How to study effectively | Psyche Guides

Alternating between different topics (referred to as ‘interleaving’) can be more effective, especially for topics that are similar in nature and might otherwise be easily conflated.

Research indicates that interleaving seems to bias your attention towards looking for differences between topics. In contrast, blocking seems to focus your attention on looking for similarities between topics.

Question what you read as you’re reading it. By responding to your own questions, you are forcing yourself to think about how to explain the subject matter in your own words and with reference to your previous knowledge and experience.

Testing is not just a way of measuring learning; it can also be a powerful mechanism of learning.

Contrary to how it might feel, both success and failure to retrieve information are helpful for your memory. Both outcomes serve to calibrate confidence in your perception of your knowledge.

This involves reading a short passage of text, putting the source to one side and trying to recall the information in your own words, before checking your recall against the source for factual accuracy.

You repeat these steps until you are satisfied with your ability to capture the meaning (not words) of the source material in question.