Are you looking for advanced study techniques this fall semester so that you can crush it
get a good start get better grades stand out highlight yourself to your professors so that
you can get that internship you can get that job down the road.
Well this video is for you.
We're going to go over a 9 study techniques so that you can crush it in your engineering
career.
Hey 1 % Nation, I'm Jake Vorrhees and you are watching episode 041 of the 1% Engineer
show where we empower young engineers to rise to the top 1% of their career.
This is your first time of the channel guys.
Make
sure you subscribe because I release videos three times per week about engineering student
success.
There is a lot of crappy study tips on the Internet stuff that is super basic super boring
not really helpful like Don't procrastinate and study with friends.
But I wanted to make this video to give you some more advanced techniques that you can
crush that you can get good grades in your challenging engineering courses so let's not
waste any more time.
and jump right into it with Tip Number 1.
Set yourself up for classroom success.
Preparing yourself for lecture is very important.
I've talked about this before.
This way you're not scrambling to pay attention in class.
You're not actually seeing things for the first time.
When you get to lecture you looked into the material the night before days before you
reviewed it you familiarize yourself with it.
So you're not just scrambling and playing catch up in the classroom you're actually
ready for those first questions you're ready to apply it and it just helps to lock in those
lesson notes.
Those equations those formulas whatever you are learning in class that they so much better
because you've seen it before.
Keep this in mind later on when we talk about the space repetition technique where the more
you see something with spaced repetitions and give yourself some time to let it sink
in and have the neural connections actually fuse then you will be better suited later
on.
So that's why you need to review the material before you even get to class.
That the first time you're seeing this stuff is that while you're in class number to make
sure you take good notes and I'm going to give you a specific tactic so that you can
do this.
Check out the Cornell method.
This method was created by Walter Polk who was a Cornell professor in the 1950s and wrote
the book How to study in college.
This note taking technique divides your paper into three sections.
The rightmost section is where you take all your notes the leftmost column is where you
do keyword summaries and little cues questions.
For example you would talk about a key word about a physics technique or Newton's second
law or something like this.
And then you would have all the equations on the right side and then at the bottom of
the page.
This is your third section.
You will summarize that page of notes and this gives you so many advantages when it
comes to studying when it comes to doing your homework because you can glance at the left
column you can glance down at your summaries and then you can use the core section of your
notes to actually call on the equations look at the formulas.
Check out the information so that you can execute on your homework study for that exam.
A little better.
There's also a guided notes method but studies have shown that the Cornell method is more
dominant to this.
You can check out that other strategy if you choose.
But I'm going to suggest the Cornell method today 3 habit forming.
This is Truls do his book he is an expert on habit.
I've read this and I want to talk a little bit about how utilizing habit forming can
actually help you when it comes to studying so that you don't procrastinates that you
don't absolutely hate it and just get into a rut and stop studying.
But you can create positive healthy feedback loops for yourself so that you actually crush
it when it comes to studying when it comes to doing your homework.
In his book Duhigg talks all about the three pronged habit forming cycle and what that
is is that you have a Q You have a response and then you have a reward and a habit is
grounded by these two other pillars for example.
Q Being that you have a homework assignment coming up and it pops up on your schedule
that you need to study you need to do this homework.
The action is what you do with it.
It's either it's actually studying or maybe procrastinating.
And then the third one is the reward.
And this is super duper important if you're actually rewarding yourself every time you
accomplish something great like finishing a homework assignment on time or studying
for an exam on time that you need to make sure that you're rewarding yourself properly
instead of doing the wrong execution and then rewarding yourself improperly.
For example what some students might do is the Q is they need to do homework and instead
of actually executing positively they go to a party and then rewarding themselves by extra
fine maybe extra drinking and they get into this negative cycle where instead of actually
making yourself feel better and rewarding yourself with a positive accomplishment you're
committing to procrastination or committing to a negative feedback loop where you're going
out with your friends or playing sport or go into a party or something and instead of
studying.
So you don't want to see tactics like only watching Netflix after you accomplish a homework
assignment.
Another example would be only allow yourself to go to a party if you've already finished
your homework or each time you read a page in your textbook.
You have a little tiny snack.
Make sure it's healthy so that you guys are crushing your total fitness.
But investigate some of the some reason this book and you'll find that you can form a very
very strong study habits that you can deploy in your life that you're not procrastinating
and you actually positively rewarding yourself so much that you crave that feeling of accomplishment
after you finish your homework after you finish study for the Pomodoro Technique and a good
way to make sure that you're not burning yourself.
That you're not overcommitting in making yourself turn to procrastination isn't deploy a technique
like the Pomodoro method and what that is is you chunk your time up such that you focus
on something for 25 minutes with no distractions and then you take a five minute break and
this falls right after the habit suggestion because that five minute break is the reward
for committing yourself to a 25 minute study period.
Twenty five minute homework execution period.
And what they suggest with the Pomodoro method is that you do.
For Pomodoro sections so you do twenty five with a five minute break and then you do it
again and then you do it four times in a row that's two hours of studying two hours of
homework before you then reward yourself even further with a 15 or 20 minute break.
This is where that Netflix episode comes in.
This is where going outside and playing Frisbee or going out for a little snack or something
can come into play where you have to deploy a guideline study tactics like the Pomodoro
Technique so you can stick to a plan so that you can follow a little system and you are
avoiding distractions and you try to get that deep work for twenty five minutes so that
you can actually finish up your problems so that you can actually have some studied information
sink into your brain and allow those neural connections to be made while you're in that
deep work zone for twenty five minutes at a time and while you're in the pomander method
what you need to do is write down any distractions that come into mind instead of looking at
your phone instead of googling something that when you get it out of your brain and you
relieve yourself of that distraction and over time as you dig deeper and deeper and deploy
the Pomodoro Technique over and over again you will train yourself to avoid distractions
and you'll get into that deep work zone so that you can crush it and accomplish all your
tasks and become an A student.
Check it out guys.
I highly encourage you to explore the common to our method of study with a group even if
it's just one other person.
It is very very key to success because sometimes you will not get that homework assignment
Sometimes you will be caught off on an exam studying portion.
So having someone else there to support you or even for you to instruct even for you to
teach while you are studying is very very important because in order for you to teach
something you have to understand it so thoroughly in order to write it down in a fashion where
someone else can explain it so it helps you understand something even deeper.
It also may help you finish up that homework assignment a little bit faster it may help
you get to the bottom of an exam practice problem all it better when you're in a team
so highly encourage you to work with people who are at the same student caliber as you.
Don't work with someone who is so far ahead of you that they get frustrated and you don't
want to be pulling people up from the bottom to where you are.
Make sure you guys are peers in your classroom academic peers and the way that you stand
out to better students is by participating in class staying after class meeting with
the professor and you guys will find each other.
Always.
Always encourage one percent nation to find little study groups to three four people max
even four can be a little much maybe for an exam for works out.
But for the people who are the same status as you in your engineering road and study
together six spaced repetition you heard me mention this earlier in this video.
But studies have shown that if you introduce yourself to a topic wait a little bit introduce
yourself again.
Wait a little bit.
Introduce yourself again.
You actually can deploy fewer hours to your study commitment versus been studying and
trying to compact it all to three days before exam.
You have to invest less time if you space it out.
Because what happens is just like a muscle when you're working out when you're going
to the gym.
Your brain is the same.
You show it something new you learn something new and you have to wait for all the neural
connections to be made in your brain and what happens is you have to forget a little bit
of stuff to really learn it even faster.
It's a lot like muscle building where you have to break it down and work that muscle
a little bit harder damage it so that when it rebuilds it's even stronger than before
the brain is the same.
So studies have shown that you can invest significantly less time if you start studying
for an exam weeks ahead of time to three weeks ahead of time and study for just one hour
and then wait three or four days and then study for two hours and then wait three or
four days and then study for two hours again.
And if you utilize these types of tactics you are not only being more proficient with
the way that you study you're going to be more familiar going to be more where are you
going to have more baked their knowledge of these information pieces of these equations
of these formulas that you learn in your engineering courses and not only that but you're gonna
have to invest less time to studying before you actually feel confident you actually know
the methods you know the strategies for executing on equations so highly highly suggest that
you look into space and repetition method so that you can be a better student in general.
And seven one thing to keep in mind is the power of diffused versus focus thinking.
And there's a reason why I put this right after the space repetition method because
when we are concentrating with full force we're studying them or trying to learn that
is focused attention.
And we're using the prefrontal cortex here this front part of your brain which is attention
and learning but actually it is other parts of your brain that hold memory it's other
parts of your brain that utilize all the neural connections so you need to be thinking about
these things in a non focused setting as well which is why the space and repetition method
works so well because if you're just trying to overload in the very last minute and you're
only utilizing focused attention and prefrontal cortex very very deep learning then you're
not actually building the connections in the best way possible you need to give yourself
breaks and allow yourself to sleep on things and allow yourself to think about stuff passively
while you're in the shower or you going over very casually certain equations and certain
problems and you try and remember things but you're not actually fully fully focusing on
these things.
This way you're allowing your focus attention and you diffuse attention to come together
and lock in those memories so that you can crush it when it comes to exam time.
Hate destroy procrastination.
Procrastination is the kryptonite of all students.
Everyone would rather go for a walk play video games go out and get ice cream and actually
doing your homework.
But if you deployed micro tactics to slash that procrastination you can be at an advantage
to win.
You have to break down your study tasks into the smallest microscopic details so that you
can create a chain reaction of wins and get a good grade on your exam.
Let me give you some examples here.
If you have a macro goal of getting say all B's all B pluses all A's on your classes then
you're not actually giving yourself microscopic goals to get there.
You need to do is break that down to very very small manageable goals.
You say I'm going to study for each class three hours a week which means you're going
to have to apply for about 45 hours of studying per week in total.
Assuming you have about a 15 semester credit load.
So we need to do is go into your calendar and blockin study times and actually plan
those out so that you stick to the plan so that you break it down into these little tiny
microscopic tasks and then they build up to those good grades at the end of the semester
because if you make these things too challenging for yourself and say well I'm going to study
for eight hours on Saturdays and Sundays.
Those could be unmanageable tasks and you're not actually breaking it up and splitting
it up into actionable microscopic goals and you could have a tendency to procrastinate
if the goals you set for yourself are too hard if you don't actually break it down into
things where you can actually be successful you can actually accomplish these little goals
that build up into this big picture.
You also don't want to put yourself in a situation where it's easy to fail in your goals.
For example this is why people go to the library to study.
It's not that the library helps them study it's that they are removing themselves from
distractions and won't be seduced into playing video games with their roommate.
They won't be seduced into going out into some party actually putting themselves in
an environment where they know they can win.
So I encourage you guys to do that.
Don't always study in your dorm room.
You should go to a library you should go to a coffee shop with soft music or something
and remove distractions so that you can kill it during your study time.
Now in the course in method and if you guys get stuck on something while you're studying
for that exam then what you need to do is make sure that you dive into it enough such
that you write down all of the steps and you get to that stopping point you get to that
frustration point where you can't go any further.
And when you do actually go ask for help you can say OK I did this and I tried that and
then I got to here and this is the part that I don't understand.
While you're showing your professor what you're showing you today is that you have been ambitious
enough to try it and you did deploy what they learned in class but you got stuff here and
it shows that you tried.
It also helps them help you because they know the exact source of the confusion.
They know the exact source of frustration.
So this is what you need to do.
Guys you need to try yourself first and then ask if you get stuck on below and let me know
which of the study tactics you like the most what you're good with the point in your semester
this year.
And if you like this video guys consider subscribing because I believe videos three times a week
for engineering students success so that you can crush it in your career and become a one
percent engineer.
Thanks
for watching the one percent engineer show guys and stay hungry on your quest to become
a one percent engineer cheers!