MY STUDY HABITS—THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING UNFOCUSED.

MY STUDY HABITS—THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING UNFOCUSED. This New York Times article by Benedict Carey reports on what psychology research has established about how to study, and it turns out that the research provides support for what I had always considered to be failings in my study habits. (I posted here with rueful thoughts about my study habits). For example, Carey says that the traditional advice is: “Clear a quiet work space.” I was always restless, moving from place to place every few minutes. Now, the researchers say that: “instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention.” The theory is that “when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting.” I had trouble focusing on one thing at a time. Research also shows that studying several related things at a time is better than focusing intensely on a single thing. Finally, in the post I linked to above, I told about how I used to copy down the jokes as part of my lecture notes on the theory that the joke might trigger a memory . Carey’s article shows that psychologists think that “[f]orcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.”