6 Study Tricks Every Student
Should Know in 2026

The Forgetting Curve Killer

In 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered something that every student intuitively knows: we forget things. Fast. His “forgetting curve” showed that within 24 hours of learning something, we lose roughly 70% of it — unless we review.

Spaced repetition exploits a quirk in how memory works. Each time you successfully recall something, the memory gets stronger and takes longer to fade. So instead of reviewing everything equally, you review material at increasing intervals:

Tools like Anki automate this scheduling, but you can practice spaced repetition manually with a simple calendar system. The key is consistency: short, regular review sessions beat long, irregular ones every time.

“The best time to review something is right before you're about to forget it.”— Piotr Wozniak, creator of SuperMemo

Retrieve, Don't Re-Read

Here's an uncomfortable truth: re-reading your notes doesn't work. It creates a feeling of familiarity that your brain mistakes for actual understanding. You recognize the material, so you think you know it — until you sit down for the exam and realize you can't reproduce any of it.

Active recall flips the process. Instead of passively absorbing information, you actively retrieve it from memory. Close your textbook. Put your notes away. Then try to answer: What were the three main causes of X? How does Y mechanism work? What's the formula for Z?

A 2013 study by Karpicke & Blunt found that students who practiced retrieval remembered 50% more a week later than those who studied the same material through concept mapping. The effort of retrieval is what makes it work.

Pictures Beat Words

The picture superiority effect is one of the most reliable findings in memory research: people remember images roughly 6x better than text after 72 hours. Your brain evolved to process visual information — it makes up about 30% of your cortex, compared to just 8% for touch and 3% for hearing.

This doesn't mean you should just look at pictures. It means you should transform text-based information into visual formats:

• Mind maps for connecting related concepts and seeing the big picture.
• Diagrams and flowcharts for processes, timelines, and cause-effect relationships.
• Sketch notes — hand-drawn visual summaries that combine text with simple illustrations.
• Infographics that compress dense information into memorable visual formats.

The act of creating the visual is as important as the visual itself. When you translate text into a diagram, you're forced to understand the structure of the information — which is a form of active recall.

Learn While You Move

Most students have 1-2 hours of “dead time” per day — commuting, walking, working out, doing chores. Audio learning turns this dead time into study time.

But the real power comes from dual coding theory: when you learn something visually and then reinforce it with audio (or vice versa), you create two independent memory traces. If one fades, the other remains.

Important caveat: audio works best for review and reinforcement, not first-time learning of complex material. Use it as a complement to visual study, not a replacement.

Small Cards, Big Results

Flashcards are the Swiss Army knife of study tools because they naturally combine two powerful techniques: active recall (you have to retrieve the answer) and spaced repetition (review harder cards more often).

But most students make flashcards wrong. Here's how to do them right:

Digital flashcard apps (Anki, Quizlet, RemNote) add spaced repetition algorithms automatically. But physical cards work too — the tactile act of sorting and flipping has its own benefits.

Mix It Up

Your instinct is to study one subject until you “get it,” then move to the next. This is called blocking, and it's comfortable — but suboptimal.

Interleaving means mixing different topics, problem types, or subjects within a single study session. It feels harder and messier — but that difficulty is precisely what makes it effective.

Why does this work? Switching between topics forces your brain to constantly reload context, which strengthens the neural pathways for each topic. It also improves your ability to discriminate between concepts — which is exactly what exams test.