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Step 1
Turn off the radio and TV. One of the most effective study habits that you can develop is to put yourself in a quiet environment. Many people think that they can just ignore music as it plays in the background, but studies have shown that people can only focus on one thing at a time. Your attention will actually be switching back and forth from the music to your studies. This switching back and forth breaks your concentration on your work. If your dorm room doesn't get quiet enough for you to focus on your studying, download a free white noise generator for your computer to drown out the distractions.
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Step 2
Schedule your study time. If you are having trouble pulling yourself away from the Xbox to work on your college paper. An effective study habit is to make an agreement with yourself that at a certain time, you will sit down at your computer and work for a half hour. You can usually break through procrastination by telling yourself that at a certain time you will begin working, but only for a little bit of time. After working for a half hour, you will probably find that it easier to keep working than it was to start working in the first place--breaking your inertia at the beginning is the hard part.
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Step 3
Get in the habit of working in groups. It can be hard to coordinate times to meet with a classmate or two for a study session, but this is one of the most effective study habits that many people overlook. Just talking about the course material with a friend will help your brain hang on to the information better than if you had read it out of a book and quizzed yourself with flash cards. When you study with another person, your brain gets to see multiple perspectives on the same material, and by having conversations about the course material with friends, your brain becomes more comfortable thinking in the patterns that are necessary for your to comprehend and recall the new information.
