Study Smarter, Not Harder

You've probably heard this phrase many times. It's a worn-out cliché: we ought to study smarter, not harder. But what exactly does it mean? Let's try to answer that question.

1. Effectiveness

You could say that "study smarter" is similar to "study efficiently." The more effective you are when studying, the more gets done and the less time is wasted. Before you can become a more efficient student, you need to be aware of how effective you are now. It has to be measured before you can improve it, for a fairly obvious reason: if you don't know where you stand, how will you know how far you've come?

A simple way of doing this is to measure a typical study week. You could track how many tasks you've completed, how many problems you've solved or how many pages you've read, and then combine those and similar figures into averages. Do this every week. The result will be a chart or graph that shows how effective you are and whether you've improved over time.

2. Find what works best, then do just that

Economists use the term ROI, or return on investment, to measure how much value an investment yields compared to the capital invested. You need a similar mindset toward your studies. Which study method has given you the best results compared to the energy you've put in? For instance, if you spent one hour either reading about a subject or discussing it, which would yield the better results? You need to measure these things now; otherwise, you might be wasting time that could have been spent on other things.

For more practical advice, read our guide on how to study effectively.