How to Study Well: An Introspective Look

Several of my friends have asked me this simple question: "How do you study?"

It's an incredibly difficult question to answer, and my fallback is to proffer some generic advice such as "find out what works for you and just keep doing it". This advice is built around my strong belief that no one formula works for everyone, and everyone's brain is wired oh-so-slightly differently. We're unsure if everyone's experience of the color red is exactly the same, and if so, how can we even claim that we have discovered a secret method to achieve universal academic success? Unfortunately, this kind of overly empirical approach isn't too helpful, and I've realized that that first part of the generic advice I had been giving, finding out what works, can only really work if you know what you can try in the first place. This post aims to highlight some facets of my studying methodology, and I'll also try to note down several caveats that might make these strategies applicable only to me. As they say, YMMV.

Part I: Open Mindset

I think the biggest caveat for everything I'll mention in later parts is that I am naturally motivated to learn new things. Curiosity is one of my core values, and I understand it might not be the case for everyone. I also understand that, even if you are curious about the topic at hand, being assessed on it takes away the charm that led you to it in the first place. I've definitely found myself at that point multiple times throughout my education, but there was just something about learning about things for the sake of learning that allowed me to push myself at least 55% of the way. That open-mindedness is essential, and if you ask yourself, "Why am I learning this? I won't be using it in my career anyways.", then nothing can really push you towards achieving your theoretical best performance. Sounds cheesy? I am very much aware.

So that's the "why", really. Learning for the sake of learning because humanity has been building up its corpus of knowledge over the course of millennia and we have inherited something truly magical. Because each little piece of knowledge gives us another vector for serendipity to strike us. Because whatever grades you get for your assessment is just an approximation that doesn't fully reflect your interest and potential in a particular subject. This mentality is the backbone of my studying strategy, and has been pretty transferrable so far to the workplace.

Part II: Mixed Scheduling

Calendars: Too Impractical?

I'll be honest: one thing people don't expect about me is that I'm not the kind of person to keep detailed notes on everything and manage my tasks according to some strict hour-by-hour schedule. I've tried using Notion and similar tools before and even then I never really got much mileage out of it. I remember back in my IB years I used to use detailed schedules to be as productive as I can be, and honestly, my productivity then when it comes to the sheer number of hours worked will never fail to impress me. However, in university, this didn't work out for me for one reason: Computer Engineering/Science isn't a course where you can really estimate how long a particular task would take. It might take anywhere from minutes to half a day for me to write up a proof or algorithm, and for programming tasks, there will always be some level of experimentation and debugging that eats up time like I have a lot of it. The rigidity of time-based scheduling makes it impractical.

To-Do Lists: Too Rigid?

Since schedules didn't work for me anymore, I decided to use to-do lists instead. To-do lists are useful in making sure I'm on top of the things I have do, and checking off an item on a to-do list is an effective motivation boost. However, even then, something was missing. Moving from a time-oriented approach to a task-oriented approach didn't allow me to fully keep track of my productivity, especially for large tasks that cannot be finished in a single session, or in cases where the amount of time I have left in a day is too short for me to do anything in particular. To-do's end up being shifted further and further and time, and every shift is a loss in motivation that more or less cancels out the joys gained when finally checking an item off. "Just create subtasks!" you might be screaming, but even then, subtasks can be nebulous in nature and, upon excessive division, might not actually mean much. I feel like I'm just taking a rigid concept and turning it into something that's too flexible.

Lists and Time: A Middle Ground

The approach I decided to go for instead is a mixed approach. I still use to-do lists, but only as a tool to keep track of deadlines, and not as a productivity booster. Instead, I track my time using Clockify. Tracking time puts a metric on effort spent when things get rough and there are several things to do. If I'm done with my tasks for the day, I don't feel pressured to clock more hours. If I have tasks that end up being spread out across multiple days, then the time I spent focusing on it will still be clocked, providing daily motivation. The feeling of having a lot of time to be productive and only clocking in some two hours... is a punishment unto itself. The inverse is true as well; clocking a good seven to eight hours on a day I have to myself (when I really needed to put in the effort) is objective proof that I have truly tried my best for the day. All that being said, this approach is not for everyone. It's might be too harsh and demanding for some, and too messy and meaningless for others. YMMV.

For people who love overly systemizing things (such as myself), Clockify also allows you to see how much you spent on your different subjects/courses for a given time period. And I can also clock in time retroactively in case I forget to start the timer, which is in fact a very common thing I do. To keep track of my deadlines, I prefer a physical notebook to any online resource. (Actually, I prefer a physical notebook for most things, but that's for another post...)

Of course, turning on the timer and then getting distracted by miscellaneous things doesn't help. And that brings me to my next part.

Part III: Deep Work

Working is not enough. We should work deeply. One of the books I had read earlier in the year was Cal Newport's Deep Work, my review of which can be found here. Technically this is cheating, since I didn't read this book during my undergraduate education, but then again, I've been practicing deep work for a very long time, so I'm still going to include it. Even the most innocent distractions can cause us to do merely shallow work, and shallow work doesn't give us the ability to make the deep insights we need. One might argue that discussing things with other people is what gives us the ability to cross-examine our thoughts and come up with something creative, but, at least in my experience, discussion is good to brainstorm and validate, but the best ideas come from introspection when alone and free from distraction.

I've implemented this habit by ensuring that all the time I clock is deep work. If I pick up my phone for any recreational reason, I'll immediately stop the timer. Random Wikipedia and YouTube dives can be prevented by being strict with yourself regarding the deepness of your work. That doesn't mean that breaks can't be taken. I frequently feel claustrophobic when I work too deeply for too long, but replacing deep work with shallow work isn't the answer. Instead, actually taking meaningful breaks (i.e., no doomscrolling) in between periods of deep work is. Allocated breaks are also essential to prevent burnout, and you can almost always afford some allocated break. If you can't, then you have definitely bitten off more than you can chew, and should reconsider your commitments accordingly.

I actually don't think there are many caveats here. Sure, maybe for some courses, networking and/or groupwork is so ingrained to the academic process that work necessarily has to be shallow. Also, work work (not school work) is a completely different ball game that requires some minimum amount of shallow work in terms of communication and working as part of a team. Beyond that, however, we bring the most to the knowledge economy by working deeply.

It's funny how I feel like I have even more to share after writing this post. Three parts might not be enough for me to share the small productivity tips I've learnt along the way, but I think this article is long enough as is. Maybe in the future I'll write up a sequel, but for now, when someone asks me "how do you study?", I'll make sure to send them this post as a starting point for further advice.

I'll be going back to clocking another hour. See ya next time! 👋