How To Self-Study Effectively At Home: 21+ Tips & Tricks

With plenty of knowledge sources continuously renewed every day, students engross themselves in school lessons and explore many other external reference sources through self-study methods.

Moreover, self-study is also considered one of the basic skills everyone needs to practice while still in school. However, only some know how to use this learning method effectively.

Why should everyone know how to have an effective self-study?

Self-study helps us to create the habit of independent thinking and solving complicated problems independently.
Self-study also builds discipline.
Also, it can exercise memory, cognitive ability, and consciousness in the learning process.
And finally, self-study to train willpower and ability to concentrate.

Reasons why your self-study doesn’t work

Do you feel as though your self-study strategy isn’t working? What are some reasons that your self-study isn’t successful?

Objective factors

It’s the things that happen around us, like the noise or the surrounding temperature. You think about how we can concentrate on studying when one person goes in and out, the other goes in, and then the kids in the house keep going—shouting. The traffic on the street is always loud from morning to night, or the air conditioner in the room is too cold to distract you.

But that’s nothing because there’s something worse, your phone. While studying, ‘ting..ting’: messages from friends asking to go out – you will forget that you are studying.

Subjective factors

Subjective factors are those caused by yourself. In the beginning, everyone was determined to study hard, but not everyone knew whether that goal could be fulfilled. Learning at home makes you feel very comfortable. Still, because of that freedom, you will have no discipline, specific study plan, and schedule. You may need more determination to study continuously.

21 Smart Self-Study Tips and Tricks

Prepare the study space
A clean and tidy desk corner will be an ideal study place.
What you need to do is to remove all irrelevant things from the lesson. Only place school supplies, books, and related equipment on the table. Before studying, prepare a full bottle of water to avoid distracting travel.
Turn on the do not disturb mode
Whether you are a person who enjoys noise or not, it is impossible to concentrate when someone calls your name every 5-10 minutes. So, before sitting at your desk, please set it not to disturb mode or mute your phone.
Alternatively, you can write a piece of paper or a board outside the door with the following content: “I’m studying, don’t come in!” to gently remind your family.
No one will bother you unless necessary.
Set a specific goal
A plan and clear goals from the very beginning come success.
The curriculum can include many different lessons, each containing considerable knowledge that must be fully absorbed.
To do so, in the process of self-study, learners need to outline detailed plans and goals. First, you must determine which source of knowledge is the focus to be cultivated. Then, categorize them according to different goals and allocate a reasonable study time for each goal.

Create a to-do list for the day.
Get into the habit of creating a to-do list every day. Specifically, what you will learn today, how many exercises need to be completed, and how many lecture videos you will watch. It helps you link the tasks together and have more motivation to achieve the goal.
Learn to memorize. Everyone will have different ways of remembering; you can refer to this basic way.
Take notes by hand.
After you’ve written down the information, you need to remember it in your notes, break it up into related sections and mark it with vibrant colors to make it easy to distinguish.
Each week, you can schedule some time to write down everything you have memorized from your brain. Thanks to that, we will remember longer and easily consolidate what we have learned.
Split study time.
Sitting for a long time and concentrating too much sometimes doesn’t work either. You may experience stress and fatigue. So, every 40–45 minutes of studying, you can get up and walk around, go downstairs to talk to your parents, or play with your dog for about 5–10 minutes, then go back to study.
Change the learning environment.
In addition to the familiar room, why not try a coffee shop, bookstore, or dessert shop if that place makes you feel comfortable? These spaces allow you to relax, admire the scenery, and study, which increases your interest in making friends with books.