How to Make Efficient Study Habits and Techniques?

Basic Concepts

In this new installment, I will talk about a fascinating topic, and that will serve to do or propose as a personal goal basically what you want. In this topic on techniques and study habits, paperhelp will be studying the mistakes that are often made in the learning process by the student and the teacher. Also, what can we do to remedy them?

This article does not intend to give a single way for you to improve, but arguments and ideas of why we opt for these techniques to improve both as a student, teacher and even better as a self-taught, the latter being the objective of the writing.

Technique:

We can use this definition, a set of procedures or resources used in an art, science, or a particular activity, mainly when acquired through practice and require a skill.

Skill:

Something as simple as a person’s ability to do a thing correctly and with ease.

Later we will observe how this becomes a significant stumbling block between what we do and what we desire.

Knowledge:

Facts or information acquired by a person through experience or education.

Habit:

The simplest can be defined as the customary practice of a person, animal, or collectivity.

Now we will begin by explaining the relevance of these basic concepts to better understand what we mean by study habits and the techniques we employ.

Study habits and the beauty of simplicity

It seems something straightforward when we say lightly develop your study habits. In the case of teachers, it seems something so simple to say, but for the student, on most occasions, it becomes something impossible to do, and most of the time, we have this image in mind as the key to academic success.

From a very young age, we are taught that whoever learns to read and write can make their goals come true, and from my humble point of view as an educator (I speak as the son of Prof. Fredy Olmos), I would say yes and no.

This answer is based on reality, on how we perceive it. For example, we are taught from a very young age to read, but we are not given much clarity on interpreting or understanding what we read.

For this reason, the image above is shown, which in my opinion, is entirely wrong if we do not take into account how to make it happen literally. Here we begin to relate the four concepts seen and give them logical handling, in what order they go.

Which will be first the knowledge, the skill, the technique, or the habit.

Like my father, the author of this article has already had more than ten years teaching and training students from elementary school to the diversified cycle and university in physics, mathematics, and chess. But believe it or not, the last specialty has given me a lot to talk about in terms of education. This time, I share something beneficial as a teacher and student.

It seems very simple to say, but it is pretty challenging to do. If it is not developed correctly from the first minute, we can generate a usually too challenging to correct the failure, even for those who already know the answer.

It turns out that we can easily find the answer, and we have it on screen. If we look back at the basic concepts, we will see that it is the simplest definition: repeating something frequently. It is not so apparent to most, and I would say that the problem of this for students, for example, is that it is never clearly stated how to do it. Here we will try to help a little.

The first thing we will do will be to study ourselves in other areas where we consider ourselves good; one of them could be smartphones. Seeing how we learn to use them, we realize that we develop the habit of being close to them at almost all times. It leads us to handle them; then we learn more about their functions, and finally and without realizing it, we take them with good technique these devices.

With the proposed example, we answer the order. We will start with the habit. It will lead us to the ability. From there, we will need the knowledge to develop a technique.

How to develop study habits

The answer is just as short as the definition, and in most cases, it is little understood since it is often said as teachers that they must make a schedule to study and comply with it. The answer is valid, but it is not attractive to the student; the problem is that those students in the future will be teachers and will make the same mistake when giving that answer.

For this reason, we will study in this section something interested. Most people remember when they acquire new knowledge, such as learning the alphabet and multiplication. They place in many cases who taught them but very rarely remembered what exactly they did to develop the skill.

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself, how did you develop the ability to speak, and how long did it take?

We must start studying something to remember habits we had as children and in others when we were younger. I would say that the key lies in not trying to understand what you learn. It is vital to make the habit and later the skill.

Children, youth, and adults

Most children and young people have something in common not to ask much about what they learn, by this I mean not trying to understand it, hence their ease to gain ground in the development of simple study habits but with results, and why adults have problems when it comes to learning something new.

As people over 18, 20, or 30 years old, we must keep in mind that this is a process that, like a tree, requires time, and this parameter depends on how you use your free time. It is better to study 30 minutes every day than to do it the conventional way, not for the time but to form the habit, and with the passing of a few weeks, symptoms of the skill.

We already see how the two fundamental pillars to succeed in developing these “techniques” as a teacher is to know how to convey the message to the student, where is first the habit and then the skill. Still, we must also say how to do it as apparent as it may seem.

On the other hand, as a student, you must understand the idea of the process; something that takes time will not be ready when we want it but depending on what we do to get it. If the message is not given well, the time will seem too short, and in many cases, we are offered very little time to learn well. It happens a lot at the university level.

The art of Learning and Unlearning

There is a well-known phrase that says that our brain is like a glass. If it is complete, we cannot introduce new knowledge; by the number of experiences obtained and my research, I can affirm that this is false. To begin with, the brain, including that of children, is tough to adsorb information of any kind. We do not store information quickly. We must prepare the ground so that it remains stored and is not forgotten, something that happens too much and gives us headaches to such a degree that we do not like to study even if we have plenty of time.

Learning and unlearning

It is why I see probable interest in new ideas that will be of great use to you, one of them is the subtitle, but how to unlearn something that in theory I know; I would tell you to start by trying not to understand about that which is new and worry about developing the steps mentioned above; habit, skill, knowledge, and technique, where the first two will take much more time. Please find a way to make it interesting for you.

A perfect example of this we get from movies, and I like to give two of them that will improve study habits if overseen.

I recommend you watch the Karate Kid movies, both the old and the new version. Both are excellent, showing how a habit and a skill are formed. The missing ingredient like interest, motivation, will, or whatever you want to call it must be found by you if you study or train on your own.

If you have a teacher, this is the one in charge together with the student to find what is missing to give the necessary push.

An important fact

It is necessary to mention that the creation of many habits of study, of exercises and of our day to day we do not develop them consciously, we need the subconscious to do this work, is it difficult, yes and quite a lot at the beginning, but there are many ways to acclimatize to this if you want a demonstration see and detail the movies that I have mentioned above and any similar. On the other hand, I will give you this advice “Don’t think about what you are thinking about.”

How do you do this? With a lot of practice and concentration, something difficult to achieve today because of the enormous amount of distractions, phones, television, social networks, and video games, among others. I do not mention them as unnecessary, but we form nasty habits concerning them. Being the main one of them the consumption of time, we spend many hours and this amount of time is what you need to develop what has been said since the beginning of the article and vital for our subconscious to be activated when we study or train.

On the other hand, I clarify that the art of learning or unlearning does not mean to reject the information; but to not be dogmatic, avoid prejudices, and not underestimate the information or activities to perform no matter how simple it may seem.

Small conclusions:

• The first step before starting to execute what is written here is to avoid distractions of any kind.
• Start with little time from 15 or 30 min and gradually increase it if you see it necessary.
• Forget about time. Set a timer with the time, you will spend to forget about it.
• Avoid letting your mind think about other things while doing an activity. Just do the exercise.
• Do not overthink those activities to be performed, as it will never form the first pillar of the habit.
• Maintain the repetition of the activity, remember to start small, increase the number of days as required and the time.
• Take one step at a time and give it time to mature, don’t rush it, habit, skill, knowledge, and technique, in that order.