How to Study at Home Effectively
There are many reasons you may want to study from home. Maybe you're working a job that doesn’t require you to be on-site for most of your day, or perhaps you're at school and need some downtime after classes let out.
Whatever the reason, being able to study at home can be beneficial to both students and working professionals alike—but we mustn't lose sight of how important studying as a whole is for our success as learners.
So how do we make sure that studying from home doesn't become an excuse for not getting the most out of our time with books?
Let's dive in.
Create Flashcards or Quiz Yourself
Flashcards have likely been used for faster and more efficient learning for at least a thousand years. This method works on both short and long-term memory.
Students of various specialties use flashcards; they are both good for those who need to learn new words in a foreign language and for doctors who need to learn more than 200 bones in the human body.
There are many ways to use flashcards effectively.
If you prefer to type and use electronics, then you can leverage an app on your phone or computer. One of the best apps is Quizlet, it's the most used because it has collections of different themes, and you can create your own online flashcards.
Quizlet is a free app, so it's perfect for you if you're a student on a budget.
You can also create physical flashcards called index cards. So you will additionally memorize the material when you write down information on flashcards because when we write by hand, our memory works more efficiently than when we copy or print.
Another great reason to use physical flashcards is that they can be placed in plain sight in different places in the house, where they will most often catch your eye.
The flashcard learning method is the least labor-intensive even in terms of time, because for learning, you do not need to open your phone or computer every time.
Index cards are available in almost every grocery store, pharmacy, and office supply store.
Make a Quiz Book out of Various Questions
In many cases, we study to be able to answer some professional questions, and often it is not about work questions but about exams at the university or at high school.
Therefore, you should not focus on learning all the topics completely very deeply but on being able to answer questions qualitatively.
Here is a list of resources where you can get these questions:
Questions from class discussions.
Questions from homework.
Questions that professors take from footnotes.
Read your textbooks attentively because the professors typically take their questions to the course from the extra information that is mentioned in the footnotes.
By the time you create your own quiz book based on these questions, you will already be repeating a lot of information that will help you pass exams or write the necessary papers.
Take Breaks Every 20-30 Minutes
Taking a break every 20-30 minutes helps your brain process information.
In fact, studying without rest breaks is the fastest way to reduce efficiency, even for a few days.
Cognitive burnout is a process that you can hardly reverse. If you get very tired, your brain will rest for as long as it needs. Even extra sleep will not help you.
Therefore, to prevent cognitive burnout before an exam, please study for 20-30 minutes and take a break of 5-10 minutes. In a few days, you will definitely see all the benefits of such a system.
You will not get tired, and during the period when you study, you will really concentrate on the material, and you will memorize it very quickly.
In this regard, learning at home is better than in the classroom. Because when you study, you do it with concentration, without unnecessary sounds around.
And when you are relaxing, you can do a wide range of activities without being distracted by other people.
Make your Environment Studies-Friendly
In addition to balancing work and leisure, it is important to pay attention to the atmosphere and environment in which you study.
Firstly, it is significant to ventilate the room with fresh air and keep the room cool.
If the room is stuffy, then the likelihood that you will remember something and be able to reproduce it on the exam is almost zero.
Be sure to drink water and try to stretch your body at least a few times during the day. It is not necessary to do any serious physical exercises. A few minutes of activity or stretching will help keep you cognitively active.
Everything in our body is interconnected, and you must understand that our body is tuned to survive. Getting a higher education is not on the list of priorities in the context of survival.
Therefore, you should not expect your brain to process and remember information well until you cover the basic health needs of having enough water, good air, and physical activity.
Set Boundaries with People Around You
The COVID pandemic has shown that it is not easy to study from home if you are not at home by yourself.
For many people, the main obstacle to online learning is that professors cannot always teach online well, but at home, we constantly face distractions.
Most of these distractions are due to the people we live with. Don't let anyone dictate your studying style and dealing with education challenges.
If you need to lock yourself in a room for two days — be it if you need to address a professional writing company, such as Smart Writing Service, for essay writing help – do it.
You don't need to explain yourself when you want to delegate some tasks to expert writers, like thousands of other students worldwide.
Be sure to set specific times when you study and ask that no one bother you while you study. This is good not only for your studies but also for your relationships with loved ones.
Because you will not only be less annoyed, but your relatives will know exactly the time when they can fully communicate with you.
Wrapping up
We hope these tips will help you study more effectively at home.
It's important to remember that there is no one right way for everyone, so try out some different methods and see what works best for you!
