Study Tips for Long-Term Retention | Jim Kwik

Okay, let's get limitless. How do you study anything quickly? How do you cram correctly? And this episode is for students of all ages and all stages. This is for parents that want to help students. This is for if you're going for your MBA, you're in medical school, or you're a student of life. You have to prepare for a meeting, a sales call. You need to absorb a lot of information in a very short period of time. Period of time, so it's abbreviated. So how would I approach studying new material in a short period of time? Now we know that there's a difference between studying to remember and cramming to forget. If you've ever crammed information in your mind, you don't take any breaks, you pull an all-nighter, you don't sleep, and you just— the next morning nobody could talk to you because you don't want anything to slip out during breakfast because you have to save it all inside because you can't wait to take the test. And when you take the test, you don't know if you know the answers or not. But when you're done, what happens for sure? All the information is gone, right? So how would I go about to be more efficient in my cramming or in my studying? Well, let's, let's go through some. I recommend if you're listening to this and you're able to, to take some notes. If you're not taking some notes, make sure you go to jimkwik.com/notes. Always go to the podcast notes. If you could watch this on YouTube, highly recommend this. If you're not, if you're just listening in on Spotify or iTunes to listen to it. Watch it on YouTube so you can actually see some of the graphics, and we outlay some of these notes also as well. So let's get started. So one of the first keys to learning anything faster, any subject, is to really have a goal. And so when I sit down, I want to ask questions. I want to have a target in mind. A lot of people don't learn something because they just don't know what they're looking for. They don't know when they're gonna be successful. And remember this: questions are the answer. Questions are The answers. So ask yourself numerous questions. You'll notice that in our Limitless book that all the chapters start with primer questions, right? Questions stimulate that part of your brain called the reticular activating system, RAS. It really directs your focus and your awareness. It gets you alert, and then you're like, oh, there's an answer, there's an answer, there's an answer. So first, prime yourself with questions. Now, I would also say, remember this as a reminder, as a quick reminder, that all learning is state-dependent. All learning is state-dependent, meaning that if you learn something in a bored state, you know, information by itself is forgettable, but information combined with emotion becomes unforgettable, right? So you have to up the emotion. And so how can you add some fun into your studies? How can you add some, a little bit of more joy? How can you add a little bit more interest and excitement? You know, and part of it is different for different people. Some people, before they start studying, they'll play music in the background. You know, they have a soundtrack to their life. You know, I don't know if you have a song that puts you in the mood to get you focused, to get you motivated, right? Get you excited about something. Some people do some jumping jacks or some cartwheels. They do some rebounding. They move their body. They put a smile on their faces because you have to up your emotion. Because if you're in a bored, sedated state, the information will not be encoded very strong. And so you're not gonna be able to retrieve the information outside of your mind. So just remember that. Now, it's not just your internal environment. The next tip would be to really, really optimize your external environment. What do I mean by that? Your workspace. And I would highly recommend, if you could avoid it, do not work on your bed. I see so many people of all ages working in their bed. Here's the thing. The environment that you're learning something in gets encoded with the information and the feelings and the emotion that come with that. And really, some people actually have sleep issues because they work in bed. And they can't differentiate that between that and actually going to sleep. Or if you associate bed to going to sleep, you're not going to be very efficient in your studies. So either way, it's a lose-lose, right? And so really, what's, what's an ideal environment? It's never going to be perfect. All right. There, there could be kids around, there could be distractions, there could be noise, but do the best you can. Some people are, are learning remotely or maybe they're working remotely. Do the best you can to have a dedicated environment. So that when you go in that space, then you go into— you're in the zone, right? This is where you're gonna be studying, right? Every area of your home or your office should really be dedicated, ideally, to certain behaviors that when you go to do, you know, whether it's like, you know, watching something on your iPad, it just puts you in entertainment mode, right? Or you're going to the gym, you're just gonna work out. You're not on your phone doing social media, right? Whatever environment It really sets an internal environment to put you in a place where you're just really optimized for that spurt in behavior. Now, what I would recommend, so always studying in the same place ideally, ideally that you have good lighting. We've talked about this in previous podcast episodes, meaning the fluorescent light, probably not the best because it has been shown to really make people tired. There's some eye strain there. is optimal. Temperature, find something that's not putting you to sleep, that keeps you alert. Sometimes for most people, it's a little bit on the cool side also as well. Good airflow because oxygen is so, so very important in the process. So you're getting a good environment, plus your environment, do the best you can to free yourself from what? The enemy of your focus, which is distractions, right? Tell your family that this is your study time, you know, lock the door, put a sign, you know, close by. You know, in your office cubicle saying, you know, do not disturb until this time. Turn off, close, turn off your phone, right? Put it on airplane mode, or even better yet, put it in your glove compartment of the car, put it in another room, because even if it's there, like even at the dinner table, you feel like you have to kind of check it, right? You know, out of habit. Turn off all the alerts, maybe close different browsers, right? Focus on that one thing. So that's your external environment. Now, when you're actually sitting there to study, you know, I have my notepad here. I do my capture create. If you're not familiar with that, search jimkwik.com/howtotakenotes. There are lots of videos and podcast episodes we've covered about it. But what I'm looking to do is set a timer, right? And it can be on your phone if you're using it, if you still have your phone there, or it can be an analog timer, right? Something you could get online, very inexpensive. And I'm looking to study, I have like, 30, 45 minutes. I set a countdown timer for 30, 45 minutes, and they call this the Pomodoro technique, right? It's after that amount of time, after about like the amount of time of a sitcom, your focus concentration starts to dip. You start to lose some energy, right? You need to get refreshed. But the reason why I do this is like, hey, I could do some focused activity for 30 to 45 minutes in those intervals because it's so much better than studying 5 hours straight. Right? So if I could do 30 minutes, take a 5-minute break, another 30 minutes, a 5-minute break, that's way better than going for a marathon, right? And I'll give you one of the reasons why. Besides concentration, something called primacy and recency. Primacy and recency. Primacy says you tend to remember something in the beginning, right? You go to a party, you meet 20 people, you probably remember the first people there, right? I give you a list of 20 words to memorize, you probably remember the first few words. That's primacy, right? Prime first, right? Recency means something— you remember things that are more recent or towards the end. So you go to that same party of 20 people, you remember the people you first met and then the last people you met, the most recent. I give you a list of 20 facts or words, you probably remember the first ones and then the last ones. Here's the thing, and this is really the magic: if you study for like 8 hours straight and you cram, you know, for an all-nighter and not sleep, which is not good for your memory. And you remember things in the beginning, things at the end, but there's a big dip in the middle, right? Do you see that? But if you take a break every 30 minutes or 45 minutes for just a few, you know, 5 minutes if you will, then you create more primacies and more recencies, and you pick up so much more information. Now when you take this break, what I'm looking to do when I'm studying, I'll study for that 35, minutes, 40 minutes, 50 minutes, around there, never more than an hour. And I'll take my brain break. And what do I do with my brain break? Just like 3 or 4 things in 5 minutes, right? What I do, I move. Very important because we're just sitting behind screens all the time. And when your body moves, your brain grooves, create brain-derived neurotrophic factors. You've heard me talk about this, which is like fertilizer for the human brain. Number 2, what I'm looking to do is to hydrate. Your brain is mostly water, and just staying hydrated can boost your reaction time, your thinking speed, you know, upwards of 15-30%. So stay hydrated. So get yourself some water. Another thing I do is I kind of flex my eyes. What does that mean? I just, if I'm looking at a screen or a book, you know, and I'm looking at something maybe 6 to 12 inches in front of me all the time, I like to just like go outside and just look off into this distance or look out a window and just look out in the horizon as far far as I could go, because that gives me some depth, right? Because if you're visually fatigued, you're gonna be mentally fatigued, right? Your visual focus really directs your mental focus. And so you wanna be able to move your eyes also as well, not just your body. And then finally, I mentioned going outside. If you can get some fresh air, if you wanna do some deep breathing, a lot of times when you're studying, if you suffer from like brain fog, you know, the mental fatigue, You're getting more sedated and tired. Part of it is we're not breathing. You know, our postures lots of times get collapsed, and the lower 1/3 of your lungs absorbs 2/3 of the oxygen, and you're getting tired. Some people use reading, they're so— they use it to fall asleep late at night, and that's not a good association. So you could do your breathing exercise, your fire breathing, your alpha breathing, your box breathing, right? Something simple: inhale for four, hold for a count of four, exhale for a count of four, hold for a count of four, and then repeat the process. That's the four sides of the box, right? Inhale for a count of four, hold for a count of four, exhale for a count of four, hold for a count of four, and then you can repeat. But anything that's just getting more oxygen into your body because your your brain is only two percent of your body mass, but it requires twenty percent of the nutrients. 20% approximately of the air and the oxygen. And so you wanna clear those cobwebs, make sure you are breathing. Ideally, you're breathing throughout your study session also as well. My final tip for you is really active retrieval. This is your retrieval practice. We know that studying the human brain and then adult learning, that brains don't always learn best just consuming information, right? It actually learns better through creativity, through creation or co-creation, where it's not pushing information inside your mind, it's actually pulling information out, right? We've talked about memory a lot in our podcast, and many of you are part of our programs. You know there's 3 stages: you encode information, you store it, and you retrieve it. You encode it, you see it, you feel it, right? You store it. We use the location method or the peg method or chain linking, right? The pie method. All these methods we teach for storage, and then you retrieve it. Well, did you know when you start actively retrieving information, pulling information out, it actually helps you to learn it better? So simple things you could do at the end of a study session and the beginning of a study session is quiz yourself. You know, quiz yourself at the end of what you learned, or when you're— after you're coming back from your brain break, start your beginning, the next primacy recency, your next study session by asking yourself questions about what you just learned, right? This is a way of forming active retrieval or retrieval practice to help you to really ingrain and test yourself to see if the information is really there, right? Sometimes when we write things down, and it's okay to take notes obviously, we feel like it's there, but we don't have to really know it, right? And as it just as a final bonus besides active retrieval and quizzing yourself, remember, if you want to learn something faster, learn with the intent of teaching somebody else. They call it the explanation effect. You get to take advantage of the explanation effect when you're studying whatever you're studying for school or for work, or you're helping your child to be able to do that. Remember to remind them and yourself that if you learn it with the intention of explaining to somebody else, you're gonna learn it so much better, because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. All right. Now, I gave you a lot of quick tips in this episode on how to learn more rapidly, how to study something, and you're gonna get so much more out of it. Better comprehension, better organization, better actual retention of the information. And these little tips, little by little, they become a lot. Now, if you want to go deeper in this and you really want to have the student advantage, if you want to have that extra edge, in this session we went through and we just gave you like like a good amount of tips in, in the same amount of time. Imagine doing this for 30 days, all right? Imagine you and I spending 30 days together where we spend the same amount of time we just did, and I just keep on giving you more motivation on how to focus, on how to study, on how to win with exams, how to be able to support your children, how to be able to learn things if you're getting continuing education for your career. We've developed for you a quick And this is really where we spend about 30 days together and we dramatically enhance your focus, your concentration, your ability to read faster, understand what you read, study better, and retain the information. If you want to secure your spot, join us at kwikstudent.com. That's kwikstudent.com. And when you do, not only will I be your coach to help you to be able to enhance and level up your learning in your life, you will join a community, a global community of other students. They're sharing their best tools and techniques, knowledge, skills, abilities, and the different subjects they're applying these techniques to, right? Everything from calculus to Spanish, you know, to geometry, to history, to human anatomy. And that's really where the magic happens. You know, how do you become limitless in a limited world? We do it together. And that's really the key. Not only do you have a coach, but you have a community, people like you who are dedicated to lifelong learning that want an extra advantage, and everybody helping each other in one place. All right, so just go to kwikstudent.com, secure your spot. I'm your brain coach, Jim Kwik. Thanks for listening to this episode. Make sure you screenshot it and post it. Tag me in it so I get to see it and share your favorite study tip. What is your favorite study tip? By you sharing that and teaching it, you get to learn it even better, right? I'll repost some of my favorites as we often do, and of course, we always send out copies of our books to people all around the world just as a thank you, right? Remember this: make learning fun, right? Fall in love with your brain. You are extraordinary. It's not how smart you are, it's really how are you smart. And in this Kwik Student Program, we're gonna unleash that amazing genius. We'll talk to you soon.

Hi, Kwik Brain, it's your brain coach. I wanna thank you so much for watching this video. 3 things to do. Number 1, make sure you share this, 'cause when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well. Number 2, make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a thing, 'cause if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and you find out when we put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing: if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone number: 310-299-9362. Did you remember that number? 310-299-9362.

362.

Shoot me a text and we'll stay in touch. Ask me your burning question, and I wish your days be full of lots of life, lots of love, lots of laughter, and always lots of learning. I'll see you in our next video.