If you’re in high school or college, you need to know how to study. Studying effectively helps you learn faster and more efficiently. As a neurodivergent person, you may find traditional study methods challenging, but there are strategies that can make learning easier.

This is not a one-size-fits-all guide. Instead, these are suggestions you can try, because everyone learns differently.

Flashcards

For tests, you often need to memorize information by heart. Flashcards are one of the best tools for this.

The definition of productivity (such as time, labor, or materials) is to produce a desired outcome, output, or result. But why do I say it’s snake oil?

It’s unmeasured and undefined. What most people call productivity is really just busywork. We measure it in quantity before quality—and there’s a big difference.

There’s a quote: “Bite off more than you can chew.” That’s what people are doing in the pursuit of productivity. So we end up turning in half-hearted work, which we sometimes have to redo, just to say we got more done. It’s not attainable—there’s always more to do. So we rush, repeat, and burn out.

In a digital environment, it is easy to go faster. In the age of AI, things go even faster. But that speed does you no good if you don’t know what you are doing, because you end up copying and pasting the information. You don’t know what you just said, and you will forget it in a few hours. I think people should write more and practice. According to Science Daily, workers were 25% faster on paper than on an electronic device (“Study Shows Stronger Brain Activity”). The article says that a notebook is not uniform in pen strokes, has limited space, and is a physical item to keep track of. Digital notes are infinite in spacing and easily closed, so when you close the app, it is out of sight, out of mind. This reminds me of a quote that I once heard: “ To go faster, you first need to slow down,” which means to step back and look at it objectively, but with the digital tool, you don’t step back and see it differently. I know the convenience of the available digital tools, and you have them anywhere via the cloud. A notebook is not easily searchable, and they are bulky to carry, especially if you go bigger than an A5-size notebook. In contrast, a notebook enables faster deep understanding than a digital app.