The mind of the engineer is deemed as one of the most powerful mindsets anyone can have, Imagine if you could apply this mindset to your studying techniques and learn how to study smarter, longer and harder. Studying more effectively can be achieved by starting at a planning stage and abiding to a study schedule, but there is a thought process to produce the most concise and meaningful strategy to studying., here's how.
Sometimes it can be difficult to establish what good study habits are, the ultimate aim is that you want to study more in less time. If you want to understand how to learn better, you have to determine whether your current method of studying is really worth it.
But why improve your study skills in the first place, why not just study for a long time without doing that? Well the truth is that you can study for too long if your method of learning is ineffective. If you do this, you will experience study burnout and frustration far more often than you should.
To figure out how often should study breaks be taken and all of the other parameters around studying effectively, we must go through a 5 step process that engineer's often use. Engineer's usually apply this method to product design and manufacturing, but we can apply the same logic to improve our study habits.
The biggest issues with studying usually come down to preparation, study motivation, time management and commitment.
Upon completion of this 5 step process, we should end up with a concise and condensed amount of information that has an incredible amount of value to you for the exam. Gaining the motivation to study is also a part of this process, if you can't be bothered to study, this post may be able to help!
This isn't one of those easy study tips, this takes determination, thought and awareness, but the rewards teach you how to study better with the best studying strategies. Let's start with Step 1.
1) Make Your Study Requirements Less Dumb
On the surface this may sound silly, but the term 'Study Requirements' basically describes the goals you set for yourself. Sometimes we set goals that aren't well defined, structured, complete or even achievable.
It's important that when you set a goal for yourself, you are using your experience to determine which is the most reasonable goal that you can meet and actually achieve, the beauty is, once you achieve one, you are often motivated to achieve another.
This step alone significantly increases the effectiveness of your study habits. This will not only allow you to learn more in a shorter time, but to learn the correct things, for sure.
You always want to make study goals that are reasonable and achievable, avoid making goals that sound like "I want to study for 10 hours a day, every day until the exam" - This is quite unachievable for most. Instead, something like 2 hours of personal study per working day is achievable, consistent and highly effective (you may use this to begin with, and then build on it).
Additionally, if you did set an unreasonable goal like that, notice how vague it is. Make sure you set goals that are S.M.A.R.T Goals. This stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
There are a number of ways to achieve this, defining your study requirements in SMART way will allow you to study long hours without getting bored and just study for longer hours generally (because now you have definitive tangible goals to achieve)
The following techniques may help you make your requirements less dumb!
Check the Past Papers
Past papers are gold dust to students, they are the more accurate representation of the final exam which tests your ability to do the very thing that you need to do - the final exam. They also have the most accurate content to study glittered throughout each page. Therefore, they are the most popular study method, and for good reason.
Though intimidating, if you become familiar with the past papers early and actually use them as part of your study notes, you are setting yourself up for a huge success.
When it comes to defining study requirements or 'goals' for yourself, you want to understand what the past papers are asking for, this way you can begin to make goals that immediately align to the exam you are going to sit.
For example, If your past papers have a lot of algebra questions and you know these questions are likely to appear in this year's exam, your study requirement would be to learn not just algebra generally, but to:
Learn this type of algebra.
To solve these types of questions in the exam.
In this amount of time given per question in the exam.
For this many marks per exam question.
Making these specific points.
See how we have made a specific requirement of what we actually need to achieve, not only that but we have given our learning an exact purpose (to solve those questions in the exam)
Using past papers as a means to understand what you need to study is powerful, I would personally look at past papers very early on in the year (even if you have to ask the teacher for them) and become familiar with it.
Throughout the year, I would link the questions in the exam to each piece of content talked about in each week's lecture. By doing this, I'm aligning the exact content I need (from class) and linking it to which question type it's designed for in the exam - total game changer.
Understand the Requirements of the Question
If a question has 4 marks, it's likely that you need to provide 4 significant pieces of information to gain them. For example for a maths question this could be split in to...1 mark per using the right unit, answering the question correctly, showing your working, and using the right equation for the job.
With this knowledge, you can define the goal of studying a particular exam question and answering it in a specific way. By doing this you are defining your goal in a smart way rather than just jumping in and maybe securing only half the available marks.
Additionally, this allows you to narrow down the amount of time you spend per question, being time efficient in your exam is very important.
Talk to your Teacher and Ask as Much as Possible
I can't emphasise this enough, this may be the most important study tip that NO ONE uses. In some cases I can understand why, in other case not.
The teacher is the perfect person to seek information from, they are the teacher of the knowledge you need to know as well as the tester of the knowledge you should know (the exam marker, most probably)
But many students go to class, rarely answer questions aloud, walk out of the class and study. This may work for some, but they have skipped over a fantastic resource for study tips and exam technique pointers - the teacher themselves.
When you become aware of what you need to study, you need to be correct about it, communicate what you are learning to your teacher and see what they have to say about it. You may be putting too much time in to one section of the exam and the teacher will 'hint' you to research another part of the exam.
This simple hint may DRASTICALLY change your performance in the exam, and this information will help you navigate a new direction for your study schedule and allow you to have a more relevant technique to learning content that is likely to be in the exam (because the teacher hinted it!)
Make Sure you Understand the Assignment
Let's say you get assigned some piece of work, and you are relatively confident about what you need to do, but part of you aches for an understanding on how you should present it. You could either take a shot at presenting it in a way you feel, or you could send a short email or pay a short visit to your teacher and get an exact definitive answer.
Granted, there may be a scenario where they do not give you an answer, but with luck you have a good relationship with them and they will define their requirements - which are of course certainly correct (which now become your requirements)
The lesson is, if you are unsure, you must ask. The golden nuggets of information you discover from reaching out are valuable. You may end up including a lot of information that the teacher wasn't asking for (but seemed relevant)
This would mean that you get no marks for your added effort, but if you knew the requirements beforehand (by asking) you could have used that effort and generated more marks for your assignment in another way.
Always have your work checked, specifically if it's something like a thesis. Always come back to the teacher and ask for advice how to improve before your final submission, be sure to get all the marks available!
Understand the Making Schemes
This is less common, but sometimes teachers will actually discus their marking scheme per question. The trick is, they may not present this in a lecture, you may need to be friendly with them in the first place for them to give this information, or maybe you just need to show interest by going to see them in person.
Finding out how the marker themselves marks YOUR PAPER, is very beneficial. By knowing this you can really define your study requirements and tailor what you need to learn precisely.
If you are able to understand how marks are assigned per answer, you can really refine your study technique to cover the most amount of relevant information in the shortest amount of time for the highest amount of impact.
These are the moments where studying harder becomes studying smarter, these are the turning points in your study technique and produce the most effective students.
Convergent Thinking - The Ability to Answer Correctly
Convergent thinking is the term used to describe the ability to give the correct answer, the opposite of this is Divergent thinking.
As the name suggests, if we define the word 'convergent' it means the coming together of things. in terms of thinking, it's the coming together of information, good judgement and experience.
Convergent thinking is certainly what you want, to get this, you must use all of the available tools to you.
By following this guide, you will be able to bring all of the elements together to support the practise of convergent thinking, you almost have to be a detective while you study!
With the above, you will be able to collect information that allows you to define SMART study requirements, remember that stands for:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound
Now you have gathered all of the information you need that allows you to determine what the correct goal is and what parameters are necessary, you can begin step 2 of the engineer's study guide.
2) Delete Parts or Processes
How many times have you found yourself in a situation where the amount of content you need to cover is just too much for the time available?
This is incredibly common among most students, sometimes it's because people haven't stuck to a consistent and steady way of studying. Other times it's because people have failed to create SMART requirements and are spending time in areas where it is NOT needed, or not spending time at all.
Students will spend incredible amounts of time studying information that has little to no value or using study techniques/processes that are ineffective for their learning style.
Step 2 aims to identify and remove these anchors to your learning. This is where you refine your study skills (after defining your study requirements from Step 1)
If you need a trick to understand how to study for long hours without getting tired, this may be solution - you need to reduce the time studying less relevant things.
Studying harder is a key aspect, but this is another penny in the hat for the study smarter method.
Condense information from Original Sources
One of the most inefficient ways of learning is to write content exactly how it is from the original learning material, over and over again.
You need to try your absolute best to condense the information down as much as possible while maintaining the integrity of the answer. If you are unable to remember the long explanation, turn it into bullet points that you can expand upon in the exam if needed.
A very important concept is when it comes to the exam period, you must be studying from your notes and NOT from any original sources, your notes are the new 'tool' that contains all relevant information for the exam, tailored for you, by you.
With this tool, you have a consistent and memorable canvas of information to draw solutions from. It is the most refined information with all the fluff and irrelevance removed.
It's written in shorthand which allows you to learn the material far easier, but not only that, learn far more of it.
Take pride in your notes, put real effort into them, make them 'noteworthy' and memorable. By doing this, they act as your bank of only useful and examinable information.
Understand which Sections are Important, which are not
If a module has 12 sections that you need to study for the exam, you need to understand the individual characteristics for each of those sections. Some will be easy to you, others hard, some will be longer, others short.
The important step is understanding which of those each section is. Combine that with speaking to your teacher and looking at past paper exams and you will begin to see which section is consistently examined upon, which has the highest marks, the hardest questions etc etc.
If you find any sections that are less important, you can remove them or spend less time studying them.
If a Study Technique is not Working, Drop it, Try Another
There's something to be said for the skill of studying itself. There are many study techniques and whether they work for you will depend on your learning style and how much effort you've put into practising them.
If you are practising a study skill that your friend uses but it doesn't work for you and it doesn't make you feel confident or capable, be sure to evaluate the study technique and understand whether you should exchange it for another.
Ideally, you should do this earlier in the year to give you enough time to figure out a study pattern. A few techniques are:
Use of flash cards
Sketching out answers
Teaching other people as a means to help them and teach yourself
Studying alone or In a group
Solving questions at the end of a section, or at
If Friends are Distracting you, Remove or Reschedule
Sure, friends are great. However it's awfully common that when certain groups of friends come together they spend too much time on things that aren't as urgent as the upcoming exam.
If you feel like you get distracted or aren't as productive with your friends, there are two solutions to this. You could stop studying with them entirely (or at least part of the time) and go spend some time alone in somewhere more productive.
Or, you could reschedule your own study time to be before you meet your friends, I used this technique often.
I would study in the early mornings and then go to see my friends as part of a study group later on in the day or evening. This way, I was arriving with the confidence that I have used the day well so far, for the parts where they were working, I was able to answer questions and help.
Doing this taught me as well as helped them, additionally it kept the whole 'social side' of the group in check.
If you are in an Environment that Doesn't Help, Change or Adapt it
The study environment is very important, environments do well to motivate, encourage and allow certain types of activities.
Gyms for example, do everything to emphasis the encouragement toward being active. They provide equipment, play lively music and host other people being active.
A library offers supplies, resources, quiet (at least it should do) and dedicated working areas. If you study from home and your environment doesn't provide what it needs to, do your absolute best to look around and find a location that gives you what you need.
If you are Reading Physical Books, Swap for PDF and use CTRL+F to Find What you Need
This is just an example of an ethos you should adopt, you should always look for ways to simplify and speed up your learning.
A good example of this is if you were to swap a big book of study material for a PDF equivalent. They have the exact same content, however, with the PDF you now have a means of searching (CTRL+F), you can also write on the page, highlight, erase things etc.
This benefit is enormous, it's a yet another tip in the hat of studying smarter. Apply this kind of thinking to your own study practises and relish in the fruit of your improvements. Studying inefficiently is never the way to go.
3) Simplify or Optimise
Before we plunge into this one, it's very important that this is step 3. If you do this at the beginning (which many do) you end up simplifying or optimising things that - 1) are not getting you closer to the requirements and/or - 2) shouldn't be there in the first place.
Assuming you have completed the above two steps, you should only be holding onto the resources, techniques, requirements and strategies that will most likely result in your success.
Now we have to take these and simplify their use in some way and or optimise their ability to provide useful outcomes.
Refine your Study Material
Study material can come in many forms, often times, they come in forms that are bloated. What I mean by this is that if you are asked to study from a textbook, that is a very bloated form of information.
Within the book you will find a glittering of useful information embedded by a great amount of perhaps less useful information.
Additional to that, you have no real tool of finding what you want quickly (you have an index page of course, but...we live in an age of ctrl+find)
When you begin to study, be sure that you have a mindset that encourages the condensing of information into more consumable ways of talking about the same information.
You want to write your notes in such a way where you manage to maintain the integrity of information, but in the simplest of explanations and in the shortest forms possible.
This is the simplification part, the optimisation part is to create notes that are truly memorable to you. Spend real attention in making them neat and well maintained, hold onto them like the resourceful tiles of information they are.
The one Resource many Overlook
This is a big one, truly, it's huge. Many students who do not perform as well as they wish usually have one thing in common. They admit to rarely speaking to their teacher. I've spoken about this before, but I'm covering it from a different angle here.
This may sound strange, but in the same way that your study material, online resources, friends, practise questions and YouTube are valuable resources, so too is your teacher.
Not only that, but it's likely that your teacher is also the author and marker of your exam - goldmine alert.
My best advice to you, perhaps of this whole piece, is to create a lasting, genuine and productive relationship with your teacher (also any PHD students who help them, or anyone else for that matter)
Though I am encouraging you on to do this to profit yourself, I'd like you to build a relationship of genuine intention anyway, this leads to a win-win scenario.
With this relationship you can complete past paper attempts and have them mark and advice you on ways to improve - this is invaluable, it's the reason why good students really do well.
Aside from the tangible benefits, the level of confidence and motivation you will gain from having the ear of the teacher will be remarkable. Imagine how you will feel if the expert of the subject (and exam writer) tells you to concentrate on a specific area of study - which they are able to do.
This feeds into the clarification of requirements point above, if you can narrow down exactly what the mission is, you have a better chance of completing it successfully.
I reiterate once more, get friendly with your teachers!
How Long Should you Study
This is a contentious subject, many say just 2 hours a day, others say 8 hours a day. The important thing is that you do what's right for you and do something that is sustainable.
I personally would never intend to study 8 hours in one day, certainly not in one session. But if you were to split up a 4 hour session in the morning and then one in the evening, you can immediately feel the appeal of the idea increase.
Again, this feeds into the refining of requirements, make your study objectives smart - this is how.
Even 4 hours a day could be very profitable, simplify what you want to do in those study periods and just do them more consisntelty. This is a far better technique than promising yourself to do 8 hours of 'this this and this'.
Instead, just promise yourself to do 2-4 hours of 'this', then the next day do 2-4 hours of 'that'. This simplification will serve you much better.
How to Answer Exams
Have you ever heard (or experienced) the issue of not being able to finish the exam? I used to be this person, I was doing something super silly.
When it came to answering questions I would be writing paragraphs (in STEM exams) when actually all you need to do is state the prevailing point.
When writing an answer to an exam question, often times you only need to bullet point sentence one answer that contains the main keywords that show understanding.
Avoid re-writing the question, or introducing the answer in some way. Just state the answer, to qualify whether this is the correct way to do things - speak to your teacher and ask them "how would you like people to answer the questions". They will often say "briefly".
Additionally, you should always answer the questions as directly and clearly as possible. A common mistakes by students (again, the old me) would be to answer with an interpretation or analogy of the answer.
This means that instead of writing the answer in a close to first principles kind of way, you write it in a descriptive way that you would explain to someone who was trying to learn the subject.
So if you were asked to talk about electricity, you could explain how it flows like water etc. Though this is an effective answer to teach someone, in an exam you would receive no marks for this. You need to state first principle understanding with keywords (in this case, using words like charge, potential, current etc)
4) Accelerate Cycle Time
At this stage, you have a bundle of simplified techniques and resources to deploy - fantastic! Knowing that you can't increase the efficacy anymore, you need to increase the efficiency.
Accelerating the cycle time refers to the idea that you increase the speed of your writing, understanding, writing the exam, using a calculator and any other thing that will benefit you.
If you can get to stage where you can cover more content in less time, that's great and useful. But if you are someone who writes exams in a slow way, this is an area you need to concentrate on.
Speed up Your Studies
If you have managed to improve your study methods, you should be in a position to study more per day and gain more confidence per study session.
If you can speed up the consumption and filtering of information, you will be far better poised to successfully write an exam.
Writing an exam is another area of improvement though, for example, if you use a calculator in your exam be sure you know how to use it and use it very quickly without error.
You should spend genuine time practising how to use the tools for the exam, things like:
Calculator
Geometry tools (Rule, protractor etc)
Any kind of chart you will need to use in an exam question
Your writing speed and legibility
Invest time Correctly
Though this sits in the area of 3) removing parts you don't need section, it's important to show it's benefit here.
The time in the day is of course limited, if you have areas of the day where you waste time, you need to be honest with yourself and transform those into profitable portions of studying.
Be wary that if you waste just 15 minutes every hour, that really adds up!
By wasting, I'm not referring to times where you rest or take a break - these are actually productive times, but you need to genuinely resting for this to be true.
If the resting period allows you to enter a better mindset, genuinely relax, collect your thoughts or de-stress then it's an effective investment of time.
If the 'resting' period does none of the above and even adds stress, prolongs work, delays motivation or anything other, this is a time block to improve.
5) Automate
This sounds less obvious on the surface, how can you 'automate' studying right?
Well, it comes down to a powerful ethos that successful people adopt all around the world, in all different walks of life.
"Do the thing you need to do, whether you feel like it or not"
Study motivation is a fascinating topic of dive in to. Why is it that we can't motivate ourselves to study for something which we know will benefit us in the long term.
The answer is because it's totally unclear how it will benefit us, we try to trick our minds that studying now will profit us in the future but we can never give definitive reasons to why and how - and the mind doesn't like that.
We just tell yourselves that we will be 'rich' or be 'happy', but the mind wants tangible, meaningful representations of this, which we can't predict so far in advance.
So at times where we need to be motivated, we may not have the ability to conjure any want to succeed, or seemingly.
Motivation is the product of commitment, if you force yourself to study for a short period of time regardless off how you feel, this is commitment.
Do this for long enough and a product of that action will be motivation. This kicks in because you are showing your mind that studying actually isn't that bad, you even feel good when you can answer exam questions and because of that motivation begins to kick in.
It kicks in because you are giving your mind tangible evidence that studying isn't as stressful as you first thought and it becomes less stressful the more you learn, thus the mind wants to get to the position of least stress...which is how? - studying!
Suddenly you are fired up to do well, you may even find it difficult to stop studying. Congratulations, you have sustained autonomy.
Autonomy is both about the ability to start studying even when you don't feel like it and then continue the practise of studying afterward.
If you can conquer this skill alone, I can promise you a phenomenally successful road ahead! I've covered a few motivation techniques before especially if you keep getting distracted by gaming or something similar.
But there it is, an engineer's guide to studying better and gaining motivation when you need it most. Study motivation is perhaps the hardest area of a successful academic story, but as with any journey, the combination of techniques and practise lead to a proficiency in whatever you want.
Best of luck in your studies, share this post and others to those who need it, let's all help eachother find the study strategies that benefit us best!
If you have any questions for me or other readers, pop them in the comments below. Hit the <3 icon if you enjoyed the post! (doing this also bookmarks the post, if you have an account, which I invite you to get!)
Thanks for reading
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