How I Study

Studying has been my primary occupation for 17 years now. First primary- then high-school, later undergrad and now graduate level university, all meant that I spent the bulk of my time studying. And over time, I began tweaking with the process, trying to decrease the time I needed to learn a new thing while increasing how well I could learn things. The process still changes and keeps evolving, but I want to use this moment to codify what I believe is pretty close to the optimal way of studying. At least for me. May this blogpost save future generations all the mistakes I made.

Why study anyways?

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education - Grant Allen

The education system in pretty much any country serves a dual purpose: On the one hand it aims to educate the population. On the other hand it is a giant sorting system. An education comes with good jobs and a high status, which for most people is the sole incentive to participate in the education system. But grades are not the only reason to study. You also learn things, which can be satisfying if done right. In fact, many adults once they have left the education system learn to enjoy learning. They read books, attend workshops and try to gleam something from their smart colleagues. As a student, the goal should be to learn as much as possible, while also overcoming the hurdles the sorting machine puts in your way. The key to doing well on both objectives, as I realized many many years into my own struggles with education, is to realize that studying is a creative process.

Studying is a creative process

People are motivated by creating something they can call their own. But when you study, you usually learn things that other people invented, and there is no point at which you invent something for yourself. Usually students do not even have control about what is learned or when. This is why students don’t feel a sense of ownership about their studies. This is very demotivating. And if you are demotivated, it is hard to focus on something for a long time, and to put in extra effort. It took me 12 years to understand those dynamics and center all studying around a creative project that is shared widely. When I study a new topic, I create a summary powerpoint presentation. I imagine that I will give a lecture in which I explain the entire topic in one go. I put in a lot of effort to make the entire presentation easy to understand and focus on the intuitions. Every slide is meant to look extremely well, and often I even make infographics on my computer. Once the summary is done, I upload it to the class forum (or some other distribution channel). For me, the last step is very important. Why would I invest so much time in my summary if nobody sees it? Usually, the majority of my classmates look at my slides at least once. Many come to me to thank me and tell me how much they liked my work. This is a great reward that motivates me to invest great effort into my next summary again. Comprehension is compression which is why I use slides. Slides force you to keep things short and to the point. A summary that is as long as the textbook us useless. Ideally, one slide has one concept on it, and use as few words as possible to explain it. Usually it makes sense to use a graphic to visualize the concept (or just make the slide look pretty). You can find some of my summary slide decks on this website.

Some of my creative study outputs have gone beyond slides: When I was learning data science, I had no class to share notes with because I was learning it on my own. So I asked the local computer club if I could teach a class on data science (which used my slides). When I learned machine learning, I ran an 8 week course with many partner companies including Google. Since I had to turn up with teaching materials every week, I spent many many nights refining my knowledge. Through that class, I got a book publishing contract which was a great motivation to learn even more. Many people think you have to invent something entirely new to contribute to their chosen field in any meaningful way, but that is not true. If you can summarize and systematize knowledge, you may do science an even greater service. For me, this summarization and publication approach to studying has moved me from dreading studying to actually enjoying it.

Fluency matters

Once a good summary is created, the real studying begins: There is no way around learning things by heart. Spaced repetition is a powerful memorization technique in which flash cards are reviewed in gradually increasing intervals. I use Anki to create flashcards with snippets of information from the slides created earlier. Michael Nielsen has written a long and detailed blog post about his use of Anki and I broadly follow his advice. For formula heavy subjects I recommend setting up Anki to work with LaTeX as recommended by Cathy Wu. Use an app like MathPix to quickly generate LaTeX code from hand written or on-screen formulas. As you revise your cards, you will find after some time that some are incorrect or just not a good flashcard. My approach is to create a lot of new cards, ruthlessly delete what is not good.

If you are in a field that requires practice to be good at (like solving work-sheets), flashcards can still help you. Write down the main approaches and methodologies and learn them by heart, too. This way you will already know which method to use and your progress will be accelerated.

When to binge study

I am no fan of binge studying: I hate being tired and I get less productive after a few hours of focused work. In my undergrad I was only able to do about 3 hours of highly focused work a day, in grad school that went up to 4-5 hours of high focus. High focus time is much more productive than low-focus time, and so it makes sense to use the high focus periods over multiple weeks and call it a day when your energy is depleted. It also helps to study multiple subjects over the day, so you can take a walk and then start something new once you are tired of one subject. All this is only possible if you start studying well in advance of any exam.

Last minute studying helps if the exam is predictable you can learn the answers to old exam questions. Questions that require some clever trick but are asked every year again are prime candidates.

Roundup

The tips above successfully got me through school, college and a few early career roles. I am sure I will update this guide in a few years with more tips on how to study while at work. In the mean time, I recommend the learning how to learn MOOC by Babra Oakleay and Terrence Sejnowsky, which contains many more tips, backed by neuroscience. Investing in your learning process is a great investment of your time and pays greater dividends the earlier you do it. So keep learning!