Marty Lobdell - Study Less Study Smart

I wish I had enough time to cover everything but I don't so I'm gonna pick out kind of the most important things and make sure I get to those

right off the bat. So is it going? Okay, I the red light. I'm gonna ask you a question. I want you to think for a moment and tell me how long would

you estimate the typical college freshman can read material in their book or in their notes and effectively be learning what they're reading.

Okay. 5 minutes says Chris. 25 minutes. Hour. Now, let me ask, anybody think more then an hour? How long? By the way, I had a

guy, last time I did this, he said I can do it about 6 hours. And I just (scoffs). Well then I found out he is a medical resident, just finished

medical school, his wife was in my class and indeed, my daughter's 4th year med, oh yeah 4, 5 hours but that's not typical I can tell you, okay.

Anybody less then 5 minutes? Okay. So we've got 5 to maybe 4 or 5 hours. A study was done, believe the University of Michigan, they asked

students to do the following thing. When you're ready to study, you've got all your materials, you're back in your little dorm room or your place

you live. Check your watch, start working, the moment you feel that sense of I've read it but it's not coming through, and it's like eh I'm

wasting my time, we all get that feeling, note what time it is. Record that, bring it back. And they had many, many hundreds of freshman and

sophomores do this and then somebody took the time to compile it. And typically, right about 25 to 30 minutes. By the way, it's also true of

lectures and you've all proved it to yourself. You come in to a lecture, you're really alert, check the clock at about 25 after it's like...yeah. And I

see it in every class I teach but how long do we teach? 50 minutes. And yet probably most of learning, if it's gonna happen, is in the first 25-30.

Okay. I'm gonna talk about a person cause I also like to teach by anecdote. Woman named Janette. I was a junior at Western, she was a

freshman, because I was a junior I could live off campus, those days, colleges where your parents had abstentia. She had to live in a dorm

cause she didn't have a relative in town. We were dating. She got her first quarter at Western a D average, 1.0, 15 credits of D. She decided

she really needed to buckle down, plus the school said if you don't make it up you're gonna be kicked out. So the second quarter of her freshman

year, she set the following goal, to study for 6 hours a night, non-stop, 6-midnight, Sunday night through Thursday night. Friday, Saturday she

could party, rest of the week she was gonna study. Now one would assume, my gosh going from little study to 6 hours a night, 5 nights

of the week, she should've aced everything. Want to guess her grade point second quarter? 0.0, she failed every class. This is why telling

people to study more is not necessarily help. In some cases it might actually worsen their performance. What I want to do is show you

graphically what I'm talking about. Let's say this is efficient studying, and I know there are no numbers there but higher means more efficient,

lower means low or no efficiency. And this axis we're looking at time. Here's what happens for the average student. For her, 6 o' clock in

the evening, after her supper at the residency dining hall, she plopped herself down at her little study area and started studying. Here's what

happened. By about 6:30, she was in a major slump. But what was her goal? To study 6 hours, so she continued to sit at her little desk and

stare at pages until midnight. She was at her desk 6 hours. How long did she actually study? About 20, 30 minutes. Now, there's a simple

conduct in psychology all of you are aware of, things that are reinforced we tend to do more of. Things that are punished or ignored, we tend to

do less of, and we operate by those principles to a large degree. If you are sitting there for 6 hours, are you feeling good? No. Once you get

here, you're looking at your book going I hate geography, I hate literature, I hate psychology, all the things we're trying to get you to

fall in love with, you're hating it. And so her actual good studying was followed by 5 and a half hours of pain and misery. I would bet you, I

don't know for a fact, that as the quarter progressed she sat down and finally she was done before she even started. She sat down and just

stared at a book and she flunked every class. Now, had she taken this little seminar or had figured things out on her own, she'd know what to

do. First rule, the moment you start to slide, you're shoveling against the tide. What you need to do is what? Take a break. Here's what's cool

about it. You can study for a half hour. It doesn't take a half hour break to recharge your batteries. For most people about 5 minutes. This is

where you go away, do something fun for 5 minutes. Call a friend, talk to a child, talk to a parent, a roommate, enjoy some music, do something

you enjoy and actually say this is my treat for having studied for 30 minutes effectively. Go back, and here's what happens. Your efficiency

is nearly 100%. Study a half hour, take a break, study a half hour. Had she done that over a course of 6 hours, she would have got about 5 and

a half hours of serious studying and about a half hour of total break time. I really don't believe she would've flunked out. Now I get students

complaining I don't have enough time to study. Look for a break at work. Look for a break at home. Those little 15-20 minutes can be very

efficient if you apply them efficiently. Unfortunately, sometimes it's really tough to get those moments but you need to build them in somehow.

You gotta have at least sometime to study. It's not gonna happen through osmosis. I'm gonna ask you a final question. Lets say you've

studied till midnight, what do you want to do after your last study 20-30 minutes? No, not yet. You want to give yourself a big treat, okay.

Whenever you're studying time is done, plan something special. Now for most women, especially with kids, it's a calgon bath with candles and

the bathroom door locked and the statement if you bother me I will take your head off. This is where guys go "what?" Yeah, moms have no

privacy, kids walk in while you're using the toilet, while you're in the tub, they'll bring their friends with them, won't they? Dads don't put up with

that. When dads are in the bathroom it's lock the door, tough luck, go elsewhere. For you guys, I'll give you mine. This is politically incorrect.

I liked beer, kay. My goal was to knock out all my studying, go to the Iron Bull Tavern in Bellingham, knock down a couple beers for my treat. Now

my buddies they'd say Lobdell how're you getting straight A's? Well I'd studied starting about 3 in the afternoon. By 9 o' clock at night, when

pitchers went on cheap, I'd done all my studying. I went and enjoyed my beer. These yahoos started drinking in the afternoon, then went to the

tavern planning to go home and study. You know that's not gonna happen. You're not gonna study, and even if you do, what's called state

dependent memory you'll typically only remember if you're intoxicated and I don't recommend getting drunk before a test. It's kind of a stupid

thing. If you plan your day right, you can have those little study breaks but the coolest part is this. Because you're now reinforcing it with those

little breaks and something fun, you extended. And you'll find you can go 30, 40, 50, an hour, an hour and a half. This is training. Those of you

who go on to advanced degrees, you're gonna have to study incredible lengths of time without taking a break cause you've gotta get it done

like my daughter in med school. Just amazing, I've told her I couldn't do it now, or actually I wouldn't do it. You're training yourself and if you do it

right it becomes progressively easier, okay next question. How many of you have a true study or library in your place of residence? Okay. 2, 2 of

you if I'm seeing correctly. I've always envied that. A quiet place to actually do reading or studying, kay. I'm gonna make a predicition.

Many of you study in your bedroom. Okay, how many of you study in your bedroom? We'll raise high so everybody can see. Mmhmm, that's

where I studied a lot, especially when I did go to community college. If you don't study in your bedroom hmm...I bet some of you study at the

dining room table/kitchen table or bar. How many of you study at the dining/kitchen/bar? Okay. Now if you don't study in those 2 places and

you don't have a study or library, study in the family room/rec room/living room...the place where your TV and stereo is, your couch, easy chair.

How many of you study there? Okay. Now some of you might actually might drive to a school or library, any do that? Go to a...okay. A few of

you do. I still remember living at home going to Highline Community College, my folks bought me a little desk. I still have it. Little desk, I'd

come home cause I did work then at Albertsons, typically got off at 9, home about 10 and I'd start studying. I still remember reading Billy Bud

Melville. I lie there sitting there studying and my eyes are just...and then the bed started calling to me. "Marty, come lie upon me." Now those of

you who've studied Greek, the idea of Sirens calling sailors to the rocks, oh it's real. I'd hear the bed call me and I'd finally go oh I'll just lie down

for a moment. Next thing my mom to be yelling "Marty you're late for your English class" I was like "Oh god. I didn't read Billy Bud and I'm

screwed." Let me ask you, what's the primary function of a bedroom? What's the secondary function? Good. Most groups go...and I go take

psych 20..or 225 and learn about it. It's functional, okay. Primary function of a dining table, eating. Primary function of a living area...

Recreation, socializing, right? Now, a lot of students don't realize how much we're controlled by environmental cues. How many of you have

been to the Tacoma Mall? Funny, isn't it? Why do you raise your hand? Have you ever been to Tacoma? You answered, why didn't you go like

this? Why? Cause if I'm asking the entire class, you've been trained to do what? And you don't even think about it. How many of you been

Tacoma Mall? Hands go up. But if I walked up to you, Chris you ever been to Seattle? Totally stupid right? When you're talking face to face

you respond verbally. When you ask a group, hands come up. Now, here's what's bad...now that I've tricked you, you won't raise your

hands. I'm not gonna raise my hand. But can you see how powerful it is? Without thinking cause we're in a classroom, how many of you have

been to Tacoma Mall, hands shoot up. Same is true of going in your bedroom and trying to study. You're in the bedroom. Now, piece of

research done in University of Hawaii. Researchers asked the students what's the biggest problem with studying, they said we can't get into it.

The university in question had primarily dorm rooms. Very few commuter students to the university. Most of you have seen a dorm

room. Oh okay. Most of you have seen a dorm room. They're usually rectangular if it's a 2 plex. One side bed, other side a bed, everything

kinda mirror imaged, study area, study area, right...You've got a closet or wardrobe so it's real interesting. In one room you sleep, you groom,

talk with people, you socialize, you study, you snack, you're all in 1 room. It's a multi-purpose room and yet you're supposed to study. If

your door's open, what happens? Everybody "Hey Lobdell what's up?!" You know and then they got to come in and talk to very quickly you can't

get to study. Well the professors heard that the students couldn't get into studying. But they knew what the dorms looked like and the Hawaiin

dorms, all of the rooms had a goose neck lamp, so the professors said we're gonna try a little experiment. Take that lamp, make a little sign and

put it on it, "Study Lamp". Use it only for studying, you don't dress by it, you don't have bs sessions by it, you don't snack by it, you don't clean

the room by it, nothing. You use the other lights for all other functions. Here's the way it works and it's so easy. Every one of you can do this.

Get a little lamp, probably have one already, if you don't my gosh. Yard sale, garage sale, you can pick 'em up for nothing. Get that lamp and it

becomes your study lamp, so if you have to study in your bedroom, turn your desk away from the bed. That's the like how many of you been to

the mall, it makes you want to go to sleep. By the way, you can't study in the bed, it's also bad for your back if you know about posture. Turn your

back to the bed, have a blank wall, have your lamp, have your books ready to go cause you could futz away a lot of time getting ready, can't

you? How many of can futz and futz yeah? You're ready to go, turn on the lamp and start studying. The moment you lose your edge, 15 20 30

minutes later, turn the lamp off, get up and leave the desk. What you're training yourself to study while seated there, and it becomes

increasingly automatic as did the raising of the hand. You sit, turn the lamp on and you're ready to go. It's like magic. The students who did

that were 1 grade point higher the next term compared to the controlled group that didn't do it. 1 grade point simply by creating a study area.

Now if you study in the kitchen/dining, remove all food cues cause I know what happens there. You start thinking turkey in the fridge, yeah

swiss cheese in the fridge, oh yeah sandwich time. How many of you have studied and created sandwiches, takes about a half hour to make

a really good one. So damn good, what do you do? Make another one! And pretty soon not only are you not studying, but you're getting the

spread going, okay. You're really frustrated then. The living area, I'm gonna tell you, you can do this experiment. You try to study in the living

room and you're focused, and other people are listening to music, watching a movie, watching TV, they won't leave you alone. "Hey

Marty. Marty look, look look it's really good." "Excuse me I'm studying." And then they get angry at you. "Well boo on you too." You can't study

in the living area. It's not designed for that unless you're all by yourself, and you turn off the TV, turn down the stereo so it's truly background. If

you're singing along to your favorite song, you're not studying. You're singing along to a song. Your brain has to be focused to be really

studying, not time sharing back and forth between singing and studying. So living areas, very tough to create but if that's what you have to do it

bring your little study lamp in, everything else off, turn on your study lamp, create a study there. Are you getting the idea? Now, I'm gonna

go through a lot of suggestions. Break it up into chunks, reinforce it, simple to do. Create a study area, simple to do. And you'll be amazed

if you take these ideas and do them. I'm gonna make a challenge to all of you. It's so easy to sit through a presentation, say yeah yeah that

sounds good and then walk away and do nothing. Technically as a psychologist, if it doesn't change your behavior you haven't learned it.

It's just in your head. To be a true learning experience you have to behave differently. So my hope is you all make a promise I'll try at

least one or 2 of what I talk about today, and when you find out it works, say gosh I'll try a 3rd one, maybe a 4th. I went back to grad school in

the mid-80s, second time around, I actually aced every class. PLU gives pluses, I got pluses in all but one class. I didn't do that first time, okay. I

was a good student but not that good. I used the principles I learned about in teaching psych to become a student. I wish somebody had told

me these things when I was a student the first time. It would have been a lot easier. So we got 2 things going. Break your study up into little

pieces with reinforcement. Create a study area, if you don't have one. I think you said you do have a study. There you go. Okay. Next thing. The

more active you are in your learning, your're more effective. And yet increasingly I have students who think studying is reading it over and

over and they're gonna have some magical thing where they suddenly understand it and remember it well. When your reading it over and over,

or saying it over and over, the term for that is rote memorization. Spelled r-o-t-e. It can work. It is the way most of us were taught in elementary

school. The way I understand it, a lot of Asian schools depend heavily on rote. Some of you may be darn good at it and if you can memorize

and actually understand by repetition and its effective for you, don't change. But for most of us it's not the most efficient or effective way.

The way to learn efficiently in college, first you have to decide what am I learning. Is it a concept or a fact? A fast is the discreet little piece of

information, Sigmund Freud is the father of psychoanalysis, that's a fact. Okay, but understanding what psychoanalysis is is a concept. Okay.

Understanding the name of a bone is a fact. Understanding what it does in the body gets into a concept, okay. So, in studying, sometimes there

are a lot of facts. In fact, I use anatomy as a good example. You gotta memorize bones, muscles, organs, tissues, a lot of it. But if you simply

memorize and don't understand the function of it. The comprehension of the actual concepts, it's a lot of wasted learning, really. Just to know a

name of a bone is like yeah, so what. Okay. What does it do? How does it function? So, if it's a fact or a factoid, you have to approach it one way

and I'll talk about how you do that. But in most college classes, what we as professors are most concerned about is that you grasp the concept.

Because concepts, once grasped, will stay with you a lifetime. Facts can easily get confused, but that's why we have Google, why we have

reference books. If you know the concept, you can quickly look up the fact if you have to know that for a particular fact. Neat thing is, I get

questions who has more advantage, younger students or older students? Depends on what you're talking about. Most of us as we get

older realize concepts are what are really important to make our lives better, to be effective in our work, effective in our personal lives. Facts

though, we realize we can lookup. We can get those if we need them. Young people actually often learn facts very quickly but they never think

about the concept. I'll give you a simple example, I'm an old guy, when I was a bit younger, I would sing along with the radio with my adolescent

daughter in the car. Oh Dad, if you don't know the words don't sing the song. I'd say okay Beth, you're right. I'm not singing exactly what he or

she is singing, but it's conceptually the same. What? I'd say what's the song about? I don't know. She couldn't tell me what the song was about

but she could tell me every word in the song. That's earning or learning facts and not seeing the concept. I as an adult, I know the concept, I just

make up my own lyrics, okay. Because I don't worry about the factual. Now, some of you are going yeah but my teacher does. I got to know

the facts as well as the concepts, so we'll first deal with concepts. Here's the question, can you put the concept in your own words. If you

can't, you don't really understand it. It's not meaningful to you. To make it meaningful is a struggle. It's probably the biggest struggle you have as

a student. But its a struggle you need to do or you're wasting your study time. Now I'm gonna give you an example. Only 1 of you probably in this

room will understand what I just say or what we say. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. I knew she would get that. How many of you

know exactly what I'm talking about? Rog, you do? Cool. 2 of you. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Most of you are going it's all Greek to me, it's

actually probably more Latin but I'm not certain of that. When I was a biology student, I learned about the ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny and if you try

to learn that and you don't understand it, it's gonna go in one ear and out the other. You can't hold onto it. But if I take a moment to break it down, ontogeny

means your own development as a being. You as a human for example. Recapitulates means goes back through or recaptures, retraces. Phylogeny,

which is the development all the way from single cell to complex mammal. Now to make sense of that, how did all of you start in utero? A single

fertilized cell. An ovum that's fertilized and then it starts dividing and you get all that. But you get a little peer and this is what they first looked at embryos,

where we look like a little thing that looks like a tadpole. Right? Yeah, tadpoleish. So we start with a single egg that's fertilized and then we get this

little thing that looks kinda like a tadpole and they thought these were gill slits. They're not, they're just what becomes the pharisaic area. But there's no legs

it looks like a little tail. We had a tail! Got the idea? Well then we get our arm buds and we get them growing you know, so we now get arms and legs and

gradually we start looking more like a human being but we take an embryo of every mammal, you probably couldn't tell one from the other. Human, pig,

doesn't matter, they all look very much alike don't they? Now, you understand ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, but if the instructor doesn't take the time to

tell you that and you just read it and eh whatever I'll memorize it, you would forget it about as quickly get through it. I'm not gonna prove this, you all get

to do a little memory task. Gotta find where...here we go! I'm gonna read to you 13 letters from our alphabet, you all know the alphabet right? Should be

meaningful. As soon as I finish I want you to say them back to me in the same sequence that I give them to you. So I'll say them and then I'll go

like that, you say 'em back. Y-T-R-H, don't write 'em, A-U-S-P-D-P-A-Y-H...Boy, somebody sounded like they got quite a few but did any of you get

all 13? By the way, the fact that you took notes is a good thing. It's one of the best things to help you remember, and I sit in front of classes where they just

go...for 50 minutes. I'm givin' them wisdom and they're not taking a damn note, and then they wonder why they don' remember. You can't remember

everything in a lecture. I'm gonna rearrange the letters a little bit, see if you do any better. H-A-P-P-Y-T-H-U-R-S-D-A-Y. The letters in sequence. Shh...

letters. Most of you got all 13, and you thought coming to this lecture might be nothing. I've just taken your short term memory span, which is usually 5

to about 9 letters and expanded 13. Can you give 'em again? What are they? Damn you're good. Or I'm good. Now, obviously it was a little easier. Those

were the same 13 letters, same ones. If you're studying anything conceptual, and you're trying to memorize it, it's like Y-T-R...it doesn't make any sense.

It's in one eye out the other, if it's out loud one ear out the other. But if you take the time discover the meaning, suddenly it clicks. And I could probably

ask you next week what were those 13 letters and most of you tell me. At the end of the quarter I could ask you and most of you could tell me. You might

be confused was it happy wednesday or thursday but you'd guess probably thursday. Now, some of you are in my intro class this quarter. I do something

that I wish I had time to do. I divide the class in 2, using a card so half reads 1, the other half reads another card. I have one group try to estimate the

number of vowels in a series of words that I read to them. So they're thinking about the words, we'd say that's superficial thinking. How many vowels in

mosquito? How many vowels in bottle? How many vowels in elephant? And they get to write down what they think is the number of vowels. The second

group are instructed, they're told you need to think about how valuable this item would be. If you were stranded on a deserted island, and you then rate

its value on 5 point scale, 1 being no value, 5 being highly valuable, that's called deeper processing. You're now thinking about it in terms of its

application or use. By the way, I think elephant is a fun one, I'd give it a 5. Not really company but if you got really hungry you got a lot of food there right? I

then read, I think it's about 30 words, everybody's writing down their numbers. I then have them do a stalling exercise where they write their name

phone number and address, that's to dump short term memory cause they might be thinking about the words I just read. If you're now writing your name

and address, it changes your focus. Short term memory only lasts about 20-30 seconds, its pretty brief. So I counted on the clock, after 30 seconds I say

now write down as many words that you can recall. This one is so powerful, the group that's counting vowels on average remembers out of about 30

words. Time and time again. The group that's thinking about usefulness on a deserted island remembers 10. It's slightly more 5/5, 5.5 vs 10.5 but very

close to it doubling without doing any more effort, simply by thinking about it instead of just trying to superficially think about it. And this is where, as a

student, the more you get into the understanding the better. Now this then raises a fun question, what is the meaning? If I say something is meaningful

or meaningless, what am I really saying? Now I'm not gonna through a big drill which is kind of fun of teasing it out of you, but a meaningful piece is a

piece that relates to something you already know, and the best little analogy is its like a file system that you've already got established, you add a new

entry to it so its all neatly organized and its very easy if you got a file system to add a new entry. We do it with computers also. The other way,

meaningless. It's where something new doesn't fit with something already established and so its Greek to you. Its ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

What did you say? If its something brand new, you can't relate it. You have to create a new entry, so you have to grapple with it saying what does that

mean? But as I broke it down, I bet you could associate it with something you already understood. You've probably all seen little embryos, you got the idea

of an egg, the idea that it kinda recaptures our development from a primitive one cell to a very complex mammal, get that idea. That's the meaning of

meaningfulness. Now as a teacher, I think all of us, as we are teachers we all try to make things meaningful in our classes. So we give stories, we give

examples, but sometimes our examples don't work for you. This is where you have to tease it out. So I'm gonna go to a couple things to help you there.

First, study groups. We underutilize them, especially in community college. Would people get through med school without study groups. Not very many.

Do we have vet tech back there? Dental hygiene, vet tech, pretty sophisticated stuff they have to learn, right? Do they do study groups? No?

Oh my...I would hope they do. I would encourage them to do it. Where I've got students to form study groups, performance of the groups go up

dramatically. Now, part of it is probably because they're motivated to do that so its a bit confounding but I'm convinced there's also the power of

studying with other people. I know these concepts its like so well I can't see how they're confusing, but another student who's just found the

answer can sometimes turn and say Thursday, here's what its about. They go ah is that what Mr. Lobdell was saying, god. So easy. But I

can't do that because I don't see where the problems lie in that particular concept. Study groups are great. I'm not gonna tell you how

many of you totally hurt yourself in studying. How many of you magic mark, highlight, whatever you call it, textbooks. A little yellow, pink,

green, glow in the dark sort of thing? How many of you use the markers? Those were invented '65, year I started college. So I

bought one. I turned entire books ugly orange. Then I figured it out. If you color your page solid orange, you've actually highlighted nothing.

Yeah, by highlighting everything you've really highlighted zip. So I did the clever thing and you guys are way ahead of me. What do you

highlight folks? The most important thing. When do you do it? When you first read the book right? Or the chapter. So you read through, are you

studying? No, I'm reading for the most important things. Zip, zip, zip...some of you get out rulers to make it really neat, take hours to

make pretty little...then you go back to the start of the chapter, you read the first thing you underlined and you go I remember that. No you don't.

You recognize it. People are incredible at confusing recognition with recollection. Your visual recognition threshold is so great, you can see a