Lazy recollection of studying tips, information, methodologies

I’m looking after defining and/or implementing a study workflow I can follow. I’m collecting information about it online before dissecting it. I’ll only copy and paste what I found citing its sources, hence the effortless of the title. Some items will be only nouns without anything linked to it.

may or not may do a post about the resources I tend to implement.

Two comments from ‘kaidomac’ on reddit

I found them to be very valuable, so I prefer not relying on reddit storing this forever.

Comprehend and retain knowledge

I have a solution for this! And it’s SUPER EASY!! Short version here:

Longer version: this was the story of my life growing up. Sometimes the ole’ mental sponge was dry & ready to soak up new information, and sometimes (okay, most of the time) it was just so over-saturated that nothing could get in there.

The trick is to bypass your ability to absorb things by using a checklist of next-action steps, which gives you something to do, instead of trying to use a resource that isn’t available (your over-saturated brain). So the two tasks are:

  1. Comprehension (understand it)
  2. Retention (remember it)

Unfortunately, I never learned how to do either of those tasks growing up, because most of the time, my sponge was full & couldn’t soak up any new information, so I’d just sit there re-reading the same page, paragraph, or line over & over again. I had no clear path forward. Fortunately, once you have a reliable procedure, it’s really easy! The elements include:

  1. Creating a mind-map
  2. Converting that into short notes
  3. Memorizing your notes

So what we’re going to do is:

  1. Bypass our non-functional hardware (can’t download the reading material to our brain)
  2. Use a very specific set of step-by-step instructions

So rather than just blindly “trying really hard” & attempting to use brute force to muddle through, we’re simply going to follow a very doable checklist of next-action steps. Here are the checklists:

Step 1: Create a mind-map

  1. The idea here is to break down the monolithic idea of having to study. We’re only going to take one little bite of material, and we’re going to follow a step-by-step process to build up a clear picture in our head. With ADHD, we are often driven by immediacy and want to fully comprehend 100% of the information instantly, otherwise it’s too hard & we want to quit lol.
  2. So we’ll begin by selecting a section of the material. Not 50 pages, not a whole chapter, just like one section.
  3. Draw a box in the middle of a piece of paper for the main topic of the section.
  4. Do a quick scan through the section. Identify the main ideas. Draw a bubble around each idea & draw a leg back to the main topic box like this (although I just use a pen & sketch it out instantly, not a software app)
  5. Continue to do passes through the section to build up your visual web of information like this. The goal is to eventually capture all of the relevant information.
  6. For things you don’t understand, i.e. stuff that doesn’t click, just draw a box around a question mark to revisit later, rather than getting stuck on it. When my ADHD kicks in, I’ll get stuck on having to do some trivial thing & that will literally halt all progress on my task at hand; simply drawing a box around a question mark gives me permission to move on & come back to that issue later (i.e. look it up on Google or Youtube, ask your professor or boss for help, etc.).

Step 2: Convert that into short notes:

  1. We’re going to use this memorization process (archive link) to get that web of information inside our head. This process begins with creating Short Notes.
  2. So once your mind-map is complete, it’s now time to convert it into Short Notes. These are one-line notes, not long notes, not multi-paragraph notes. Clear, complete, short sentences.
  3. You don’t have to write out or memorize your entire mind-map. Simply creating the mind-map gives you the background information you need to support the main ideas. So maybe you only need to memorize the math formula itself & not the entire chapter’s worth of supporting information. I call these Optimized Notes.
  4. My preference is to type these out for two reasons: first, my handwriting is atrocious, so it’s much easier to read notes printed from a computer, and second, you can re-order the notes in a way that makes sense as you type up your mind-map.

Step 3: Memorize your notes:

  1. The idea here is to use the Stacking Technique to do the memorization. Note that memorization is different than comprehension: you can memorize anything using this method, even if you don’t understand it, because all you’re doing is very specifically using the data-storage portion of your brain by using a physical-to-mental download technique, explained below.
  2. To be clear, this does take a significant time investment. However, it also gives you a very clear & successful path towards memorization the material. So you can sit there & stare at the same page for an hour, or you can spend that hour memorize a page of notes. Note that this is a muscle & you will get faster & better at it the more you use it.
  3. Next, print out your typed-up Optimized Notes. This way you have a physical copy to hold in your hand, with no digital distractions of a laptop or tablet available.
  4. Go into a quiet room where you have no distractions. Silence your phone, turn off your music, etc.
  5. Look at the first sentence in your notes and read it out loud (not in your head – actually speak it!). Next, close your eyes and say the sentence out loud, but without looking at it.
  6. Repeat step 5, but now do the first two sentences. Then 3 sentences, then 4, and repeat this process until you have memorized every sentence in your notes.
  7. This is why having Optimized Notes is important, why it helps to only type up the relevant information you actually NEED to memorize from your mind-map, why having a printed piece of paper that is clear to read is good to have, and why being in a quiet environment with no distractions is so helpful.
  8. Once you have memorized your notes, take a nap. Not joking. Your brain runs off food & electricity, and you just expended energy to download information from paper to your brain. Once you can recite your notes out loud all the way, take a nap! Since you’re already in a quiet room with no distractions, just lean back or curl up and chill out for a bit, even if you don’t fall asleep.

It looks like a lot written out, but it’s actually a quick & simple technique:

  1. Sketch out a mind-map
  2. Type up the stuff you want to remember into short notes & print it out
  3. Repeat each line out loud using the stacking technique, and once you can say your entire page(s) of notes out loud, take a nap

This is how I study. It’s been an incredibly effective technique for me since I started using it back in college. It bypasses the problem of our “sponge” getting overloaded, resulting in us just staring at the page & re-reading the same material over & over again. It does that by giving us a clear path forward, literally step-by-step, so that we have something to do & a path to follow, instead of just spinning our wheels.

This approach helped me get off that mental treadmill & actually start hiking towards the goals of understanding & memorizing the knowledge I was required to learn & remember!

Writing essays

I’ve heard it said that there are only two problems in the world:

  1. You don’t know what you want
  2. You don’t know how to get what you want

All throughout grade school, I had tremendous difficulty writing essays. I would stare at the blank page in front of me, noodle around with sentences & ideas, and just generally be one frustrated cat. I knew what I wanted – to write & turn in an essay that would get me an “A” – but I had no idea how to DO it.

As I got older & learned the value of checklists (aka a list of step-by-step actions to follow, also known as a “procedure”), I worked hard to create a procedure for writing essays. I now have a solid essay procedure that I’m going to share with you. This essay procedure has gotten me an “A” on every single essay I’ve turned in since I started using it.

So without further ado, here is my procedure:

First, math time! You need to convert the professor’s requirements into numbers. So you start with the basic formula: in Microsoft Word, with 1″ margins, using double-spacing with 12-point Times New Roman font, you can fit about 5 fleshed-out, well-written paragraphs per page, or about 300 words. So if your job is to deliver a 10-page paper, then 10 pages times 5 paragraphs is 50 paragraphs (apply the same logic if your teacher has a word-count requirement instead). Note that you also need an opening & a closing paragraph, so 50 total paragraphs minus 2 opening & closing paragraphs is 48 paragraphs required.

Second, the fun part – generating ideas! So the structure of a paragraph is quite easy:

  1. You need one main topic for each individual paragraph
  2. You need five sentences in every paragraph (you don’t want it too short, or too long!)

Obviously, you are free to adjust as you see fit, but this gives you a concrete path to follow. For this step, we’re going to be focusing on the first part of the paragraph structure – getting clear ideas. So because we’re writing a 10-page paper in our example, we need 48 paragraphs (re: “math”), which means we need 48 individual topics. All you have to do is open Microsoft Word or Google Docs and start a numbered list. The procedure is:

  1. Do free-word association. This is where you write down anything you can think of related to the topic.
  2. Do research. My general advice to kickstart the process, especially on a topic that you don’t know much about, is to get a few good books or other resources & skim them to see what ideas keep popping up. Grab those as your topics (you can flesh them out later) & fill out the remaining number of topics you need.
  3. Re-order the topics into something that makes logical sense. For example, if the topic of our 10-page paper is “The history of Video Games”, then you probably don’t want to start out with modern virtual reality systems, but rather the early stuff like Pong & Mario.

Third, generate the data points for each idea. This is the second part of the structure of a paragraph – you need 5 sentences per paragraph. This means you need 5 data points. Same deal as before: take one of the topics & generate 5 related lines of information about it. So if we have to write a 10-page essay, and it’s on the history of video games, then we might have a paragraph topic like this:

  • Early 70’s & 80’s gaming hardware

OK, so now we need 5 pieces of data about that. Just spit-balling here:

  • Atari
  • Sega
  • Nintendo
  • Gameboy
  • Apple Mac II

And now getting some actual info: (put in an order that makes sense – chronological, in this case)

  • The Atari 2600 was released in 1977
  • The Nintendo NES was released in 1986
  • The Apple Mac II was released in 1987
  • The Gameboy was in 1989
  • The Sega Genesis was released in 1989

Fourth, convert it to English. This is just like if you were explaining it to a friend – how would you talk about it? Let’s pretty it up a little bit with some flowery language:

In 1977, the world of home gaming changed with the release of the incredible Atari 2600 console. Within a decade, Nintendo made an explosive entrance to the North American market with the popular NES console, featuring games like Mario and Duckhunt. Not content to leave money on the table, Apple released the Mac II computer in 1987, which was a multi-function device capable of not just playing computer games, but also doing real work. Two years later, Nintendo floored the market with the unveiling of the portable, battery-powered Gameboy handheld system, enabling gamers to play on the bus, in the car, or in their bedroom, and sold completely out of their initial one-million-unit shipment in just weeks. The same year, Sega dove into the home gaming segment with their 16-bit Genesis console, offering twice the performance & graphical capabilities of the famous Nintendo NES system.

BOOM! So now instead of sitting there spinning your wheels, you now know how many paragraph topics you need for the paper as a whole, how to generate them, how many data points you need for each paragraph, and how to convert those into a more readable format. You know how have a procedure. You have a clear-cut path to follow!

Fifth, button things up. I once heard someone offer this procedure for essays & public speaking:

  1. Tell ’em what you’re gonna say
  2. Say it
  3. Tell ’em what you said

So that’s all you have to do for your opening & closing paragraphs: tell them what you’re going to say, then tell them what you said. Hit the highlights:

  • 1947 introduced the cathode-ray tube amusement device as the first known video game
  • 1977 introduced the Atari 2600 console for home use & lit off an entire industry
  • 1980’s introduced portable gaming systems & 16-bit consoles
  • 1990’s introduced 32-bit systems & 3D games, like StarFox
  • Multi-player, networking, and virtual reality systems grew from there

So an introduction paragraph might look like this:

1947 saw the birth of the very first video game ever documented. The next 70 years would see massive development on that front, including the jump to home consoles. The advent of the Atari in the late 70’s sparked a revolution in digital home gaming that would lead to the multi-billion-dollar empire we know & love today. What started with the Atari led to the Nintendo NES system, which made gaming consoles a household name. The state of the art progressed rapidly to today’s world of online multi-player games, virtual reality systems, and real-time 3D gaming.

After that, run a spellcheck (check out Grammerly if you haven’t used it before), cite your sources if needed, make sure your name & the date is on it & that all of the paragraphs are indented, and you’re done! It’s almost like a fill-in-the-blank process; you now have clear, specific the 5-step approach for writing an essay:

  1. Do the math, based on the requirements
  2. Generate the number of ideas required, to use as individual paragraph topics
  3. Generate five ideas per individual paragraph topic
  4. Convert those bullet points to readable English
  5. Finish the project by adding an opening paragraph, a closing paragraph, cited sources (if required), put your name on it, put the date on it, and run it through a spellcheck. Optionally, use a tool like Grammerly for additional verification.

I have used this process to write a 20-page paper in a single day (although I don’t recommend that, I only did it because I was procrastinating lol). Once you do a few papers using this technique, you will get pretty good at it & be able to pump out clear, well-written, easy-to-read essays on any topic you want!

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