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Effective Studying 

  • Master First Principle

    • Develop a list of basic axioms in your subject that you can always work back to -relate all future concepts back to them.

  • Elaborative Interrogation

    • Deeply understand the reasons behind a concept, keep asking why/how? Until there’s no info left to cover

  • Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve

    • Retention of new knowledge falls steeply right after the first encounter - successive reviews slows the rate of forgetting.

  • The Skeptical Second Party

    • Imagine (or better, get) someone who disagrees on the topic - then, reply to every objection with facts and logics from the material you learned.

  • Incremental Learning

    • Associate new knowledge with existing knowledge to increase memory and recall.

  • Triangulating Genius (perspectives)

    • Pick two to four brilliant experts with differing perspectives about a specific topic that you are learning and try to understand their viewpoints and how they argued their sides to understand the topic better.

  • Elaborative Interrogation (knowledge depth)

    • Ask yourself questions about how and why things work, and then produce the answers to those questions.

  • Feynman Technique (knowledge quality)

    • Take something that is hard to understand and try to clarify it in your mind by explaining it as if you were talking to a child.

  • Second brain

    • Method for saving and systematically reminding us of the ideas, inspirations, insights, and connections we’ve gained through our experience.

  • Inversion Learning (conceptual topics)

    • Look at problems backwards – instead of looking for the right answer, figure out what about the questions would make it incorrect.

  • Spacing Effect

    • Make your study sessions spaced out – studies have shown that learning in this method is more effective

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07 / The career toolkit

Effective Studying

Turn a full week of material into a repeatable routine for understanding, practice, and recall.

01

Build a repeatable session

  • Choose one specific outcome: explain a concept, solve a problem type, or identify what you do not understand.
  • Try it from memory before opening your notes.
  • Check your work and identify the exact gap.
  • Practice again with a different question or example.
  • Schedule a short return to the topic on a later day.
02

Understand the reasoning

Start from fundamentals

Write the basic assumptions or relationships. Connect new ideas back to them.

Ask why and how

Explain why each step works. If you cannot, identify the missing concept and ask for help.

Explain it simply

Teach a concept in plain language. Define unfamiliar terms and build an example.

Challenge your answer

Look for a counterexample or a changed assumption that would make your conclusion fail.

03

Practice for the work you will do

  • For quantitative courses, solve problems without looking at the solution, then check the reasoning and units.
  • For conceptual courses, answer your own questions in writing and compare with the source material.
  • Mix related problem types so you practice choosing a method, not just repeating a procedure.
  • Keep an error log: what went wrong, why, and how you will recognize it next time.
Finance example

Explain why a change in a discount rate changes present value. Then calculate two cases, compare them, and describe the difference in words.

04

Space and organize your work

Return to topics across several sessions rather than leaving every review for the night before an exam. Keep notes and practice questions in one system you can maintain.

  • Use a calendar for deadlines and a short task list for the next study block.
  • Compare perspectives when a topic has competing explanations.
  • Use office hours or a study partner to work through specific questions.
  • Protect time for breaks and sleep alongside your coursework.

Get the assignment and grade trackers ↗

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