- Hey guys, I'm Ron White, two-time USA memory champion,
and this is 50 study and test taking hacks
in just over nine minutes.
Did you know that in four-choice multiple-choice quizzes,
the second option, B, was more often correct,
being correct 28% of the time,
according to research that William Poundstone did
in his book "Rock Breaks Scissors"?
Get eight hours of sleep.
If you get eight hours of sleep,
in the last two hours of sleep, in the REM sleep,
your brain will actually replay
what you learned during the day.
Study in breaks.
Use the Pomodoro Technique.
The Pomodoro Technique says study for 20 minutes,
and then take a five minute break.
Use the Feynman Technique.
The Feynman technique says
you learn more by teaching others.
After you learn something, teach it to somebody.
Even if it's a dog, or a plant, or a wall,
you'll learn more by teaching.
Use the Mind Palace technique.
The Mind Palace is a 2500-year-old memory technique
where you use a map of a room,
and you visualize what you want to remember
around the room as pictures.
If you find history boring,
imagine you're reading the script
of a play or a movie that you're really excited about,
and insert your favorite actors playing those roles,
and see if you get more interested.
Read faster and focus more when you're reading
by using your finger
to push your eye across the page under each word.
This will maybe double your reading speed.
Drink more water.
A dehydrated brain can't focus.
I try to drink eight glasses of water a day.
Eat healthy brain foods. I try to eat avocados.
Avocados have the Omega-3 and the healthy fat
our brains need to focus and pay attention.
Exercise.
The better you treat your body
through good nutrition and exercise,
the better it's gonna work for you.
Your brain is part of your body.
The better it'll work for you.
You will be able to focus better in class if you exercise.
Go out and get fresh air.
If your brain is stagnant and you can't focus,
walk outside, go get some fresh air,
change your perspective, get your blood flowing,
and then get back to studying.
Go to class!
How are you gonna learn anything if you don't go to class?
Go to class!
Take notes in class.
Not only will you have something to look back on,
but it's gonna engage you more in class
when you're writing down what you're supposed to learn.
Ask questions in class.
By asking questions, you're going to, again,
engage your brain in what's being learned,
and you will at least remember the answer to your question
if you remember nothing else from that class.
Relax your brain when you're studying.
A great way to do this is to listen to classical music.
Meditate.
When you're calm and peaceful,
you will be able to remember more and retain more.
(breathes deeply)
Take deep breaths before an exam.
(breathes deeply)
It will calm you down.
It'll also get that oxygen into your body
and wake up your brain.
When you're studying, categorize information
with a different colored highlighter.
Orange could be all one topic,
yellow could be another topic.
And this will help you remember the topics
when taking the test.
Use acronyms to remember.
The acronym HOMES is a way to remember the Great Lakes,
Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior.
Explain everything as simple as possible.
After you've learned something,
explain it as if you're talking to a six-year-old.
When you can explain it simply, you really understand it.
When you review, do an active review, not a passive review.
A passive review is just rereading the information.
An active review is turning your head away,
not looking at it, and see how much you can recall.
This engages your brain in the review,
and you're not fooling yourself that you know it
when you don't.
Create images for what you want to remember.
If you read the book "Macbeth", and you want to remember
the name of the King from Macbeth, King Duncan,
imagine Dunkin' Donuts,
and they're in a bathtub, for Macbeth.
Macbeth? Bathtub? Dunkin' Donuts for King Duncan.
Use images to remember dates.
December 7th was Pearl Harbor.
December's a Christmas tree,
seven you might use dice, for lucky seven.
So imagine inside of Pearl Harbor
there's Christmas trees with dice all over them.
Use images to remember dates.
Always review what you learned the day before.
Ask yourself, what did I study yesterday?
What did I study the day before that?
Always go back and review to cement it into your memory.
Utilize study groups.
Don't always study alone.
Find people with the same interests, the same topic as you,
the same goal as you, and create groups
to reinforce and encourage and test each other.
Learn to juggle.
Oftentimes at memory tournaments,
you will see people juggling in between the memory events.
Juggling engages your brain
and exercises parts of your brain
that you normally wouldn't use.
Don't try to memorize as you read.
Instead, read with a pen or a highlighter,
and underline or highlight the key words.
Then when you're done with the chapter,
go back and remember what you highlighted or underlined.
Before you open up a book, read the table of contents,
read the study questions at the end of the chapter.
This will tell your brain what to focus on
and what to look for when you're reading.
In William Poundstone's book "Rock Breaks Scissors",
true/false questions, true was more often the right answer,
being right 56% of the time.
In the same book, "Rock Breaks Scissors",
William Poundstone found
if there are two true answers in a row on a test,
more often than not, the next one will be false.
If there's two false in a row,
more often than not, the next one will be true.
Answers that have "all" or "none" in them
are correct almost 52% of the time.
The longer the answer, the more words in the answer,
there's a better chance that it's gonna be the right answer.
In the same book, "Rock Breaks Scissors",
William Poundstone found that when there's five choices,
A, B, C, D, or E, E was the correct answer more often,
being the correct choice 23% of the time.
Study every day.
Even if it's just a little bit, study every day,
it keeps the information fresh in your brain.
So don't wait till the end,
and procrastinate and cram at the end.
Take it serious! It is your job!
See it as your job to learn this material
and get good grades.
Plan your study time.
Have a dedicated time that you're gonna study.
Don't let your day happen around you, plan out your day.
If I have something to memorize,
I try to do it first thing in the morning,
that's when my brain is the freshest.
By the end of the day, I have all the stresses of the day,
and I just need to relax.
Take practice quizzes.
You'll often find them at the back of the book,
or maybe you can find them online.
This really tests your knowledge
and gives you an idea of where you need to focus.
If you're getting bored studying history,
switch over to science and study that until you get bored,
and then switch back to history.
But keep it interesting.
Plan out the day of an exam.
Take enough pencils,
plan out what time you're gonna arrive to class,
plan out what time you're gonna wake up,
wear comfortable clothes,
you wanna be comfortable during the test.
You're not going to get a date,
you're going to do good on the test.
Get a change of scenery.
If you are studying in your house
and you can't focus anymore,
take your books and go to the coffee shop,
or go to the library, or go outside on a park bench,
but change up your scenery when you're studying
to keep your brain fresh.
Use a technique developed by Sebastian Leitner.
Sebastian had a three by five box with questions,
and would randomly pull out the questions.
The questions that were easily answered
were put at the back of the box.
The questions where there was struggling
were kept at the front of the box.
This way, you spent more time
studying the questions that you don't know
versus the ones that you already knew.
There's software and apps that you can do this with,
such as Anki, as well.
Make connections. Think about the concepts.
Don't just memorize the material,
but after you have it memorized,
sit back and think about it.
Make connections, see how it all fits together,
and try to really understand it.
Disconnect social media.
Turn off Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and YouTube.
Don't turn off this video until I'm done,
but after I'm done, if you're trying to study, turn it off.
If you have a list of things to remember, create a story.
Let's say you wanna memorize
the Periodic Table of Elements.
Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium.
So imagine for hydrogen, I'm saying hi to a helium balloon.
I grab the helium balloon,
and inside of it is lithium batteries.
And then I'm attacked by a bear.
Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium.
Create a story to memorize what you want to recall.
Give yourself a reward system.
If you complete this study, or if you get an A on the test,
you're gonna buy yourself
that special thing that you always wanted,
or you're gonna take a break,
or you're gonna reward yourself in some way.
Draw diagrams, draw pictures of what you learned.
The mind thinks in pictures,
and whatever you see as a picture
there's a better chance you're gonna remember it.
If you're trying to learn something,
see if there is a documentary out there on it
that might tell the story about science, or history,
in a fun way on the subject you're trying to learn.
Get a good night's sleep before the exam.
Simple, but it's true.
If you're tired, you're not gonna do well.
Use your senses and smells to memorize.
I remember once I was studying for a test,
and I couldn't remember an answer.
So when I read the answer,
I pulled on my ear, the sense of touch.
And when I was in the class, I pulled on my ear again,
and I remembered that answer.
Use your senses of smell, touch, and taste.
Have somebody else teach you the information.
If you didn't understand it in class from your teacher,
go ask an expert in the field,
or somebody who knows it really well,
or maybe go online and Google it,
or find somewhere online
somebody else teaching the same thing,
and it may click in your brain.
If you like this video, I love the thumbs up,
and so does Caleb who helped me out with all of this,
we both love the thumbs up.
We would love for you to comment down below.
Tell us what your favorite study tip is,
and tell us which one of ours that you liked the most.
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And finally, I have a link down in the description
about my memory course.
I'm a two-time USA memory champion,
I used to hold the record
for the fastest to memorize a deck of cards,
and I will give you some memory tips
that are really gonna help you out in school.
Click the link down in the description,
my Black Belt Memory Course.
I'll see you on the next video.