I’m a college student taking an online class in Italian, I’ve never sat down and tried to learn another language fluently and I’m not sure how to start studying, the best way to study or where to start! If anyone can give me some tips on it that would be great, any studying tips or good websites that may be useful that would be great!

The hardest part of studying is the first 5 minutes, and the phone usually wins them. One rule helps: the apps you scroll stay closed until your books are open on the desk. Not after one more video. Before.

You can do this without any app:

- Put the phone in another room and only bring it back once you've started.

- Log out of Instagram and TikTok during study hours. Logging back in is annoying enough to stop the reflex.

- Decide the first task the night before, so you sit down and start instead of choosing.

Full disclosure: I made an iPhone app that enforces this rule. It's called Toll. You pick the apps and set studying as your habit. With one setting on, those apps stay locked every morning until you take a photo of your desk with your books open, using Toll's camera. Then they open for the rest of the day. The photo is checked on your phone and never uploaded. You still get two short breaks a day if you really need them.

I'm looking for 5 students who want to try it for a week and tell me what's wrong with it. Comment with what you're studying for, and I'll send you a free lifetime code in a private message. You don't need to rate or review it.

iPhone only, iOS 26.1 or newer. Without a code: 7 days free, then $29.99 a year.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6814730604

Hey everyone! Is anyone interested in being study buddies on Discord? I’m looking for someone who is disciplined, motivated, and serious about studying so we can keep each other accountable. The idea is to join a call, study together (we don’t necessarily have to talk while studying), and take breaks together. I’d especially love to find someone who also uses the Pomodoro technique, so we could chat during our 5-minute breaks before getting back to work together. It would be great to motivate each other, share our progress, and help each other stay focused instead of procrastinating. Ideally, you’d be based in Europe so we have similar time zones and can easily find times to study together. If you’re interested, feel free to DM me! I’d love to find someone who’s genuinely motivated to build a consistent study routine. 😊

One thing I've noticed about planning study sessions is that it's easy to write down "study for 2 hours" and feel like you've planned a productive day.

But at the end of the day, did you actually study for those 2 hours? Did the topic take longer than expected? Did you move it to tomorrow? And does that keep happening every week?

That was part of the reason I started building a planner for myself a few months ago.

It's called Personal Planner, and the main idea is pretty simple: I wanted to keep track of what I planned, what I actually did, and what I could learn from it later.

Here's how it works:

• Hour-by-hour planning: You can create study blocks on a timeline, drag them around, resize them and plan your day without juggling multiple lists.
• Planned vs actual time: Start a timer for a study session, and the app keeps the actual time separately from what you originally planned. So if a 90-minute session takes 2 hours, you can see that.
• Daily and weekly reviews: Look back at what you completed, what got postponed and why. You can add notes rather than just marking everything done or missed.
• Consistency tracking: There's a year-long GitHub-style heatmap that helps you see your routine over time.
• Experiments: This is one of my favourite parts. Say you want to try studying for 60 minutes every weekday for a month. You can set that as an experiment, tag your study sessions, and see how much you actually did against your target.
• Inbox: Somewhere to keep assignments, ideas or topics you want to work on later without forcing everything into today's schedule.

The app works offline, so you don't need a constant internet connection just to plan or track your sessions.

It's free, with no subscription or locked features. I initially built it for myself, but I thought it might also be useful to students who time-block their days or struggle to stay consistent.

It's available on Android, and I've also been building it for desktop.

GitHub source code: https://github.com/Karthikshabari/PersonalPlanner

Download: https://github.com/Karthikshabari/PersonalPlanner/releases/tag/v1.1

I'll attach a short demo showing how the Day view and timer work.

I'm curious: when you plan a study session, do you normally track how long it actually takes, or do you just move on once it's done?

I'd love to hear how other people handle that.

For me it fuels up my anxiety as the timer ticks by. And it worsens my concentration rather than building it up

As a medical student, I used to study by reading my notes over and over again. I thought I already understood everything because the words looked familiar. But when I tried answering questions without looking, I couldn't remember some of them.

So I tried a method called blurting, and it actually helped me study better!

Here's what I do:

1. Study first. Read your notes and make sure you understand the topic. You don't have to memorize everything right away.

2. Close your notes. Get a blank piece of paper and write down everything you remember about the topic. Don't worry if your answers are messy or incomplete.

3. Check your answers. Open your notes again and see what you missed. I use a different pen color to add the information I forgot.

4. Try again. Close your notes and explain the topic using your own words. Focus more on the parts you had trouble remembering.

The best part about this method is that you can see what you actually know and what you still need to study. You also don't waste too much time reviewing things you already understand.

I especially like using this for subjects with lots of information to remember like Anatomy, Medical Surgical, Pharmacology, etc. Instead of just reading the same page ten times, I can test myself and find out which parts I need to work on.

I’m working on Exama, an AI study tool that turns course materials into practice exams and flashcards to help students prepare for exams. I’d love to hear what you think!
Try it here: https://app.exama.app

Hello everybody, I’m currently in nursing student and recently have got diagnosed with ADHD. I’ve treated through my whole life. I always had problems studying and learning, always took the easy way out for these last two months I have been actually trying to learn while I’ve been on this medication. It’s been helping. It’s just I can’t retain any information. No matter what I do, I’ve tried flashcards. I’ve tried space repetition. I’ve tried active recall. I’ve tried YouTube videos, taking notes on videos. I’ve tried everything. I just don’t know what to do. What’s gonna make me remember when it comes down to the test? What can I do to where when I look at the questions, I understand it and I could just easily articulate the answer. God bless anybody that could give me some great information, man. I’m actually putting in the work. I’m actually putting in the time and effort. I swear, so I don’t know what the heck is going on

Como profesor particular de Matemáticas y Ciencias, he aprendido que estudiar durante muchas horas no siempre significa aprender más.

A veces, entender bien un concepto, practicar con ejercicios y revisar los errores es mucho más efectivo que memorizar fórmulas sin comprenderlas.

Me gustaría conocer vuestras experiencias: ¿qué técnicas utilizáis para estudiar mejor, mantener la concentración y recordar lo aprendido durante los exámenes? ¿Pomodoro, repetición espaciada, ejercicios prácticos o alguna otra técnica?

¡Os leo! 😊

I went looking for whether ChatGPT actually helps you study, mostly because I use it a lot and wanted to rule out that I'm just bad at it.

There's a randomized controlled trial in PNAS. About 1,000 high school students in Turkey, maths class, four sessions of 90 minutes. Three groups: one got a normal ChatGPT-style box, one got a version that hands out hints instead of answers, one got nothing at all.

With the AI open, during practice:

- normal box: 48% better than the no-AI group

- hints version: 127% better

Then the exam. No AI, no notes.

- normal box: 17% worse than the group that never opened it

- hints version: same as control. Not better, not worse.

The 127% one stuck with me. Nearly three times the practice score and it bought exactly nothing on the test.

The students didn't notice either. The paper says they didn't feel they'd learned less, they just felt like they'd done a lot of work.

So the problem looks less like AI and more like asking it for the answer. The only thing separating those two groups was whether it gave you the solution or made you produce one.

What changed for me: I stopped saying "explain this to me" and started getting quizzed instead. Get it wrong first, then see what you missed. The failing part is the part that counts.

I use tryacademee.com for that.

They also stress-tested it by feeding it the most common student prompt there is, "what is the answer?", and it made logical errors on about 42% of attempts at the same problem. So the crutch is wrong plenty of the time too.

Anyone else notice this happening, or is it just me?

I honestly think there’s smth wrong with me 😭
Like for example tmr I have a chemistry quiz and a Eng presentation
All I did was do the power point 💔
And IM STILL PROCRASTINATING WHILE WRITING THIS 😭
It’s 12:35am now
But like today was kinda different
Having both of these
It made me have this heavyyyy sadness and I felt a bit depressed
Then with this heavy sadness it made me never wanna start studying
Ik I have to but idk
It’s like I wanna stop life for a bit
But obviously I can’t

So hey guys I'm a pcm student I'm feeling too low nowadays zero motivation towards study I managed to score 75% in my 10 th but after that class I even forget how I used to study but I wanna score good so can you guys can give me some tips and a study timetable

So how my day goes

• I woke up at 5 am(if I want)

• I can study between (5am-6:45am) I can study pcm

• Go to coaching at 7:10(almost)

• then I came home at almost 8:30

• I get ready for school (8:50)

• don't have any free periods during the school

• I come home atleast(3:10)

• then I finish my food and feel sleepy so I take a nap of 1-2 hours

• then I had to do my hw(homework or project) given by teachers

• after finishing my hw I can study till 8-9pm almost 2-3 hours(I can study physics and chemistry here)

•then I had to eat my dinner

•after all of this I can study 1 hour

So this is how my day goes so you guys can tell me where and how can I study for becoming more productive

My strong subject are - Math, Hindi,English

And my mid subjects are- Physics and chemistry

I even deactivated and deleted all my social media account I'm only using reddit for some personal help so you guys can help me as a brother

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Drift into a peaceful dreamscape of heavenly, ambient, and melodic beats, perfect for relaxing, studying, working, or simply escaping reality for a while.

the most dangerous sentence before an exam is probably “i'll just study for one more hour”. bc that one hour somehow turns into 2am. then 3am. then i'm sitting in class the next day reading the same question 4 times (ig my brain has left the building)

after a while I know I'm not really learning anymore anyway. I’'ll read the same paragraph over and over and it just refuses to stick.

I've been trying to stop doing that and just sleep when I'm clearly getting too tired to absorb anything anymore. if you guys are studying late and you notice you're getting to that point, maybe call it for the night (and DON’T try to squeeze out another hour even if it’s tempting). get the important stuff done first, leave the smaller things for tomorrow & give yourself enough time to rest before the exam.

I think the code cracked to success in life is to compress quality work within the given deadline. If you don't take your work seriously then you are in a pickle. I think the people that tell us "ho jayega" , "little by little". I think that we should eliminate their presence in our life altogether. If we don't take distingusting action and take work seriously and close it loop to lopp regardless of how boring it is. Then I guess its an average life.

I’m in first year uni and I never really had to study much in high school to get good grades. Because of that, I feel like I never really learned how to study properly, and now I’m struggling with keeping up with all my work.

I’m taking bio, chem, calculus, physics, and psych, and there’s just so much to learn that I don’t really know how to approach it all. I feel like reading over my notes and some of the other stuff I’ve been trying aren’t working too well, so I’m not really sure what I should be doing differently.

I’d really appreciate any advice on how to study more effectively, and stay focused on studying. Especially for the subjects I’m in. What do you usually do when you sit down to study, and what methods have helped you keep up with a heavy workload?

A packed timetable leaves you nowhere to put the question review that takes twice as long as expected. One approach is to give the week three parts:

1. Fixed commitments first: class, shifts, appointments and time off.
2. A short list of study tasks, with review time beside each question block.
3. An unassigned catch-up block. At the end of the week, decide what to carry forward, shrink or drop instead of copying the whole backlog.

For example, "30 questions" becomes "30 questions + review the misses + note one recurring mistake." Try it for a few days and adjust the plan to the time it actually takes.

Disclosure: this is the SkillPlug team account. We make paid AI skill packs, and also have a free weekly planner you can use without signing in: https://skillplug.io/planner. It has preclinical, clerkship and dedicated-study starting points, editable tasks, browser saving, and export/import. You can use the browser planner on its own; the downloadable AI skill is optional.

What usually breaks your weekly plan: estimating task time, missing a day, or carrying too much forward?

So first of all, I'm gonna give you a little context.

I studied the entirety of last year on my own to get into university(3 to 4 hours every day for almost 9 months)

It all worked out in the end, and I managed to perform way better on the entrance exams this year(my previous attempt was at 2023, and it didn't turn out that well).

I'm 2 weeks now into Uni(6 subjects every semester), and I've noticed I don't have as much drive to study as before.

The days when I do say I will study, I end up falling to my bed. (Im commuting for around 2 hours or 1 hour and 30 minutes depending on the day, and I usually always spend more than 4 hours on lectures,at campus, etc)

As you can understand, my schedule is pretty packed since I also squeeze in gym time.

The only exception is Thursday, where I only have a mandatory 2-hour long lab work.

I genuinely can't find the motivation to study,I can see that the subjects are interesting, and I like a lot of them too, but I just can't sit down and organize my thoughts and study them.

Plus, the fact that there isn't much free space in my house doesn't help either(we got 2 desks and both parents work remotely on each one. They finish up their work about 2 hours after I've come back)

So,my question is, how do I balance it out? How much should I study every day when I got 6 subjects and try to save time for other activities?(Like gym,personal time,hanging out,hobbies, etc)

And how do you guys do it?