week and it also applies to flashcards so in that case each card gets reviewed in increasingly
longer intervals but like at this point i have 1845 korean flash cards and i do not feel like
managing all those little pieces of paper so i prefer to use digital flash cards they keep track
of your learning schedule for each card for you it shows you exactly what you need to review when
you need to review it and it takes up exactly zero space so after my language learning video my super
successful language learning video a lot of people reached out to me to ask me to elaborate on how i
set up my anki cards because i did use a little bit of html and css magic to customize them but
i can imagine that if you didn't have experience with that then it would be quite confusing and
intimidating and you probably just want to start learning you don't want to be learning programming
so the sponsor of today's video spark cards plus is a really simple and beautiful alternative to
anki and i promise you won't need to learn any programming skills to set it up you probably
won't even need to read the instructions like anki you can use it to create different decks
and organize them into folders you can add text images and audio files to your flash cards you can
actually even import your anki decks into smart cards if you started in anki or in quizlet and it
even imports your study history so it'll pick up right where you left off every time you open the
app it'll show you exactly what cards you need to review based on what you're most likely to forget
soon so if you're waiting in line you have time between classes you can just pull out your phone
do some quick review and those little bits of very targeted studying on exactly the material that
it knows your brain is about to forget will make sure that you don't forget anything all of the
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it's just 9.99 for a year but for a limited time because you are bliss bean viewers and
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you might know this quote doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results
is a sign of insanity nothing changes if nothing changes right so when i first started studying
korean i thought that i could get words into my memory by simply testing myself on them enough
times but no matter how many times i repeated the same words i just kept forgetting them and it got
really frustrating finally i realized that instead of just repetition i needed to be making some sort
of a personal connection in my brain and we'll talk more about the types of connections in the
next section but after i started doing that it took me longer initially to learn a vocab word
because a lot of times i had to sit there and try to come up with a good memory trick but then
once i did that i only had to review the word like three times to learn it permanently instead of 176
times so it definitely saved me time in the long run so if you're finding that you're just not
getting something whether it's memorization or grasping a concept or you're stuck on writing an
essay stop sinking time into what isn't working step away from your work take a break and ask
yourself what am i currently doing that is not working can i find a different resource
that might be able to help a lot of times just hearing something explained in a different way
is really helpful can i ask someone for help can they introduce a fresh perspective that might
help me understand can i change my study routine maybe you've been doing all of your review the
night before the quiz but if you did some studying the night after the class your memorization would
improve and do i simply need a break at the end of the day it could just be that your brain is tired
so in the same way that habit stacking something we've talked about on this channel
connects new habits to older already established ones you can memorize new information by making
a personal connection to things that you already know well these can be mental images or something
that sounds similar and reminds you of something so for example the korean word
means to be tired p means blood in korean and con sounds like gone so if all of your blood is gone
you'll probably be tired you'll also probably be dead gd means geography and because i'm very bad
at geography i have to ask siri for help cd siri get it another memorization technique is called
the memory palace or the mind palace so if you're trying to connect new information to old familiar
information well what's more familiar to you than your own house so in the memory palace technique
you basically have to design a route walking through your house through different rooms of
your house and a couple of specific locations in each of those rooms so maybe in your mind you walk
into your kitchen you look in the sink on top of the stove inside the oven inside the refrigerator
and inside the freezer then you connect some sort of visual cue to each piece of information so when
i was learning about this technique it was in the context of trying to memorize a deck of cards so
maybe the seven of cards reminds you of a ring that you have that has i just say the seven of
cards the seven of diamonds reminds you of a ring that you have that has seven diamonds
in it and then you place each of those items in a location so maybe you imagine yourself
opening the oven and there is just a diamond ring sitting there then once you've put everything away
in your memory palace you can visualize yourself taking that entire route through your house
looking in every single location and bring up every single piece of information so those are the
basics of the technique if it sounds interesting to you you can search online and people have come
up with incredible ways to expand this technique and apply to all sorts of different subjects
for memorization you can also try to get as many of your senses involved in the process as possible
when i study i like to talk out loud to myself a lot i also talk in a british accent for some
reason i don't know why when i'm trying to understand some sort of a process i like to just
talk it out and use my hands a lot this is why i normally study in my room i don't go to
libraries or anything like that because i would get kicked out probably so for example when i'm
studying korean i'll see an image on the screen i have to use active recall to remember the word
i flip the flash card and i see the word i hear the word i say the word myself i write
down the word the only thing i don't do is i don't smell or taste the word but there have
been studies done on taste and smell and how they're related to studying so you might want
to try picking like a new flavor of gum or some new essential oil smelling that or eating that
eating the gum and smelling the essential oil not vice versa while you're studying and then also
while you're taking the exam and that kind of like programs your brain to connect the information
science wow humans are just naturally lazy we want to conserve our energy and we want
to boost our confidence by doing stuff that's easy so we procrastinate on difficult projects
by reorganizing our home screens when we study we have this tendency to focus on what we already
know well because reviewing material that comes easily just makes you feel good but we only grow
when we're pushing our limits right so you have to actually apply what you know when you're doing
flash cards set aside the ones that are getting easy drill the ones that you're getting wrong
if you're doing practice problems skip over the ones that you feel confident about and go
straight to the difficult ones and do practice problems practice exams practice essays etc
i know that taking tests and writing essays sucks so it's like why would you put yourself through
more of that than you have to but it's a really good way to test your active recall to study the
exact types of questions that will actually be on the test and also to measure your progress
so you really want to try recreating those test taking conditions as much as possible if you're
not going to be allowed to use your calculator on the chemistry exam don't use your calculator if
you're going to have a certain amount of time for a set of problems set yourself a timer for things
like ap exams i think it's really important to take at least one full practice exam because ap
exams are exhausting so it's really good to have like a practice run to test your mental stamina
how is it gonna feel to take a test for three hours and then finish that by writing three long
essays how are you going to manage not only your time but also your energy throughout this exam
and finally take some time to create a schedule for yourself make it specific so identify exactly
what it is you need to do which chapters do you need to read which practice problems do you have
to do space it out because that is much better for your long-term memory than cramming it all
at the end keep it light because if you overwhelm yourself and don't leave yourself any time to rest
and recharge you'll be much less likely to stick to the schedule and get creative so please do not
try to take practice exams while you're driving to school but maybe on the bus ride to school you
can do your daily smart cards review because reviewing is the key to learning to sum up
today we learn about taking regular breaks active recall the forgetting curve and space
repetition how to change your study methods if something isn't working memorization techniques
like creating personal connections the memory palace and involving your senses why you should
focus on what is difficult doing practice problems and creating a schedule thank you for coming to
my class your homework is to try out smart cards plus the ad free version is 30 off for a limited
time so head to the link in my description to test your active recall and space repetition good luck
in the next school year you've got this i will see you next week thank you so much for watching bye
you