The Only Study Guide You'll Ever Need: Simple tips, tricks and techniques to help you ace your studies and pass your exams!

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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. The academic system is a game, and you came to win: the academic system is a game with rules and you can develop a winning formula.

I feel that this book can be encouraged to be read from the school level. This is because we start learning mostly from school. Most of this book is generally explained around the UK educational system. However the principles and tips mentioned are universal. The tone of this book is intimate and it feels like you are speaking to someone close. Thus never feeling like an advice. The end of the book was a little bit slow and a little harder to get through, but I still learned things from it. Book Genre: Academic, Education, Health, Mental Health, Nonfiction, Personal Development, Productivity, School, Self Help 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. 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!The Urgent/Important Principle follows the same general outline as Bowler’s recommendation—to consider your level of understanding (importance) and the deadline (urgency) when prioritizing tasks. However, Bowler’s method doesn’t mention the possibility of avoiding tasks entirely if they’re deemed unimportant and not urgent. This is likely because Bowler sees all tasks that appear on your list—school requirements, extracurriculars, and social events—as important, and thus worth completing at some point. Step #4: Schedule Your Tasks 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 Every space in your environment should have a purpose. Don’t associate your desk with wasting time (such as using social media). If you don’t have a space, use the local library. The river’s force causes the sides of the river to change shape. The higher the force, the more it changes shape. On the side with less force, there is more sediment.

Options: getting good grades gives you more options either for universities you want to apply to or the job you can get. To start a new habit attach the desired habit to an existing one, make it a habit, and give it a cue. Habits are formed through repetition and over time. 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. Bowler notes that you should consider spaced repetition when scheduling your study times. For example, “study flashcards” might be one task on your list, but scheduling and performing it only once won’t improve your understanding of the material. Instead, use the spaced repetition technique by scheduling multiple flashcard sessions at regular intervals.Oakley explains that when our brain first absorbs information, it stores it as a “chunk” in our working memory—where information is stored while we process it. “Chunks” are bits of information that are bound together by a common theme or meaning—for example, the food-related vocabulary words for your upcoming Spanish exam might form one chunk, and vocabulary about the rooms of the home might be another chunk. The more we build connections between the bits of information in these chunks, the stronger the neural pathways within the chunks get; the deeper the chunk gets ingrained into our long-term memory; and the easier it is to recall the information within it. Write down what your life will look like in five years if you choose a different, but realistic alternative path. Well, I do admit there were pieces that did entertain me, though, overall, this book left me unimpressed. I expected much more from this book when I started reading it but, it was...in a sense, boring. Summarization from memory: notes are a useful foundation, but they don’t count as revision. Summarize with intention and do it half from memory (so summarize without copying). Try saying a summary out loud or explaining it to a friend. Discipline and hard work: working hard at school gives you discipline, a routine, goals and a roadmap to achieve them, and a wide array of problem-solving techniques.

Experts echo Bowler’s suggestions on how to create and use flashcards to boost your study productivity and learning. However, they emphasize a few additional techniques that make studying with flashcards even more effective and prevent outcomes that could negatively impact learning. By incorporating these ideas alongside Bowler’s recommendations, not only will you boost your productivity, but you’ll also ensure that you aren’t accidentally sabotaging your learning. Write down what your life will look like in five years if money and outside expectations didn’t matter.Third, you can connect elements of a concept to parts of a physical object—when you look at the object, it will help you remember the elements of the concept. For example, connect the three main stages of the hydrologic cycle to your water bottle: First is evaporation—you can connect this stage to the top part of your water bottle that’s foggy because of evaporation. Next is condensation—you can connect this to the water droplets inside your bottle and imagine that they’re the product of condensation, like raindrops. Finally, connect precipitation to the water sitting at the bottom of your bottle—imagine this is the rainwater that has fallen and collected. What’s a habit? A habit isn’t a daily activity. If you feel like you have to do something, that’s not a habit, that’s a responsibility. According to Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, habits have three parts: First, flashcards should require deep engagement. There are a few ways you can do this. One of the easiest ways is to create cards with a question on one side and an answer on the other—before flipping the card over, you must answer the question yourself. This will make studying with flashcards harder than simply flipping through your cards and rereading information.

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 The second of Kossly’s maxims is “make and use associations”. Revising means connecting what you’re learning to previous knowledge. In other words, revising is about making associations and using them. You can’t expect to learn a brand-new concept with no foundational knowledge to relate it to. SAAD: Desirable Difficulty In A Mind For Numbers, Barbara Oakley suggests that the underlying reason why turning information into a story aids memory is that it replicates the brain's system of storing information and transferring it from the working memory to long-term memory. All three of Bowler’s recommendations—creating an original story to connect pieces of a concept, connecting parts of a concept to a routine, and connecting parts of a concept to an object—mimic this process.Productivity isn’t about studying for hours on end, it’s about spending your time well. It’s about doing what needs to be done so that you can enjoy some free time. It’s about focusing on what’s important at a given moment and with intentionality. 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. Over time, the horseshoe becomes tighter, until the ends come very close together. As the river breaks through, e.g. during a flood, the loop is cut off from the main channel. The cut-off loop is called an oxbow lake.