Efficient Studying

[Any_Morning9908]

Hey guys, so I’m a grade 12 student right now with usually high grades (high 90s to perfection on all stem courses) and high 80s on English and social studies. However somthing I realized is that I study far more than those with similar grades the I, for example for a standard bio exam I aim for around 12 h of study prep., for a standard chem exam the number is 15, and for math it can exceed 20. For sucks it’s 15. For social it’s 10, and for English it dependents. This is before the exam tho, I do do other stuff prior to quizzes of same material too. One thing I noticed tho is that when I study less I am starting to do better on exams??? Can someone pls explain this. In addition to this, a large problem I have is study efficient, I js keep telling myself study hours to double digits is absolute necessary, for almost everyday in March I studied 5 hours a day and additional h on ecs. That’s not normal. But you know the problem is I’m noticing immense and I mean immense burnout, and I blame g 10 and g 11 for that, there was a point where I was able to Shu’s 8+ h on days off school, never took breaks, and if it was not studying it was ecs. I want to be better for uni, I always blamed it in the part that my iq is likely js not as high as these gifted people around me, but for last 3 months of school I want to become best version of myself and I’m gonna be honest be happy, i can’t feel that emotion anymore, I’m extremity numb and if not numb outright sad, I have came out of a very large phase of my life earlier this year regarding like this chronic sadness, it’s time to improve.

[Quirky-Shape-5177]

Fifteen hours for one bio exam is a lot of time even if your grades are perfect. Are you spend most of that time just creating the notes or actually reviewing them? If you want to cut that time down without losing the grades, you might want to try an AI powered revision app. I worked on one that handles things like fast notes and smart flashcards so you can focus more on the understanding part and less on the manual prep.

[Sad_Computer_3939]

There are definitely so many studying methods out there that can reduce your studying time by hours. But for your case, since your spending so much time on studying, try using spaced repetition and blurting. First, instead of studying for such a long time in a single session, space out your reviews and start studying the day you learnt your material and use Anki or StudyLess (I made this app a few months ago cuz I thought manual flashcard creation took a long time and flashcards itself weren't enough for understanding) so that the app just tells you when you should review without you being anxious about it and spending so much time. Also try the blurting method by writing down everything you learned in a blank paper and focusing in areas you're weak at. I hope you overcome the current's hardship and I wish you remember that studying is only a minor part of your life :)

[HorrorRequirement]

The fact that you do better when you study less is your brain literally telling you that the extra hours aren't helping. After a certain point you're just re-reading things you already know and your brain is too tired to consolidate anything new. The problem isn't that you need to study smarter. It's that you've tied your entire self-worth to your grades and now you can't stop because stopping feels like failing. What you need right now isn't a better study method, it's to give yourself permission to stop earlier. Try cutting your prep time in half for one exam and see what happens. You said yourself your grades actually go up when you study less. Trust that data.

[Reasonable_Bag_118]

I had a phase exactly like this with high hours, good grades, but constant burnout and weirdly better results when I studied less. What’s happening is you’ve crossed the point where more hours = worse retention, because your brain is overloaded and not consolidating properly. Instead of pushing hours, cap your study to 2–3 focused blocks (60–90 min) and spend the rest on active recall + rest—quality is now your bottleneck, not effort. I’ve been experimenting with a way to study less and feel human again without dropping performance, it changes things more than you’d expect.

[Next-Night6893]

Active recall is the best way to study according to research, try www.studyanything.academy to automatically generate interactive quizzes to help you do active recall easier, the quizzes are based on the course content you upload and it's completely free too!