How do top students study?

I graduated from my honours bachelor of arts degree as the

number one ranked student from one of Canadas most
prestigious and competitive universities and then went on to
successfully complete a demanding masters programme before
being accepted into an elite Ph.D. programme.
Here are seven study hacks/tips that I have used over the past
fifteen years to successfully complete multiple university
degrees, become a top-ranked student, acquire extensive and
ongoing financial support, and ascend to the position of award-
winning evaluator.
These techniques will be of immense help to those of you
looking to lead more balanced and less stressful academic lives,
to excel in your studies, to move towards the next stages in your
careers, and to remain healthy and happy whilst doing so!
HACK #1: FIGURE OUT WHEN YOU WORK BEST AND STICK
TO THAT SCHEDULE
Are you a morning person, i.e., somebody who wakes up with a
go-getter ahead, enthusiastic about immediately taking on the
days challenges, sinking your teeth into the work that awaits
you, and feeling inspired to get cracking? Or are you more of a
night owl, i.e., somebody who prefers to sleep late in the
morning and ease into the day, letting your mind wake up over
the span of several hours, perhaps taking care of non-school-
related responsibilities first (e.g., the dishes and laundry), and
feeling more prepared, inspired, and creative in the afternoon,
evenings, and/or late hours of the night?
There is no right or wrong answer that applies equally to all
people but there is a right and a wrong answer for YOU
specifically!
Be honest with yourself by asking: do I work more
productively and efficiently, am I more hopeful, focused, and
organized, is my thinking more connected and insightful if I start
my work early in the day or if I tackle my studies later in the
evening? You know which is the case! Based on your answer to
this question, create and stick to a schedule that revolves around
what is most natural to you in terms of your effective working
hours.
Personally, I am far more effective, intellectually competent, and
personally satisfied with myself if I go to sleep early, wake up
around 6:00am, and begin my studies after eating breakfast,
showering, and doing some deep breathing relaxation. I tend to
feel quite anxious if I have not yet started my studies by the time
1 or 2pm rolls around.
HACK #2: USE CAFFEINE AND OTHER ENERGY DRINKS
SPARINGLY AND STRATEGICALLY
One of the more interesting and insightful scientific phrases I
heard recently is: Theres no such thing as a biological free
lunch!
This means that there is, essentially, no way to affect your
biology that doesnt then produce one or more effects of its own.
And this is especially obvious when it comes to caffeine
consumption.
Caffeine typically causes a spike in energy, increased motivation,
determination, and creativity, and even feelings of euphoria and
wellness but these all tend to come at the price of thereafter
experiencing the exact opposite effects, i.e., lethargy, exhaustion,
and tiredness, decreased motivation and increased apathy, an
inability to think straight, elevated anxiety, and physiological
jitters. In addition, the more caffeine you consume in a given day,
the shorter are your experiences of the benefits and the longer
are the unwanted sensations.
I find that the effects of a strong cup of coffee last, at most, an
hour. Thereafter I typically start yawning and feel myself
struggling to concentrate.
On the majority of days, I do not consume more than two
caffeinated drinks in a twenty-four hour period. I have a strong
cup of coffee with my breakfast and then I might have a second,
less strong coffee or tea in the afternoon (e.g., around 2pm).
In general, you should avoid consuming caffeine five hours or
less prior to your intended bedtime. Caffeine not only makes it
difficult to fall asleep, it also impacts the quality of the sleep you
get, usually robbing you of the deep rest you need for the
following day.
The takeaway point is this: use caffeine (and other energy
drinks) strategically. If youre dead-tired and unable to take a
2040 minute nap, then have a cup of coffee to power through
the next hour or two of reading and finish up your work.
However, if you feel well enough to study without relying on an
artificial boost then skip the coffee for now and opt for (lots of)
water instead.
As with many other things in life, the less often you use coffee,
the greater the impact it has on you when you do use it. So, save
the coffee for now and use it instead when youre stuck doing
marathon cram sessions or engaged in all-night-long writing
extravaganzas.
HACK #3: NEVER SIT FOR MORE THAN ONE HOUR AT ANY
GIVEN TIME
Stated plainly, you can (and very likely will) do extensive
damage to your mental health and/or the physiological well-
being of your body if you consistently sit at a desk for more than
one hour at a time without taking at least a few minutes every
sixty minutes to walk around your office, go get a drink of water,
etc.
Studentsespecially graduate students and those studying in
specialty programmes such as law school or medical school
often become very effective at sitting and concentrating on
tasks for three, four, or five-plus hours at a time without taking
breaks to literally stand up from their desks. Although the
modern world seems to demand this sort of dedication and
focus, endless sitting is in fact a very unhealthy habit that can
produce serious and long-lasting consequences.
Our bodies do not want to sit for hours and hours at a time and
they often tell us as much; the problem is that we learn, often
unconsciously, to ignore the messages that our bodies send us.
You know that persistent and annoying pain you experience in
your leg or deep inside your back after reading or writing for
two or three hours straight, the one that seems to appear only
after studying and sitting for such long periods of time? That,
very often, is your bodys way of screaming at you to get up,
get your blood moving, and engage in a little physical activity,
even if for only a couple of minutes!
Sitting for more than an hour at a time tends to increase anxiety
and stress, and it encourages us to hold onto tension in our
bodies, which has the real possibility of turning into chronic pain
over time.
I speak from experience regarding these matters so please heed
my advice with due care by committing to physically walking
about your study area at least once every sixty minutes.
HACK #4: MARK UP YOUR TEXTS BY READING ACTIVELY,
NOT PASSIVELY
One of the most crucial pieces of advice that I can give you
(assuming that youre studying in the humanities and/or social
sciences) is that you need to actively engage with your readings
by marking them up!
It is not enough to merely sit back and read your textbooks,
journal articles, and/or course readings without physically
engaging with them, just hoping that youll somehow
understand and retain all the relevant information for future
use. Rather, you need to mark up every reading you tackle.
Whether youre reading a physical book or a hard printout of an
article or, alternatively, reading digital files on your computer
(e.g., PDFs), its crucial that you highlight key information and
write/draw/type in the margins and headers/footers of the
pages.
Virtually every single document Ive ever readby this point
Ive read tens of thousands of pages of academic workis full of
my own notes and highlights. Why? Because one gains a better
and more complete understanding of a reading when one marks it
up with highlights, notes, etc.
Personally, I engage in three forms of active reading:
1 Using a highlighter to highlight the relevant and important
parts of a text (e.g., major concepts, key statements,
definitions, previous findings, significant statistics, etc.);
2 Using a pencil and ruler (or digital lines) to
selectively/sparingly underline the most fundamental
parts of a text (e.g., the two or three most vital claims made
by the author in the entire piece); and
3 Writing/Typing notes in the margins and headers/footers.
Sometimes these notes are questions I have, things that I
do not fully understand, and/or connections I see with
other authors/readings but, more commonly, they function
as instances where I explicitly re-write crucial bits of the
text.
For me, the third tactic here is by far the most important. As I
read lots of philosophy, criminology, sociology, and social
theory, I regularly come into contact with very dense and highly
theoretical/abstract texts that simply cannot be read slowly or
haphazardly if the ideas they contain are to be comprehended.
Over the years I have learned that the most effective means of
truly understanding a difficult reading is to slowly and
methodically follow the authors ideas by re-writing bits of
his/her arguments in the margins of his/her text.
This is a kind of psychological trick that works very well! Your
mind does not like to write/type out things that you yourself do
not properly comprehend and so you will naturally do all you can
to force yourself to think through, and make sense of, what youre
reading before you write something out. This, for me, has been
the key to working through the ultra complex ideas of Plato and
Aristotle, of Bourdieu and Bhaskar, of Foucault and Heidegger,
etc. The uncomfortable feeling I get when I re-write a passage
that I do not actually grasp as well as I should lets me know that
I need to look further into the matter (and perhaps seek out the
help of a colleague).
HACK #5: DO NOT CONVERSE WITH OTHER STUDENTS
RIGHT BEFORE TAKING AN EXAM
Take this hack with a grain of salt as your own experiences
might differ from mine but my history suggests that it is best to
avoid talking to other students immediately prior to writing an
exam.
I followed the same basic (and highly successful) exam
preparation protocol for five years whilst completing my first
two university degrees. I would wake up several hours before
having to commute to school (assuming I had a morning exam)
and review my (already studied) core review notes for 90120
minutes. Then I would put earbuds into my ears, play repetitive,
vocal-less music that wouldnt distract me, and continue to study
on the subway train until I arrived at my stop. I would then
travel to the library, if I had time, and continue to study on my
own. Finally, I would make my way over to the exam with only
about ten minutes to spare before the classroom doors were set
to open. I would not talk to anybody: I would leave my
headphones in and either review my notes somewhere off in the
corner or simply listen to some music by myself. I would then
walk into the examination room, pick a desk/table as far away
from others as possible, write the exam, and earn my A grade.
The few times that I chose to speak with other students
immediately prior to an exam were indeed regretful
experiences. In short, I always ended up feeling far less sure and
way more confused about the material than I had been upon
arriving at the building.
If youre a hard-working student who pays attention in class,
always does his/her readings, and studies diligently for tests
then you will very often find that you understand the exam
material better than most of those in your class; consequently, if
you speak to other students right before an exam then youre
bound to come into contact with people who have a less secure
grasp of the relevant issues, thus leading you to lose confidence
in what you know as their confusion spreads to you.
Remove the possibility of needlessly perplexing yourself and
harming your self-assurance by entirely avoiding the situation in
the first place and trusting your own abilities to perform well.
HACK #6: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOUR
PROFESSORS/TEACHING ASSISTANTS OFFICE HOURS
Virtually every university/college evaluator is contractually
obligated to set and hold regular office hours during which time
he/she is mandated to make him/herself available to students
who wish to speak about educational (usually, course-related)
matters. Holding office hours and meeting with students is a
fundamental (albeit un-sexy) aspect of being an evaluator, and
evaluators are well aware of this.
As a student, you should never feel as if youre interrupting,
bugging, or getting in the way of your professor or teaching
assistant by visiting during his/her scheduled office hours. Office
hours exist exclusively to allow you to discuss school- and
career-related issues with your evaluator in a private, one-on-
one setting. They are opportunities for you to seek out and
receive individual attention and help regarding course material,
recently graded assignments, upcoming exams or essays,
reference letters, graduate school and scholarship applications,
etc.
As an evaluator, I can, of course, provide students with greater
detail and enhanced insight concerning the reasons why they
receive certain grades, methods for improving for future
assignments, and schooling/career options after undergraduate
studies than I can when speaking in front of a whole class or
providing written remarks on an exam or essay. As a student,
thus, youre almost certain to gain something of value by taking
the time to meet with your professor or teaching assistant in
person.
Please keep in mind the following two things whenever you visit
your professor/teaching assistant during office hours:
1 Always be respectful and humble. Being polite and
demonstrating a genuine willingness to learn and improve
will allow you to gain so much more value and insight out
of the meeting than will showing up with a bad attitude,
demanding a better grade, and/or speaking in a demeaning
and presumptuous tone.
2 Always be adequately prepared for the meeting. Its obviously
never your evaluators job to do your coursework for you
and, so, if you expect your professor/teaching assistant to
help you with your assignments, readings, applications,
etc. then make sure you have done as much as you can on
your end to facilitate a productive and meaningful
conversation from which you will both benefit. Show up to
the office hour with your necessary materials and having
spent some time seriously thinking about what you want
to say, why you want to say it, and what things in specific
you need dedicated help with.
HACK #7: MISCELLANEOUS TIPS
Finally, here are a bunch of miscellaneous/uncategorized hacks
that you can incorporate into your daily routine and study habits
so as to improve your overall university/college experience,
earn better grades, and progress toward the next stage in your
career:
1 Try to go to bed, and wake up, at the same time each day. You
will feel much better, both physically and emotionally, and
perform more effectively if you stick to a predictable
sleeping schedule.
2 Where appropriate, try studying in a scented room. I find that a
burning vanilla candle, which seems to promote relaxation
and an uplifting sense of calmness, makes a study session a
 little more special/enjoyable/bearable than without it.
3 Take extensive notes during class. No, it is not necessary (or
possible) to write down (or type out) every single
utterance that comes out of your professors mouth but it
remains true that the more material you record from each
lecture, the greater your chance will be to make sense of
the course ideas/themes and to prepare for upcoming
assignments. Additionally, try and develop and use a
specific kind of shorthand to make your note-taking more
efficient. For instance, I write sentences such as: Judge
Carmichael: test = too broad, unconstitutional meaning,
Judge Carmichael argued that the test was too broad and
therefore found it to be unconstitutional.
4 Use the references page(s) at the end of a journal article to trace
ideas back to their sources, i.e., by locating the original
text(s) from which the ideas originate. Not only will this
allow you to determine the original context from which the
ideas come but it will also make it possible to determine if
the author(s) of the present paper youre reading have
misrepresented and/or misunderstood the original
authors claims/arguments.
5 Engage in some form of physical activity everyday or every
second day at the least. Our bodies are not designed to
remain static and stay confined to the most mundane and
unchallenging activities (like sitting and lying down). We
human beings need to move, to exercise, to get our blood
flowing and our endorphins circulating. Physiologically,
playing a sport or lifting weights makes you happier
insofar as your brain releases feel-good hormones when
your body is (safely) stressed. These feel-good chemicals
will help give you the patience, perseverance, and positive
vibes to push ahead with your studies and remain hopeful
for your future.
Participate in 1525 minutes of deep breathing relaxation prior
to, and/or at some point during, extended periods of studying.
By far, my favourite kind of deep breathing meditation is the
legs-up-the-wall yoga pose (which you can read about here: 5
Health Benefits of Legs Up the Wall Posture, here: 5 Things I
Learned From Throwing My Legs Up a Wall Every Day, and here:
Legs-Up-the-Wall Pose [I have no association with any of these
sites]). Its very simple to do this exercise: place a blanket on the
floor in front of a wall, lie down on the blanket and swing your
legs up so that youre lying perpendicular to the wall, put a
pillow under your hips/buttocks, keep your legs shoulders-
width apart, place your hands on your belly (not your chest),
slowly breathe in through your nose and push your belly upwards
(i.e., make your hands move up toward the ceiling), and then
release all the tension in your body by slowly blowing the air out
through your mouth and allowing your pelvis to fall back to the
floor. Each repetition should take about 1015 seconds.
Concentrate on letting go of all the tension in your body,
especially your pelvis. Focus on your breathing and think only
about being present in the moment with your body. This
exercise will leave you feeling very relaxed, calm, de-stressed,
and ready for the day. I do this exercise every single morning for
twenty-five minutes right before I start studying. I also like to do
it for seven or eight minutes as a reset during the middle of the
day if I feel myself getting tense and/or stressed out from
working so much. Legs-Up-The-Wall is an incredibly beneficial
meditation exercise, both physically and emotionally: it relaxes
your nervous system, releases stress-reducing hormones,
decreases muscle tension, drops your heart-rate, promotes
healthier and calmer breathing, increases your sense of
wellbeing and peace, and leaves you feeling more capable of
tackling any problems/issues youre currently facing.