Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens

Your diffuse mode can take over on the hard problem as soon as you drop your focus on it. While

When you begin your test, here’s what you should do. Start by quickly looking it over. Make a little checkmark beside what you think are the hardest problems. Then pick one of the hard problems

Use the hard-start technique. If you’ve studied well for a test, start the test with a hard problem. Then pull yourself away when you find you are getting stuck and work on another, easier problem. You can go back to work on the harder problem again later in the test. You can often make more progress than if you tackled the hard problem at the end

Vegetables from the onion family, which includes garlic and leeks, contain chemicals that help keep away all sorts of diseases, from diabetes to cancer.

Five other ways to help you remember are to: Use a song. Make up metaphors. Take good notes, preferably handwritten. Imagine you are the thing you’re trying to understand and remember. Share your ideas. Teach them to someone else.

Metaphors are powerful learning tools. They help us reuse neuron trails we have already developed so that we can learn more quickly.

route you take to the grocery store. Here’s the trick. If you convert a fact you are trying to remember into a picture, you can remember it more easily.

The television, or other background noise, can distract your attentional octopus. This takes up one or more of its arms, making it more difficult for you to make full use of your working memory.

It may seem strange at first, but it’s good to change the place where you study.1

Cognitive load: Cognitive load means how much mental effort is being used in the working memory. If you have too big a cognitive load because you are being presented with too many new ideas at once, you can’t take in new information very easily. Deliberate practice: Deliberate practice means focusing on the material that’s most difficult for you. T