Have you ever noticed how better your creative ability is when you’re tired? Being a little distracted while making music can be a good thing since your brain becomes more susceptible to distraction when tired. Your brain becomes more open to new ideas and connections when fatigued.
Nevertheless, preparing for an exam requires a focused mind for analysis and memory retention. That’d mean not staying up all night before an exam, regardless of how much it helps with your skills. Such would make your brain less efficient at performing analytical tasks and retrieving previous knowledge.
With a few simple tidbits of knowledge about your mind, you can enhance your ability to process information, retain it, and improve your grades. Therefore, in this listicle, you’ll learn about five brain hacks scientifically proven to work!
-
Define Your Goals
It is helpful to set goals to visualize and achieve them. A clearly defined plan helps you prioritize what you need to do to achieve it. Visualizing your goals can help you reach them based on research. You’ll feel inspired and motivated by the display of motivational quotes in your study area.
You perform better when you believe you can achieve a goal, think you’re smart, or believe you’re good at math. There is nothing more potent than self-belief. Keep your energy and focus up by staying positive. Do not give yourself any negative labels.
-
Have Effective Note-Taking Skills
Learning fast is dependent on the quality of your notes. Making thorough notes will aid you in remembering concepts, gaining a deeper understanding of the topic, and developing meaningful learning skills. Make sure you learn different strategies for taking notes before you know a new topic, such as the Cornell Method, which simplifies composing class notes.
The following are some essential tips for taking notes, regardless of the method you use:
- Listen, then take notes in your own words.
- Separate main ideas with lines so that you can revise them later.
- To save time, create a consistent abbreviation and symbol system.
- Rather than writing complete sentences, write in phrases.
-
Learn in Multiple Ways
The more ways you use to learn something, the more brain areas you’ll activate to store information. By doing so, you will embed that information more deeply and more interconnectedly in your brain. As a result, you can keep the information more effectively than memorize it because it adds redundancy to your knowledge.
You can use several ways to do this, including reading notes, reading the textbook, and other academic materials from excellent online tools. For instance, you can check NYU documents here. Learning will be faster if you utilize more resources.
-
Write it Down
Do you have trouble grasping a new concept or memorizing a long formula? Then, you could consider writing it down. Study findings published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience suggest that writing things can help you remember unfamiliar characters like computer code or sheet music.
Moreover, Indiana University researchers discovered that kids who practiced writing letters on a piece of paper had significantly better neural activity than children who saw images of letters. The brain functions more efficiently when active, making memorization easier. Go old-school once in a while by ditching the keyboard for a more effective learning experience.
You can take it further by typing the handwritten notes again while reading them aloud. An article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that reading text aloud while studying led to the Production Effect, which improves memory. By typing them out, you can also review them during the process.
-
Test Yourself and Teach Others
The most common and oldest way to assist with memorization is to quiz yourself on what you’re studying. Your efficiency will improve as you identify what you know well and what needs more attention, and you’ll spend less time retrieving the information. Flashcards are a simple way to accomplish this.
Writing them out by hand adds an extra layer of complexity. Be sure to quiz yourself even after you feel you have mastered a specific piece of information to keep your memory sharp. You can practice teaching the material to someone else once you know it well. Teaching something requires thorough knowledge, and the fact that someone else depends on your ability makes it more stressful without overdoing it.
Conclusion
If you’d like to get the most out of these hacks, it would help to start early. Leaving until the last minute would only add to your stress, which would not make your brain perform at its optimum. Leaving ample time out of your studies will make you conquer your exams
Taylor is a freelance SEO copywriter and blogger. His areas of expertise include technology, pop culture, and marketing.
