Studying & Diminishing Returns
Lots of college students are (or should be) studying for finals right now, so I thought I’d like to hear about what your thoughts are about studying and the amount of time spent on it.
I’ve always felt that the long-term absorption of information over time is infinitely more valuable than intense “study sessions.” For me, studying for too long or hard can be affected by diminishing returns; meaning that the amount of value that you get out of each unit of time spent studying rapidly decreases as times goes on.
Don’t study aimlessly! Be aware of how engaged you are in whatever it is that you are doing, as soon as it feels like you are on autopilot, you’ve hit that point of diminishing returns. Move to something else (another class, chores, etc) that you can get more value out of.
Here’s an example of how I got hit by this today:
- I was doing some reading from one of my engineering texts, my head was in it and I was really processing what I was reading
- After 20-25 minutes, my mind started wandering and I was just reading words but not processing them (in one ear, out the other)
- I started scanning around the coffeehouse and on Twitter
- I recognized what was happening - I wasn’t getting anything done with studying so it was time to switch tasks, to something that I could get some value from (blogging in this case)
How aware are you of when you aren’t getting enough out of what you are spending time doing?
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