I find theories on study skills interesting. Even if you are not a student anymore, they can be generalized to try to be more efficient at work and outside of work, and try to learn something every day. I’m the type of personality that concentrating and learning is the most fun thing I can do every day, but only if I can really concentrate without distractions and interruptions (especially noise and people rushing around) and only if the thing I am learning is something I want to learn at my own pace, not something I have to learn at someone else’s pace. And of course, this is not how real work or life work most of the time.

Anyway, this article and lecture on study skills is interesting. The main premise is that people can concentrate for about 25-30 minutes, after which they need a short break. And after several of these short bursts of focus, they need a long break to do something else in another location. I’ve experimented with the Pomodoro technique, which is based on this idea. I think something in the neighborhood of 40 minutes works okay for me. A 5-10 minute break is long enough to take a mental break without losing focus. For those of us chained to our desks by billable hours, this is about the longest break we can take without raising eyebrows with the boss and/or our own consciences.

Anyway, beyond that, the article also mentions Richard Feynman’s “notebook technique” (fill a notebook with notes on a particular subject, then plan out a class where you teach the subject to other people, even if it is only pretend) and some note-taking techniques. Drill down into the links a little and you come to the Cornell note taking system, which I find interesting. I have actually seen real people from Cornell use it.

My teachers really emphasized note taking around 7th-8th grade, and I think what I learned then has served me well throughout school and life. They also focused on how to research a topic and how to write an essay. They taught a preview-read-take notes-review technique that I still think works well. I used to assume other people had learned similar skills around middle or high school, but I have found since then that most otherwise intelligent, educated people actually do not have this skill. The main thing, beyond taking notes, is reviewing them regularly. I actually try to review mine daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly, the last two being more of a heavy skim. I used to use loose leaf paper and a clipboard, after which I would move the notes to binders. The binders would have tabs and occasionally indexes. These days, I use mostly Microsoft OneNote for note taking, with lots of tabs and some hyperlinks. I don’t do a lot of sketches and pictures, I think mostly through lists and writing although I will draw diagrams where my words and lists are in boxes and connected by arrows. I know pictures are more important for a lot of people.