Simplify, Simplify, Simplify…

1. Ruthlessly cull every inefficiency from your study habits for the class. (For Mike, this meant getting rid of the fancy binders and printouts, and capturing the notes rough and dirty during lecture itself.)
2. Then constrain yourself with a reasonable but non-negotiable time limit. (For Mike, this was 2 hours per lecture for review.)
3. Use Computer for designing, managing and reviewing Flash Card (save handwriting time)
4. When reading chapter, and if something really gets you stuck mark it, but continue with the stuff you do understand. Then handle what’s left in a separate session — it’s all about how to efficiently fill in gaps in your knowledge.)
5. Create a cheatsheet - you write out definitions that are important and mini diagrams that relate information together, which forces you to think about how its connected/what it means and also just how to condense it into its simplest form.
6. Get off the not copying everything down mentality. “There are minimal differences in the grades produced by obsessively trying to learn every possible detail and trying to efficiently capture and learn most stuff, fast. Yet, these two strategies induce huge differences in the quality of your life. ” (the 80/20 rule)
7. Don’t worry about being perfect, just get most of the stuff down during lecture.
8. Next, you have to abandon your quest to learn every last fact from all slides from all classes. No one else in the class will do that, and you just have to do better than them on the exams.
9. Instead, set an arbitrary time limit. I suggest 2 hours for each lecture. In this time, try to learn as much of the material as possible. But stick to this limit. This will require that you haul ass, but I think you’ll find that the pressure and knowledge that it will be over soon, will drive you to learn more than you thought possible in this period.
10. Finally, add a shadow course to your schedule and devote 2 hours per week of this time to review a random assortment of past lectures. This ensures that you won’t forget too much of the material between now and the exam.

http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/05/07/the-grade-whisperer-mikes-pre-med-nightmare/#more-623