Most people want to have better habits. We want to get up earlier, exercise regularly, meditate or whatever. If you’re a student, you have to add studying to all those good habits, and it’s not surprising if study habits end up taking second place to less useful habits, like your social media habit or your Netflix habit. It’s easy to get into the habit of watching YouTube, not so easy to get into the habit of reading textbooks. If you want to set up good study habits, you need to dig into why this is the case.
Why you don’t forget to brush your teeth
I assume you brush your teeth every day. No one has needed to tell you to do this since you were a toddler; you don’t need to set an alarm to remind you; if you forget to brush one day, you don’t need to make a special effort to brush the next. (Note: if you have teeth and don’t brush them every day, stop reading this and google “gum disease”.)
Why has the habit of tooth brushing stuck for everyone except that guy on the bus you wish wouldn’t breath in your direction?
- We do it every day. It’s actually easier to do something every day than to do it twice a week because our brains are adapted to the cycle of night and day, not to seven-day weeks (which don’t even exist in some cultures).
- It’s linked to other things we do every day. If you wanted to brush your teeth at exactly 3 p.m. every day, you would need to set an alarm. Fortunately, we don’t do that: we brush when we get up in the morning, after a meal, or before we go to bed, so the habit of brushing is linked to something we can’t really avoid doing.
- It doesn’t take too long. Fewer people would brush regularly if it took an hour, but fortunately it only takes two minutes (and a lot of people brush even more quickly).
- We’ve been doing it for a long time. The longer you do something, the easier it is to keep doing it, and you’ve been brushing your teeth for a long time.
- There’s an immediate reward. Unless you’re an exceptionally clean-living type or blessed with unusual oral physiology, your mouth probably doesn’t feel or taste very nice when you wake up in the morning. Then you brush your teeth, and it’s full of minty goodness. Not a major reward compared to the thrill of finishing a level in a video game, but enough to reinforce the habit.
- Study like you brush
So how we can make studying (or some other worthy habit) as automatic as brushing your teeth? Let’s revisit the above points.
- Study every day. Well, nearly every day. Depending on your work and family obligations, you might need to take some days off, but studying (nearly) every day, even if it’s only for a short time, is actually easier than only studying a few times a week.
- Link study to some other habit. If you’re an early riser, study when you get up in the morning, preferably while sipping your morning coffee or tea. If you’re a night owl, start studying when everyone else goes to bed.
- Study in manageable chunks. How long is too long? It’s different for everyone, but you’ll know when it happens: you’ll feel sleepy or restless, and get an uncontrollable urge to check your phone or put the kettle on. Start with a much shorter study time than you’re capable of, then work your way up. When Scott and Amundsen were racing each other to the South Pole, Scott’s team decided to walk as far as they could during good weather and rest up in bad weather, while the Norwegians chose the minimum distance they could cover each day and walked that far, and no more, every day. Amundsen’s team made it there and back; Scott’s didn’t.
- Go for winning streaks. One reason why the language-learning app Duolingo is so popular is that it tracks streaks — the number of days in a row that you’ve studied. When it comes to brushing your teeth, you’ve been on a winning streak for so long you probably can’t remember the last time you didn’t brush, but for studying or exercising you need to be a bit more methodical. Track your streaks, either on paper or with an app — I recommend habitica.com. The longer the streak, the less you will want to break it.
- Reward yourself. The good thing about learning stuff is that it makes your brain release dopamine, which is the same stuff that cocaine gives you. The bad news is that it’s nowhere near as much as you’ll get from cocaine, or even a video game. Give yourself a boost with a little reward during or immediately after studying, like a piece of chocolate, a hot bath or some guilt-free social media. (Just not cocaine, OK?) Give yourself a bigger reward when your streak hits a certain number.
Bonus: Make it social
The one thing brushing your teeth doesn’t have is the social factor. Couples brush their teeth together in films; in real life, your heads bang together. Studying, on the other hand, can be done with friends. If you’re the social type, make study dates, whether to discuss a text or assignment, or just read in companionable silence. Even if you don’t get together physically, keep in touch with your study buddies with a messaging app — you could create a WhatsApp group for your classmates, for example. Studying together, or even just letting other people know you’re studying, helps keep up the habit.
You don’t have to do all of the above for a good study habit, but the more you can do the better. To sum up:
- A little study every day is better than a lot once in a while.
- Link it to existing habits, and reinforce it with rewards.
- Study together, even if you’re apart.
About the author
Robin Turner works at Global Banking School as a learning technologist and also produces materials for GlobalU. Before this, he taught English and academic skills for thirty years at Bilkent University in Turkey, where his courses included subjects as diverse as technical writing, social and political philosophy and life-hacking. He has published on topics ranging from cognitive linguistics to gamification.
Academia.edu profile: https://independent.academia.edu/RobinTurner19
