104. The Real Reason Your Study Methods Stopped Working (And How to Fix Them)
Episode 104
You had a study system that worked perfectly. But then suddenly, it didn't.
So what happened?
In this episode, I'm breaking down the #1 reason why legitimate study systems stop working. Whether you're moving from high school to college, freshman to upper-level courses, or undergrad to grad school, the academic demands don't just get harder: they fundamentally change.
I start by breaking down the three major shifts that happen at every academic transition. Then I give you three concrete strategies to level up your study methods so they match where you are now.
If you've ever felt like you're doing everything right but still not getting the results you used to, this episode will help you understand what's really happening and what to do about it.
In this episode of Learn and Work Smarter, I'm giving you the truth about why study systems fail and exactly how to scale yours up.
What You Learn:
Why your study methods stopped working (and what to do instead)
The three academic shifts that break your study system
Why "knowing the material" doesn't mean you'll ace the test
How to create study materials that match your exam's thinking level
🔗 Resources + Episodes Mentioned:
⭐The College Note-Taking Power System (Brand New Program!)
⭐Assignment Management Power System (Brand New Program!)
Episode 07 - How to Learn Things
Episode 20 – How to Use Active Recall
Blog Post: When Your Study System Stops Working
Never stop learning.
❤️ Connect:
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I choose not to spend my time fixing them 😉
3 Reasons Your Study Methods Stopped Working (And How to Fix Them)
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[00:00:00] Well, hello and welcome to episode 104 of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I'm Katie, and today we're talking about something that I hear a lot. I was gonna say every single week, but probably at this point, at least once a month from the students that I work with in my private practice. And it sounds something like this, Katie, nothing is working anymore. I'm studying like I always have, but it's not working. Like what happened? Or maybe it's, you know, I got good grades last year and now I'm not, and I don't understand what's [00:00:30] changed. Some version of that. And if that sounds familiar, if you've ever had a study system that worked beautifully and then it just stopped, then this episode is for you.
Also, before we proceed, I do have a blog post on schoolhabits.com called When Your Study System Stops Working. I'm gonna leave that link in the show notes and in the description box.
In that post, I break down five main reasons why legitimate study systems fail. Okay, there's five, but [00:01:00] today we're going to go deep on the biggest one, the one that affects, I would say, nearly every single student at some point in their academic career. And what is that? Today we're talking about developmental transitions.
I know that sounds fancy and scholarly, but hold on, it's not that complicated. Put more plainly, you have leveled up in some way, but your study system hasn't, and now it's not working.
Now, before we dive in, I do need to make something really, really clear. When I say your study [00:01:30] system stopped working, I am assuming that you were using a legitimate study system to begin with.
I'm talking about active recall and spaced repetition, so testing yourself on material over multiple study sessions, spread out over time. Okay. And if you've been rereading notes or just highlighting textbooks or just cramming the night before tests, those aren't study systems that stopped working. Those are passive methods that just literally never even worked in the first place.
All right? So if you're not already using Active Recall and Spaced [00:02:00] Repetition, I am encouraging you to pause this episode right now and go back and listen to episode seven and 20 because everything we're talking about today builds on that foundation. Alright? As always, everything I mentioned today can be found in the show notes at Learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/104.
You can also find that link in the description box if you are watching the video version of this on YouTube. And while you're there, if you haven't subscribed, I would love so much for you to do that. We have a [00:02:30] lot to cover, so let's get into it.
Okay, so to set the stage again for today's conversation, [00:03:00] I am digging into a primary reason why your study methods and study systems may have stopped working, and that reason I'm claiming is due to developmental transitions. Now, when I talk about developmental transitions in, in academic context, okay, I am not talking about like psychology and things like that, i'm talking about the fundamental shifts that happen as you move through different levels of school. And what's important to understand is that academic demands don't, you know, just get harder as you progress. [00:03:30] They fundamentally change in nature. The type of thinking required changes. The structure around you changes and decreases.
We're gonna talk about that. The pace changes. Expectations change. Literally everything changes as you go up through grades in, in your academic career. So when students tell me, you know, their study system stopped working, what's often happening is that they're using a high school study system in a college environment, right?
Or they're using freshman level strategies for upper level courses, [00:04:00] or maybe they're using undergraduate methods in graduate school. The system itself might be perfect and perfectly executed, but it's not scaled to match the current demands.
Let me use an analogy. I hope this works. It makes sense in my head as I'm thinking about it, but we'll see how it comes outta my, outta my mouth. It's like using scissors to cut a piece of paper, right? Okay. You have mastered using a decent pair of kitchen scissors to cut a single piece of paper, and maybe those scissors even work on a few pieces of [00:04:30] paper stacked together.
But then one day you are asked to cut a stack of 20 pieces of paper. And your scissors no longer cut it like, oh, okay. Did you see what I did there? You're saying scissors no longer cut it. Get it. But like your scissors are the right tool for cutting, right? They're the right tool for cutting paper, but they're not enough when the demand changes. Now you might need a hardcore exacto knife or one of those paper cutting machine things with a handle. I have one of those. I love it. Probably use [00:05:00] it once a month or even something even stronger than that. I don't know what's stronger than that, but maybe there's something, and that's what's happening with your study system.
The method is right, the execution might even be right, but the intensity, the complexity or the application is not matched to where you are now. So it feels like now my study systems don't work. But that's not actually what's happening, right? So let's talk about these academic transitions and when they tend to happen.
I make the case that there are three main ways [00:05:30] that academic demands shift as you level up, and I would say that understanding these shifts is key to understanding why your study systems need to evolve, and then even when you might expect to have to adjust what you're doing. Then of course we're gonna talk into about how to actually do that.
So the first shift, shift number one, is the cognitive demand is increasing. So in high school, most tests reward memorization and just rote recall of facts. You need to know [00:06:00] vocabulary. You need to remember formulas. You need to recall the key facts from the chapter.
And if you're using flashcards with active recall and spaced repetition to memorize those things, that usually works. Actually, it does work, right? That is a legitimate evidence-based study system for that context. But then when you get to college, or even not if you get to college, but even like AP courses in high school, right?
Suddenly exams aren't asking you just to recall information. They're asking you to apply it, to synthesize it across [00:06:30] multiple sources, maybe to analyze case studies, to evaluate arguments, right? Your flashcards are still useful for the foundational knowledge and the key terms and things like that. You still need to know, you know, the, the key concepts and terminology, but if that's all you're doing, you're only studying at that initial memorization level.
And then your exams are testing you at the application and analysis and sometimes synthesis level. Right? And this gap is why students tell me things like I knew the material, but I still didn't do well on the [00:07:00] test. You did know the material, you could recall it, but the test wasn't asking for recall, it was asking for something more complex, right?
And then graduate school takes this even further. You're expected to not just apply and analyze, but to evaluate and to critique and synthesize new ideas. The cognitive demand just keeps increasing as you go up through grade levels and especially as you move through school. So from like middle school to high school and then high school to college. College to graduate [00:07:30] school.
Now, shift number two, I would say, is when the external structure disappears. So in high school, your teachers build a lot of scaffolding into the learning process. They review material in class. They tell you exactly what's gonna be on the test. They're, you know, giving you study guides.
They're reminding you about deadlines all the time. So much scaffolding happens at this level, and that's fine to a degree. And your study system probably worked within that level of structure. You knew when to study because your teacher told you [00:08:00] and was posted on the portal and was written on the board and you got a million reminders.
You knew what to study 'cause they gave you a review sheet posted to the classroom, and then maybe they even made a Quizlet for you.
And then you got to the point where you could validate that you understood the material because you could do the problem questions that they posted to classroom or that they had you do in class. But then you get to college and then suddenly none of that scaffolding exists. Your professors don't review in class.
They expect you to do that on your own. They don't tell you what's on the test. They just expect you to figure out [00:08:30] what's important. Or they'll say something like, you know, chapter five, like you're tested on chapter five, right? They don't give you daily homework. They just give you a syllabus in week one, and they expect you to manage your own time and just make it happen.
And now your study system has to do all the work that your teacher used to do. You have to figure out what to study. You have to create your own review schedule. You have to assess your own understanding. And if your study system doesn't account for that, if it was built to work in sort of that hyper [00:09:00] structured, lower level, high school kind of en environment, it's gonna fall apart when that structure disappears at the higher levels. And then finally, shift number three, I would say, is when the pace of learning accelerates. So in high school, you might have a week to prepare for a test that covers, you know, one chapter. That pace is for most students manageable.
If you use your time well and you don't procrastinate, right? You're using spaced repetition study sessions and they fit comfortably into that [00:09:30] timeline, and you don't feel that rushed as long as you get started, you know? Quickly, right? And you don't wait till the last minute. But in college, you might only have three days to prepare for an exam that covers six weeks of material from lectures, from textbook readings, supplementary articles, and even things that the professor posted to the portal, but literally never even mentioned in class at all, but it was to in the portal.
So you're kind of just expected to know about it, right? The volume of information you're required to know increases dramatically at this level.
But the [00:10:00] time you have to process and learn, that information decreases just as dramatically. Now, if you're using the same spaced repetition timeline that you used in high school, so starting to study just days before a test, you're gonna run outta time.
The system itself is. Relatively sound. Well, space repetition is absolutely sound okay, but it's not scaled to match the volume and the pace of college level material. Now, many of my students who are currently in college I started working with when they were in high [00:10:30] school or in some cases even middle school,
and I can think of so many times when this happened, but I'm gonna share an example like from this most recent year of a, a current student. So I have a student now who is a freshman in college and I worked with her since she was in eighth grade. And at this point our sessions are on Zoom, you know, 'cause she's on campus.
And we started a recent ish, maybe, probably a few months ago maybe. Yeah. About a few months ago started a session with her telling me that she had a test to prepare for, and I said, all right, well when is the test? And she said, well, it's in two days. And I was like, okay, well [00:11:00] I'm assuming that you've, you know, done some studying up to this point and I'm just gonna kind of help you, you know, finalize what you know.
And she's like, no, the professor only announced the test today, so I couldn't have started studying earlier. And I get, I love her dearly. I get that that's a situation she thought she was truly in. But the reality was, and I told her this obviously too, that's my job, to be honest and real, right in, in, in coaching that the exam was on the syllabus that she got in September.
She knew that the test coming up in two days was gonna happen on [00:11:30] that day since September, since she got the syllabus. And so in college, the expectation is that she would see the test and the quizzes on the syllabus, and she would prepare for those on her own.
And honestly, it's just a bonus if the professor happens to mention it in class. I mean, I think they should, but they don't always, and they don't have to. It was on the syllabus. They already did their job. Now this was a hard reality check for her, but it was necessary for her to be reminded of the fact the college works this way.
And it's a good example of study systems from one era, not [00:12:00] scaling to a new era.
All right. Now that you understand these three shifts, there's um, what were they? Cognitive demand, external structure, and pace. Okay, so shifts and all of those. Let me show you what this actually looks like when it happens to students.
I just give you an example, but I'm gonna give you an example of like one from each of those.
So let's do hypothetical example number one, I'm gonna call it the flashcard problem, right? Let's say that you are a college freshman taking intro to psych. In high school, you used flashcards to [00:12:30] study for every test, and it worked great, right?
Flashcards work great for high school level material, even college, but you'll, you'll get what I'm saying in a minute. So, in college freshman year, you're making flashcards for all of your psychology terms. You're reviewing them using spaced repetition, you know, every definition cold, and you take the exam and the questions are not anything like define operant conditioning.
Okay. The questions are more like given the following scenario, and then there's a scenario, identify which type of conditioning is occurring and explain [00:13:00] why. Right? Or maybe it's a question that's like compare and contrast classical and operant conditioning, right? You knew the definitions. You use flashcards, space repetition, active recall.
You knew those definitions, but the test wasn't testing definitions. It was testing application and synthesis. So what went wrong? Well, nothing actually. Your flashcards worked perfectly for what they were designed to do. To help you memorize, but you needed to add another layer to your study system. [00:13:30] You needed to create practice problems that forced you to apply the concepts. You needed to write out comparisons between related ideas. You needed to study materials that matched the level of thinking the exam required.
All right, so that's number one.
Example number two, I'm gonna call it the timeline problem. This one's obviously related to space repetition. Let's say that you're taking organic chemistry in college. Now, in high school chemistry, you started studying three days before each test, and that was plenty of time.
[00:14:00] Usually I advise more than that, but let's say you somehow pulled that off. So you do the same thing in organic chem at college level, but organic chemistry has twice as much material per unit, and the problems are way more complex. Three days is not enough time to work through practice problems, to identify gaps in your understanding and review multiple times, which is the nature of space repetition.
So let's say you take the test, you don't do well, what went wrong? Again, nothing with your method space. Repetition is still the [00:14:30] right approach here, but your timeline needs to be longer. Instead of starting three days out, you need to start a week or even two weeks or more out. You need more space between your repetitions and more repetitions themselves because there's more material to process.
All right. Example three, we're gonna call this the self-direction problem. This is more about, you know, in high school having a scaffold and a slower pace and things like that. So this is, um, yeah, I'm just gonna call it the self-direction problem. So [00:15:00] let's say in high school, your teacher gave you a study guide before every test you knew exactly what to focus on. Your study system was organized around that teacher made study guide. Maybe you went one step ahead. Yes. Okay, because you listen to all of my material and you're like, well, Katie says, make flashcards from it. So you took the study guide that your teacher made and you made flashcards from it, and you did practice problems from it, and you reviewed your notes based on it.
That is awesome. But in college, there are no study guides. Your professor expects you to identify the key concepts from lectures and [00:15:30] readings on your own. If your study system is still built around the idea that someone else is gonna tell you what's important, it's not gonna work, and you're gonna get so frustrated.
You need to add a new component, which is identifying and extracting the key concepts yourself, like scaffold yourself. That's the idea here. Now, that might mean different note-taking methods. That might mean creating your own study guides as you go through each unit. It might mean going to office hours and asking questions to confirm that you're focusing [00:16:00] on the right things.
In all of these examples, right? The point that the three that I just listed, the point is the same. What you did before isn't working now. So you have to do something different.
So that takes us to the question, what do you do? How do you level up your study system? If you're recognizing yourself in any of the examples I just went through, here's what to do about it.
Alright? I'm gonna give you three specific ways to scale your study methods to match your current academic [00:16:30] demands. And remember, we're not throwing out what you've been doing. We're just taking it and we're leveling it up.
All right, so strategy number one, extend your space repetition timeline. If you used to start studying three days before tests, start a week out. Now. If you used to start a week out, start two weeks out now. Now, making this adjustment means that you are spreading those hours over more days, which gives your brain more time to process and consolidate the information. [00:17:00] Now, okay, here's what this looks like practically.
So you, because I can just like hear some of you being like, okay, but like, how do I do that? Let's say on the day your professor introduces a new unit, I'd say spend 15 minutes that evening doing a quick review of your notes. And yes, you better be taking notes. Alright, three days later or two days later.
Yeah, two days later. Spend 25 minutes testing yourself on the key concepts. Three days after that, spend 30 minutes working through practice problems and then rinse and repeat. For study sessions, I typically recommend 25 to 45 minutes. If you're doing enough study sessions [00:17:30] and you're using spaced repetition, the way it's designed to be used, which is like a whole bunch of study sessions, you know, multiple days, they can be short, 25 to 45 minutes, and by the time you get to the week before the exam, you've already done multiple rounds of active recall in multiple study sessions.
And your final review sessions are just reinforcement and confidence building instead of frantic cramming. That is how you level up space repetition.
Strategy number two would be to add more complex [00:18:00] practice problems. So don't just test yourself on definitions and recall like you were used to doing.
Now it's time to test yourself on application. So to do this, you can look for practice problems at the end of your textbook chapters. Those tend to be a little bit more complex than just like vocab right? Ask your professors if they have old exams, you can practice with. Many professors post these online or they at least are keeping them on file.
Some of them won't share those assessments 'cause they're reusing them year after year, but it doesn't hurt to ask. [00:18:30] Closed mouths don't get fed. Right. Just ask like literally the worst they can be like is no. And you're like, okay.
You can create your own what if scenarios that force you to apply concepts in new ways, um, let me give you an example of that.
Instead of making a flashcard that says, what is foso photosynthesis? And then having the answer just be the basic definition, you would make a flashcard that says A plant is placed in a dark room for 48 hours. What happens to the rate of photosynthesis and why? Right. That forces you to apply your understanding and [00:19:00] not just recall a definition.
This is one of those scenarios where you could probably use AI to help generate some questions that are like that. So maybe come up with five or maybe three to five, feed those into chat, um, and then say, generate, you know, five to 10 more hypothetical questions that are, uh, or hypothetical scenarios that are similar to this question.
This would be a good, proper ethical use of ai That's not gonna sacrifice your own learning. It's, it would enhance it. Okay. Anyways, if you are in a class that [00:19:30] involves problem solving, maybe math, physics, chemistry, econ, you need to be doing lots of practice problems.
Not just reading through solutions, right? And actually working through problems yourself, getting stuck and figuring out where your understanding falls apart. You can't figure out what you don't know unless you get in there and practice on something, right? And that is how you level up your active recall practice questions.
And then strategy number three.
Create study materials that force higher order thinking, and this is where you move [00:20:00] beyond flashcards and basic self quizzing. This is where you create comparison charts. Let's say your class is covering multiple theories. Maybe make a chart that compares in contrast them. You can make a Venn diagram.
Venn diagrams are a wonderful way to think about material. Right. Like why, why aren't people making Venn diagrams anymore? They're like legitimate ways and frameworks to think about things and to learn about things. 'cause you can't learn about something you don't think about. What are the, what do these two things have in common?
How are they different? When would you use one over the other? You could write [00:20:30] practice, prompt, uh, essay prompts for yourself and outline your answers. Not do full practice, uh, full essay questions, but you could at least outline what you would say, even if your exam isn't essay based. This forces you to organize information and make connections between ideas.
I'm always saying this one, but you can teach the material out loud to somebody. Seriously pretend you are explaining the concept to someone who has never taken the class before. Can you do it without looking at your notes? If you get stuck, that is where your understanding is weak. I would say try to actually find [00:21:00] someone to really explain this to so that they can ask questions back.
And typically the questions that people would ask you back is like, wait, I don't get it. Can you like why and how? And that's that deeper order thinking. Sometimes for lower levels, I say, okay, if you can't find someone to explain this, explain the concepts to just, you know, find a stuffed animal or a dog and just try practicing it out loud.
But for the higher order of thinking, I'd say try to find an actual human to encourage them asking questions in return. You could also make mind maps or concept [00:21:30] maps that show how ideas connect to each other. This can be especially useful for classes where you need to see big picture and understand relationships between concepts. I have a YouTube video, not on this channel, but in my school habits channel about how to make, uh, use a mind map to study.
I'll leave that linked below. The key here is that your study materials need to match the level of thinking that your exams are gonna require. If your exams ask you to analyze, your study materials need to force you to analyze, right? If your exams ask you to synthesize, your materials need to force [00:22:00] synthesis.
Okay. Is this harder than just making flashcards? Abs are freaking lly, but that is what it takes. That is literally what you have to do. Tough love.
Now, I wanna talk about grad school, just for a sec. If you're in graduate school, everything I just said applies, but even more so because grad level work requires you not to just understand and apply information, but to critique it, to evaluate it, to generate new ideas from it.
And your study system will need to [00:22:30] reflect those even higher order thinking skills. This might mean reading papers and writing critical analysis of the methodology. This might mean comparing multiple studies and identifying gaps in the research. This might mean taking a theory and applying it to a completely new context that just wasn't even covered in class.
Alright? Try doing that and if you can do that, then you know what you're talking about. Grad school is also where you start to need systems for managing long-term projects, literature reviews, research. I mean, whatever your program, you know the specifics of the program, but it's more like [00:23:00] long-term stuff.
Your study system isn't just about preparing for exams anymore. It's about managing ongoing scholarly work completely independently. And if you're struggling with this transition, that's completely normal. This is a massive shift for students that I don't think enough people talk about.
It is okay to need help figuring out how to study at this level. All right? But no matter what level you're at in school, here's what I want you to do after listening to this episode, okay? I want you to first honestly assess which transition point you're at right now. Are you [00:23:30] in that high school to college shift?
Are you moving from lower level to upper level courses? Are you in grad school figuring out a whole new level of academic work? That's step one. Second, I want you to look at your current study system and ask yourself, is this scaled to where I am now, or am I still using methods that worked at a lower level?
If you're using flashcards, are they just testing recall or are they testing application? If you're using spaced repetition, is your timeline long enough for the volume of material you're dealing with? If you [00:24:00] are reviewing your notes or testing yourself in your notes, are you also creating opportunities to practice higher order thinking?
And also this is important, give yourself permission to evolve your system. Just because something worked before doesn't mean you have to keep using it forever, or even should. In fact, that's like the entire point of this episode, is that you shouldn't. You're not feeling it being a student at school if you need to change your approach, you're adapting, you're evolving, and that's what smart students do. But again, no one talks [00:24:30] about this. Hi, I am, I'm trying. Inside SchoolHabits University, I teach all of this and so much more in depth.
The study Strategies module specifically walks you through how to level up your active recall methods as your academic demands change. And the time management and task management modules help you build in the structure that's gonna disappear as you move into college and beyond, so that your study system isn't relying on that external scaffolding that's no longer there.
You build it for yourself.
If you wanna check that out and join me inside [00:25:00] that program, you can go to schoolhabitsuniversity.com. Okay, so to recap, if your study system stopped working, it's because you've leveled up but your system hasn't caught up with you. Academic demands change as you progress through school. Your cognitive load increases of the work that you're, you know, learning.
The external structure disappears, pace accelerates, and your study methods need to evolve to match those changes. The good news is that you already have the foundation. You're using active recall, you're using spaced [00:25:30] repetition, which are the most effective study methods that exist, period.
Now you just need to scale them up. Expand your timeline, add more complex practice, create study materials that match the level of thinking that your exams are gonna require. You've got this, and if you need more support, join me Inside SchoolHabits University, where you get one full year of q and a access to me.
As always, you can find everything I mentioned today in the show notes at [00:26:00] Learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/104. Thank you so much for your time. Keep showing up. Keep doing the hard work. Keep asking the hard questions and never stop learning.
