I wasted 100+ hours on dumb study methods - here are the 5 that actually worked

relearnsmarter
1 day ago
3 min read

I don't know about you, but personally, I've spent ages trying a bunch of study methods that just didn't work. I used to spend hours making my notes look aesthetic, going highlighter happy, and sometimes even rewriting my notes from scratch. But when I discovered past papers, my mind went blank. Then, I found that these methods (which around 90% of students use to), are trash, I ran into SO many ways to study, that toppers just don't reveal.

So, to save you the pain, here are 5 study methods hit me like a truck, and that SAVED my grades from being stuck in the drain.

Pretty notes don't equal good grades

Meta Learning

This is not exactly a fixed study tip, but more like an 'experiment' to study more efficiently. Everyone’s brain works differently, so the fastest way to improve is by figuring out what sticks for you. For some people, it means watching YouTube videos, and for others it may mean studying at 6am. Try studying at different times of the day, studying out load, or even typing vs handwriting. I realized I memorized French vocab way faster by walking around and saying it out loud instead of just staring at a page. Once you figure out your personal method, studying becomes less of a grind.

Guilt Trick

You know the brain-eating feeling when you're scrolling on Insta when you have homework incomplete? Work with that feeling. Choose one of the thousands of screen time limiting apps there are and block ALL your fun until you finish your work. Make it hard on yourself, but just study 30 minutes a day. Makes a huge difference. Then reward yourself guilt-free. Your brain starts associating work with the dopamine of relaxation afterward, and suddenly the guilt becomes fuel.

Weakness Probing

It's 10x easier to just reread stuff you already know, but that's just fake studying. The real deal comes from revising stuff that makes you look pretty dumb. After every past paper or exam, I would note down the questions that I bombed. Then, I would come home and grind out those questions till I got how to solve them. It feels stupid to look at stuff you messed up, but those are the questions that are going to get you your grades.

Interleaving

Sounds fancy, but it's really just a basic thing that requires no effort. Cramming one subject for hours is a scam. Study a bit of math, then chemistry, then finally history. Research shows your brain actually retains information better when it has to pull knowledge from different places. It feels harder than block-studying, but that difficulty is the whole. point. It forces your brain to work and makes the learning stick.

Embrace Boredom

We, including me, are addicted to stimulation. The second studying feels boring and lifeless, we immediately jump to our phones. But if you can sit through those 5 minutes without being bored, you can make studying less boring. Over time, you can tolerate boredom more, giving you a leading edge in studying. Instead of just sitting, being bored, I used to just stare at the ceiling. For me it worked.

Highlighting feels productive. It isn't.

So yeah. Skip the highlighters and try to focus on something that actually works. These methods seem really useless, but they are practical and save time, rather than 'rewriting your notes' a couple hundred times. 👉 If you want to stack even more hacks, I wrote about