Most of the time I talk about learning better, I try to focus on long-term habits. Build good habits over months and years, and they\u2019ll serve you for the rest of your life. Even if you fall off the wagon, it\u2019s easier to rebuild old habits than construct fresh ones.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, however, you won\u2019t have that luxury. You\u2019ll have a big test or deadline which you need to learn a lot, fast.<\/p>\n
In this article, I\u2019m going to share the strategy I used both when tackling the roughly four-fold pace of the MIT Challenge<\/a> and currently, learning to speak Chinese<\/a> over three months. What makes this strategy powerful is that it is the opposite of how most people approach tough learning deadlines, and why they eventually succumb to procrastination or burnout.<\/p>\n The typical student\u2019s approach to a looming deadline is something like this: force yourself to spend all your time in the library, eliminate all social activities and fun, beat yourself up for wasting time or getting distracted.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a common pattern because its a reinforcing cycle. You start getting distracted, so you force yourself to buckle down and spend more time studying. This drains you more, making it easier to get distracted, which guilts you into spending even more time in isolation. This generally continues until you\u2019re either operating at very low levels of your peak efficiency, or you\u2019re burned out and have given up.<\/p>\n What\u2019s hard for these students to realize is that they can learn more, by spending less time studying. (Or, more accurately, less time guilting themselves into studying since in the unfocused haze of semi-work, very little studying is actually occurring.)<\/p>\n The key of the method is simple: constrain your studying hours, but make them higher quality.<\/p>\n Here are the three steps, which I\u2019ll explain in detail:<\/p>\n The first mistake is believing you can study non-stop. This is a dangerous temptation, and the bigger the exam or deadline looms, the easier it is to fall into this trap.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not going to tell you that the optimal amount of hours of studying should be leisurely. If you want to study hard, you\u2019re going to have to work hard. But think of it like running a race, there\u2019s a hard pace you can stick to and a pace that goes too fast and you run out of air. Separating the two is a fine line.<\/p>\n The easiest way to separate that line is to set concrete hours that allow you enough time to rest. I personally find working 5 days per week 8am-6pm plus an additional half day (with breaks, of course), to be about the best I can do for more than several weeks at a time. I used this schedule throughout the MIT Challenge, and I\u2019m using it now while learning Chinese.<\/p>\n Notice that this schedule means every evening is free as is one whole weekend day (and half of another). This means that going out to meet friends, exercising or anything else you do for fun doesn\u2019t need to be sacrificed.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re currently studying hard, feeling burned out, and are trying to switch strategies, your transition workload needs to be even less than this. I might do only half as much for a few days or a week until I build back up to this schedule. If you\u2019re winded when running, you need to go back to a slower pace for awhile before you return to your sustainable pace.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve used the running metaphor to explain why setting concrete hours is essential. However, the running analogy fails because mental and physical tasks are fundamentally different. If you\u2019re in a race and start feeling you\u2019re running too fast, you have to slow down. If you\u2019re in a mental race and start feeling you\u2019re pushing too much, your body can compensate by wrecking your focus.<\/p>\n When your focus is damaged, your learning speed is curtailed significantly, but you\u2019re still putting in a lot of effort. This means you may be putting in the same effort as someone who stuck with a concrete schedule, but you\u2019re learning far less.<\/p>\n The next step to combating this problem is to switch your tasks from passive to active ones. These will strain you more, so if you\u2019re transitioning from a burnout schedule to a fixed one, you\u2019ll need to set even more minimal hours for the first few days. However, the benefit of active tasks is that they force you in a higher efficiency direction with your studying.<\/p>\n Activeness is a spectrum so there aren\u2019t two categories of studying tasks that are labelled either passive or active. Rather, some tasks are higher-focus, higher-efficiency than others.<\/p>\n Self-testing is an active task. Re-reading notes is a passive one. The Feynman Technique<\/a> is an active task. Skimming is a passive one. A good rule of thumb is that if there\u2019s no point in your studying routine where you have the possibility of finding out you’re incorrect, it isn\u2019t an active task. I would make some limited exceptions to that list (some mnemonic techniques have no feedback, but are mentally demanding and fairly efficient) but it\u2019s a small one.<\/p>\n This step is obvious: if you work where you have distractions, you\u2019ll get distracted. I do my non-conversational studying of Chinese at a cafe where I don\u2019t have internet access. If you need to use the internet for part of your work, use an app like SelfControl<\/a> to selectively block all websites that aren\u2019t work-related. If you can go without internet altogether, even better.<\/p>\n Put your phone on silent, or don\u2019t even bring it while you\u2019re studying. Go somewhere your friends aren\u2019t (although I picked my studying location in Chinese so that it can occasionally facilitate random Chinese conversations, it\u2019s the exception which proves the rule).<\/p>\n Even though you don\u2019t want to be distracted, don\u2019t worry about taking breaks. The ideal should be to create an environment where breaks are boring (but still relaxing) so you don\u2019t get tempted into giving up studying. Choosing break activities that fit that criteria in advance can help you sustain your focus over an entire day.<\/p>\n During the MIT Challenge, I\u2019d often go for short walks or just sit quietly for fifteen or twenty minutes. These are good breaks because they allow you to give your mind a short breather, but they are boring enough that returning to your original task doesn\u2019t require willpower. Surfing the internet, chatting with friends or playing phone games aren\u2019t good break activities.<\/p>\n My frequency of breaks depends a lot on the type of activity I\u2019m doing. I took frequent breaks during the MIT Challenge because the hard math problems and long reading assignments were difficult to sustain focus for more than an hour or so. During this language challenge I rarely take long breaks because the mental task of grammar exercises or vocabulary building is less taxing.<\/p>\n Despite knowing these lessons deeply, I even recently succumbed to the temptation to work too much. I built my language-learning routine around immersion, which meant nearly constant engagement with the language. That worked with Spanish, where studying time itself was rather minimal in comparison to simply interacting, but it broke down when applying it to Chinese.<\/p>\nBurnout and Procrastination, Symptoms of a Poor Strategy<\/h2>\n
How to Study Hard Without Burning Out<\/h2>\n
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Step One: Concrete Studying Hours with Ample Rest Time<\/h3>\n
Step Two: Switch Passive Learning Tasks to Active Ones<\/h3>\n
Step Three: Build a Comfortable, Yet Distraction-Free, Work Environment<\/h3>\n
How to Transition from a Burnout Schedule to an Effective One<\/h2>\n