Today, Tea shares "Effective Learning with a Question Tracker System."
Categorize Questions: Focus Only on What Needs Learning
When doing exercises, if you encounter a question you already know how to solve, mark it as High—meaning you're comfortable with it. You don't need to redo these questions; you can skip them. Later, when you review, you won't focus on these, only on questions categorized as Low.
Low means questions you don't know how to solve. These are the important ones because they're what will help you improve. When you encounter a Low question, don't sit there overthinking too long. Instead, learn how to solve it by reading the answer key and explanations. Once you understand the method, you'll be able to solve it next time.
Some questions might be at Medium level—meaning initially you're a bit uncertain, but after seeing the answer you realize, "Ah, I can understand this, it's not too hard." These still need to be redone to consolidate understanding.
Don't Waste Time Overthinking Answers
A major mistake many students make is spending too much time thinking about answers instead of learning new knowledge. This is actually very counterintuitive, even the opposite of common thinking.
Normally, people think learning means you have to try hard to think of the solution first, try to find the answer yourself for better retention. But in reality, this method isn't effective.
The reason is that most people study from BBP books, and BBP books aren't meant to test what you already know—they're a Learning Tool. Questions in BBP books are designed to help you learn. They already know you don't know this yet, but after doing it, you will.
The Right Way to Learn: Read Solutions First, Do Questions Later
The usual classroom method is:
- Teacher gives an exercise.
- Student sits and thinks about how to solve it.
- If they can't figure it out, they continue sitting and thinking more.
But if I read a question for 5 minutes and still don't know how to solve it, I immediately flip to the answer.
Teachers often say: "If you do that, you won't improve!" But in reality, if you can't think of it, you could sit there for an hour and still not think of it. So why not just learn the method from the start?
Instead, focus on reading the solution, understanding the method, and memorizing the approach.
After learning new knowledge from the solution, the next day return to that question to check if you actually remember.
Use a Question Tracker System
To learn effectively, you need a clear question tracking system. Here's how it works:
- Low: Questions you look at and have no idea—mark as Low. These need the most thorough study.
- Medium: After reading the answer and understanding somewhat but not completely confident—mark as Medium.
- High: When you can explain thoroughly, even argue with the person teaching you about how to solve it—then it's High.
Without a tracking system, you'll keep redoing questions you already know, which doesn't help. The tracker system helps you focus on questions you don't know yet, instead of wasting time on ones you've mastered.
Study Smart, Not Just Hard
Without a good question tracking system, you'll keep redoing questions you already know, which doesn't help you progress.
Another mistake is students keep spending time thinking about answers instead of learning new knowledge. But learning is about understanding knowledge and applying it, not sitting there thinking and hoping you'll figure it out yourself.
For example, you don't need to come up with E=mc² yourself, but you need to understand what it is and how to apply it. Learning is the same—you don't need to discover everything from zero, you need to understand how it works to apply it to exercises.
I've applied this method, and it really works. If you follow this approach correctly, your learning will definitely improve noticeably!