TL;DR: You’ve been studying wrong. So have I. So has basically everyone who’s ever highlighted a textbook and felt productive. But there’s good news: science has figured out what actually works, and it’s probably the opposite of what your teachers taught you.

The Uncomfortable Truth Nobody Told You

Here’s a fun fact that’ll ruin your day: that three-hour study session where you re-read your notes, highlighted the important bits, and felt like a productivity god?

Yeah, that was basically useless.

I know. I hate it too.

But here’s the thing—there’s over 100 years of cognitive psychology research telling us exactly how memory works and exactly how to study effectively. The problem? Nobody teaches us this stuff. We’re just thrown into school, handed a textbook, and told “good luck, figure it out.”

So let’s fix that. Right now.

The Three Pillars of Actually Learning Stuff

Effective studying comes down to three things:

Understand (before you memorize anything)
Remember (combat the forgetting curve)
Focus (actually sit down and do the thing)

Revolutionary, I know. But stick with me—the devil’s in the details.

Step 1: Understanding (Or Why You Can’t Skip to the Flashcards)

Here’s a mistake I see all the time: students discover flashcards and spaced repetition, get excited, and immediately start making 500 cards about topics they don’t actually understand.

This is like trying to build a house by decorating the walls first. You need a foundation.

The Feynman Technique: Your BS Detector

Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist known as “The Great Explainer.” His superpower? He could explain quantum mechanics to a five-year-old.

And that’s exactly how you know if you actually understand something—can you explain it simply?

Here’s how it works:

Learn a topic
Close your notes
Explain it out loud like you’re talking to a friend (or a rubber duck, no judgment)
If you stumble, get confused, or start hand-waving… you don’t understand it yet

The moment you say “well, it’s kind of like… you know… it just works“—that’s the moment you’ve found a gap in your understanding.

Go back. Fill the gap. Try again.

Pro tip: You don’t need an actual five-year-old. But if you can’t explain cellular respiration without using the word “basically” fourteen times, you’ve got work to do.

The Secret Sauce: Active Recall

Okay, this is the part where I tell you the single most important thing in this entire article. If you remember nothing else, remember this:

Test yourself. Constantly. Aggressively. Relentlessly.

This is called active recall, and it’s basically a fancy way of saying “close the book and try to remember what you just read.”

Here’s what the research says:

In 2013, Professor Dunlosky and his colleagues reviewed thousands of studies on how students learn. They rated study techniques from “low utility” (doesn’t work) to “high utility” (actually works).

Active recall? High utility. The highest, actually.

Re-reading? Low utility.

Highlighting? Low utility.

Summarizing? Low utility.

Basically, all the stuff that feels productive is the stuff that doesn’t work.

Why Your Brain Is Lying to You

Here’s the cruel trick your brain plays: when you re-read something, it starts to feel familiar. And familiarity feels like learning.

But it’s not.

Recognizing information (seeing it and thinking “oh yeah, I know that”) is completely different from recalling information (pulling it out of your brain with nothing in front of you).

And guess what exams require? Recall.

The fix: Every time you learn something new, close your notes and ask yourself: “What did I just learn? Can I explain it? What are the key points?”

That tiny moment of struggle—that “ugh, what was it again?”—is where learning actually happens.

Step 2: Remembering (AKA Fighting the Forgetting Curve)

In the 1880s, a German psychologist named Hermann Ebbinghaus did something weird: he memorized hundreds of nonsense syllables and tested how quickly he forgot them.

What he discovered is now called the Forgetting Curve, and it’s both depressing and incredibly useful.

Here’s the deal:

Within 20 minutes of learning something, you’ve forgotten ~40% of it
Within 24 hours, you’ve forgotten ~70%
Within a week, you’ve forgotten ~90%

Your memory doesn’t fade gradually—it plummets like a skydiver without a parachute.

But here’s the good news:

Every time you review something, you reset the curve. And each reset makes the next decay slower.

Day 1: Learn it → forget 50% by tomorrow
Day 2: Review it → forget 50% by next week
Week 2: Review it → forget 50% by next month
Month 2: Review it → forget 50% by next year

This is called spaced repetition, and it’s the closest thing we have to a memory cheat code.

How to Actually Use Spaced Repetition

You’ve got options:

Option 1: Flashcard Apps (Anki, Quizlet, Cruxly)

Apps like Anki use algorithms to show you cards right before you’re about to forget them. It’s like having a personal trainer for your brain who knows exactly when to make you do another rep.

The downside? Making flashcards manually takes forever.

(Shameless plug: This is literally why we built Cruxly. Snap a photo of your notes, get flashcards in 60 seconds. Problem solved.)

Option 2: The Retrospective Revision Timetable

Forget planning what you’ll study in advance. Instead:

Create a spreadsheet with all your topics
After each study session, mark what you covered and rate your understanding (1-5)
Next session, prioritize topics with low scores or topics you haven’t touched in a while

This way, you’re always studying what you need most, not what some arbitrary schedule told you to study.

Interleaving: Why Switching Topics Makes You Smarter

Here’s something that’ll feel wrong but is actually right:

Mix up your studying.

Instead of spending 3 hours on one topic until you “master” it, do 1 hour on Topic A, 1 hour on Topic B, 1 hour on Topic C.

This is called interleaving, and research shows it significantly improves retention—even though it feels less effective in the moment.

Why It Works

When you practice the same thing over and over, your brain takes shortcuts. “Oh, I know this type of problem, I’ll just apply the formula.”

But when topics are mixed up, your brain has to work harder. It has to ask: “Wait, what kind of problem is this? What approach do I need?”

That extra cognitive effort = stronger learning.

Think of it like the gym: You don’t build muscle by doing the same bicep curl until your arm falls off. You switch exercises, challenge different muscles, keep your body guessing.

Same principle applies to your brain.

What About Re-Reading? (Spoiler: Don’t)

Let’s address the elephant in the room.

Re-reading is probably the most popular study technique on the planet. It’s also one of the least effective.

Dunlosky’s research concluded:

“When compared with some other learning techniques, rereading is typically much less effective. The relative disadvantage of rereading to other techniques is the largest strike against rereading and is the factor that weighed most heavily in our decision to assign it a rating of low utility.”

Translation: Re-reading technically works, but literally almost anything else works better.

When is re-reading acceptable?

Honestly? When you’re exhausted, it’s 11pm, and you can’t muster the energy to do anything more effortful.

At that point, re-reading is like going to the gym, doing one pull-up, and leaving. Not ideal, but technically you showed up.

Step 3: Focus (The Part Where You Actually Have to Do the Thing)

Understanding and remembering mean nothing if you can’t actually sit down and study.

The Pomodoro Technique

You know this one, but it works:

25 minutes of focused work
5 minute break
Repeat 4 times
Take a longer break (15-30 min)

The magic isn’t the timing—it’s the structure. Knowing you only have to focus for 25 minutes makes starting way less intimidating.

Environment Design

Your brain is easily tricked. Use this to your advantage:

Study in different places than where you relax. Your bedroom = sleep/Netflix. Library = work.
Remove your phone. Not on silent. Not face-down. In another room. If you can see it, you’ll reach for it.
Tell people what you’re doing. Public accountability is embarrassingly effective.

Study With Friends (The Right Way)

Studying with friends can be amazing… or a complete disaster. Here’s how to do it right:

Pick the right people. Find friends who actually want to study, not just hang out.
Have someone take charge. Designate a “Pomodoro master” who keeps everyone on track.
Use the 10-second rule. When reviewing together, give everyone 10 seconds of silence to think before anyone answers. Otherwise, the one person who knows everything will just shout out answers while everyone else nods along pretending they knew it too.

The Study Myths That Need to Die

Let’s kill some sacred cows:

❌ “I’m a visual learner”
Learning styles aren’t really a thing. Research consistently shows that matching teaching to “learning style” doesn’t improve outcomes. Use multiple approaches instead.

❌ “I work better under pressure”
You don’t. You just work faster. The quality suffers, and cramming destroys long-term retention.

❌ “Highlighting helps me remember”
It helps you feel productive. It doesn’t help you remember. Highlighting is to studying what Instagram is to photography—it looks like the real thing.

❌ “I’ll just study more hours”
More hours ≠ more learning. 2 hours of active recall beats 6 hours of passive re-reading every single time.

The Bottom Line

Here’s your new study protocol:

Understand first. Use the Feynman technique. If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it.
Test yourself constantly. Close the book. Try to recall. Struggle a little. That’s where learning happens.
Space your practice. Don’t cram. Review at increasing intervals. Use flashcards with spaced repetition algorithms.
Mix it up. Interleave topics. It feels harder because it is harder—and that’s exactly why it works.
Ditch the useless stuff. Re-reading, highlighting, and cramming feel productive but aren’t. Spend that time on active recall instead.

One More Thing

Look, I get it. This is a lot to change. You’ve been studying the same way for years, maybe decades. Old habits die hard.

But here’s the thing: you’re already spending the time. You’re already putting in the hours. Why not make those hours actually count?

The students who ace exams aren’t necessarily smarter. They’ve just figured out how learning actually works—and now, so have you.

Now go close this article and try to recall what you just read.

(See what I did there?)

Want to put this into practice without spending hours making flashcards? Try Cruxly — snap your notes, get quizzes in 60 seconds. All the science, none of the busywork.