Free · 8 pages · 10 minutes

Study Better, Not Longer

Most study advice is folklore — handed down, never tested, repeated because it sounds sensible. This is the version built on what the research actually found, written to be read in ten minutes and used the same night.

What's inside

• The fluency trap — why the study session that felt productive probably did less
• The one distinction that matters — surface, deep, and strategic approaches, and why they aren't personality types
• A three-way diagnosis — the phrase that tells you whether your problem is knowledge, application, or reading the question
• The four methods — retrieval and spacing, elaboration and teach-back, interleaved practice, structured group study, and how to tell which your material needs
• A week that works — a low-burnout template you can adjust to your own schedule
• Four habits to drop — including one that most people have organised real effort around
• A first-week plan — the smallest version that proves itself

Who wrote it

I hold a Master's degree in educational psychology and I'm a certified DBT coach — an unusual combination that means I work on both halves of the problem: how people learn, and what stress does to that process.

Everything in the guide is sourced, and where the evidence is thin I say so. There are no invented expert quotes and nothing is included because it sounds good.

Prefer to start with a tool?