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estimator comments on Open Thread, May 18 - May 24, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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How do other people study? I'm constantly vacillating between the ideas of taking notes and making flashcards, or just making flashcards. I'd like to study everything the same way, but it seems like for less technical subjects like philosophy making flashcards wouldn't suffice and I'd need to take notes. For some reason the idea of taking notes for some subjects but not others is uncomfortable to me. And I'm also stuck between taking notes on the literature I read or just keeping a list. It's getting to the point where I don't even study or read anymore because I feel like I need to figure out the best way first.
Ideally I want to take no notes whatsoever and just make flashcards in Anki, since it's quicker and I never look back at notes anyway, but I'm paranoid that I'll be doing things sub-optimally. Does anyone have any suggestions for what to do? I mostly study math and science.
I believe that both making notes and making flashcards are suboptimal; the best (read: fastest) method I know is to read and understand what you want to learn, then close your eyes and recall everything in full detail (that is hard, and somewhat painful; you should try to remember something for at least few minutes before giving up). Re-read whatever you haven't remembered. Repeat until convergence.
In math, it helps to solve problems and find counterexamples to theorem conditions, because it leads to deeper understanding, which makes remembering significantly easier. Also try to make as much connections to already known facts and possible applications as possible: our memory is associative.