how to study less and get higher grades

Summary

In this video, Gohar Khan shares strategies to study less and achieve higher grades. He compares two types of students - one who studies inefficiently for hours and another who studies wisely and effectively in shorter durations. Gohar, who excelled in his academics at both high school and MIT, offers practical tips such as disconnecting from hours studied, reading chapters backwards, batching tasks, and giving oneself constraints. He also emphasizes leveraging AI tools like Grammarly, avoiding the sunk cost fallacy, managing study tasks effectively, and tagging notes for efficient review. These methods aim to enhance productivity, save time, and improve academic performance.

Highlights

• Studying for hours doesn't guarantee better grades; study smart instead! 🎓
• Read chapters backward by starting with summaries for quicker study sessions 🔄
• Batch similar tasks to avoid wasting time on mental transitions 🧠
• Use Parkinson's Law: The task takes as long as you allow it ⏲️
• AI tools like Grammarly can save time and enhance your writing ✍️
• Don't get stuck on tough problems; come back to them later 🚀
• Do fixed tasks first; they prevent variable tasks from consuming all your time ⏳
• Tag difficult points in notes for targeted study sessions 💡

Key Takeaways

• Disconnect from tracking study hours; focus on effective study methods instead ⏰.
• Read chapter summaries first to save time, especially when cramming 📘.
• Batch similar tasks to reduce time lost in context switching 🔄.
• Set strict time limits for tasks using Parkinson's Law to work efficiently ⏲️.
• Use AI tools like Grammarly to streamline and improve writing tasks 🤖.
• Skip over difficult problems and return later to maximize time use 🧩.
• Complete mindless, fixed tasks before variable ones to manage time better ⌚.
• Tag notes during lectures to quickly identify focus areas during revisions ✍️.

Overview

Ever wondered why some students burn the midnight oil but still don't make the grade? That's because effective studying isn't about the hours you put in; it's about how you use them! Gohar Khan, an MIT graduate, spills the beans on studying smarter, not harder. Whether you're struggling in high school or deep in college textbooks, these tips will make your study hours more productive!

Say goodbye to the old-school method of rereading entire chapters. Instead, Gohar introduces the brilliant technique of reading chapters backward. Start with summaries and key points, then skim sections for faster comprehension. Plus, batching similar tasks helps save time by reducing the mental strain of constantly switching gears. Efficiency at its best!

Setting time limits and using AI tools like Grammarly can dramatically cut down your study time. Stop letting tough questions hold you back—tackle them later! Prioritize mindless tasks to ensure everything gets done without stress. And remember, proper note-taking is your secret weapon! Tag notes in real-time to zoom in on what matters most during exam revision.

how to study less and get higher grades Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 there are two kinds of students in the world here we have student a who has been studying for 6 hours is on their third coffee cup and has been highlighting their notes rereading the textbook and doing flashcards all night long and here we have student B student B has a very calm 2hour study session they know exactly what to review how to review it and barely waste any time highlighting their notes or rereading the textbook come exam day I think you know who gets the better grade if you couldn't tell it's me by the way wait how I studied four times longer than you
• 00:30 - 01:00 in this video I'm going to teach you how to study less and get higher grades so I graduated as the valid dictorian of my high school and I went on to double major at MIT and I'm not saying that to flex instead I want to provide some context so back in high school I took 11 AP classes peing at five my junior year and then at MIT I decided to double major pretty late which required me to stack up on a bunch of classes all at once so as you can imagine I had to be very efficient with my studying and the entire time I had to keep my GR grades
• 01:00 - 01:30 up so my first tip is to disconnect yourself from the number of hours that you study as a student it's very easy to get fixated on the amount of time you spend studying instead of how you actually study and I get it right because it's very hard to measure the effectiveness of a study session but something like the amount of time you spend is a very concrete measure though it usually masks the true nature of the study session for example let's say I study for 5 hours now did I spend those 5 hours rereading my notes and highlighting everything I possibly could or did I quiz myself pretend to teach
• 01:30 - 02:00 others and Tackle my weakest Concepts first those two behaviors would yield drastically different results all right so now that you're in the right mindset let's move on to tip number two read backwards this sounds really weird I know but bear with me this is a very valuable tip especially if you're cramming for an exam at the last minute so the night before an exam you're probably tempted to pull out your textbook and read the chapter the test is on but there's a problem the chapter is probably very long and you don't have enough time so what you're instead going to do to start at the end of the chapter
• 02:00 - 02:30 you're going to start by looking at the chapter summaries and the key points and then work your way to the beginning and now that you're back at the start you're still not going to read the chapter normally you're going to do what I like to call a first pass you're going to look at all the headings all the charts all the bulit terms all the colorful boxes to get a high level understanding of what the chapter is about but of course you're still missing some of the key details so now you're going to do a second pass and no you're still not going to read the chapter normally instead you're going to go Section by section and read the first paragraph
• 02:30 - 03:00 skim the body paragraphs and read the last paragraph So now after the second pass you should have a decent understanding of what the chapter is about but if you still have time to study now you can go back and read every single word individually all right and with that let's move on to tip number three batch your tasks so a huge problem that a lot of students deal with and maybe even you is something called context switching so for example the mindset that you have while reading something is different from the mindset you have while writing something which
• 03:00 - 03:30 is different from the mindset you have while solving math problems switching from one form of thinking to another takes time something I like to call the transition cost for example let's say you spend an hour answering some brutal calculus problems and then you have to write an essay for your English class both of those tasks require very different forms of thinking it's probably going to take you a good 10 to 15 minutes just to get into the groove of the essay writing process so to save time while studying you have to minimize the number of transitions through a
• 03:30 - 04:00 technique called batching and the premise of batching is very simple you're going to group together similar tasks and Tackle them together so for example instead of doing some math problems then an English essay then some science problems and then a history essay you're instead first going to do the math and science problems first together and then you're going to do the two essays this way you only have one mental transition instead of three now I use batching all the time in fact I'm using it right now once I finish filming this video I'm going to go ahead and film another one because I already have
• 04:00 - 04:30 the light set up I have the camera set up I have the background set up if I were to film these videos at separate times I would just waste time taking everything down and then putting it back up oh and I have another quick tip for batching tasks once you batch your tasks you might notice that within a batch different tasks have different degrees of difficulty I always recommend that you tackle the easiest task first within any given batch this way it's much easier for you to transition into that new mental state that you might need to be in so for example if you bash together a bunch of writing tasks like write an essay work on a presentation
• 04:30 - 05:00 and write a discussion post you should probably do the discussion post first because that'll take the least amount of effort and then you can follow this up with the outline and then the essay tip number four is to give yourself constraints now one of the easiest ways to spend less time studying is to give yourself less time to study and no I'm not being factious I'm 100% serious so there's an old adage called Parkinson's law that goes as follows work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion now this idea sounds fancy but it's simple however much time you
• 05:00 - 05:30 give yourself to do a task is however much time you're going to take for example if you give yourself 3 days to work on an essay you're going to take up the full 3 days but if you give yourself only 3 hours you might be surprised to see how fast you can actually finish that essay so now while it's nice to space out your deadlines you don't want to give yourself too much time to work on an assignment because then you're just going to have the mental comfort of telling yourself oh I have hours or days or even weeks to complete this task and then you'll just work at a slower Pace
• 05:30 - 06:00 now the easiest way to take advantage of Parkinson's law is to set a timer before you start an assignment first ask yourself how long is this assignment going to take then reduce that number by 10 to 20% and set your timer accordingly again you might be surprised by how fast you can actually finish that work so this technique is something that my apsy teacher actually used at the start of the school year he only gave us 30 minutes for each exam towards the middle of the school year he only gave us 25 minutes and then towards the end of the school year he only gave us 20 minutes minutes now Believe It or Not by the end
• 06:00 - 06:30 of the school year most students were able to finish the exams even when only given 20 minutes I remember at the start of the school year he told us he was going to do this and we all thought that it was nuts but turns out he was on to something DeMarco if you're watching this shout out to you you helped me learn how to take test effectively all right and my next tip is to leverage AI now one of my favorite ways to cut down on study time is to use AI tools like grammarly who's the sponsor of this video so many of you know grammarly as a spelling and grammar tool but do you know that does way more than that let's
• 06:30 - 07:00 say you have to write an essay you're staring at the prompt but have no idea what to write about this is where grammarly can help just open up grammarly and ask it to help you to brainstorm topics then tell grammarly what your essay is about and almost instantly it'll give you a handful of topic ideas oh and it doesn't stop there once you have your topic grammarly can also help you draft a research plan and even give you an outline now once you have the outline you start writing your essay and along the way grammarly ensures that your writing is clear and concise it'll check for common mistakes
• 07:00 - 07:30 like passive voice subject verb disagreement and misplaced modifiers but it'll also analyze your piece as a whole and provide suggestions for cohesion flow and tone in fact with grammarly Pro you can indicate the exact tone you'd like to go for whether it's personable confident empathetic engaging witty or direct oh and once you're done writing you can also use grammarly's plagiarism detector to ensure that you can submit your essays with confidence grammarly is a must have for all students sign up and upgrade to grammarly Pro for 20% off using my link and now now back to the
• 07:30 - 08:00 video so tip number six is don't idle and this again comes from an AP psych teacher so while you're working through an exam or doing some homework problems you are inevitably going to come across some problems that stump you and I'm not talking about problems that are just a little bit challenging I'm talking about problems that you legitimately do not know how to answer no matter how hard you try now the best thing that you can do in this scenario is to swallow your ego and move on and this was a huge issue for me back in school if I had spent 20 or 30 minutes trying to solve a problem I would feel terrible if I moved
• 08:00 - 08:30 on without figuring out the answer but this ties into a psychological phenomenon known as the sunk cost fallacy now if you're not familiar with the sunos fallacy it is the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have heavily invested in it even when it's clear that abandonment would be more beneficial in other words just because you put a lot of time and effort into solving a problem that's going nowhere does not mean that you need to waste even more time in most cases you're better off tackling other problems first and then coming back to the ones that stumped you and this
• 08:30 - 09:00 requires being comfortable answering things out of order so if you're doing a homework assignment maybe you answer the last problems first and the middle ones and then make your way to the start and if you're working through an exam the same principle holds don't ever feel compelled to answer all of an exam's questions in order unless they build upon each other just try to find a foothold somewhere work off that and then tackle everything else so tip number seven is to do mindless work first so there are two kinds of tasks you have fixed tasks and then you have variable tasks fixed Tas tasks are usually mindless work like working on
• 09:00 - 09:30 flashcards or trying to find images for a presentation variable tasks usually require more mental energy for example writing an essay or brainstorming ideas for a group project now you should do your fixed tasks first and here's why so this bar represents the amount of time that you have for studying if you drop in your variable tasks first they're going to follow Parkinson's law in other words they're going to inflate and take up all of your available time and now you won't have time to fit in your fix tasks now fixed tasks on the other hand
• 09:30 - 10:00 don't inflate like variable tasks something like create 20 flash cards is always going to take the same concrete defined amount of time so by doing your fixed tasks first you create a constraint for your variable tasks so when you drop them in yes they're going to inflate again but this way you manage to fit everything so this is a concept that's much easier to understand visually and shout out to my editors who I know have done an amazing job showing you how it works oh and by the way this is a concept that I came up with and have been following for years let me know in the comments how you feel about
• 10:00 - 10:30 it and if it makes sense because I'm down to craft more productivity rules but I just want to make sure I don't sound like I'm crazy up here okay and the eighth and final tip is to tag your notes so students waste a ton of time rereading notes I have wasted a ton of time rereading my notes and this is usually because in the days leading up to an exam we don't really know what to focus on we just tell ourselves oh my God there's an exam coming up for unit 3 time to read everything I have about unit 3 but the reality is within any given unit there are topics that we know like the back of our hand hand and others that we're not super familiar
• 10:30 - 11:00 with so if you want to spend less time studying you have to spend less time on the topics you're already comfortable with and that's why you should tag your notes during lecture while your teacher is speaking if they say something you're not too familiar with just put a star or some other symbol next to the bullet point this way when it comes time to review your notes your eyes are automatically drawn to the areas that you need to focus on now if you forget to tag your notes during lecture don't worry you can also do it after class just pull out your notes skim them as quickly as you can and tag any points that you're not super familiar with so
• 11:00 - 11:30 that wraps up today's video hopefully you enjoyed it and by the way comment below to let me know how the school year is going for you so far are you enjoying it is it tough I would actually love to hear more from you guys and of course if you haven't already be sure to join the Discord join my newsletter And subscribe for more study tips