Life Hackery

Deadlines and exams
can be harsh on people, especially to those who are not prepared. Some people crumble as a project deadline draws to a close. Others simply give. On the other hand, an experienced crammer flourishes during these situations. He or she has the uncanny ability to perform or study many items over a limited period. Some of these techniques can surely come in handy, even if you are not a crammer. Let’s uncover some of the secrets of a seasoned crammer
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1. Information Breakdown

Organizing information plays a big role when you are preparing for an exam or a formal presentation. These endeavors require you to master and memorize a great deal of information. In some cases, the time alloted for you to prepare is rather limited, making those activities even harder. Your savior comes in the form of proper information breakdown.

• Create Abbreviations – Whenever you are faced with a multitude of terms and definitions, a good way to memorize them quickly is to turn each group of terms into abbreviations. For instance, you see the terms Business, Accounting, Revenue and Taxation grouped in one section. You can call the entire group the BART (coming from the first letter of each term) section. By doing abbreviations, you can easily remember all the terms and recognize the definitions that go along for each. Less memorization is required.
• Highlight Important Terms – With your highlighter, you can mark the main point of each term. Memorizing all the terms becomes easy since your focus is only on the important points of lengthy explanations. Remember, people tend to overstate explanations and definitions, so they can drive the points thoroughly. You might as well remember only the main points, then do your own overstating when you have mastered each of the terms yourself.



• Locate the Topic Sentence – Textbooks and review materials often support concepts with lengthy explanations that are in paragraph form. Reading the entire paragraph is important, but if time is not on your side, you can just locate the topic sentences and put emphasis on them. The supporting statements are important but they are all based on the topic sentence. You can pretty much infer some of the supporting statements, if you understood the main point of the paragraph. This strategy is not as efficient as the previous two, so make this your last resort.
• Make a Reviewer – Rewriting the summarized version of terms may be time-consuming but it happens to be a popular strategy for crammers. The act of writing down information instantly imprints some of the concepts in your mind, since you get to skim through all the information. When you finish your reviewer, you may skip some of the items that have been mentally retained while you were writing. Of course, the rewritten reviewer is shorter than the original, so reading it shouldn’t take too much time.
• The Index Card – The index card is perhaps the favorite tool of crammers. It has three general purposes – a reviewer, refresher, and cheat sheet. Due to its small size, you have no choice but to understand and thoroughly summarize all the important concepts that speed up review sessions. You can view it when making presentations to remind you of all the points that you need to discuss. If you are struggling in an exam, you can slip the index card in any discreet corner as you peek at the answers en route to a passing grade. Pretty cool huh?

2. Human Interaction

Having a partner when reviewing or doing a task is distracting for some people. The difference in motivation and interests can spring up arguments instead of productive moments. A good solution is to manipulate your partner into being a tool for retaining knowledge.

• Get a Review Partner – If you have a partner, you can cover many subjects at nearly half the time when you are reviewing on your own. Delegate one half of the workload to your partner as you take care of the other half. When you’re done, explain to your partner the things you learned from your end and ask him to do the same. Remember, an explanation is easier to comprehend than formal reviewing and it takes less time.



• Mock Tests – At the end of each chapter or lesson, you can ask your partner to give you a mock test. He or she will ask about random terms to test your mastery of the chapter. You can also ask your partner to give you a test before reviewing a chapter, so you will know if you can already skip it.
• Human Alarm Clock – If your partner does not want to review with you and just wants to hang out, you can ask him or her to do what the alarm clock usually fails to do – waking you up. Just cue your partner to give you a hard slap on the thigh, arm or cheek if you fall asleep while reviewing. You’ll be back on study mode in no time.
• Delegation of Work – More people working on one big project is usually an advantage. You can get more things done at the minimum time. If your partner is not really involved with your presentation, just ask him or her to do some of the tasks in exchange for cash or goodies.

3. Stimulants

Keeping yourself awake is always the challenge when facing an upcoming deadline or exam. You should always have a stock of things that will keep you energized for the entire duration of your study or work period. You have to be selective with your stimulants though, or else they will end up being your worst distractions.

The suggested stimulants are:

• coffee
• tea
• hot soup
• cigarettes (for smokers)
• music (play something intense when you feel tired)
• soda
• candies or chocolates

Cramming, of course, is not a healthy practice when doing a job or any particular task. The risk of not finishing the task on time is always present. It also shows the amount of your dedication towards an endeavor. The entire point of learning cramming techniques is not really to cram. You will only use them in situations that require you to work with multiple tasks and deadlines at a relatively short time span.

Knowing techniques on cramming is great, but isn’t it better if you’re confident because you know you studied well? If you want to pass with flying colors and with no self-doubt, here are some tips on how to study.