Studying enough, too much or too little.
An attempt to define balanced study time.
Hi! I’m Laure, a passionate tutor with 2700+ hours of experience helping students navigate through their learning journey.
Over the last 7 years, I’ve heard so many students tell me:
‘I failed because I didn’t study enough’
or ‘I’m studying so much but it still doesn’t pay off’
Such statements are usually a reflection of how their low grades are negatively impacting their self-esteem. But they are also showing me how most students do not know what studying means, nor how to do it. So let’s dive in.
What does ‘studying’ mean?
The official definition from Oxford Languages of ‘studying’ is: ‘devoting time and attention to gaining knowledge of (an academic subject), especially by means of books.’
To my students, I tend to make the definition a bit more practical:
Studying means being fully focused on a task in order to increase our knowledge or understanding on a specific topic.
Working, on the other hand, is being fully focused on a task in order to get it done.
The difference between working and studying is mostly the outcome: when you study, you don’t just get something done, you learn something. (Sadly, it is not always the case anymore when we get into the work field.)
So if you want to study, you need to:
Keep all distractions away. Now I know this is extremely hard, especially when most school materials are on screens, and so are social media. A concrete way of keeping the screen when you absolutely need it while putting away the distraction is to use the focus mode of the phone, or any other mode that allows you to stop social media and email notifications. You can also block some websites or apps on dedicated hours, to avoid the temptation of doing something else than work.
Put yourself in a real ‘work mindset’. Define the goals you want to achieve, cut them into smaller tasks, and make a list of these tasks. Tick the boxes as you move forward to keep track of your progress. Just like you can put yourself in your I-can-do-this mode for things you enjoy doing, try to find the same energy when you need to work on a task. Even if you do not enjoy studying as much, you will still enjoy the feeling of ‘I did it!’
Revise or practice efficiently. But first, let’s make a clear difference between revising and practicing. Revising applies to general and theoretical knowledge which you will be expected to know for a test (for instance, math formulas). Practicing consists in applying that theoretical knowledge in concrete situations (for instance, math exercises). Once you defined whether you are in revision mode or practice mode, adjust the setup in which you are working. Usually, trying to do both at the same time is less efficient: define a clear task you want to do, give it the framework that’s right for you, and move forward. Maybe when you revise, you prefer to read aloud while walking around, but when you practice, you prefer to be sitting in silence with no one disturbing you? Try things out, and stick to what works for you for each different type of task or homework you need to get done. But the more you try to get several things done at the same time, and the less you will have effectively done in the end.
As obvious as it may sound, you should not count time you spent in the study framework (book opened, computer on the school app) but in the break mindset (social media alerts, texting a friend ‘real quick’) as study time.
How long to study?
Planning 2-hour-straight revision sessions is a myth.
The average attention span of a teenager basically varies from 30 to 50 minutes. On screens, it shrinks to hardly more than 2 minutes.1
The best way to study efficiently is thus to:
break your 2-hour-straight revision session into smaller blocks, with intermediate breaks for which you define a beginning and an end before you start them.
take into consideration your mindset before you decide how long you will study, or what you will study. Already had 2 hours of math at school today? Maybe you’re fed up with them already, and it’s not worth spending 40 more minutes on them before tomorrow.
What is the right setup to study?
That one is fully on you - try whatever you think may work, but provide yourself with honest feedback. If you tried working on the kitchen table but you kept chatting or watching TV, then it wasn’t a good study setup. No matter how enjoyable that was.
Set yourself achievable goals.
All good study sessions have one thing in common: they started with a goal that was clearly defined, and that was reached by the end of the session.
The goal must be achievable by the end of the study session. Why? Because an unreachable goal only leads to demotivation, and ultimately lack of self-confidence, and work not being done.
You’re about to work on math for 30 minutes? Great: how about planning on getting 2 math exercises done and understood? Or correcting half of your last test that didn’t go so well, and understanding your mistakes?
The goal can be a task to be ticked as done in the to-do list, or a more general one: understanding this specific point which I did not understand when it was studied in class, for instance.
Achievable goals allow us to stay motivated, as they help us see what we have concretely done, how far we’ve gone, and how much is still ahead of us.
Bear in mind that ‘study time’ doesn’t mean anything in itself - it only makes sense if you consider how you study, more than how long you study for.
Want to have a chat about it with me?
https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans