Studying again...

In one of my better work-avoidance moments, I was reading
that we waste a lot of our time when studying (rather than
avoiding studying, like I'm doing).

I mentioned earlier that I like to try and sit down and
decide what I intend to learn from a particular study
session. What I hadn't thought about was that I should
define a period of time I am going to spend on doing the
learning. There appear to be a couple of reasons that
make setting a goal and a time limit a good idea.

Firstly, if we decide on what it is we are intending to
learn, we avoid meandering around a lot and ending up
becoming distracted by concepts or ideas that are not
central or essential to what we want or need to learn. If
you read an article and don't understand a concept, you
can usually read to the end of the article without
understanding the concept, and grasp the central tenet of
the article anyway. If each time you didn't understand
something you went off and looked it up, several things
would happen. You would waste time looking it up, and you
would get distracted from your main theme.

Secondly, there is something called the serial position
effect.
When asked to repeat back a list of things they have just
been told, people will usually (not always) start with the
last thing they were told (called the recency effect),
then more than likely some of the first few things they
were told (the primacy effect) and then those things in
the middle are least well remembered. By working
continuously without interruption for lengthy periods of
time, we don't give ourselves beginnings and endings
(primacy and recency) to recall from, and if we don't set
ourselves a time limit or a "learning limit" or "learning
goal", we are less likely to stop work. (This appears to
me to be a special application of Parkinson's Law, where
work will simply expand to fill the time available, and by
giving ourselves an indefinite time to finish, we could
give ourselves and indefinite and infinite amount of
work).

Thirdly, there is always the "fear of the unknown".
Imaging you want to learn the contents of e.g.
Fundamentals (Pinnock et al) or Miller's Anaesthesia, or
(my favourite) Hutton. How many pages are there in each
of those books? (963, 3376 and 1072, in case you were
wondering). A lot. Imagine sitting down and starting to
read at page ONE, only to read all the way through? Every
time you stop and come back, you still have "1072 pages
less whatever I read so far" to go. Or are you a glass
half-full kind of chap/chapess and think "I've read this
many pages, fantastic"? And how long is it going to take
to read (well you could work it out, I suppose)? This
uncertainty of the amount of time it will take is almost
certainly going to be a millstone around your neck.

So what am I trying to say here?
Well, basically it boils down to: when studying, set
yourself a goal, and set yourself a (realistic) time in
which to achieve that goal. Take a break when you've got
to the end of that goal to allow primacy and recency a
chance to exert their power, and then come back to your
studying. Which is where I'm going now.