1. Find a calm and peaceful area in your house in which you are comfortable and can isolate yourself from disturbances. Ensure that this space includes a chair, table or desk, and sufficient lighting. Ask others not to disturb you while you are in this special location and switch off all phones, beepers, televisions, videos, music, or anything else that your mind will wander to instead of focusing on the assignments.
2. Find the best time to study. Some students tend to do their best work as soon as they get home from college while they are still in college mode. Others need a break and don't settle down to study until after practice, playtime, a nap, dinner, and/or family time. Just be sure to allow yourself sufficient time to get everything done and still get enough sleep each night.
3. Organize your day, week, month, etc. Set aside a precise time each day to do your assignment and study. Decide on a sensible minimum measure of time that you will spend in this quiet place each day. For instance, let's say you settle on 1 hour as a reasonable amount of time to dedicate to assignment work each day. This means that even if work is completed in the first 40 minutes that you will still stay in this area and study or review notes for the next 20 minutes until the 1 hour is up.
4. Reward yourself for adhering to your schedule and being productive. Decide on an exercise to do once your study time is completed. Plan on watching a Netflix show later in the evening. Tell yourself that you will play five minutes of a video game for every 30 minutes that you study. Create goals and their bonuses before you start studying and work hard to reach them every day.
5. Variety is important. Vary the topics that you are contributing time studying. Get the mandatory projects out of the way first and then go back and spend the supplementary time reviewing material from different courses each day. If you spent extra time reviewing antiquity yesterday, spend the additional time on science tonight. Some subjects and topics may require more time and effort than others. Y'all should get a feel for this a month or so into the college year.
6. Study the challenging subjects first and get them out of the way. You will be able to grasp material quicker and make more connections when you are intellectually fresh.
7. Take regular study breaks. This can also serve as a mini-reward. For instance, tell yourself that you are going to get a beverage or meal or listen to your favorite song after you complete the first set of assignments for math. Make the breaks short, 3-6 minutes or so, so you won't get side-tracked or lose focus for the day.
8. Don't just re-read notes or the text. Ask questions. Create flash-cards. Redo assignments. Create timelines. Play games. Re-write your notes. Get someone to quiz you. Find websites online that review the same material. Makeup questions that you think will be on the test. Create new outlines of the study material by writing specific topics and filling in the details from memory. Studying should be an active process, not just time spent re-reading and cramming something.
9. When you need to retain a group of words use the first letter of each to create a word (acronym) or a sentence (acrostic). For example, an easy way to remember the five Great Lakes is the word “HOMES”. By just remembering the word “homes” you can easily remember the names of the five Great Lakes. H stands for Huron, O for Ontario, M for Michigan, and so on. You can also create silly sentences to help you remember long lists of terms. For instance, remembering the sentence “Martha Visits Every Monday, Just Stays Until Noon, Period”, will help you remember the planets in the order they are found. M for Mercury, V for visits, E for Earth, etc.