4 Ways to Ruin Your Studying Efficiency
Summary
TLDRIn this video, Dr. Justin Sung humorously reveals four ways to ruin your learning efficiency. He explains the importance of aligning study methods with different types of knowledge, avoiding irrelevant memorization, and the pitfalls of not improving and choosing comfort over progress. Dr. Sung shares insights from his experience as a learning coach and former medical doctor, emphasizing the need for meaningful metrics in measuring learning success. Viewers are encouraged to stick to ineffective habits to ensure they never improve their learning efficiency.
Takeaways
- 📚 Studying methods should align with the way knowledge needs to be used, emphasizing the importance of understanding interconnected concepts rather than just memorizing isolated facts.
- 🔍 Prioritize learning material that is most relevant to your existing knowledge to build a strong foundation and facilitate deeper understanding and better memory retention.
- 🕰 Time is precious; avoid wasting it by learning in a way that doesn't contribute to building a robust understanding of the subject matter.
- 🧩 Start learning by identifying the most relevant information first, similar to solving a jigsaw puzzle from the edges inwards, to progressively build a comprehensive picture.
- 🚫 Avoid learning in the order given without considering relevance, as this can lead to inefficient learning and difficulty in forming a coherent understanding of the material.
- 🤯 Never improve by always choosing comfort over challenging your current methods, which can hinder growth and keep you stuck in inefficient learning habits.
- 🤔 Encourage self-awareness and critical reflection to assess the effectiveness of your learning methods and be open to making necessary changes for improvement.
- 📉 Use meaningful metrics to measure learning success that reflect the quality of knowledge acquired and its retention, rather than just the quantity of material covered.
- 📉 Avoid metrics that don't necessarily correlate with learning success, such as the number of notes written or lectures covered, which can be misleading.
- 🔑 Recognize that not seeing a problem in your learning process means you won't address it, leading to perpetual inefficiency.
- 🔄 Commit to practicing and applying new learning techniques to truly experience their benefits, rather than just dipping your toes in without full immersion.
Q & A
Who is the speaker in the video and what are his credentials?
-The speaker is Dr. Justin Sung, a learning coach, learning researcher, and head of learning at I Can Study. He is a former medical doctor with a decade of experience teaching people to learn more efficiently.
What is the main purpose of the video?
-The main purpose of the video is to explain four ways to ruin learning efficiency, framed humorously as a guide on how to avoid studying effectively.
What is the first method mentioned to ruin learning efficiency?
-The first method is to make sure the way you study is completely irrelevant to how you will be tested or need to use the knowledge, focusing only on memorization and isolated fact recall.
Why is studying using only memorization and isolated fact recall considered inefficient?
-It is considered inefficient because it does not help in understanding the interconnectedness of concepts, which is necessary for solving complex problems and applying knowledge in real-world scenarios.
What is 'order control' and why is it important for effective learning?
-'Order control' is a method where you control the order in which you learn new information based on its relevance to what you already know. This method helps in building a stronger and more interconnected memory, making learning more efficient.
What happens if you ignore relevance and order in your study methods?
-Ignoring relevance and order leads to learning information in a fragmented and isolated manner, making it difficult to form connections and retain knowledge, thereby wasting more time and effort.
What is the third method mentioned to avoid improvement in learning?
-The third method is to always choose comfort over challenging oneself, avoiding critical reflection and self-awareness that are essential for growth and improvement.
What example is given to illustrate the importance of challenging oneself in learning?
-An example given is of a medical student who spent a year using inefficient study methods due to fear of change, resulting in wasted time and minimal improvement until she committed to better techniques.
Why are meaningful metrics important in measuring learning success?
-Meaningful metrics are important because they provide insight into the quality of learning and retention. Metrics like the number of notes written or lectures covered do not necessarily reflect true understanding or ability to use the knowledge.
What is the speaker's favorite method to ensure poor learning efficiency?
-The speaker's favorite method is using metrics that mean nothing, as it ensures that any problems in the learning process remain unseen and unaddressed, perpetuating inefficiency.
Outlines
😱 How to Ruin Your Learning Efficiency
In this video, Dr. Justin Sung, a learning coach and researcher, shares four methods to ensure you learn inefficiently. These tips are meant to help you avoid becoming too efficient in your studies. Dr. Sung highlights the importance of understanding how different study methods align with the types of knowledge you need to retrieve, and stresses the importance of using irrelevant methods to waste time and learn less effectively.
🚫 Learning the Wrong Way
This section emphasizes the importance of learning the wrong things in the wrong way to ensure inefficiency. Dr. Sung explains that the brain builds knowledge by connecting new information to what we already know. To waste time, he advises against scanning material for relevance and suggests learning in the same order as presented, without considering connections. This approach guarantees poor retention and constant relearning.
🛋️ Choosing Comfort Over Improvement
Dr. Sung discusses the dangers of choosing comfort over growth. He uses the example of a medical student who wasted a year due to fear of changing ineffective study methods. He highlights the importance of self-awareness and critical reflection for improvement, and warns that sticking to comfortable but inefficient methods prevents real progress.
📊 Misleading Metrics for Learning Success
The final section covers the pitfalls of using meaningless metrics to measure learning success. Dr. Sung explains that metrics like the number of notes taken or lectures covered don't reflect the quality of learning. He stresses the need to use meaningful metrics that actually measure understanding and retention. Ignoring this advice will ensure long-term inefficiency in learning.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Learning Efficiency
💡Retrieval Practice
💡Interconnected Knowledge
💡Prior Knowledge
💡Order Control
💡Relevance
💡Self-Awareness
💡Critical Reflection
💡Comfort Zone
💡Metrics
💡Flashcards
Highlights
Four ways to ruin your learning efficiency are discussed.
Align study methods with different knowledge retrieval needs for a robust study system.
Avoid studying in a way that is too relevant to ensure time is wasted.
The human brain builds knowledge by relating new information to existing knowledge.
Order control in learning can lead to high-quality memory and understanding.
Learning in the order given without considering relevance can be inefficient.
Choosing comfort over challenging oneself can prevent improvement.
Self-awareness and critical reflection are key to growth and self-development.
A student's story illustrates the consequences of sticking to inefficient methods.
Measuring learning success with meaningless metrics can hide problems.
Metrics should reflect the quality of knowledge and retention.
Not seeing the problem means not being ready to improve.
Asking if someone could perform better with lower metrics can reveal ineffective measures.
The importance of using meaningful metrics for true learning progress.
A call to action to subscribe for more efficient learning strategies.
A suggestion to watch another video for creating a personal development plan.
An offer to check out a playlist for learning the basics of efficient studying.
Transcripts
are you sick and tired of being Elite do
you wish you could spend more time
studying and remember less are you
looking to feel overwhelmed with more
content look no further in this video
I'm gonna tell you four ways that you
can absolutely ruin your learning
efficiency and for some of you you may
already even be doing some of these make
sure to stick around to the end because
number four is my personal favorite way
to learn absolutely nothing even if I
study for hours if you're new to the
channel welcome I'm Dr Justin sung I'm a
learning coach learning researcher and
head of learning at I can study I'm a
former medical doctor and for the last
decade I have worked with tens of
thousands of people to teach them to
learn more efficiently which also means
that I have a lot of experience seeing
how people can work inefficiently before
we jump in I'd appreciate if you give
this video a like it really does help
with the YouTube algorithm so coming in
at number one make sure the way you
study is completely relevant what does
this mean you know how there are
different ways that you can be tested
for example you can get a very direct
fact recall kind of question for example
name the parts of this animal cell but
you can also get a question that's like
this medication affects the cell's TRNA
function in this way what is the
potential impact it could have on
protein synthesis so you can see it's a
lot more interconnected it requires us
to draw on lots of different concepts
and how they influence each other it's
different from just like an isolated
factorical there's different types of
knowledge even in the workplace that's
exactly the same we might have problems
that we're trying to solve that's like
what's the process for cleaning this
data set again versus using your
knowledge in a really interconnected way
like if the data set is this small then
what are still some relevant analyzes
that I can do that give me an insight
into the businesses recent performance
so you can see that the latter requires
a lot more of that high level synthesis
drawing on your understanding of lots of
different concepts so if you make sure
that the methods that you're using to
study are aligned with the different
types of ways that you need to retrieve
that knowledge for example if you need
to retrieve the knowledge in these
interconnected ways using a non-linear
relational method of studying that
allows you to see the big picture and
the connections and figure out the
influence and relationship between them
and then you can pad up and supplement
that with direct Factor recall isolated
methods for example like flashcards if
you do that then you'd have a robust and
comprehensive study system that means
that when you are studying the type of
knowledge that you're developing is
going to be high quality and as a result
you'll be able to use that knowledge in
the right way for whatever your needs
are but obviously if you do that then
you're running into the risk where you
might actually spend a lot of time
studying and then you'd actually also
learn a lot too which we don't want that
now so we have to make sure that we
don't do that instead make sure that
your methods of studying are just purely
memorization and isolated fact recall
don't think at all about how you need to
use knowledge in different ways and how
the method of studying might actually
influence that so make sure you're
wasting as much time as possible you
have to make sure that the methods
you're using are as irrelevant to the
way you need to use your knowledge as
possible something that you definitely
should do is you really should like this
video
secondly as time is precious and like
we've already talked about it's
important that you waste as much of that
time as possible one great way to waste
hours and hours of time in fact like
almost all of the time that you've spent
studying is to make sure that you learn
the wrong thing in the wrong way this
one's a little bit more complicated so
let me explain the human brain builds
knowledge and memory in a very specific
way
we all start off with a set of prior
knowledge either from previously
studying the topic or just general
knowledge you may have picked up
throughout life now when new information
enters into the brain then our brain
tries to see how it's related to what we
already know when that new information
is related to a lot of our existing
knowledge then our brain knows how to
think about it it's more easily
integrated and Consolidated which is
what forms a stronger more robust memory
and because it's connected to lots of
other things we can use that knowledge
in many different ways it's kind of like
a town that is connected by lots of
different highways versus let's say a
town that you can only reach you know by
boat because it's on an island now the
thing is though that when we're learning
things in the normal kind of real world
we can't really control all the time
whether the information that we're
learning is going to be relevant or not
and especially this is the case in
formal education where the information
is actually being fed to you in a very
specific order and this could be reading
it through a book or it could be someone
speaking to you but the idea is that new
information is actually scattered all
around and that information isn't always
going to be something that your brain
finds relevant it's not always going to
see that there's lots of different
connections and so in order to make sure
that the time that we spend studying
creates the highest quality memory and
depth of understanding possible what we
need to do is we need to scan through
the material to pick out the parts that
our brain would find the most relevant
in other words what in the new
information feels like it is the most
related to and connected to what you
already know and that could be a lot or
it could be very little but by starting
in this way we're able to extract out
new parts of information maybe not at
the same usually actually not in the
same order as what's given to us and
then as we do that our knowledge is
going to grow and grow and grow and that
means that as we learn more new
information we have more and more more
points of reference so for example if
this piece of information was new and
previously it would have had nothing to
really connect to well now that we've
got a better Foundation we can actually
form some new connections with it that
we might not have been able to do one or
two hours ago and this is the benefit of
going by relevance when you start with
what your brain feels like it's better
at holding on to and what feels more
relevant it allows you to build
relevance on top of relevance and as we
learn it starts to make more and more
sense it's actually getting
progressively easier to deal with it's
kind of like completing a jigsaw puzzle
when you start with a jigsaw puzzle if
you just start from like a random part
of the middle that looks the same as any
other part of the puzzle it's actually
really hard to solve it because you have
to dig through all the you know hundreds
of different pieces to find the right
one what you should do is just to start
with the edge pieces the one that's got
a flat Edge on one side and then as you
complete the edge pieces then you start
getting more to work with and you can
fill in from the edge edges towards the
middle and this means that as you go it
gets easier and easier because you're
building that bigger picture and also
because there's more stuff that's
Consolidated there's less pieces in the
Box for you to scatter through to figure
out how to make sense of it all it
becomes more a matter of finding the
right thing and just fitting it into the
Gap that is still in your puzzle so if
you're controlling the order in which
you are learning the information based
on relevance and this is a method that I
call order control then this means that
you have a very very high chance of
learning a lot and having really great
depths of understanding as well as
really high quality memory after a
single study session which would be
terrible in this case so to avoid doing
that we need to make sure that we are
learning things in just the same order
as what was given to us and we're never
really thinking about whether it's
relevant or not and we're never really
looking for things that are more
relevant instead what we should do is
just take each piece of information one
by one try to memorize and completely
understand each individual piece of
information so that one day hopefully we
form that big picture it would be kind
of like trying to serve a jigsaw puzzle
by just staring at a box full of pieces
and then individually try to memorize
each piece until somehow you can
magically see how it all fits together
and forms the bigger picture
which is incredibly inefficient and
maybe even impossible
perfect but what's even better is that
if we do that then our brain is going to
have no idea what to do with all of
these individual isolated pieces of
information and so it's not going to
hold on to it very strongly either for
example if you're trying to memorize
each individual jigsaw piece one by one
then you probably get through five or
six pieces before you start forgetting
what the first one looked like and so in
that case you now need to spend more
time to go back and relearn the stuff
that you already covered but now you're
forgotten and in doing so you create a
never-ending backlog of things for you
to constantly repeatedly learn because
you didn't learn it the right way the
first time and by doing that we can
waste even more time and as long as
every time we're trying to relearn
something that we forgot we're just
relearning it in the same way that we
learned it the first time then we can
guarantee that we're going to forget
like half of it again so we never really
able to get on top of the material that
we're constantly forgetting so if you
wanted to be really overwhelmed with
work all the time and as you study more
and more it just gets harder and more
overwhelming then this is going to be
perfect for you thirdly and this is
critical we have to never actually
improve every year of Our Lives
challenges are just going to get
continually harder so imagine if your
abilities and skills grew faster in the
challenges got harder imagine how
efficient you would become if every week
you're getting 5 or 10 watts even one
percent more efficient than you are now
yes it may not be enough for an
immediate short-term goal like in the
next few months but over time your
ability to handle challenges would grow
massively and we can't have that
happening so to make sure that we never
really improve or grow we have to always
choose Comfort the key components to
growth and self-development is
self-awareness and critical reflection
which sound like kind of fluffy words
but it's actually very logical it just
means that we know what we are doing why
we are doing it and whether we think
it's working or not for example most
people learn a certain way because they
just picked it up from their friends or
it's just a habit of learning that they
picked up over time and a lot of people
feel very insecure about changing their
methods and so as a result they choose
Comfort let me give you an example one
of my students is finishing their second
year of medical school at King's College
London and they started off studying
four or five hours a day but we found
that a lot of the time the issue of
spending was wasted there was a lot of
inefficient methods being used she was
relearning a lot of what she'd already
forgotten in fact of the four or five
hours a day of studying like three or
four of those hours were spent on just
kind of re-learning and recapping the
stuff that she had already covered
before and also the myth is that she was
using was not really a line and so even
though she was studying it she wasn't
really able to use the knowledge very
well for her needs either she'd kind of
resigned herself to the fact that there
are some difficult curvier questions in
the exam that are going to come up that
she's just not going to be able to
answer so she actually ended up joining
my programming and after a whole year
she sent me this big long email and she
was like the techniques aren't working
I'm not getting any better I'm my
results aren't any better and she was
getting really stressed out because she
was about to enter into her second year
which is you know even harder so I
jumped on a call with her to see what
was going on and it turns out that for
the whole year she had been so afraid of
making any real and meaningful changes
to her methods because you know just in
case she screws up that she had never
even tried practicing the techniques for
more than a few hours she had
effectively spent her whole year just
dipping her toes
in and out rather than starting with
dipping her toes and then eventually
kind of like submerging herself more and
more and so for her the comfort of
holding on to and keeping with her
current methods and habits was well
worthwhile then the discomfort
associated with making a change so
here's the learning point from the story
is that instead of actually challenging
ourselves and asking ourselves is this
really working or do I just want to
believe that it's working because if
it's not that means that there's too
much uncertainty and discomfort
associated with accepting it and then
having to make a change instead of
asking ourselves that by choosing
Comfort instead of making changes we can
guarantee that nothing will change and
so will never improve by choosing
comfort and doubling down on methods
that weren't working for her she managed
to spend the whole year on trying to
improve without actually ever improving
now unfortunately that was was a year
ago and then I had that call in the
meeting with her and I sort of told her
you know this is what's going on and
then she decided to really commit
herself and so now apparently in her
recent email she said that she's down to
studying only two or three hours a day
so you know that's unfortunate it's
really amazing how much people can
change when they stay open-minded and
commit to making wild thought out
strategic decisions so yeah we can't
have that no but that doesn't have to be
you as long as you follow the tips in
this video don't worry I promise you
will not improve finally number four my
favorite way to learn absolutely nothing
even if my eyes bleed from studying so
much measure your learning success with
metrics that mean nothing a metric is
something that you use to measure
something else for example a metric for
how fast your traveling might be
kilometers an hour a metric for how well
a YouTube video is performing could be
views or likes and metrics really matter
because it tells us what we care about
it gives us insight into the problem
back when I was still working as a
doctor one of the things that I hated
was that there weren't any metrics on
the doctor's well-being or their job
satisfaction or the efficiency of the
system the hospital management didn't
really care and if there were any
problems they would never know because
they're not measuring it so no matter
how bad things got there was probably
not any action that was gonna arise out
of it because the problem doesn't exist
and it's the same thing with learning
that student from before she measured
her success with learning based on how
many notes she was able to write
lectures for in a single day or the
number of lectures she was able to cover
should be really happy if she was able
to cover five lectures in a single day
or do four years worth of past papers
but since learning is something that
happens in our brain and that's where we
need the knowledge not on Hafer those
metrics are actually kind of meaningless
how many no to be rain or how many
lectures we cover are how many papers we
do it doesn't actually tell us about the
quality of the knowledge that's in our
brain our brain's ability to hold on to
it or use it in the way that we need to
use it for example even if she was happy
to cover five lectures in a day she
didn't really think about the fact that
she would be forgetting half of it a
week later anyway so the total amount of
time it would take for her to reach the
level of knowledge that she actually
needs at the retention level she
actually needs was way longer than just
a single study session but she wasn't
measuring any of that so the problem
didn't really exist and that's the key
if you don't see the problem you never
fix it even when she learned better
techniques and better methods she wasn't
willing to commit to it because of the
fact that it might mean that Chief
covers fewer lectures in a single study
session even though her retention and
quality of learning was higher and so it
should be saving more time overall and
even after she'd learned about how to
measure learning more effectively she
didn't actually apply that because it
wasn't as convenient to measure as her
normal ways of measuring things and
that's how she managed to leave it for a
whole year without even realizing what
the problem was which led to her sending
me a big long email like everything is
broken nothing is working and then I
looked at it and I was like
that's not where the problem is so if
you want to make sure that you are blind
to any problems then make sure that you
don't think about things too deeply do
not measure things in a way that is
Meaningful now you might be wondering
how can I know if my metric makes a
difference or not and a few good
questions that you can ask yourself are
is there someone that would do better
than me even if they were to score lower
on the metric so for example in a single
study session is it possible that
someone could study and cover less
lectures than me but still perform
better or you could even make it is it
possible that this metric doesn't
necessarily lead to success is it
possible that the more flash cards I
cover or the more past papers I do it
doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to do
well if the answer is yes then it
probably means that the Metro trick that
you're using is not going to make the
biggest difference
which is excellent now the reason that
this is my personal favorite way to ruin
your learning efficiency is because it's
fundamental if you don't even see the
problem in the first place you are not
even ready to start improving which is
one of the most efficient ways to
Forever stay inefficient use all four of
these methods and I guarantee you will
struggle with learning your whole life
don't worry if you enjoyed this video
make sure to subscribe so you don't miss
my future uploads and if for some reason
you're interested in learning to be more
efficient rather than less for some
reason then you might be interested in
this video here around how you can
create the perfect safest fastest
personal development plan it's a method
that I've been using for years or if
you're looking for a single place to
start with my videos that you can cover
the basics as quickly as possible then
check out this playlist here thank you
so much for watching and I'll see you
next time
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