What if I told you that you just need to stop studying? Because the way you might have been taught to study, the way that you might have now been studying for years, might actually be cooking your grades without you even realizing. We're told that studying is the thing that leads to good grades, and so it makes sense to believe that if you just study, good grades would be something that will come naturally, right? But just like how someone might go to the gym for years doing the wrong form on a specific exercise, indirectly causing long-term injury just because of the simple fact that they always assumed that they were doing it right and they never bothered to check whether they were doing it properly, assuming that you can just study the way you have been and assuming that studying leads to a grade is a really, really dangerous connection to make.
Consider this: this is student A. They study for 33 minutes a day, get 8 hours of sleep, maintain a social life, and consistently score in the top 5% of their class. They spend most of their study time taking practice tests and teaching concepts to classmates. Now, this is student B. They study for 4 hours every day, sacrifice sleep, rarely see friends, and still struggle to maintain a B average. They fill notebooks with highlighted text and spend hours rereading chapters. What's the difference between them? It's not intelligence. It's not dedication. It's not even luck. It's how they study. Not how long they study.
It's also the reason that the majority of students don't know how to study. Even though it sounds crazy, students don't know how to study. And that's why studying seems to take a long period of time, it seems tiring, and less and less students feel like studying and getting the grades that they deserve. Because I, Ujjwal Nova, was just like that. I never considered the way I was studying, and I never considered it to be wrong. And yet, I was always wondering why I got poor grades. It was only after I actually learned how to study, which is what I'll be sharing right now, my grades actually skyrocketed and got them to where I wanted them. So wherever you are in your student journey right now, now is the best time to learn how to study because this will save you so much time.
The Productivity Illusion and the Consumption Trap
I remember sitting in my dorm room, especially during my junior year, empty coffee cups everywhere, notebooks scattered across my desk. It was 3:00 a.m., and I'd been studying non-stop for 12 hours straight for my psychology exam. I thought I was doing everything right: highlighting key points, rereading chapters, writing detailed notes that looked aesthetically perfect. But deep down, something felt off. Despite all those hours, the information was slipping through my brain like sand through my fingers. That night changed everything for me, not because I aced the test, but because I failed miserably. It forced me to face a hard truth: I had no clue how to study effectively.
Why More Hours Don't Mean Better Grades
Think about it. We've all fallen into this trap, drenching our textbooks in highlighter ink until they look like abstract art, rereading the same paragraph 200 times hoping it'll finally stick, or writing pages of notes only to never look at them again. Just like those saved Instagram reels we never revisit, we confuse the time spent studying with the amount we actually retain. You know you're in this trap when you spend more time picking the perfect highlighter color than actually understanding the material, or when you create the perfect study playlist only to realize you spent more time curating it than studying. But nobody tells us this in school, because studying isn't about time; it's about strategy.
Confusing Activity with Achievement
There's something called the consumption trap – the belief that the more information you consume (reading more pages, watching more videos, cramming more hours), the more you learn. Schools reinforce this myth when teachers say things like, "study for 3 hours" or "review the entire chapter." Whenever I'd asked my teachers at school how much should I study for the upcoming biology test, the answer that they all gave was similar: "Oh, you should probably study for like 2 hours," "Uh, 90 minutes probably," "3 hours is good for this test." Teachers in school often tell you that when you have big exams coming up to make sure you spend a lot of time studying.
The Flaw in Focusing Only on Consumption
But what if I told you that it actually doesn't matter, and there will be no difference in your grades whether you studied 2 hours or 10 hours? It's a controversial statement, I know, but I used to obsess so much on the consumption side of things, just as school does. I thought that if I read more pages, if I looked at the textbook more, if I spent more hours studying – so more consumption went in this way – that would lead to more learning and remembering. That's what I thought. But here's the catch: your brain isn't a sponge that just absorbs info automatically. It's more like a muscle that needs training and rest to grow. None of this really matters if all of this information you're consuming doesn't stick in your brain and it just leaves out through the other ear.
Here's a formula that changed my entire approach to studying: Real Learning = Amount of Information × Retention Rate. Imagine two students. One studies for 5 hours but retains only 10% of the material. The other studies for just 1 hour but retains 50%. Both end up with the same amount of retained information (0.5 hours worth), but the first student wasted four extra hours. If you study for 5 hours and only retained 10%, you actually only benefited from 30 minutes of studying. But if you study for just 1 hour with a strategy that helps you retain 50%, you save time and energy. What goes on inside here, the digestion and absorption of the information, is far more important than the amount that you consume.
The Power of Active Learning and Retention
Now, what if I told you that studying less could actually improve your grades? Sounds crazy, right? Especially when every YouTube video out there is screaming, "Study harder! Why are you so weak? Get up and study now!" Yeah, no, shut up. When I, Ujjwal Nova, started studying less, my grades actually got better. Here's how.
Shifting from Passive to Active
Before, I would spend hours rereading textbooks, highlighting everything, and rewriting notes, only to forget most of it. This is passive studying. It’s like trying to fill a bucket full of holes; you can keep pouring water in, but it'll never hold. The learning pyramid, as you can see, actually shows that the way you study and the way you learn has a drastic difference in the amount that you retain, and hence the effectivity of your studying. When I used to just study by reading my notes, it would firstly take so long, and I'd also do poorly in my tests. And only now, after learning about the learning pyramid, it all starts to fit into place because reading, as you can see, literally has a 10% retention rate. Rereading notes, hence for that reason, is named a really, really bad study technique, as countless studies show. This is why those passive forms of revision are so bad. They do work, but they take so much more time.
Methods That Actually Work
After I switched to Active Learning – using practice questions, explaining concepts to others, and applying information to real-life problems – suddenly my retention rate jumped from maybe 10% to 70%. The key is to patch the holes first, so the knowledge actually stays. If you did something such as past papers, which has a 75% retention rate, you could get the exact same information, the exact same amounts of knowledge and studying done in seven times less time. So, when you study, you should always aim to do the majority of your studying in that active, higher-retention zone. When I finally learned about this, I finally switched to doing past papers, practice questions, the Feynman technique, and flashcards as my primary sources of revision.
Ujjwal Nova's Transformation: Less Study, Better Grades
The result? My study time was cut in half, and my grades went from B's and C's to Straight A's. Studying took far less time, I was less burnt out, I remembered more, and these were the results I had to show for them. So, focusing on the retention side of things is crucial because that way you can keep the amount of time you study the same, or even reduce it, but make your study sessions far, far more effective.
Beyond *What* to Study: *How* and *When* to Study
But that's only half of how to study. Because knowing *what* you should be doing (focusing on retention) is important, right? But there's the other side of studying, which I feel like is rarely talked about, which is actually how to study consistently and how to actually time and space your study sessions so it's the most effective. This is the again, and again, and again chapter.
The Importance of Digestion and Spacing
Now you know that focusing on retention and digestion of information is more important than the consumption and volume of stuff that you're trying to read. The actual more important thing that follows on from that is how to make studying consistent and to do it again and again and again. Because that's how you actually study for any exam or test: you need to get a certain amount of reps in, a certain amount of learning done. Just as absorption and digestion happens inside your body when you eat, between meals – right, those things happen after you eat breakfast, between the time of breakfast and lunch, that's when absorption and digestion happens – it's the same with studying. Your brain absorbs information and digests info when you're *not* studying. This is what spaced repetition and the Zygarnik effect are about.
Why Cramming Fails
For example, if you had 10 hours worth of content that you had to learn for an exam, then with a high retention method such as past papers, this would mean that you need to study around 13 hours. If I asked you how you would study for that set exam, a lot of you (and me included, previously) would have probably said, "I'd study for like 6 hours 2 days before the exam and then 7 hours the day before the exam" to do my 13 hours of studying required to ace the test. But that is actually the wrong way to study. Cramming is actually far less effective than if you had spaced those same 13 hours across the span of 2 weeks to just do an hour a day. Just sitting down and doing a study marathon is really ineffective.
Building a Consistent Study Habit
Not only will you remember far more and your retention will be higher because of the spacing effect, but it will also feel less burdensome, and you're more likely to study again and again and again. Because having to watch these study videos before every single exam is really tiresome and it's unnecessary. Once you learn how to study the correct way, which is what I'm showing you, and once you space it out and get this kind of healthier relationship with studying, making it feel less burdensome because you just integrate it as part of your routine... right? Like, just imagine doing study for like a month, but then you do like a cramming session of like six, seven hours of studying, and then not doing it. That literally kind of makes you dread the periods of when you're not studying. Whereas if you just spread it out throughout the days, it's just little but often. And so it becomes part of your day, and it becomes consistent, and it becomes a habit. Remember that learning can't happen without your brain filtering out the information.
Ujjwal Nova's Actionable Study Plan
Okay, so how do you study less and actually retain more? Relax, I got you. Here’s the exact study strategy that works, combining effective methods with consistency:
- Break study sessions into shorter chunks: 30 to 60 minutes per subject is ideal. This prevents burnout and respects your brain's processing limits.
- Test yourself first: Before reviewing notes or the textbook, try recalling what you already know about a topic. This primes your brain for learning and immediately identifies weak spots.
- Focus on the topics you struggle with: Don't waste time passively reviewing things you already know well. Target your effort where it's needed most.
- Use active study methods: Ditch the passive rereading. Instead, answer practice questions, do past papers, explain concepts out loud (to yourself, a friend, or even a rubber duck – the Feynman Technique!), or use flashcards for active recall. Aim for methods in the higher-retention parts of the learning pyramid.
- Connect ideas together: Don't just memorize isolated facts. Understand how concepts relate to each other and to real-life situations. This builds a stronger mental network, making information easier to retrieve later.
- Let yourself forget (then reinforce): Remember the spacing effect. Do an hour a day, come back tomorrow, see what stuck, and reinforce any weak areas. This process of retrieval and reinforcement strengthens memory much more than cramming.
- Quick review before bed: A brief look over your notes or key concepts before sleeping can be powerful, as your brain consolidates information while you sleep.
I hope this really did change your perspective on how you need to study. These are really key concepts that are really not taught in school, but they really do change the way you study. By shifting from focusing on hours logged to focusing on effective techniques and consistent, spaced practice, you can genuinely study less, reduce stress, and achieve the grades you're capable of. Remember Student A? That can be you. It's not about innate talent; it's about learning how to learn.
Now, go back to how you initially felt about your own study methods. Are you still confident in them, or do you see room for improvement? If you see that room, that's your first sign that you're ready to level up your studying and finally get the results you deserve.
