Original subtitles

So this whole class is basically going to be split up into

three parts.

And these are the sort of the three key steps of effective

studying, effective learning, effective anything.

And that is step one, understand step two, remember and step

three focus.

And they're all kind of interlinked and obviously kind of

focusing as part of the understanding and remembering.

But those are the three broad categories that we split up

this class into.

And when it comes to effective studying of any kind, understanding

is by far the most important thing.

I think one of the mistakes that we can often make one way

of studying for our exams or learning anything new is that

we could be very quick to rely on memorization, and especially

when we talk about some of the effective study techniques

that we'll talk about later on, like active recall and space

repetition, especially when students find out about those

for the first time.

And this certainly happened to M.

It's very easy to just go into kind of flashcard making mode

and thinking, Okay, cool.

I'm just going to be doing efficient things now and just

kind of really focusing on memorizing the details, but that's

the wrong way around to do it.

We always want to be starting with understanding.

Once we understand the stuff, once we can comfortably explain

it to a friend, comfortably explain it to a five year old,

and we can actually remember the fact that we've understood

it at that point.

Everything just becomes so much easier.

So step one is understand tanding.

And within understanding, we'll talk about the Fineman method.

We'll talk about active recall and how it works.

We'll talk about some of the evidence behind it, and we'll

talk about how you can take notes during class and how you

can take notes after class to aid with our understanding

of stuff.

And then we'll talk about scoping the subject, which is another

fundamental technique to help understand the content.

Our second step is remembering.

And we've all had this issue where we think we've understood

something. We've been kind of working through it for hours

and hours.

And then we come back to the topic a week later, and we realized

that, Oh, crap.

I literally can't remember anything that I definitely understood,

like, a week ago.

And that's because of the way memory works.

There's something called the forgetting curve, which we'll

talk a lot more about later on.

But that's basically this phenomenon where anything we learn,

you're just gonna forget exponentially.

It'll exponentially decay from our memory, sort of like half

life. If you're into eight level chemistry and stuff, our

memory for that thing will decay over time.

And we have to interrupt the forgetting curve by repeating

the subject at space intervals.

And that's where the idea of space repetition comes from.

And so in this class, we'll be talking through loads of techniques

on how we can efficiently remember stuff.

So things like using space repetition using a retrospective

revision time table using a space repetition Journal using

flash cards using mind maps highlighting rereading e memory

palaces, the PEC technique mnemonics there's all sorts of

evidence based techniques that we can use to help remember

stuff more efficiently.

But again, just to reiterate, the main important thing is

that we understand the content first and we worry about memorizing

or remembering it later.

And finally, along with understanding and remembering, the

third part of effective studying, effective learning, effective

doing anything is being able to focus.

So Firstly, this comes from getting the motivation or the

discipline to actually sit down and study in the first place.

That's something we all struggle with.

Then it comes from like when we're actually sitting down

to study, how do we not get distracted?

How do we make sure we can focus for an extended period of

time? How do we take breaks appropriately?

And so in this class we'll be talking through loads of techniques

and how we can more efficiently focused using some evidencebased

examples and also some anecdotal examples from my own life

and that of my friends.

We'll talk about kind of what music is best to help studying

and focusing, and we'll talk about the different environments

that we can create for ourselves to help make the process

of studying a little bit more pleasurable and therefore make

us more likely to do it.

So those were kind of the three steps of effective studying,

step two, remember and step three focus.

And we're going to be diving into those in great anal levels

of detail.

And throughout this entire class don't feel like you have

to watch all the videos.

I think hopefully you'll find it helpful and everything we've

put in there in here we've put in there because hopefully

it's useful.

But if you are kind of well versed in the study techniques

and you've been watching my YouTube videos for the last three

years, then maybe you can skip the video on active record

on spaced repetition because these are things you'll be very

familiar with, or you can just watch them anyway because

it'll be a good reminder.

But there's lots of stuff in this class that I haven't talked

about in YouTube videos before, things like different Pneumonic

techniques, things like motivation, focus, procrastination

and consistency.

All of this sort of stuff is brand new to this class.

And finally, if you haven't read a book called Make It Stick,

you should read the book called Make It Stick.

It's about this big called Make It Stick to the Signs of

Effective Learning or something like that.

And the two authors of that book, I literally dive deep into

the research and they explain how we can Make It stick, how

we can learn anything, whether it's for exams or for pilot

school or for law school or whatever, how we can learn anything

efficiently. And there's loads of stories in that book from

students who weren't doing very well in class.

And then they started incorporating some of these effective

study techniques, like active recalling space repetition.

And then their mocks magically got transformed just by changing

the way that they studied.

It wasn't that they needed to study harder to study more,

which is often what we sort of implicitly understand it was

that they were just changing up the technique that they were

using. Because really, no one teaches us.

So to study.

It's not a thing as taught in schools.

And when I first came across this stuff in my second year

of Med school, me and all of my friends, we had our minds

blown by this psychology lecture that we had about how to

study for exams.

Because we were thinking, why wouldn't we taught this stuff

in, like, year seven or year, right when we were in middle

school or whatever?

So if you haven't read the book, make at stake, you should

read it.

We'll be drawing a lot from that book, using examples and

using stories from there.

I think if you're a student and you need to learn anything,

that is the single best thing you can do with your time in

the next week.

Just like, buy that book, make it stick and read it.

We'll put a link in the video description.

It won't even be an affiliate link, or it might be an Amazon

affiliate. I don't.

Now what?

I will put a link.

The video description.

Get it on Kindle.

Get it in, like, physical copy.

Whatever you want.

Just read the book.

Make it stick.

Because that will help all of your revision flourish.

Okay, cool.

So that's all my preaching about.

Make it stick.

Done.

Thank you for signing up to this class.

Let's now move on to the first section, which is step one.

Understand.

I'll see you there.