The Digital Garden

Effective Learning

4 min read

The Essentials

  1. Get good sleep → Getting minimum 8 hours for 3 nights prior to study. This also correlates to the QUALITY of your sleep:
    1. Stick to a rhythm of sleep that your body can adapt to.
    2. Do not eat or drink caffeine, sugar, alcohol or heavy carb diets within 5 hours of sleep
    3. Create a sleep environment that minimizes exposure to light in evenings, light from blue light screens or other high lumen emitters
    4. Create a calming/bed ritual that relaxes
    5. Include physical exercise in daily routine (but not before you sleep)
    6. Journal/Practice Mindfulness in order to alleviate Anxiety
  2. Switch up your environment to increase recall → Study outside your home at other spots each week to change the scenery:
    1. The Library
    2. A coffee shop
    3. Someones house (or a different part of yours)
  3. Stick to an environment that works when under pressure → create a dedicated workspace that you can rely on to work effectively in when you need to urgently get things done
  4. Listen to simple, calming music → Avoid high intensity, involved music while you study as it can distract. Stick to Lo-fi, Instrumental, Jazz, Ambient and Classical at a reasonable tempo (sub 100 bpm).
  5. Eliminate distracting entities → Create an echo chamber for you to solely focus through.
    1. Remove background noise through noise cancellation
    2. Silence or eliminate distracting electronics (phone, news updaters)
  6. Focus on healthy, light foods → Stay away from energizers like candy or coffee and focus more on sustainable energy foods. Eat like a bird:
    1. Edamame
    2. Apple
    3. Nuts
    4. Healthy Dark chocolate

Research Frameworks

1. SQ3R

  • Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review

  • Survey → Skim your material of focus and take notes on recognizable facets (headings, images, charts, anything that stands out)

  • Question → Form questions about what you’ve skimmed:

    • What is this chapter about?
    • What prior knowledge do I have?
    • What are the key facets to this topic?
    • How does this part work?

  • Read → Read the chapter and find answers to your questions.

  • Recite → In your own words, summarize what you’ve learned:

    • Identify the major points
    • Recall all that you’ve read
    • Answer questions you created in the previous stage

  • Review → Go over the material and quiz yourself on questions you had. Re-read any portions that you are still unclear on.

2. Retrieval Practice

  • Quiz yourself frequently through practice tests or quick quizzes without notes
  • Utilize flashcards and write answers down prior to checking
  • Create diverse and unique questions in order to activate your mind in different ways for a topic

3. Spacing Method

  • Best for complex topics by encouraging study over time utilizing recall
  • Run in a series of revisiting/reviewing:
    • Day 1 → Write Notes
    • Day 2, 3, One Week Later, Two Weeks Later → Revisit and Review

4. The PQ4R Method

  • Preview, Question, Read, Reflect, Recite, Review

  • Preview → Skim material only reading headers, sub header and highlights to get an overall view of the material.

  • Question → Write down questions you want answered relating to what you want to take from the material and what you already know

  • Read → Read sections one at a time and answer your questions before moving on

  • Reflect → See if you have answered ALL of the questions you had. If not, then return to the material.

  • Recite → Write down a summary of what you have just covered section by section

  • Review → Return to the material over the next couple of weeks to improve recall (see Retrieval Practice for review method) **

5. Feyman Method

  • Simplifying topics through boiled down explanation

  • Is completed IN POST OF FIRST NOTE TAKING

  • Summarize → Write down the topic you hope to learn and everything you know about a topic

  • ELI5 → Explain in as simple a term as possible the interworking of this topic

  • Assess → Go back on explanation and identify areas of incorrectness or muddled understanding.

  • Review → Return to notes and review what you got wrong

  • NOTE: Keep technical jargon to a minimum. Instead, replace this jargon with simplistic explanations anyone could understand.

6. Leitner System

How to take notes effectively

https://www.goodnotes.com/blog/note-taking-methods

Cornell Method

https://www.goodnotes.com/templates/cornell-notes

  • Center block for main points/key topics
  • Left bar for questions, comments or hints about the actual notes
  • Bottom block is for Summarizing the entire section

Box Method

  • Best for Revising already taken notes
  • Organize key points on each topic into boxes

Charting Method

  • Organizing topics with the same facets in order to compare them

Brainmap Method

  • Dividing subtopics off of main into a web

Zettelkasten Method

Zettelkasten Method

https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/

https://www.google.com/books/edition/How_to_Take_Smart_Notes/QmBjEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

Graph View