The hard truth: That beautiful color-coded notebook? Those perfectly highlighted textbooks? The notes you spent 6 hours making look Instagram-worthy?

Science says they’re not helping you. Like, at all.

I know. It hurts. But stick with me—because once you know what actually works, you’ll never waste another study session again.

The Big Three Study Techniques Everyone Uses (That Don’t Work)

Let’s get the painful part over with first.

In 2013, Professor Dunlosky and his colleagues did something wild: they analyzed hundreds of research papers on how students learn. They looked at every popular study technique and rated them from “high utility” to “low utility.”

The results? Devastating.

1. Re-reading: The Comfort Food of Studying

You know the drill. Read chapter 5. Read it again before the exam. Maybe a third time if you’re feeling spicy.

It feels productive. It’s familiar. It’s also basically useless.

Here’s what Dunlosky’s research concluded:

“Based on the available evidence, we rate rereading as having low utility. When compared with other learning techniques, rereading is typically much less effective. The relative disadvantage of rereading to other techniques is the largest strike against it.”

Translation: Re-reading technically works, but compared to what you could be doing, it’s a waste of your precious time.

And here’s the kicker from a 2016 study:

“A wealth of research has shown that passive repetitive reading produces little or no benefit for learning. Yet not only was repetitive reading the most frequently listed strategy, it was also the strategy most often listed as students’ number one choice—by a large margin.”

We’re all choosing the worst option. Fantastic.

2. Highlighting: The Safety Blanket

Ah, highlighting. The colorful illusion of productivity.

Blue for definitions. Yellow for key points. Pink for… things that seem important but you’re not sure why.

Professor Dunlosky’s verdict?

“On the basis of available evidence, we rate highlighting and underlining as having low utility. In most situations, highlighting does little to boost performance. It may actually hurt performance on higher-level tasks that require inference making.”

Wait—it can actually hurt your performance?

Yep. For anything beyond basic memorization (so basically every exam at A-level, university, and beyond), highlighting might be making things worse.

Dunlosky even called it a “safety blanket” that students cling to despite its ineffectiveness. Ouch.

3. Making Notes/Summarizing: The Pretty Trap

This one stings the most because we’ve all been here. Those gorgeous notes. The satisfaction of a perfectly organized summary. The Instagram-worthy study aesthetic.

Too bad it doesn’t really work either.

“On the basis of available evidence, we rate summarization as low utility. It can be an effective learning strategy for learners who are already skilled at summarizing. However, many learners, including children, high school students, and even some undergraduates, will require extensive training, which makes the strategy less feasible.”

Translation: If you’re already amazing at summarizing (which most people aren’t), it’s… okay. Just okay. Still not the best use of your time.

I’ve seen it myself. The students with the most beautiful notes—color-coded, perfectly organized, practically art—are often the same ones complaining that “nothing is going in.”

That’s because making notes is about input. And learning isn’t about input.

The Plot Twist: Learning Is About Output, Not Input

Here’s where everything changes.

For years, I thought studying was about putting information into my brain. Read more. Highlight more. Make more notes. Stuff it all in there.

But over 100 years of research shows the exact opposite is true:

Learning happens when you retrieve information from your brain, not when you put it in.

The very act of pulling information out—struggling to remember, forcing yourself to recall—is what strengthens the neural connections. It’s like the difference between watching someone do bicep curls versus actually doing them yourself.

This is called active recall, and it’s the single most powerful study technique that exists.

The Evidence That’ll Make You a Believer

Don’t just take my word for it. Here’s what the research actually shows:

Study #1: The 1939 OG

Researchers split students into two groups learning the same material:

Group A: Studied normally
Group B: Studied normally + took a practice test

Results after one week:

Group A (no practice test): ~30-50% retention
Group B (with practice test): ~45-65% retention

That’s a 10-15% improvement just from testing yourself once. In 1939. We’ve known this for almost a century.

Study #2: The 2010 Facts vs. Concepts Showdown

Same setup—one group restudied, one group took practice tests.

Results on factual questions:

Restudy group: ~35%
Practice test group: ~60%

That’s nearly double the performance. For concepts, the gap was similarly massive.

Study #3: The 2011 Four-Way Battle Royale

This is my favorite. Researchers split students into four groups:

Read once (the bare minimum)
Read four times (the classic re-reader)
Read once + make a mind map (the visual learner)
Read once + try to recall everything (active recall)

Results?

The active recall group crushed everyone. They outperformed the people who read the material four times.

Let me repeat that: Reading something once and trying to recall it beats reading it four times.

All those hours of re-reading? You could’ve gotten better results in a quarter of the time.

The Cruel Irony

Here’s the gut-punch. Before the 2011 study, researchers asked students which technique they thought would be most effective.

Students predicted: Repeated studying would work best
Students predicted: Active recall would work worst

They had it completely backwards. Our intuition about studying is broken.

How to Actually Apply Active Recall (Without Hating Your Life)

Okay, so active recall is amazing. But how do you actually do it without wanting to throw your textbook out the window?

Here are three practical strategies:

Strategy 1: Flashcard Apps (The Digital Approach)

Apps like Anki, Quizlet, or Cruxly use spaced repetition algorithms to show you cards right before you forget them.

The key insight: Don’t just read the card and flip it. Actively try to recall the answer before you look. That moment of struggle—”wait, what was it again?”—is where the magic happens.

Pro tip: Instead of making flashcards from scratch (which takes forever), use apps that generate them automatically. Cruxly lets you snap a photo of your notes and generates quiz questions in 60 seconds. No more spending three hours making flashcards instead of actually studying.

Strategy 2: Notes With the Book Closed

Can’t break the note-making habit? Fine. But do it differently.

Here’s the method:

Learn a topic
Close the book
Write down everything you can remember
Open the book and fill in what you missed
Repeat

This transforms passive note-taking into active recall. You’re not copying—you’re retrieving.

I used this for my third-year psychology exams. Made 50 essay plans, then practiced drawing spider diagrams from memory over two months. By exam day, I could basically “vomit” complete essays onto paper because I’d retrieved them so many times.

It was my best exam performance ever. And I’m convinced it’s because I stopped making pretty notes and started testing myself relentlessly.

Strategy 3: The Cornell Method (Write Questions, Not Notes)

Instead of taking notes during lectures, write questions.

Turn “Mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell” into “What is the function of mitochondria?”

Then when you review, you’re not re-reading—you’re answering. Every review session becomes a mini-test.

A friend of mine used this exclusively for his first-year Cambridge medical exams. He wrote hundreds of questions, answered them every night before bed, and came second in the entire year.

The method works. The evidence is clear. The only question is whether you’ll actually use it.

The Mental Shift You Need to Make

Here’s what nobody tells you: effective studying should feel hard.

Not miserable-hard. But effortful-hard. Like going to the gym.

Re-reading feels easy because it is easy. Your brain isn’t working. It’s just… recognizing stuff. “Oh yeah, I’ve seen this before.” That’s not learning. That’s familiarity.

Active recall feels uncomfortable because you’re forcing your brain to work. You’re saying “produce this information” instead of “just look at it again.”

That discomfort is the whole point. If studying feels too easy, you’re probably not learning.

The Quick Reference Guide

Instead of…	Try…
Re-reading your notes	Closing your notes and trying to recall them
Highlighting key points	Writing questions about those key points
Making beautiful summaries	Making flashcards you can test yourself on
Reading a chapter 4 times	Reading it once, then quizzing yourself
Feeling productive but not learning	Feeling uncomfortable but actually retaining

The Bottom Line

Your study techniques aren’t failing because you’re not working hard enough. They’re failing because they’re the wrong techniques.

The science is clear:

❌ Re-reading, highlighting, and passive note-making are low utility
✅ Active recall is high utility
🎯 The key is retrieval, not repetition

You’ve been studying wrong. But now you know better. And knowing is half the battle.

The other half? Actually closing this article and trying to recall what you just read.

Go on. I’ll wait.

Want to make active recall actually easy? Try Cruxly—snap your notes, get quizzes in 60 seconds. All the science, none of the busywork.