Study Less, Study Smart

@TomFrankly’s detailed notes

These are my notes from Marty Lobdell’s hour-long “Study Less, Study Smart” lecture,
which is on YouTube here: { HYPERLINK "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlU-
zDU6aQ0" }

How I went about learning the content of this lecture:

 Set the video’s playback speed to 1.5x
 Paused frequently to take Flow-style notes on notebook paper
o This pausing probably increased the total watch time back up to the video’s original
1-hour playback time, but my method of watching it at a faster speed and pausing to
take notes resulted in better notes.
 Immediately after, I translated the notes from my notebook to this Outline-style
document
o This was mainly done for the benefit of readers, as my notes are chicken scratch. But
it also serves to re-encode some of what I learned, as you’ll see from one of Dr.
Lobdell’s tips

My purpose was to understand the content of the lecture well enough that I could
create a 6-minute video summary of it for students who don’t want to view the whole
thing. You can watch my summary here: { HYPERLINK
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23Xqu0jXlfs" }

Notes start here.

The lecture is broken down into 7 main tips:

1. Break studying down into chunked sessions
2. Create a dedicated study area
3. Study actively (and sleep well)
4. Take smart notes and expand on them right after class
5. Summarize/teach what you learn
6. Use your books correctly - SQ3R method
7. Use mnemonics to study effectively

Break studying down into chunked sessions

 How long can a typical freshman read and retain what they’re learning?
o Med students reported 4-5 hours - not typical
o Avg of UMich study: 25-30 minutes for both
 Reading
 Lectures
o Classes are 50 minutes, but most learning will only happen in first 30
 “Study more” is not helpful advice
 Efficiency tapers off after 20-30 minutes
o After that, it’s just wasted time
 The fix? Take breaks.
o “The moment you start to slide, you’re shoveling against the tide."
o Taking a 5-minute FUN break resets the session and brings your efficiency back up
 We tend to do more of what is reinforced and rewarded
o Less of what is punished, ignored, or ineffective
 Reinforce study sessions with breaks and FUN REWARDS once the whole thing is done
o As you do this, you’re training yourself to study and your sessions can start
becoming longer.

Create a dedicated study area

 Who has a true “study??”
o Most students study in bedrooms, kitchen or dining tables, or common areas
o In bedroom, the bed starts to “call” like Greek sirens
 The context/environment largely determines the action you’ll take
o example: questions asked in class
 If asked to a group, you raise your hand
 If asked to you, you respond verbally
 This response is pretty much automatic because you’re conditioned to do it
 University of Hawaii study
o Biggest study problem: “We can’t get into it."
o Experiment - lamp in dorm room gets the label, “Study lamp"
 desk turned away from the bed
 That desk and lamp is now only used for studying
 When studying, the lamp goes on.
 At first sign of distraction, the lamp goes OFF and student walks away
 Those who did this had an avg. 1.0 GPA increase over the control group
 Music - should be truly background noise.
o Don’t be trading your attention between studying and singing along

Aside about application

 “If it doesn’t change your behavior, you haven’t learned it"
 Try at least 1 or 2 things you learn from this, else it’s useless

Study actively (and sleep well)

 “The more active you are in your learning, the more effective you’ll be."
o Studying is NOT reading over and over - rote memorization can work for some, but
for most of us it’s ineffective
 The best way to study - ask yourself, “What am I learning?
o Concepts - “What does this bone do in the body?"
o Facts - “What’s the name of this bone?"
 Most professors are concerned that you learn concepts.
o Once grasped, they stay with you forever
o Facts can fade away, by contrast
 But we have Google to look them up again
o Marty’s daughter knew all the lyrics to a song but didn’t know what it was about.
Facts vs. concepts
 However, teachers test over both facts and concepts
o To learn both, put the concept IN YOUR OWN WORDS
o If you can’t, you don’t understand it!
 Marty’s memory test - which string of letters can you remember better?
o YTHURSPHDAAYP
o HAPPY THURSDAY
o Same letters, different order - one has actual meaning
 Deep application vs. superficial thinking
o Marty asked one group to count the number of vowels in each of 30 words
o Another group was asked to evaluated usefulness of each in a survival situation
o Short-term memory (about 20-30 seconds) was then dumped with
name/date/phone number exercise
o Afterward, students were asked how many of the 30 words they recalled
 Vowel-counting group: 5/30
 Survival-usefulness group: 10/30
 “What is the meaning… of meaning?"
o Something is meaningful if it relates to something you ALREADY KNOW
 It’s like a file system or database - new entries are easier to find if they have data that
links to already existing entries
 Teachers try to add meaning to concepts through:
o Stories
o Examples
o But these don’t always work for you, so you must work to tease out meaning for
yourself
 How to “tease out” meaning
o Study groups
 multiple people = seeing problems from different angles
o Don’t make highlighting mistakes
 Highlighting can be dangerous. You highlight when reading, then come back and see
the highlighted sections and say, “I remember that!"
 Recollection vs. Recognition
 It’s very easy to confuse simple recognition for actual recollection.
 Look at an old magazine you’ve seen before - you’ll probably recognize the ads and
picture
 but unless you can PREDICT what’s on the next page, you don’t actually recall what’s in
the mag
 Same with highlighted text - you recognize it from before, but can you recall it truly?
 This is the danger of highlighting - if you confuse recognition for recall, and you’ve
highlighted the most important facts in the text, then YOU DON’T STUDY THE MOST
IMPORTANT FACTS!
 A better way - test yourself. Challenge your recall
 This is active learning
 You also need to sleep well
o Brain science is revealing that REM cycles are crucial for consolidating and storing
memories
 Lack of sleep = studying sabotage
Take smart notes and expand on them right after class
 Taking notes is vital, but...
o ASAP after class, you should try to expand on them so they’re more efficiently
encoded.
 This puts things in your own words
 Only takes about 5 minutes per class, and you save so much study time later
 This can be considered increasing Learning Efficiency in my study time equation
 If you’re fuzzy on a concept, ask a classmate to see their notes, or ask the professor
o Go to office hours, or ask for clarification at the start of the next class

Summarize/teach what you learn

 Best way to learn is to teach others
o reinforces learning
o true test of whether you understand the material
 will reveal gaps in your knowledge
 No person to teach? Record a podcast or video! Or speak it to an empty chair
 Or summarize by writing it.
o Your own words = effective summarization
 “80% of your study time is best spent reciting - only 20% should be spent reading."

Use your books correctly - SQ3R method

 Textbooks are a powerful tool
o Designed for “pedagogy” - helping you learn
 Marty’s recommended reading method: SQ3R
o Survey
o Question
o Read
o Recite
o Review
 I (and Cal Newport) don’t think it’s necessary to stick to this system - it’s time-
consuming
o However, individual pieces can be useful
 “Survey” - also can be known as “read backward” - go to the end of the chapter, note
vocab and review questions
 This primes your brain to pick these things out when reading or scanning
Use mnemonics to study effectively
 Mnemonics are great for memorizing facts - better than rote memorization
o Acronyms
 ROY G. BIV
 Radeo - “right deoxygenated"
 Right atrium of heart pumps deoxygenated blood"
o Coined sayings
 “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue"
 Rhymes are memorable
o Interacting images (Marty’s favorite"
 The weirder or more emotionally evocative, the better
 Sinkhole to hell with weird demon fish popping out of it - Helsinki, capital of Finland
(fish have fins)
 This is one of mine
 The car has 4 wheels, and pro circuit cars still have 4 wheels
 “Car” - carbohydrate and “pro” - protein - each have 4 calories per gram
 Cat has 9 lives - rich dude is a “Fat cat” - fat has 9 calories per gram

Want to see the original 7 notebook pages of Flow-style notes I took while watching the
lecture? You’ll find scans of them here: { HYPERLINK "http://collegeinfogeek.com/study-
less-study-smart/" }