Now, my all-time favourite revision technique is blurting. What sounds like your friend accidentally spilling secrets is actually the method that got me my A*s. I was introduced to this by my wonderful A level biology teacher who made it a priority to mentor students in her free time about the importance of effective revision, without any prompting from my school. Shout out to you, Mrs Greenslade – you’re the true revision queen.

Hermann Ebbinghaus, who some people call the father of memory because he carried out experiments about human retention, discovered the forgetting curve. When you first approach something new, your memory starts strong: you revise a concept, understand it, and recall the information. But memory decays over time. To improve the curve, you review the information again, multiple times, and at set intervals from first learning it. By reviewing the information, you “reset” your memory. The more you review a concept, the longer you can wait to review it again. Eventually, you’ll be able to review a given concept once a month or once every few months. With this system, you can review concepts every day for five minutes. Bowler recommends creating connections between new concepts that you’re learning and your prior knowledge through storytelling. She presents three different ways you can do so:This book put into words thoughts I didn’t even know I had about school/grades/exams and not only made me feel motivated, but seen. The force of the water erodes and undercuts the river bank on the outside of the bend where water flow has most energy due to decreased friction.

Think of failure as a chance to learn. A symptom of fear of failure is perfectionism. With perfectionism, you focus on small details instead of the big picture. Once you know the priority levels of your tasks, schedule a time to complete them. Bowler recommends scheduling tasks week by week for up to a month in advance. You should revisit your schedule at the beginning of each week to make a daily and hourly schedule. Bowler discusses four main study methods based on the above cognitive processes that will help you maximize your learning in as little time as possible. Method #1: Flashcards PDF / EPUB File Name: The_only_study_guide_youll_ever_need_-_Jade_bowler.pdf, The_only_study_guide_youll_ever_need_-_Jade_bowler.epubAs a general rule, we tend to underestimate tasks and overvalue our abilities. Therefore, we think things are going to take less than they do. In Scrum, Jeff Sutherland explains that when listing the actions ( plans) that are necessary to accomplish a vision (your tasks that fulfill obligations), you should also record the resources needed, the effort required, and what the standard for completion is for each action. For example, you might note “Make flashcards—requires: library textbook rental, medium effort, 1 card per vocab term, 1 hour of time.” You can create a system around spaced repetition (using spreadsheets, or Notion) with the concepts you’re trying to learn and the time when you last studied it. You don’t have to revise longer, just more frequently. After each chapter, I was inspired to start doing. Her advice sees a person as a full human being, Jade knows we are not machines, and she describes techniques that are realistic and actually work. To organize your digital or physical space come up with a system. The author suggests a ring-binder folder for sheets and a tree-like system for online/digital files.

Finally, Bowler recommends completing past papers—real exam papers from previous years—or taking a practice exam on the subject you’re studying for. These methods provide the experience of answering the types of questions on the real exam. Talk about your mental health struggles and don’t isolate yourself emotionally. Accept that exams are stressful and they’re not everything in life. Chapter 11: The Night Before the Exam This method has been recommended by numerous productivity experts, including Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins, and Brian Tracy. As always this was a self-help book which gave the excitement. Which self-help book didn't? A self-help book is written to make you feel good. And that's the reason, most of the self-help books have the same words, maybe just a different scenario and subject. Stephen Kosslyn, a psychologist and neuroscientist, divided human learning into two: “think it through” and “make and use associations”. “Think it through”: the more deeply you think about an idea, the more you remember it. An example would be “active recall”, a technique that instead of re-reading, encourages you to think about what you remember. Active recall is about being active rather than passive and the main problem with it is that it goes against human nature since we’re always looking for the path of least resistance. SAAD: AssociationsBook Genre: Academic, Education, Health, Mental Health, Nonfiction, Personal Development, Productivity, School, Self Help Blurting is easy to put off because it is mentally taxing. It forces you to stare your knowledge in the face and be honest with where you’re at, without the luxury of hiding behind a textbook. However, it is an essential self-assessment tool to show you what you need to spend more time on. The more you repeat blurting the same concepts, the stronger your knowledge in them will become. Don’t overcommit by trying to please everyone. Sometimes you have to stop giving to others so that you can focus on your own goals. In the author’s words: “Learning to say no is about saying yes to yourself.” She did not just write this book during a busy school year, in which I was struggling to finish the normal workload of assignments, but on top of that, she wrote an incredibly useful book.

When you’ve written everything you can remember, compare your blurted knowledge to an official textbook, mark scheme or notes. Suddenly, you’ve got evidential proof of what you do and don’t know. As a fellow student now at university, I definitely don't have a PhD in Exam Etiquette but this is the book younger me needed. All I wanted was one place that had a variety of tried-and-tested methods with reassurance from someone who had recently been through the education system. The Only Study Guide You'll Ever Need is just that, and I have collected the best techniques and tools I wish I'd known earlier to help you get through your studies and smash your exams! Re-assess the importance and urgency of tasks and plans to ensure you’re using your time wisely. For instance, if you’ve scheduled a spaced repetition session for this week but still remember the information perfectly, delay or skip the session.Did you recall things word for word? Were you actually able to explain that difficult concept or did you just think you knew it? What did you leave out? And although I did not go to a UK high school and I had a very different focus during that time of my life, I think younger-Pia would have liked this book a lot! I realized that life is not just about what you work as or how heavy your paycheque is. I learned that you will never just be defined by your job. Work is a role you play to survive, contribute to the world and hopefully bring fulfillment to your life, but it is not everything."