How to excel in your studies

I’m sitting in class right now, half-listening to my professor talk about green bonds. It’s only mildly interesting. Ironically, this is exactly how not to excel in your studies.

And yet, having consistently ranked among the top students at some of the world’s most prestigious institutions, I might have a thing or two to say about getting good grades and outperforming your peers. But before you even think about that, ask yourself one crucial question ‒ Do I even want to excel? Answering no is just as valid as answering yes. In the end, you’ll forget 90% of what you study anyway ‒ which raises another question: what’s the point of education in the first place? But let’s not open that can of worms today. If excelling is important to you, though, this might be worth your time.

🧘 Prioritize Well-Being

The first point I want to make isn’t even about studying ‒ it’s about everything else you do with your time. It might sound counterintuitive, but I’ve found that prioritizing other aspects of my life actually improves my performance. Over time, I’ve adopted a clear hierarchy of priorities: sleep, free time, exercise, and only then, studying.

Your most important daily appointment should be sleep. Seriously! It doesn’t just affect your energy levels; it actively helps with memorizing stuff. I feel this so strongly that I can often recall things I studied the day before much better after a full night’s sleep. While this effect might be particularly pronounced for me, it’s not just anecdotal ‒ countless studies confirm it. Second, make sure to take regular breaks. Studying 14 hours a day, 7 days a week might seem productive, but if it leaves you burned out and miserable after one semester, it’s doing more harm than good. Finally, I’ve noticed that during periods when I exercised more, I also performed better academically. I’m not entirely sure why. I’m not a biologist, and I haven’t looked into the research, but for me, it seems to be linked to mood and confidence.

🧠 Study Smarter, Not Harder

Now here’s the bad news ‒ you can’t sleep, have fun, and exercise all day long. At some point, you’ll have to sit down and actually study, because, in the end, good grades are at least somewhat a function of time. The real art is maximizing study effectiveness ‒ getting the most value out of every hour you put in.

I could write pages about this, but plenty of resources explain it better than I ever could. One of the best books I’ve read on this topic is Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Here are some of the key principles I’ve applied. First, don’t go to class! And if you have to, make the most of that time by being attentive and engaged. Passively listening to a lecture is one of the least effective ways to learn, especially for someone like me with a notoriously short attention span in class. Instead, go somewhere quiet and work through the content yourself. You’ll save hours. Don’t worry about missing something. That last one percent of perfection isn’t worth the time, and you can always ask your friends if you really need to fill in a gap.

Second, test yourself. Always aim for active studying ‒ trying to recall information or solving problems rather than just re-reading material. Since my studies involve a lot of memorization, I’ve found that cramming everything in the days before an exam is a terrible strategy. The best approach is spacing your learning over time and reviewing regularly. Studying for 30 minutes a day over three months is far more effective than spending the same total time (~45 hours) in one exhausting week. This concept is called spaced repetition, and you may have heard of Anki, a flashcard app that applies it. For more quantitative subjects, you have to really work through problem sets. Even if it takes hours, resist the urge to check the solution. The struggle is where real learning happens ‒ and finally solving a tough problem is one of the most rewarding feelings. It’s like working out. If you want your muscles to grow, you have to push them to failure.

Third, collaborate with others. I’m personally not a fan of studying in groups, but some types of collaboration are really useful. For example, once you’ve cracked a tough problem, explaining it to someone else forces you to think through it again, summarize, and simplify ‒ which deepens your understanding. There’s also value in dividing work. If you and a (reliable) friend each prepare a cheat sheet for a different subject, you can save half the time. Of course, making your own materials will always give you a deeper understanding, but sometimes, aiming for 100% isn’t necessary to get the top grade. Besides, you should already know everything anyway ‒ you’ve been drilling it into your head for months. 😉

📝 Todays Key Takeaways

Although the way I describe studying might sound like the complete opposite of what you’ve always been told, it’s actually how most truly successful students approach it. But of course, you have to sacrifice time throughout the entire semester ‒ and if you also want to take on internships and side projects, you’ll need to optimize every aspect of your schedule. So, as I mentioned at the start, take a step back and ask yourself whether this is something you truly want. There’s no shame in not being at the top ‒ sometimes, second place is exactly where you need to be.