Is studying for 3 hours continuously better than studying in 3 sets of 1 hour throughout the day?

Question

(For memory retention and productivity)

In: 5

Answer 1

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.