原文地址：https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-smart-tips-for-self-studying/answers/26494595
Below are the 7 greatest tips I have learned for remembering the most and being the best student:
Focus on how long you work rather than how much you want to get done.When studying we often think more about how far we want to get in a certain time than just allowing ourselves to take our time. We always have it laid out so perfectly, that as soon as we see we won’t be able to get it done, we get stressed and nervous.
Think about it! When you are trying to complete 2 chapters in 3 hours, how stressful is it when you come across something you do not understand? Instead allow yourself to take your time. Block of some time, let’s say 1–2 hours, and see how far you can get! This is a challenge to yourself with no minimum requirement, which removes all the stress and allows you to focus fully for these hours. (This can also be used if you have a test coming up, you just need to start early enough).
Reward yourself for the little things.Every time you finish a chapter, or understand a difficult concept, you should reward yourself! Not only did you manage to get through it, you also understood it, which is more than most people can do!
Reward yourself for your little accomplishments. Get excited about what you learned, do a little celebratory dance or just feel the great feelings for a couple of minutes. This is a great motivational boost for you to keep on working even harder on the next chapter!
Learn to learn.Especially when you are self-learning, there is a reason why you want to learn this particular thing. Do not learn to get anything in particular done, but instead learn for the sake of learning.
When we learn for the sake of learning there will be no stress on us and we can focus solely on what we desire to learn the most. This gets us off track and allows us to research certain topics in depth on other sites or in other books. Overall, this way will give you way more knowledge, it will be more relaxing, but it will also take more time.
Start with the tough stuff first (at the beginning of the day and as early as you can).The single, worst thing you can do is to put off the worst thing until the end of the day. After working, or studying, for multiple hours already, seeing that the worst is yet to come is a gigantic stressor.
Instead, think about what will happen if you get thatmonsterdone already before lunch-time. Think about how great, relaxed and open the rest of the day will be!
Focus on keywords.When studying a Book or any text, focus on the keywords. The words italicized or bolded are usually the ones the paragraphs concern themselves with. If you can understand these keywords, and the surrounding paragraph, you will have at least understood 80% of what the chapter will try to tell you.
This is a quick way to get the most value out of any book. Another tip is to look at the title of the chapter and the individual parts to see what the main focus is. Using this you will be able to easily identify the most important parts of any chapter.
Teach what you learned.When we teach others it requires us to remember most of what we have learned. We not only have to recall it, but we also have to package it in a way that the other person will understand. Now, we do not know when they will understand it, so we may have to think of dozens of different ways to explain it by which we internalize the information ourselves.
Not only that, but when we teach others they will ask questions to understand, meaning they make us become aware of where we are lacking information and where the key connecting points are. All of this put together makes teaching others the best way to retain information.
Use your REM sleep.Psychologists and Neuroscientists have discovered that our brain is most active during REM, orRapid-Eye-Movement,sleep. But it was never clear what exactly happened during this phase other than dreaming.
Recently, however, it has been discovered that our brains use this phase of our sleep to transfer some of the information in ourshort-termmemory into ourlong-termmemory. What they found was if we sleep right after we learn, long enough to go into REM sleep (which usually happens 90 minutes after falling asleep) we remember more than others who stayed awake. You can use this in 2 great ways:
Taking a nap right after learning (at least 90 minutes long).
Learning the most difficult things right before going to bed at night.
