u/Extension-Analyst885

i realized most of my studying was basically fake productivity

i’d spend hours highlighting notes, rereading lecture slides, organizing folders, watching “study with me” videos etc and somehow still blank out during tutorials

what finally started helping was switching almost everything to active recall instead

a few things that genuinely improved my revision a lot:

- instead of rereading notes, i try to explain concepts without looking

- i focus way more on practice questions than summaries now

- i stopped making huge decks with hundreds of useless flashcards

- i only keep cards that make me think for more than a few seconds

also started using specific resources differently instead of relying on just one site for everything

stuff i’ve been using lately:

- https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorLeonard for math

- https://www.youtube.com/@TheOrganicChemistryTutor for chem/physics problems

- https://www.khanacademy.org for fundamentals

- https://apps.ankiweb.net for spaced repetition

- https://quizeagle.com to turn lecture pdfs into flashcards/quizzes faster because manually making cards from 70+ slides is actually painful

honestly the biggest change was realizing studying should feel a little uncomfortable

if i’m just rereading something and it feels easy, i’m probably not learning much

curious what methods/resources actually worked for other people because i swear half the study advice online is just aesthetic procrastination

i used to “study” by rereading lecture slides for hours and honestly almost none of it actually stuck

i’d spend like 5 hours feeling productive and then realize i couldn’t even answer basic questions without looking at my notes again

recently i changed the way i revise and it’s actually been helping a lot during exam season

basically instead of summarizing everything, i force myself into active recall immediately

what i do now:

dump all my lecture notes/pdf slides into one place
turn concepts into questions instead of summaries
only make cards for things that are:

- repeated a lot

- emphasized by the prof

- likely to appear in tutorials/exams

if a flashcard is too easy, delete it

i used to make cards like: “what is the powerhouse of the cell” those cards just waste time honestly

if i can answer it in like 3 seconds without thinking, it’s probably not helping much. making flashcards manually takes forever. this was the biggest problem for me during midterms because turning 80 pages of notes into usable cards is actually painful

i ended up building a small tool for myself that converts lecture pdfs/notes into flashcards automatically because i got tired of spending more time making cards than actually studying lol

been using that to speed up the boring part and then i just edit the generated cards after.

overall though, active recall + spaced repetition genuinely feels way more effective than rereading notes over and over

curious what study methods actually worked for other people

The biggest studying mistake i made

I stopped rereading lecture slides and my revision got way faster