My favourite new study hack

Textbook method

Now I’m sure that anyone who is reading this has seen and heard just about every piece of study advice in existance, because me too. Studying how to study is the absolute ultimate in study procrastination, because you stil feel like technically you’re working towards actually studying for that big exam or test while not actually having to put in that huge amount of work.

So to add to what I’m sure is already a rather extensive collection of study tips, tricks, hacks and plans you’ve collected, I’m going to share the one I found most recently worked for me, that took me from quite literally knowing nothing about the subject 2 weeks out from the exam needing at least 70% to pass the couse to, well, not passimng with flying colours, but I did pass and thats the main thing.

So basically I’m going to suggest you write a textbook for your subject. By this I don’t mean using the textbook you already have copy it out word for word, I don’t even mean paraphrasing to make your own copy of notes. I mean quite literally go to your course and find the main topics write them out as headings in word and start fleshing them out, exactly like a textbook would. I’ve attached my version of this for the computer science class I used this for so that you can understand what I mean.

My textbook for Algorithm Design and data structures, it’s missing parts as I can’t find the final version but you get the point.

How to:

1. Format a word document. I like to start with the formatting or a contents page a heading page and making it look pretty as tis gets me started, it’s not hard work and it gives that instant gratification, I also recommend adding a proper contents page that will change as you add more to your document as this is once again going to fuel that motivation to see the page numbers increase.
2. Find all of the key topics. A lot of subjects will either have these in learning outcomes for the semester or as weekly headings. Write them all out these are going to be the chapters of your textbook.
3. Now is the part that actually going to help you, start building up those chapters. I like to start with a bit of a summary what you need to know about each thing and terms you don’t understand or need to remember. Basically you just start writing down everything that you remember about each of these subjects.
4. Next we’re going to add subheadings, break down each of your chapters into more manageable blocks, this way you’re less likely to get overwhelmed by the volume of content that needs to be covered.
5. Now we add examples, these can be examples given to you throughout the year, you can create your own just make sure that your examples are following the correct procedure for full marks in an exam, do not practice bad habits.
6. From here we add the problem section thats at the end of each chapter this is where you do the real work, by this point you understand the theory of the content you’ve found, created and practiced these examples. So now you need to practice more. These are your sample exams, textbook problems, practice questions and previous assignments.
7. Now your textbook should essentially be done, hopefully theres a few days left until your exam or big test, and now you can just focus on adding some more problems to the end of each chapter and reviewing your notes.

In case it did not become apparent throughout the couse of that explanation this method is a combination of a lot of the tips that taht are often suggested. for example we use the study blurting method to write out that first summary of each chapter, and creating our own notes in our own words that we understand, and completeing practice exams, or teaching someone else, it is all incorporated within this which is why I think it works so well for me. So give it a go and let me know, feel free to share your textbooks here and perhaps we can create some form of database of all our knowledge which would be pretyy cool and let me know of anything else that you have found has helped you.

Good luck 🙂