Priscilla Xu

Reading time 7.5 minutes.

What makes the top 1% of students stand out? So, I went down the rabbit hole of academic literature on PudMed to find the answer.

1. Metacognition

John H. Flavell coined the term Metacognition in 1976

Metacognition is a fancy way of saying thinking about thinking.

This superpower can help you correct your errors, increase problem-solving abilities, and learn faster.

Here’s a systematic method to apply the metacognitive cycle in your studies to help you develop better-thinking habits.

• 1. Planning: you select a goal and break down the list of tasks to achieve this studying goal
  • I want to study 5 concepts in 30 minutes. First, I need to open my books, turn off all distractions, and get into the flow.
• 2. Monitoring: you observe your thoughts as you study and check if you understand the material.
  • You may feel a mental framework forming, and you can imagine the logic framework in your brain.
• 3. Reflecting: After finishing the studying session, how can you feel, assess the plans you have used to achieve your goals, and consider how you can improve next time.
  • This is the most valuable step for improvemen because you will figure out where to direct your effort. Of course, be mindful of what your limits are.

After building your awareness, you will monitor your thinking patterns.

2. Priming

If you click on the Wikipedia page, there is a mind-blowing 11 types of priming on the tables of content!!! Let’s ignore that.

Priming is when you are exposed to a stimulus. Then it influences you unconsciously on how you will respond to another stimulus.

Paraphrased from Wikipedia.

Research shows priming effect in everyday life.

• Imagine that you just left the hospital after seeing your doctors; you will be spotting the word “nurse” faster than other people.

How does this relate to being academically successful?

Think of your brain as a machine; you need to warm up the engine and add lubricating oil before it starts, right? Priming is “ready, set” of warming up, and “go” is when you learn the information.

You will warm up your brain’s circuits and learn faster if you preview.

The primary purpose of previewing your lecture material is to create a basic logical framework of the concepts and collect the keywords of the subject.

• Pro Tip: Instead of reading the detailed examples of accounting, I really like to read the concepts summaries at the end of the chapter as a starting point

And yes, I treat my brain like a child. I listen to my brain when I study. Then, if the brain feels more relaxed, we can work smoothly together.

3. Deep Processing

First, deep processing has nothing to do with deep learning in artificial intelligence.

According to American Psychology Associations, deep processing is

cognitive processing of a stimulus focuses on its meaningful properties rather than its perceptual characteristics.

Let’s compare deep processing to its cousins shallow and intermediate processing.

Depth of Processing	Type of Encoding	Simple Explanation	Example (Looking at the word “biology”.)
Shallow	Structural Encoding	Focus on physical characteristics.	Is the word “biology” written in capital letters or lower case?
Intermediate	Phonological	Focus on the sound of the words	– Is the word “biology” pleasant to the ears? – How do I pronounce the word “biology”?
Deep	Semantic	Focus on the meaning of words and connect them to existing pieces of knowledge.	– What does the Latin prefix and suffix of “bio-” and “-logy” mean? – What are other situations in that I have seen those prefixes and suffixes?

  If you can deeply process, you can learn complex concepts faster than other students.

Don’t you want to have this ability too? Here are some quick tips

• Apply the knowledge to your daily life.
• Imagine under what situations you will use this knowledge
• Evaluate, compare, and contast to old knowledge in your brain
• Ask: Why does this matter to me? Why is this important?

4. Threshold concepts.

Do you want to have a magic key that can accelerate your understanding of a subject?

A threshold concept is a concept that will alter your perspective about the new topic. Think of it as the core building blocks of your understanding.

A threshold concept in biology must be the theory of evolution. Once you have grasped this concept, how the body stores fat for survival in a calorie surplus world makes sense using the theory of evolution.

Here are 5 tips on how you can recognize those keystones.

• Transformative: Once understood, you cannot go back.
• Troublesome: they can be hard to understand at first
• Irreversible: it is complicated to forget or unlearn a threshold concept
• Connected: you will find many hidden associations after learning a threshold concept.

Conceptual note-taking will be an excellent method to apply the threshold concepts to your studies.

5. Active Learning

Let’s first talk about its sister, passive learning. Passive learning means that you eat in the knowledge as it is presented to you. Here are a few signs of passive learning

• Listening to a lecture without knowing why
• Reading linearly and making sure you understand the concepts
• It feels easy becaus there are no cognitive difficulties.

Active learning is challenging your potential and embracing desirable difficulty to process knowledge by

• asking good quality questions,
• knowing the purpose of learning,
• connecting to past experiences, and conceptualizing.

Here are some signs of active learning

• You own your education, and it is entirely of your control
• You don’t blame it on your teacher being lazy or bad at teaching
• You have high self-monitoring and awareness abilities.

According to the evolution theory, the primary purpose of sapiens is to be reproductively successful. So why would I want to spend all those extra time doing active learning when passive learning can save me precious calories and still allow me to survive. So here are some tips to help us get started even when we are lazy.

• Be in a relaxed, alert state when you study
  • Weirdly enough, neuroscientists have discovered that learning occurs the best when the brain is open, alert state.
• Make connections, and it feels like play.

6 & 7. Spacing and Interleaving

Suppose you are into learning how to learn and optimize your studying. In that case, the chances of you coming across those two terms will be very high. So, to combine threshold concepts, active learning, and priming, we will use interleaving and spacing to build a mini-study system.

Interleaving means that you are tackling this concept from different angles and situations.

But if you are thinking of boring flashcard flipping reviewing session, this method is not. Our goal here is to make study as fun as possible. Here are a few actionable tips for using interleaving with your studying

• Creating a question bank with a group of friends and practicing them
• Teaching an imaginary student or in a group study

At first, when I saw those techniques, I felt like I was wasting time. But, after I tried them, learning did not seem like a chore, and it slowly turned into active learning.

Spacing means the opposite of cramming.

You allow some forgetting to occur first, then you retrieve the knowledge again. As your qualities abilities to eat in expertise, you will spend more time reviewing.

I have built a notion template here that utilizes spacing and interleaving.

The Modern Education System

Our brains love to solve problems, evaluate concepts, be curious, and know why something is important.

Sadly, the modern education system is not built on how our brains function evolutionarily. The world has developed faster than the human brain can evolve. This is the main reason that studying feels like a tedious choice. It takes a lot of creativity to make learning fun, but most students are not willing to take an extract step because it takes a lot of trial and error. As a result, most energy effort seems to go to waste.

To end on a positive note, if we understand how our brains work, learning will be a lot of fun! And here’s what we do here.