How to study multiple subjects

In this video, I'm going to talk about two different ways you can combine your studies using a strategy called interleaving to get better grades. At the end, I'll talk about a common challenge that many students face when using interleaving and stepping. what can you take to overcome it Hello everyone, welcome back to the channel if you are new here my name is mike I am a doctor working in California and co-founder of brem note this is another video in our series on evidence base Learning strategies in the That Mattie and I take the research in cognitive and neuroscience and help you apply it in your studies to get better grades.

If you are interested, subscribe to see weekly videos. In this video we will talk about how to use interleaving, which means mixing your studies and I assume you already know what the strategy is about, but in case you don't check out this video here where we dive into the science behind why it works so Well, I'd probably watch it. video first to get some context and then come back here when you're ready to apply the techniques. The first way to use interleaving is to alternate between different topics within the same topic, so here's an example of how you wouldn't do it in the morning you spend three hours

study

ing chapter one, then in the afternoon you spend three hours

study

ing the chapter two and then in the evening spend three hours studying chapter three yes, you are studying three topics in one day but you are not interspersing your study time, so here is an example of how I would do it in the morning, I would spend an hour studying the chapter one, then an hour studying chapter two, then an hour studying chapter three, then in the afternoon and evening, they would do the same, they would spend an hour each studying each chapter, so now many of you are thinking that Switching between different topics would not force you to shift gears and change focus and would ultimately be less effective at learning well.

It's kind of counterintuitive in the first method, your brain is thinking about chapter one for three hours, but after you. When you finish studying it, that's it, your brain stores all that knowledge and doesn't think about it again for the rest of the day, whereas in method two, after spending an hour studying chapter one, your brain knows that you are going to come back to chapter one later in the afternoon and evening, so your brain has to retain that knowledge effectively for seven hours in advance so that your brain spends more time with that information and the best part is that when you're By studying chapters two and three your brain is retaining information from chapter one that could help you better understand those two chapters and make connections.

The second way to use interleaving is to switch between different learning modes. What I used to do and it wasn't very effective. I would go to math class and then go home and review the math lesson and then immediately do math homework. I wanted to finish everything while the information was still fresh in my head, but the problem with this was that by the next math class. When we went over our homework, I didn't remember anything I learned in the previous math lesson because it had been a long time since I had seen that material. Now here's an example program of what you can do to incorporate interleaving, so go first. to math class and then you can review the math lesson after class and then just leave it and let it sit, then go to history class and then review history and then now that some time has passed, you can do the homework for math class and then go. to science class and then doing homework for history class and so on, not only are you interspersing all your topics but this method also implements spatial repetition because you allow yourself to forget some of the material before revisiting the homework. making your learning harder, with more effort, and ultimately making it stick because the harder you try to learn, the more you retain.

Leon Pora goes into more detail about this method and I can leave a link to that video in the description below, okay so it's a common. The challenge that students often encounter is how often they switch between different

subjects

. If you spend three hours studying one topic before moving on to the next, then you won't get the interleaving effect, but if you only spend 15 minutes, then you force your mind to switch too quickly and this ends up being more like multitasking and isn't helpful either. . Well, cal Newport from the book how to be straight. One student recommends that you study a topic for 50 minutes and then take a 10-minute break before starting.

The next 50 minutes, I have personally found this time frame to be the sweet spot for my attention span, but keep in mind that yours may be a little different. To find your sweet spot, I would recommend using a pomodoro timer, so start studying a topic for 25 minutes, then take a five-minute break, then continue that topic for another 25 minutes, then a five-minute break, and then with time, you can increase the time increments. Do 35 minutes, then five minute breaks, then do 45 minutes with five minute breaks and that's it. Eventually you'll notice that you tend to keep losing focus at about the same time.

Well, that would be your sweet spot. My favorite way to do this is using rem note, the first smart note tool that applies science to your studies. The remainder is free space. snooze app that has a built-in pomodoro timer and allows you to apply spacing schedules to specific folders or even specific documents within your database, making collating practice simple to do. Well, if you enjoyed this video, we would appreciate it if you shared it. with your friends watch this video here to learn about different ways you can implement active recovery in your studies watch this video here if you want to learn about different ways to implement spatial repetition in your studies if you want to chat just follow us on twitter or instagram and send us a message as always thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next video.