I had a friend in college who barely studied yet aced every exam. While the rest of us were pulling all-nighters, Haru was casually playing video games. His secret? He studied smart—during the semester—so cramming was never necessary.

Turns out, Haru wasn’t a genius; he just knew how to work with his brain, not against it. And that’s exactly what this article will teach you: 10 insanely effective study strategies that make learning faster, easier, and way less painful. Let’s dive in.

Start on DAY ONE of your course: Effective studying tips # 1

Don't wait until a test or exam to start ingraining the information in your brain. Start on day one. What I mean by that is this dedicate 20-30 minutes each day to:

  1. Review all new information within 24 hours of initial exposure so that it is refreshed in your mind before you tackle the following day's classes;
  2. Preview the following class's content beforehand so that you have a high-level view of what you're going to be learning to prime your brain for learning in class; and
  3. Return to the harder concepts so that you work them out and deeply ingrain them as they arise, thereby saving you the stress of confronting them all at once when an exam is around the corner.

If you devote time every day to reviewing what you've covered previously and preparing for the next class, you will arrive at your exams completely fluent in your subject. You’ll have done the hard work of understanding, learning, and remembering the information.

How amazing will that feel?

(BTW, here's some great advice on creating a study routine to maximize your productivity, even if you're super busy.)

Read the relevant textbook chapters BEFORE class: Effective study methods # 2

Course book with highlights for studying

Most educators like to assign a textbook chapter to read before each class. Yeah, I know. Like ANYONE does that. But you could be the one nerd who realizes just what an advantage this undemanding preparation gives you.

Reading (even skimming) the relevant section or chapter in a textbook before class primes your brain for learning, alerting you to what information is to come, and contributing enormously towards your understanding. And since you're going to have to read the textbook at some point anyway, reading before class requires no net addition of work.

So, why wouldn’t you do it?

Learn how to read so that you retain what you read: Best studying techniques # 3

Since most information is studied in the written word, a powerful and effective studying tip is to learn how to read properly so that you metabolize and retain that new information as efficiently as possible. Here's how you can do that...

(You can also check out this awesome guide: How to read faster and better.)

  • Review what you learned the day before. Quickly read through the previous lesson's outline or notes. This provides critical reinforcement of the material, thereby strengthening the new memory traces your brain makes before they evaporate in the normal nightly process of forgetting.
  • Quickly scan the textbook sections you'll be learning that day. Before each lecture (or the night before) scan over the section or chapter you will be covering in the next class. This gives you:
    • A high-level view of what’s to come,
    • An understanding of the most important, salient points,
    • Direction on the questions you need to ask in class to address any points of confusion.
  • Ask questions in class to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. Think about some questions you might ask to bridge any gaps in your understanding. Jot these down and make sure they get answered in the next lecture. This type of inquiry puts your brain into a problem-solving mode, which is powerful for learning and remembering information.

Just don’t go highlighting everything on the page! (Check out: How to take good notes and how NOT to!)

Distill the information into condensed study notes: Best studying methods # 4

Now that you've done your pre-reading and jotted down some notes and questions, take a minute to deeply think about the take-home messages of the chapter or section you just read.

Write them down.

This potent summary strengthens the memory traces you’ve created in your brain, while also isolating that section’s most pertinent information. This saves you from having to tease that information out later, therefore helping you study more efficiently in the future.

Use adaptive, digital flashcards to study efficiently: Effective studying tips # 5

Comic image with batman

Flashcards have been used for centuries by serious students as a way to efficiently learn information-dense subjects. In fact, of Brainscape’s millions of users, many are postgraduate students preparing for super high-stakes exams.

Flashcards (done correctly):

  • Break concepts into the most important, fundamental, and manageable bite-sized facts.
  • Leverage the way your brain is hardwired to learn: cognitive scientists call this active recall, which involves thinking of the answer from scratch rather than passively reading through your notes or textbook.
  • Facilitate spaced repetition learning: repeating your exposure to the information is how to memorize it better.
  • Are the perfect vehicle for interleaving practice: switching randomly between different concepts and subjects, which strengthens your brain's neural connections to the information you're learning.

Remember right at the beginning of this article we explained that you are cognitively wired in a certain way? And that if you work with your brain—rather than struggling despite it or even against it—you can massively increase your rate of knowledge retention?

Flashcards do exactly this: they work with your cognitive wiring to help you learn.

This is why Brainscape’s study platform pivots on flashcards—and decades of cognitive science research—as such a useful mode of studying and information delivery.

Our engaging digital flashcards break concepts down into their fundamental, bite-sized learning objectives and engage your powers of active recall, while our spaced repetition algorithm calculates the exact timing to repeat the concepts you struggle with to optimize your learning.

Of course, you can always make your own paper flashcards too. But whether you use Brainscape, some other online flashcard app, or good old-fashioned pen and paper, doing this forces you to reframe your study notes into question-and-answer flashcard pairs. And as you do that, you engage the higher brain functions of analysis and synthesis to further strengthen your memories.

To nerd out on how Brainscape has helped millions of users smash their exams into the stratosphere, check out the cognitive science behind our flashcard software, or our comprehensive guide to using and making flashcards.

Final thoughts on how to study effectively

To recap:

  1. Start on DAY ONE of your course
  2. Read the relevant textbook chapters BEFORE class
  3. Learn how to read so that you retain WHAT you read
  4. Distill the information into condensed study notes
  5. Use adaptive, digital flashcards to study efficiently

Practice these tenets always, and you will fearlessly triumph over all exams and tests that come your way. Break them and you can look forward to late nights of cramming, sleep deprivation, and extreme caffeination. (And possibly poor test scores, career disappointments, and perished dreams. Not that we want to freak you out or anything ...)

There are no shortcuts.

Stay the course, and you will become one of those elite (but annoying) students like Haru, who studies only half as much as everyone else, gets plenty of sleep, and ends up scoring straight A’s.

The choice (as always) is yours ...

References

Biwer, F., Egbrink, M. G. a. O., Aalten, P., & De Bruin, A. B. H. (2020). Fostering effective learning strategies in higher education—A mixed-methods study. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 9(2), 186–203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2020.03.004

Nachiappan, S. (2022). Note-taking and note-making: The ever-cherished art! Indian Journal of Ophthalmology/Indian Journal of Ophthalmology, 70(12), 4438–4444. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijo.ijo_1780_22

National Institutes of Health (NIH). (2022, June 28). Priming the brain to learn. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/priming-brain-learn

Pan, S. C. & UCSD Psychology. (2024). How to effectively study. https://psychology.ucsd.edu/undergraduate-program/undergraduate-resources/academic-writing-resources/effective-studying/index.html

Walck-Shannon, E. M., Rowell, S. F., & Frey, R. F. (2021). To what extent do study habits relate to performance? CBE Life Sciences Education, 20(1), ar6. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.20-05-0091