(For memory retention and productivity)
In: 5
It’s all about focus and intent. If it takes you time to get into a focused state then perhaps breaking up the study block is not for you. But if you need breaks to stay fresh and focused then taking breaks may work for you.
But either way, studying for 3 hours without focus isn’t as productive.
Essentially, no. Your memory retention and productivity decline down as you study (based on averages of course). Taking frequent breaks allows your brain to essentially ‘reset’ and go back up nearly to as productive as you were at the start. The length of the break (and productivity decline) will vary per person, but a 5 minute break every half hour is generally recommended.
Many famous scientists and philosophers and other people used frequent breaks to do something entirely different (play a violin, do a crossword, meditate, or other playful activities). And that allowed their brain to process information.
A further interesting part as you mention memory retention in particular is that 1. you can learn the memory techniques memory champions use to remember thousands of numbers (or whatever you want, formulae, historical events, successions, etc). And 2. Sleep helps shift things from short term to long term memory. Studying, sleeping, exam, will perform better than studying, rest, exam.
In essence, 1 hour of *quality* study will be better than 3 hours of poor quality study.
If say that studying in three sets of 1 hour with 15-minute breaks between them would be better for me because I wouldn’t be able to really focus for three hours straight. But that’s pretty subjective, so you’d probably have to try it and find out what works better for you.
If you’re talking purely memory then three sets of one hour. The first reason is primacy and recency effect. Basically in any session you’re most likely to remember the stuff at the beginning and the stuff at the end. The middle gets fuzzy. So three small sessions gives you multiple cracks at that. The second, which is less pronounced here, is spaced versus massed practice. Basically you’re better off studying 1 hour a day for five days than five hours in one day.
All that being said, the time studying is less important, beyond some bare minimum, than the kind of studying.
I can’t answer your exact question, but if you’re trying to retain knowledge from studying, I’ve seen/heard some pretty compelling scientific studies indicating that getting good sleep after studying is *extremely* important to retaining studied/learned information.
Your mind is kinda like a muscle. Putting it under a heavy load for a long time wears it out to the point it’ll under preform until you give it a break to recover. How long it takes to reach the point of mental exhaustion varies from person to person just like how muscle endurance varies from person to person. For me I’ve found 45 minutes of intense studying followed by 15 minutes of mindless internet scrolling to be a good balance.
Businesses have learned to exploit this fact through the concept of [decision fatigue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue). They’re aware that customer’s ability to make good purchasing decisions is lower at the end of a shopping trip than at the beginning. So they put all the impulse buy items near the checkout line.
All these answers are garbage.
The answer is YES; large blocks of study are better at least for me. Ain’t got time to fuck around for 1 hour everyday. The fuck I look like, some diligent student here?
Source: grad school in a science discipline.
Taking frequent breaks doing unrelated activities helps makes time actually spent studying more efficient. The real benefit comes from revisiting new material about 24-48 hours after learning it, and then again about a week later. This causes the brain to reinforce new connections and solidifies the knowledge to which these refer.
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