You don’t have to be holed up in a room, buried under a mountain of books, to have a flawless (well, almost flawless) academic record. As it turns out, “studying hard” is not the best way to understand, retain, and recall information. “Studying smart” is.

Studying smart can refer to a bunch of things. It includes strategies for organization, note-making, time-management, even techniques for taking exams. Today, we will discuss the ‘What,’ ‘When,’ ‘Where,’ and ‘How’ of studying.

What to study?

You’ve got an economics exam in a week and you can’t figure where to begin. Should you go by the chapters, should you work on the parts you’re weak at, should you attempt hard topics or should you grab the low-hanging fruit? Here’s what we suggest:

Make a list of all the topics that you have to study and divide them into ‘Green,’ ‘Amber,’ and ‘Red’ categories.

Green: topics to be studied first; important and simple
Amber: topics to be studied next; important but complex
Red: topics to be studied last; not vital but time-consuming

When to study?

Is there a right time to study? Nope. Your ability to learn depends less on whether you study in the morning, afternoon, evening, or night and more on how you choose to space it. Let’s say you’ve allocated four hours for study each day. Instead of hounding at your desk from 5-9 PM, schedule four study sessions of one hour each and spread them across the day. While the number of hours spent studying will remain the same, retention and recall will increase exponentially.