February 16, 2026 • 33 mins
Want to study smarter, not longer? Today, we're finally breaking down my psychology-backed guide to becoming the academic weapon you always dreamed of being.
I’m sharing the exact study hacks I used to become high school valedictorian, maintain a near-perfect GPA at university, and actually enjoy the process of learning (and the Pomodoro method isn't mentioned once...)
We talk about:
- How to make your brain care about what you’re learning
- The Note-Taking Manuscript Method
- Why personal relevance helps memory
- Using novelty to make concepts more memorable
- Finding your peak productivity hours
- The effort paradox (why meaning follows effort, not motivation)
- How to hack your brain to focus longer and study better
If you want this academic year to be your best, you're in the right place! Listen now!
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The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back
(00:27):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is
so great to have you here, back for another episode
as we, of course break down the psychology of our twenties. Today, Guys,
I'm going back to UNI. I'm going back to the
time when I was a full time student. I'm taking
a trip down memory lane to talk about the academic
(00:49):
and study tips that I absolutely swore by when I
was a student, that I would use again if I
was back there, or if I wanted straight a's, if
I wanted to be valued ictorian, if I wanted my
transcript to be the best it could be by the
end of the year. I'm honestly surprised I've never done
an episode like this, because when I was still getting
(01:12):
my degrees, I genuinely loved the art of studying. Also,
I know there are so many of you who are
getting their diplomas, getting their undergrad degrees, getting their masters.
Some of you are even getting your PhDs, and you
are still trying to find the most time cost effective
(01:33):
and successful study tips to become the academic weapon you
always dreamed of being. So this episode feels very necessary.
These tips aren't going to be boring. I'm not going
to tell you to use flash cards or to read
the lecture notes or the Pomodoro technique. We know that
those are tried and true. We are talking instead the
(01:57):
really strange things I would do based on research. Because
when you understand the psychology of how to study, well,
everything changes. You end up studying less, you have more
time for you, you get better grades because you essentially understand
how to tune your brain to absorb knowledge efficiently. If
(02:21):
you just take notes in class and you highlight them,
and you know you repeat them to yourself, that's level one.
I want to take you to level ten of the
study game using the science. So I have I think
six tips for you today, things that the exact things
I did to be high school valedictorian, to get a
(02:41):
national merit scholarship, to maintain a near perfect GPA when
I was at Uni. I know these work. I have
the evidence to back it up. So without further Ado,
let's get into the best psychology hacks for studying. Stay
with us. So, when you're studying, whatever the subject is,
(03:05):
the ultimate goal is to convert information from your short
term or working memory to your long term memory. And
then I always like to think of another layer of this,
which is your application memory, not just being able to recite,
but to integrate into everyday experiences. Seems like a simple formula, right,
(03:26):
But getting it to that long term application storage basically
requires integrating the information in a significant way. And what
I mean by a significant way is that you have
to show your brain this information is important and worth remembering,
either through repetition, recall, a practical application, applying it to
(03:48):
your personal circumstances, or any number of techniques that you
may have used in the past or still do use.
Your brain receives hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of
pieces of information every day, So your brain needs a
signal for what is important, and that signal is a
deliberate behavior like study methods, like repetition, like any of
(04:10):
those things that is saying to your brain, hey, this
is something we care about. We want to learn this.
The thing is, there is a hierarchy here, and the
more personal significance you can apply to new information, the better,
and the further up the hierarchy. The method will be
basically recall like repetition is pretty low, but when you
(04:32):
start to apply personal information to what you are learning,
you start to move up the ladder. In fact, a
twenty twenty four study from Rice University titled Why People
Remember found that information that has emotional significance and personal
significance has a longer essentially like memory shelf life. And
(04:54):
that makes sense. You don't forget. You don't forget your
dog's name. You don't forget the girls who bullied you
in the fifth grade, or your favorite songs. You don't
forget the lyrics to those because those memories are often
encoded differently. This hack, the hack is encoding the information
you're studying in the same way as that personally significant
(05:15):
information so that you can recall it easier. Most people
again will do the following. They will take notes, they
will read those notes, they will highlight those notes, they
will repeat the information in the same form as much
as possible, and they will hope that they will remember
it and they will probably get a nice seventy five
on the test. Here's the technique that I would use instead. First, obviously,
(05:39):
still take notes, but take notes as if you are
writing the textbook yourself, with chapters, with headings, with formulas,
with visuals, and keep it all in the same document
on your computer. Pretend you are literally the author. Someone
is going to Your notes are going to be what
informs the next cohort. So you want to make it
(06:01):
look good. You want to make it very not complex,
but in depth, and you want to structure it so
that it's coherent when it comes time to study for
an exam or midterm, whatever it is. Up the font
size of that document to sixteen double space the whole document.
Print out those notes, staple them together or bind them
(06:24):
as if they are a book. This is what I
always did. I wish that I had like a picture
of what this looks like. I just feel like it
looks so much better visually so you can understand it.
But your notes should almost look like a movie manuscript,
like a big bound book. Now, we're still going to
use those tried and true recall or study methods. Step
(06:45):
one obviously, like you have to go through and highlight
and I know I said, that's not an effective method.
I know, but it's just stage one of integration. You
obviously just need to know what information is crucial. Stage two.
I want you to go through and in those lines,
because you've double fonted it, in those margins. I want
you to write texts, interesting tidbits, facts underline, draw pictures
(07:08):
around your notes, make them really personal. Step three, read
through your notes again and tell yourself the story of
what you're reading by applying it to something you see
in your own life or in the world. For example,
if you are studying I don't know psychopathology and the
(07:29):
section you are reviewing is on schizophrenia, write out the
symptoms like you're describing a movie character, or you're telling
the story of someone's behavior that you know, or somebody
in the news, or somebody or a character in a movie.
If you're studying systems of voting or politics, and you
(07:50):
have a big chunk of notes that are all very
theoretical about voting systems, imagine your friends as candidates in
each of those voting systems. Any kind of personal association
is going to work amazingly. The final step is to
take your notes, take your research, and do one of
three things. Either explain it to someone else in your life,
(08:17):
or prepare like essentially a small lecture on your topics.
This is known as the Fenman technique. Research has shown
it's one of the most effective study techniques you can use.
When you can teach it back to somebody else. You
know it at a depth that it's hard to come
by because it asks you to almost be the expert.
It asks you to adopt the skills and knowledge you'd
(08:38):
need to be an expert. So teach it to somebody
else to turn it into something creative. I used to
do these big mind maps and like diagrams and doodles
on it. I used to actually get like a massive
post board to remember psychology concepts back at UNI, and
I would make like this poster. In high school, I
would get a whiteboard marker and I would write my
(09:00):
notes and I would like draw diagrams and all that
stuff on my windows and on my mirrors. So process
it creatively, or write down your notes as personal questions
and do at least twenty of them and answer them.
So questions like if I had to choose the biology
concept I knew the least about from this year, what
(09:21):
would it be, and then describe that concept, or like,
what's another one, like what term did I find most interesting?
What applies most to my life? What area am I
most fascinated by? Like make the questions personally relevant, then
answer them again. All these methods work because we are
trying to encode on a deeper, more specific, personally relevant level.
(09:45):
It's like when you do this, when you adopt one
of those final three methods, on top of those other methods,
you are solidifying an idea in concrete, not in paper.
Another element to this is to understand your learning style.
Research says there's eight learning stars, and each of these
learning stars was adapted from Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences.
(10:09):
So basically he developed this idea back in the eighties
to essentially argue that IQ is just one specific type
of intelligence. It's a general intelligence, but real intelligence comes
in many different forms. There's many different understandings, and your
natural inclination for a specific form is what's going to
help you excel in a certain area. Basically, people are
(10:32):
smart at different things. People are good at different things,
but these forms are visual or spatial, So some people
have a visual or spatial learning type that's a preference
for things laid out in maps, laid out in graphs,
laid out in charts, auditory like an auditory learning style.
So you like to absorb knowledge through sound, song, rhythm, beat,
(10:55):
kinesthetic learning through movement, having a I guess a natural
intelligence for how your body moves and what it does
in space and what it can do. Verbal the use
of speech and speaking concepts or ideas allowed. This is
my learning style. Obviously, no surprise, I run a podcast.
(11:16):
But another one is logical. There are people who really
enjoy learning or absorbing information by laying them down in
a very mathematical and logical format. Interpersonal and interpersonal two
different ones. Interpersonal learning through collaboration, conversation, connection, intra personal
(11:37):
learning through reflection alone, time, deep devotion, solitude, and then
finally naturalistic learning through the world by seeing patterns by
connecting things to one's surroundings. Hopefully you got all those,
but there's eight. And the theory goes that this also
(11:59):
aligns not just to how you best process information, but
also what job might suit you best. We don't have
time to get into that because that theory is very
wild and wacky, but I think again, It's important to
know your preference and tune into how you can better
absorb information based on how your brain best sees information.
(12:23):
And when you can do that, it becomes so much easier.
I feel like it's like falling into a stream. It's
hard to explain, but when you start learning and absorbing
information in your brains one of your brain's preferred ways,
there is just so much less cognitive friction. Here is
how to figure out what yours is? Because I feel
like I gave you all of that and I didn't
(12:44):
give you the answer to how to find out Four questions.
When you have to explain something you care about to someone,
how do you prefer doing it? Do you immediately grab
a pen? Do you draw them a map? Do you
connect it to a personal experience? Do you use your body?
(13:05):
Do you use your hands? Do you work through the
logic with them? Question two. When someone explains a complex
idea to you, what makes it click for you? Is
it examples? Is it metaphors, discussion? Is it seeing it
in action? Is it getting to just sit and just
process it and wiki it and research it? Third question,
(13:28):
think back now to your school or UNI days. If
you are not still in those places. What kind of
classes felt easiest to stay engaged in even when the
content wasn't that interesting? That's another clue. And finally, if
you had unlimited time to learn something purely for enjoyment,
what would that learning environment look like? How would you
(13:49):
want to learn about the thing you are choosing to
learn about? Now? The thing to know. Our style isn't
always consistent, and there's not just one or you like,
there's often quite a few or as in like they're interchangeable.
I feel like I've been giving the impression there's like
one specific one. You can have multiple and everybody can
(14:10):
in some way learn through each of those things. There
was a recent University of Michigan article that called into
question the legitimacy of learning styles altogether, because the idea
that we can only learn in one way is kind
of preposterous. But the psychology does provide heaps of evidence
for this fact. When you enjoy the methods you are
(14:31):
using to learn, you engage more, you absorb more. Therefore,
you develop an enjoyable method for studying and enjoy the
studying in itself, even if it looks weird, even if
you feel like nobody understands it. Having a method that
relates to you personally and that you enjoy is always
going to be more effective than a traditional method that
(14:56):
bores you or doesn't interest you. There's kind of it
brings me to my next tip, which is use unconventional
ways of learning, because I guess the more novel, the
more memorable, and the more likely you are to integrate
the information. The one I loved the most, which I'm
(15:18):
now thinking about, and I'm realizing this has a lot
to say about me. But I used to record my
notes as a voice note on my laptop, and I
would convert it into an MP three part MP three
file for my phone so I could listen to the
concepts as a podcast. How I did not realize this
(15:41):
was going to be my career, I do not know.
I cannot tell you that was obviously a sign, but
that was really effective for me. And I also put
classical music behind it. Sometimes I used to play it
to fall asleep because and this has no evidence for it.
Let me just say there's no evidence for this, but
I used to be like, oh, yeah, if I listened
to it while I'm sleeping, that's more time for it
(16:02):
to be absorbed into my memory, Like over now it's
going to like infuse into my mind. That didn't work,
I can tell you that now. But novelty of any kind,
any method, primes your brain to learn. There's evidence for this.
There was a twenty twenty study done with a bunch
of high school students in Argentina that put students either
(16:24):
in a novel environment or their school environment and showed
them a geometrical shape, a geometrical object, a really random object,
and asked them to memorize. Well, the researchers asked them
to memorize it, and then they asked them forty five
days later, if they remembered it, they asked them to
draw the shape, and those in the novel situations had
(16:47):
much better recall. Study in new locations, use different colored pens,
have a unique playlist for each subject, tie new concepts
to a new flavor of gum. Anything that's again going
to give a concept another dimension means it's going to
(17:07):
be integrated differently and better. I guess okay, we are
going to take a short break here before getting into
my four final tips for studying effectively. Stay with us.
(17:28):
So this is a tip I wish, I wish I
learned sooner, but only kind of grasped. I would say,
in like my last two years of university, not all
times are good times for studying. Your peak productivity hours
may not be the same as others, or the same
as the even the typical workday, which is based around
(17:52):
what we are like a human circadian rhythm. Yes, we
might all have the same Cicadian structures, but your peak
productivity depends on your individual biology and it depends on
your individual rhythm. When I was in like the early
days of university, I remember going to this I don't
know what it was, like a module or like a lecture.
(18:13):
It was like on studying effectively, and in it the
lecture of like the person leading it was like your
best study time is nine am to twelve pm and
three pm to seven pm. I don't know where she
got that from. And I tried to stick with that
for ages. I'd be like, no, I need to study
nine am. I got to be at the library until
I realized, like I was not getting a single thing
(18:35):
done during that whole time, like I'm a night out.
I like working, I like studying, I like writing and
creating after seven pm, When after seven pm I can
focus for hours. I know my mom is the same.
And we were actually having this conversation recently where I
was like, how did you get so much work done
when we were kids? Like she had three kids and
(18:58):
she was working like multiple jobs, and she was telling
me how her peak performance hours were always for her
like ten pm to two am, so she would be
working when we were asleep. And I was like, huh,
that's where I get it. But there's another name for
a person like this, obviously, a night ow in comparison
(19:18):
to those like five am club early birds. And I
just feel like if I tried to do those five
am wake ups, I could never get anything done. That's
not how I am programmed. You have to figure out
how you were programmed. Researchers in twenty twenty one tested
participants on this with a series of cognitive tasks, and
they found that learning, memory, attention, they were all significantly
(19:43):
better when people worked during their preferred time of day.
A separate meta analysis looked at over seven thousand evening
people and warning people, and they also looked at what
they called their diurnal preferences. And a diurnal preference is
basically when you prefer to be awake versus a sleep,
And what they found was that when they let people
(20:06):
naturally work during their preferred time, their cognitive ability, their
academic achievement, their memory, their problem solving all improved, even
in school children, even in little tiny school children. This
study even actually it has a self report questionnaire. You
can take what is the study called, I think it's
called chron Chronotype Cognitive Abilities and Academic Achievement from twenty
(20:33):
to eleven if you want to look it up, and
in the appendix they'll have this so you can figure
out what your diurnal preference is. When the best time
of day is for you. I think you probably already know.
I think it's the time when you feel least tired
doing work, whether that is one am or one pm.
(20:53):
I think a crucial step to this is also being
okay with not being productive when everyone else is being
a lot of studying at least I found was sometimes
like appearance based, especially when you're like in a big college,
or in a big high school or in a big UNI,
and so sometimes like that there was pressure to sort
of appear like you were busy even if you weren't
getting anything done. So again with this like body clock, method.
(21:17):
If you know you can get seven hours of work
done in four hours, if you start at one am,
you don't need to be studying at nine am. Take
the morning off. Remember, efficiency is personal. It's not externally dictated.
It's incredibly individualized. And if your goal is to get
great grades, do it when it suits you best. Here's
(21:39):
another reason why I loved working and I love studying late,
and I guess it kind of makes up Tim Nutber five.
It's because it was romantic, and I believe like the
more romantic or sentimental you make studying, the better you
are at it. You have to romanticize study. You have
to make get glamorous, you have to make it charming.
(22:02):
I don't know what other episode I spoke about this,
and I'm pretty sure I did, But I loved working late,
and I loved thinking about like all the other great
all the other I just like thinking about like the
great thinkers and writers who who I admired, who'd be
like up by the candlelight, who'd be like diligently working
(22:23):
back in the day, and like that was so I
don't know. I love the intimacy of it and how
dedicated it felt. And I think it's important to find
an image, a mental image of studying that is attractive
to you and embody it when you are studying. Some
other examples like I know people who like to imagine
(22:44):
themselves as scholars, intellectuals, founders who are like working like
that's a common one, who like to imagine themselves as
an artist when they're up early in the morning. Whatever
it takes to make you fall in love with the
process of studying, not just the outcome, you've got to
do it. And that's another psychology hack for you. It's
actually called the effort paradox, fall in love with working hard.
(23:08):
A lot of psychology will say we avoid effort because
it's costly and we want to choose the path of
least resistance. But the more you pursue effort, the more
it feels innately valuable, and the more it actually increases
the value of the thing that you are working towards.
(23:28):
People may value a goal more when they work really
hard for it. It's why we like ikea furniture, It's why
we because we have to work hard for it because
there's a personal investment the things we put effort into. Yeah,
like furniture. We assemble or like a cake we make ourselves.
You know, it feels more meaningful and valuable than an
(23:48):
identical thing that requires no effort. Effort creates meaning, which
is more powerful than motivation. You don't start studying because
you love it. You start studying because you're because you've
invested effort and because that feels important, and so then
the meaning follows the meaning. The motivation follows effort, not
(24:09):
the other way around. Does that make sense? You can
read the paper I think it's a just called the
effort Paradox from twenty eighteen if you want to understand
this better. But effort creates meaning, not motivation. It's one
of the best things I read when I was studying
when I was at university. It's basically another way of
(24:32):
saying again like fall in love with hard work and
pursue consistency. Basically, it's another way of saying consistency matters
and consistency works, but just saying that in a different way.
I guess. Let me move on to tip number seven.
I think this was my most unhinged study tip. I
(24:52):
used to pay myself to study. I'm going to explain this,
but I knew from high school psychology that our brains
respond to reward and regular positive enforcement. So when I
would get paid, or specifically when I would get tips
when I was working at the Hawaiian Bar, or when
I was working at the Stake restaurant, I would have
these envelopes in my draw, like in my university death draw,
(25:13):
and I would put like twenty dollar bills, five dollar bills,
ten dollar bills in these envelopes, and I wouldn't label them.
I wouldn't know which had which. And every time I
went to study, I would bring a single envelope with me,
and only when I'd done a certain number of hours
would I be allowed to open it and I would
be allowed to spend whatever money was in there or
(25:35):
like add it to my wallet because I didn't know
how much money was in there. It kind of also
tapped into principles of intermittent reinforcement or random reinforcement as well.
And let me just say like it worked. It truly
truly worked so so well, Like I was basically bribing
myself normally, by like the time I think I'd done,
(25:58):
I think I would give it to me myself, like
after three hours, normally, after like I would have done
two hours and I'd be really hungry or really bored,
and I'd want to snack. And my university had this
like little basic grocery store, and at two hours, I'd
be like, I'm ready, but I would force myself to
do that other hour because then I would get the reward.
(26:19):
And obviously it was my money, like I could open
it at any time, but it would like really motivate
me to just like push to that third hour. And
I would obviously have breaks in between, like I'd go
to the bathroom. I wasn't like sitting there with like
those metal prongs like opening my eyes. Like I would
let myself get up and go around. But I wasn't
(26:39):
allowed to leave the library or I wasn't allowed to
go back to my dorm before those three hours were done.
Over the next three hours after that because I couldn't
open the envelope, which again super strange. I tell me,
if you do this, I don't know anybody else who
does this, but it worked. Okay, I don't know what
tip we are up to here, but next, another big
(27:01):
psychology hack that's very simple but very necessary is eliminate
all distractions. Do not believe that you can study if
your phone is right next to you. I used to
use this self control website blocker. I think I literally
still have it on my computer. I would also give
me and my friends, we would give each other our
phones and like put them in our bags so they
(27:24):
couldn't access them, and give them back when we were
kind of ready to go. Anything to keep a distraction
away from your desk or away from your study space
is crucial. I cannot stress enough how much you need
to be doing this, no matter how good you think
your discipline is. We really do like to believe that
(27:44):
discipline is like a personality trait, that some people are
just more motivated or motivated enough to be able to
sit there with their phone face down and not touch
it and just simply not do anything with it. But
psychology says that's not true. Your brain is not designed
to coexist peacefully with distraction. Every notification, every open tab,
(28:09):
every buzzing phone noise triggers what is called attentional capture.
Even if you don't consciously check it, a part of
you is still oh aware that something's going on. Just
knowing your phone is nearby is actually enough to reduce
your working memory and cognitive capacity. There is literal research
showing that performance improves simply by putting your phone in
(28:32):
another room, simply by giving it to somebody else, not
putting it on silent, not putting it face down, gone
putting it away. This is why externalizing self control works
so well. Website blockers, app limits a friend. It's not
a sign that you have weak discipline, like there are
signs of psychological intelligence. You are removing the need for
(28:56):
constant decision making and constantly needing to stop your brain
from doing what it wants to most, which is to
take the quick dopamine, which is to take the destruction. Finally,
and I should have said this one earlier when I
was talking about my money envelope rewards scheme, but study
(29:18):
with other people as a reward. Now, I wouldn't do
this all the time, only when I was really serious,
in like a real crunch period. But I knew that
as much as money was a fantastic treat as an extrovert,
as a social butterfly, especially at university, being around other
(29:39):
people and having a little chit chat that was a
much greater reward for me. So I manipulated that. I
manipulated that desire to force myself to work harder. There
is a powerful dopinogenic reward loop at play when you're
studying alone. Follow by letting yourself study with other people
(30:03):
as a treat, your brain begins to associate effort with
anticipated connection, making the initial work feel more tolerable, maybe
even motivating. If I knew I'd get to go sit
with my friends at the end, or like go and
annoy them or hang out with them, it just made
(30:23):
me want to work harder to get through the time.
That's the whole point of of having that reward. So
those are my tips. Those are my study tips that
I swore by. I'm going to quickly summarize them for
you now. Firstly, the biggest thing you should be doing
if you're not doing anything else on this list encode
(30:43):
information with personal significance. Use my note taking manuscript method.
Figure out your preferred learning style, not your exact learning style.
We know there's not a single one, but you're preferred
utilize novelty in whatever form. Study during your most productive hours,
(31:04):
not even if they're not necessarily the socially applauded hours.
Romanticize studying. Romanticize studying to activate that effort paradox that
we were talking about. Pay yourself to study, eliminate distractions,
use social study as a reward, and one final, one,
(31:26):
final one. As much as you can integrate the information
into your conversations, teach other people, teach your parents, Slip
it into like calls with clients, or like when you're
serving somebody coffee, anyone anything. Anybody wants to listen, get
them involved in your learning. This is literally, in a
(31:49):
small way, how this podcast started. I wanted to talk
more about psychology to integrate my understanding, and I wanted
to talk about it in reference to my friend's lives
and my family's lives. And that's this is how we're here.
Look how that turned out. So thank you so much
for listening. I hope these tips are helpful. Let me
know if you've used any of them and if they
are useful, If you have made it this far, great
(32:10):
attentional skills. Thank you. Leave a comment down below. What
is your most unhinged weird study hat? I want the
weird ones. And if you pay yourself to study like
I did, I want to know because I think I've
only I think I know like one other person who
did that, and I'm pretty sure when she said she
was paying herself it was her parents. So I want
to know if you do that and if it works
(32:31):
for you. I guess people don't really use cash anymore,
but yeah, those are the good times. I miss it.
I really miss studying you guys, like if you're still
studying at the moment as well, like, don't take it
for granted. There was something so fun about like your
only job for the evening being just like to sit
with your friends or just to like sit and learn,
like genuinely dream job, dream job. So thank you again
(32:56):
for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure
that you are following us wherever you are listening right now,
that you are subscribed, or that you have notifications turned
on so you know when new episodes come out. You
can also follow us on Instagram at that Psychology Podcast
if you want to see behind the scenes, you want
episode summaries, you want to know when new episodes are
coming out, and when we want people's listener contributions. That's
(33:20):
a great way to get involved there. You can also
follow us on substack for full episode transcripts if you
are looking for those. But until next time, be safe,
be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very
very soon.
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back
(00:27):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is
so great to have you here, back for another episode
as we, of course break down the psychology of our twenties. Today, Guys,
I'm going back to UNI. I'm going back to the
time when I was a full time student. I'm taking
a trip down memory lane to talk about the academic
(00:49):
and study tips that I absolutely swore by when I
was a student, that I would use again if I
was back there, or if I wanted straight a's, if
I wanted to be valued ictorian, if I wanted my
transcript to be the best it could be by the
end of the year. I'm honestly surprised I've never done
an episode like this, because when I was still getting
(01:12):
my degrees, I genuinely loved the art of studying. Also,
I know there are so many of you who are
getting their diplomas, getting their undergrad degrees, getting their masters.
Some of you are even getting your PhDs, and you
are still trying to find the most time cost effective
(01:33):
and successful study tips to become the academic weapon you
always dreamed of being. So this episode feels very necessary.
These tips aren't going to be boring. I'm not going
to tell you to use flash cards or to read
the lecture notes or the Pomodoro technique. We know that
those are tried and true. We are talking instead the
(01:57):
really strange things I would do based on research. Because
when you understand the psychology of how to study, well,
everything changes. You end up studying less, you have more
time for you, you get better grades because you essentially understand
how to tune your brain to absorb knowledge efficiently. If
(02:21):
you just take notes in class and you highlight them,
and you know you repeat them to yourself, that's level one.
I want to take you to level ten of the
study game using the science. So I have I think
six tips for you today, things that the exact things
I did to be high school valedictorian, to get a
(02:41):
national merit scholarship, to maintain a near perfect GPA when
I was at Uni. I know these work. I have
the evidence to back it up. So without further Ado,
let's get into the best psychology hacks for studying. Stay
with us. So, when you're studying, whatever the subject is,
(03:05):
the ultimate goal is to convert information from your short
term or working memory to your long term memory. And
then I always like to think of another layer of this,
which is your application memory, not just being able to recite,
but to integrate into everyday experiences. Seems like a simple formula, right,
(03:26):
But getting it to that long term application storage basically
requires integrating the information in a significant way. And what
I mean by a significant way is that you have
to show your brain this information is important and worth remembering,
either through repetition, recall, a practical application, applying it to
(03:48):
your personal circumstances, or any number of techniques that you
may have used in the past or still do use.
Your brain receives hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of
pieces of information every day, So your brain needs a
signal for what is important, and that signal is a
deliberate behavior like study methods, like repetition, like any of
(04:10):
those things that is saying to your brain, hey, this
is something we care about. We want to learn this.
The thing is, there is a hierarchy here, and the
more personal significance you can apply to new information, the better,
and the further up the hierarchy. The method will be
basically recall like repetition is pretty low, but when you
(04:32):
start to apply personal information to what you are learning,
you start to move up the ladder. In fact, a
twenty twenty four study from Rice University titled Why People
Remember found that information that has emotional significance and personal
significance has a longer essentially like memory shelf life. And
(04:54):
that makes sense. You don't forget. You don't forget your
dog's name. You don't forget the girls who bullied you
in the fifth grade, or your favorite songs. You don't
forget the lyrics to those because those memories are often
encoded differently. This hack, the hack is encoding the information
you're studying in the same way as that personally significant
(05:15):
information so that you can recall it easier. Most people
again will do the following. They will take notes, they
will read those notes, they will highlight those notes, they
will repeat the information in the same form as much
as possible, and they will hope that they will remember
it and they will probably get a nice seventy five
on the test. Here's the technique that I would use instead. First, obviously,
(05:39):
still take notes, but take notes as if you are
writing the textbook yourself, with chapters, with headings, with formulas,
with visuals, and keep it all in the same document
on your computer. Pretend you are literally the author. Someone
is going to Your notes are going to be what
informs the next cohort. So you want to make it
(06:01):
look good. You want to make it very not complex,
but in depth, and you want to structure it so
that it's coherent when it comes time to study for
an exam or midterm, whatever it is. Up the font
size of that document to sixteen double space the whole document.
Print out those notes, staple them together or bind them
(06:24):
as if they are a book. This is what I
always did. I wish that I had like a picture
of what this looks like. I just feel like it
looks so much better visually so you can understand it.
But your notes should almost look like a movie manuscript,
like a big bound book. Now, we're still going to
use those tried and true recall or study methods. Step
(06:45):
one obviously, like you have to go through and highlight
and I know I said, that's not an effective method.
I know, but it's just stage one of integration. You
obviously just need to know what information is crucial. Stage two.
I want you to go through and in those lines,
because you've double fonted it, in those margins. I want
you to write texts, interesting tidbits, facts underline, draw pictures
(07:08):
around your notes, make them really personal. Step three, read
through your notes again and tell yourself the story of
what you're reading by applying it to something you see
in your own life or in the world. For example,
if you are studying I don't know psychopathology and the
(07:29):
section you are reviewing is on schizophrenia, write out the
symptoms like you're describing a movie character, or you're telling
the story of someone's behavior that you know, or somebody
in the news, or somebody or a character in a movie.
If you're studying systems of voting or politics, and you
(07:50):
have a big chunk of notes that are all very
theoretical about voting systems, imagine your friends as candidates in
each of those voting systems. Any kind of personal association
is going to work amazingly. The final step is to
take your notes, take your research, and do one of
three things. Either explain it to someone else in your life,
(08:17):
or prepare like essentially a small lecture on your topics.
This is known as the Fenman technique. Research has shown
it's one of the most effective study techniques you can use.
When you can teach it back to somebody else. You
know it at a depth that it's hard to come
by because it asks you to almost be the expert.
It asks you to adopt the skills and knowledge you'd
(08:38):
need to be an expert. So teach it to somebody
else to turn it into something creative. I used to
do these big mind maps and like diagrams and doodles
on it. I used to actually get like a massive
post board to remember psychology concepts back at UNI, and
I would make like this poster. In high school, I
would get a whiteboard marker and I would write my
(09:00):
notes and I would like draw diagrams and all that
stuff on my windows and on my mirrors. So process
it creatively, or write down your notes as personal questions
and do at least twenty of them and answer them.
So questions like if I had to choose the biology
concept I knew the least about from this year, what
(09:21):
would it be, and then describe that concept, or like,
what's another one, like what term did I find most interesting?
What applies most to my life? What area am I
most fascinated by? Like make the questions personally relevant, then
answer them again. All these methods work because we are
trying to encode on a deeper, more specific, personally relevant level.
(09:45):
It's like when you do this, when you adopt one
of those final three methods, on top of those other methods,
you are solidifying an idea in concrete, not in paper.
Another element to this is to understand your learning style.
Research says there's eight learning stars, and each of these
learning stars was adapted from Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences.
(10:09):
So basically he developed this idea back in the eighties
to essentially argue that IQ is just one specific type
of intelligence. It's a general intelligence, but real intelligence comes
in many different forms. There's many different understandings, and your
natural inclination for a specific form is what's going to
help you excel in a certain area. Basically, people are
(10:32):
smart at different things. People are good at different things,
but these forms are visual or spatial, So some people
have a visual or spatial learning type that's a preference
for things laid out in maps, laid out in graphs,
laid out in charts, auditory like an auditory learning style.
So you like to absorb knowledge through sound, song, rhythm, beat,
(10:55):
kinesthetic learning through movement, having a I guess a natural
intelligence for how your body moves and what it does
in space and what it can do. Verbal the use
of speech and speaking concepts or ideas allowed. This is
my learning style. Obviously, no surprise, I run a podcast.
(11:16):
But another one is logical. There are people who really
enjoy learning or absorbing information by laying them down in
a very mathematical and logical format. Interpersonal and interpersonal two
different ones. Interpersonal learning through collaboration, conversation, connection, intra personal
(11:37):
learning through reflection alone, time, deep devotion, solitude, and then
finally naturalistic learning through the world by seeing patterns by
connecting things to one's surroundings. Hopefully you got all those,
but there's eight. And the theory goes that this also
(11:59):
aligns not just to how you best process information, but
also what job might suit you best. We don't have
time to get into that because that theory is very
wild and wacky, but I think again, It's important to
know your preference and tune into how you can better
absorb information based on how your brain best sees information.
(12:23):
And when you can do that, it becomes so much easier.
I feel like it's like falling into a stream. It's
hard to explain, but when you start learning and absorbing
information in your brains one of your brain's preferred ways,
there is just so much less cognitive friction. Here is
how to figure out what yours is? Because I feel
like I gave you all of that and I didn't
(12:44):
give you the answer to how to find out Four questions.
When you have to explain something you care about to someone,
how do you prefer doing it? Do you immediately grab
a pen? Do you draw them a map? Do you
connect it to a personal experience? Do you use your body?
(13:05):
Do you use your hands? Do you work through the
logic with them? Question two. When someone explains a complex
idea to you, what makes it click for you? Is
it examples? Is it metaphors, discussion? Is it seeing it
in action? Is it getting to just sit and just
process it and wiki it and research it? Third question,
(13:28):
think back now to your school or UNI days. If
you are not still in those places. What kind of
classes felt easiest to stay engaged in even when the
content wasn't that interesting? That's another clue. And finally, if
you had unlimited time to learn something purely for enjoyment,
what would that learning environment look like? How would you
(13:49):
want to learn about the thing you are choosing to
learn about? Now? The thing to know. Our style isn't
always consistent, and there's not just one or you like,
there's often quite a few or as in like they're interchangeable.
I feel like I've been giving the impression there's like
one specific one. You can have multiple and everybody can
(14:10):
in some way learn through each of those things. There
was a recent University of Michigan article that called into
question the legitimacy of learning styles altogether, because the idea
that we can only learn in one way is kind
of preposterous. But the psychology does provide heaps of evidence
for this fact. When you enjoy the methods you are
(14:31):
using to learn, you engage more, you absorb more. Therefore,
you develop an enjoyable method for studying and enjoy the
studying in itself, even if it looks weird, even if
you feel like nobody understands it. Having a method that
relates to you personally and that you enjoy is always
going to be more effective than a traditional method that
(14:56):
bores you or doesn't interest you. There's kind of it
brings me to my next tip, which is use unconventional
ways of learning, because I guess the more novel, the
more memorable, and the more likely you are to integrate
the information. The one I loved the most, which I'm
(15:18):
now thinking about, and I'm realizing this has a lot
to say about me. But I used to record my
notes as a voice note on my laptop, and I
would convert it into an MP three part MP three
file for my phone so I could listen to the
concepts as a podcast. How I did not realize this
(15:41):
was going to be my career, I do not know.
I cannot tell you that was obviously a sign, but
that was really effective for me. And I also put
classical music behind it. Sometimes I used to play it
to fall asleep because and this has no evidence for it.
Let me just say there's no evidence for this, but
I used to be like, oh, yeah, if I listened
to it while I'm sleeping, that's more time for it
(16:02):
to be absorbed into my memory, Like over now it's
going to like infuse into my mind. That didn't work,
I can tell you that now. But novelty of any kind,
any method, primes your brain to learn. There's evidence for this.
There was a twenty twenty study done with a bunch
of high school students in Argentina that put students either
(16:24):
in a novel environment or their school environment and showed
them a geometrical shape, a geometrical object, a really random object,
and asked them to memorize. Well, the researchers asked them
to memorize it, and then they asked them forty five
days later, if they remembered it, they asked them to
draw the shape, and those in the novel situations had
(16:47):
much better recall. Study in new locations, use different colored pens,
have a unique playlist for each subject, tie new concepts
to a new flavor of gum. Anything that's again going
to give a concept another dimension means it's going to
(17:07):
be integrated differently and better. I guess okay, we are
going to take a short break here before getting into
my four final tips for studying effectively. Stay with us.
(17:28):
So this is a tip I wish, I wish I
learned sooner, but only kind of grasped. I would say,
in like my last two years of university, not all
times are good times for studying. Your peak productivity hours
may not be the same as others, or the same
as the even the typical workday, which is based around
(17:52):
what we are like a human circadian rhythm. Yes, we
might all have the same Cicadian structures, but your peak
productivity depends on your individual biology and it depends on
your individual rhythm. When I was in like the early
days of university, I remember going to this I don't
know what it was, like a module or like a lecture.
(18:13):
It was like on studying effectively, and in it the
lecture of like the person leading it was like your
best study time is nine am to twelve pm and
three pm to seven pm. I don't know where she
got that from. And I tried to stick with that
for ages. I'd be like, no, I need to study
nine am. I got to be at the library until
I realized, like I was not getting a single thing
(18:35):
done during that whole time, like I'm a night out.
I like working, I like studying, I like writing and
creating after seven pm, When after seven pm I can
focus for hours. I know my mom is the same.
And we were actually having this conversation recently where I
was like, how did you get so much work done
when we were kids? Like she had three kids and
(18:58):
she was working like multiple jobs, and she was telling
me how her peak performance hours were always for her
like ten pm to two am, so she would be
working when we were asleep. And I was like, huh,
that's where I get it. But there's another name for
a person like this, obviously, a night ow in comparison
(19:18):
to those like five am club early birds. And I
just feel like if I tried to do those five
am wake ups, I could never get anything done. That's
not how I am programmed. You have to figure out
how you were programmed. Researchers in twenty twenty one tested
participants on this with a series of cognitive tasks, and
they found that learning, memory, attention, they were all significantly
(19:43):
better when people worked during their preferred time of day.
A separate meta analysis looked at over seven thousand evening
people and warning people, and they also looked at what
they called their diurnal preferences. And a diurnal preference is
basically when you prefer to be awake versus a sleep,
And what they found was that when they let people
(20:06):
naturally work during their preferred time, their cognitive ability, their
academic achievement, their memory, their problem solving all improved, even
in school children, even in little tiny school children. This
study even actually it has a self report questionnaire. You
can take what is the study called, I think it's
called chron Chronotype Cognitive Abilities and Academic Achievement from twenty
(20:33):
to eleven if you want to look it up, and
in the appendix they'll have this so you can figure
out what your diurnal preference is. When the best time
of day is for you. I think you probably already know.
I think it's the time when you feel least tired
doing work, whether that is one am or one pm.
(20:53):
I think a crucial step to this is also being
okay with not being productive when everyone else is being
a lot of studying at least I found was sometimes
like appearance based, especially when you're like in a big college,
or in a big high school or in a big UNI,
and so sometimes like that there was pressure to sort
of appear like you were busy even if you weren't
getting anything done. So again with this like body clock, method.
(21:17):
If you know you can get seven hours of work
done in four hours, if you start at one am,
you don't need to be studying at nine am. Take
the morning off. Remember, efficiency is personal. It's not externally dictated.
It's incredibly individualized. And if your goal is to get
great grades, do it when it suits you best. Here's
(21:39):
another reason why I loved working and I love studying late,
and I guess it kind of makes up Tim Nutber five.
It's because it was romantic, and I believe like the
more romantic or sentimental you make studying, the better you
are at it. You have to romanticize study. You have
to make get glamorous, you have to make it charming.
(22:02):
I don't know what other episode I spoke about this,
and I'm pretty sure I did, But I loved working late,
and I loved thinking about like all the other great
all the other I just like thinking about like the
great thinkers and writers who who I admired, who'd be
like up by the candlelight, who'd be like diligently working
(22:23):
back in the day, and like that was so I
don't know. I love the intimacy of it and how
dedicated it felt. And I think it's important to find
an image, a mental image of studying that is attractive
to you and embody it when you are studying. Some
other examples like I know people who like to imagine
(22:44):
themselves as scholars, intellectuals, founders who are like working like
that's a common one, who like to imagine themselves as
an artist when they're up early in the morning. Whatever
it takes to make you fall in love with the
process of studying, not just the outcome, you've got to
do it. And that's another psychology hack for you. It's
actually called the effort paradox, fall in love with working hard.
(23:08):
A lot of psychology will say we avoid effort because
it's costly and we want to choose the path of
least resistance. But the more you pursue effort, the more
it feels innately valuable, and the more it actually increases
the value of the thing that you are working towards.
(23:28):
People may value a goal more when they work really
hard for it. It's why we like ikea furniture, It's why
we because we have to work hard for it because
there's a personal investment the things we put effort into. Yeah,
like furniture. We assemble or like a cake we make ourselves.
You know, it feels more meaningful and valuable than an
(23:48):
identical thing that requires no effort. Effort creates meaning, which
is more powerful than motivation. You don't start studying because
you love it. You start studying because you're because you've
invested effort and because that feels important, and so then
the meaning follows the meaning. The motivation follows effort, not
(24:09):
the other way around. Does that make sense? You can
read the paper I think it's a just called the
effort Paradox from twenty eighteen if you want to understand
this better. But effort creates meaning, not motivation. It's one
of the best things I read when I was studying
when I was at university. It's basically another way of
(24:32):
saying again like fall in love with hard work and
pursue consistency. Basically, it's another way of saying consistency matters
and consistency works, but just saying that in a different way.
I guess. Let me move on to tip number seven.
I think this was my most unhinged study tip. I
(24:52):
used to pay myself to study. I'm going to explain this,
but I knew from high school psychology that our brains
respond to reward and regular positive enforcement. So when I
would get paid, or specifically when I would get tips
when I was working at the Hawaiian Bar, or when
I was working at the Stake restaurant, I would have
these envelopes in my draw, like in my university death draw,
(25:13):
and I would put like twenty dollar bills, five dollar bills,
ten dollar bills in these envelopes, and I wouldn't label them.
I wouldn't know which had which. And every time I
went to study, I would bring a single envelope with me,
and only when I'd done a certain number of hours
would I be allowed to open it and I would
be allowed to spend whatever money was in there or
(25:35):
like add it to my wallet because I didn't know
how much money was in there. It kind of also
tapped into principles of intermittent reinforcement or random reinforcement as well.
And let me just say like it worked. It truly
truly worked so so well, Like I was basically bribing
myself normally, by like the time I think I'd done,
(25:58):
I think I would give it to me myself, like
after three hours, normally, after like I would have done
two hours and I'd be really hungry or really bored,
and I'd want to snack. And my university had this
like little basic grocery store, and at two hours, I'd
be like, I'm ready, but I would force myself to
do that other hour because then I would get the reward.
(26:19):
And obviously it was my money, like I could open
it at any time, but it would like really motivate
me to just like push to that third hour. And
I would obviously have breaks in between, like I'd go
to the bathroom. I wasn't like sitting there with like
those metal prongs like opening my eyes. Like I would
let myself get up and go around. But I wasn't
(26:39):
allowed to leave the library or I wasn't allowed to
go back to my dorm before those three hours were done.
Over the next three hours after that because I couldn't
open the envelope, which again super strange. I tell me,
if you do this, I don't know anybody else who
does this, but it worked. Okay, I don't know what
tip we are up to here, but next, another big
(27:01):
psychology hack that's very simple but very necessary is eliminate
all distractions. Do not believe that you can study if
your phone is right next to you. I used to
use this self control website blocker. I think I literally
still have it on my computer. I would also give
me and my friends, we would give each other our
phones and like put them in our bags so they
(27:24):
couldn't access them, and give them back when we were
kind of ready to go. Anything to keep a distraction
away from your desk or away from your study space
is crucial. I cannot stress enough how much you need
to be doing this, no matter how good you think
your discipline is. We really do like to believe that
(27:44):
discipline is like a personality trait, that some people are
just more motivated or motivated enough to be able to
sit there with their phone face down and not touch
it and just simply not do anything with it. But
psychology says that's not true. Your brain is not designed
to coexist peacefully with distraction. Every notification, every open tab,
(28:09):
every buzzing phone noise triggers what is called attentional capture.
Even if you don't consciously check it, a part of
you is still oh aware that something's going on. Just
knowing your phone is nearby is actually enough to reduce
your working memory and cognitive capacity. There is literal research
showing that performance improves simply by putting your phone in
(28:32):
another room, simply by giving it to somebody else, not
putting it on silent, not putting it face down, gone
putting it away. This is why externalizing self control works
so well. Website blockers, app limits a friend. It's not
a sign that you have weak discipline, like there are
signs of psychological intelligence. You are removing the need for
(28:56):
constant decision making and constantly needing to stop your brain
from doing what it wants to most, which is to
take the quick dopamine, which is to take the destruction. Finally,
and I should have said this one earlier when I
was talking about my money envelope rewards scheme, but study
(29:18):
with other people as a reward. Now, I wouldn't do
this all the time, only when I was really serious,
in like a real crunch period. But I knew that
as much as money was a fantastic treat as an extrovert,
as a social butterfly, especially at university, being around other
(29:39):
people and having a little chit chat that was a
much greater reward for me. So I manipulated that. I
manipulated that desire to force myself to work harder. There
is a powerful dopinogenic reward loop at play when you're
studying alone. Follow by letting yourself study with other people
(30:03):
as a treat, your brain begins to associate effort with
anticipated connection, making the initial work feel more tolerable, maybe
even motivating. If I knew I'd get to go sit
with my friends at the end, or like go and
annoy them or hang out with them, it just made
(30:23):
me want to work harder to get through the time.
That's the whole point of of having that reward. So
those are my tips. Those are my study tips that
I swore by. I'm going to quickly summarize them for
you now. Firstly, the biggest thing you should be doing
if you're not doing anything else on this list encode
(30:43):
information with personal significance. Use my note taking manuscript method.
Figure out your preferred learning style, not your exact learning style.
We know there's not a single one, but you're preferred
utilize novelty in whatever form. Study during your most productive hours,
(31:04):
not even if they're not necessarily the socially applauded hours.
Romanticize studying. Romanticize studying to activate that effort paradox that
we were talking about. Pay yourself to study, eliminate distractions,
use social study as a reward, and one final, one,
(31:26):
final one. As much as you can integrate the information
into your conversations, teach other people, teach your parents, Slip
it into like calls with clients, or like when you're
serving somebody coffee, anyone anything. Anybody wants to listen, get
them involved in your learning. This is literally, in a
(31:49):
small way, how this podcast started. I wanted to talk
more about psychology to integrate my understanding, and I wanted
to talk about it in reference to my friend's lives
and my family's lives. And that's this is how we're here.
Look how that turned out. So thank you so much
for listening. I hope these tips are helpful. Let me
know if you've used any of them and if they
are useful, If you have made it this far, great
(32:10):
attentional skills. Thank you. Leave a comment down below. What
is your most unhinged weird study hat? I want the
weird ones. And if you pay yourself to study like
I did, I want to know because I think I've
only I think I know like one other person who
did that, and I'm pretty sure when she said she
was paying herself it was her parents. So I want
to know if you do that and if it works
(32:31):
for you. I guess people don't really use cash anymore,
but yeah, those are the good times. I miss it.
I really miss studying you guys, like if you're still
studying at the moment as well, like, don't take it
for granted. There was something so fun about like your
only job for the evening being just like to sit
with your friends or just to like sit and learn,
like genuinely dream job, dream job. So thank you again
(32:56):
for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure
that you are following us wherever you are listening right now,
that you are subscribed, or that you have notifications turned
on so you know when new episodes come out. You
can also follow us on Instagram at that Psychology Podcast
if you want to see behind the scenes, you want
episode summaries, you want to know when new episodes are
coming out, and when we want people's listener contributions. That's
(33:20):
a great way to get involved there. You can also
follow us on substack for full episode transcripts if you
are looking for those. But until next time, be safe,
be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very
very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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