Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Whether you are studying for secondary school, college, high school or university, keeping a record of your study progress and of your study content can vitally improve your chances of higher grades.
One of the biggest benefits of keeping a diary for your studies is that it can provide valuable feedback which generally can't be uncovered by direct observation methods such as live real time training. This ability to reflect on things past helps the student to detach from the actual learning and provide a brief moment of clarity where all the pieces of the puzzle can fit together.
Often is the case in these moments that great realisations can come and that is when learning moves from being conscious to the unconscious. After all, that is where we want all learning to be because that is the most powerful place of learning.
What do I mean by this?
Take learning how to drive for example. We all know at the beginning that learning is a case of figuring out what all the pedals, buttons and wheels do. Once we learn the mechanics of the car, we move onto learning the physics of vehicle movement and how a car steers, accelerates and brakes.
Once that part is learnt we then move onto learning about road strategies where we need to understand the rules of the road and also have some level of learning about how other human beings interpret the rules and drive their vehicles.
It sounds like there are a lot of inputs and lots of data going into learning how to drive and there is, but I bet you if you've been driving for more than a year already, you probably don't even stop to think about how it's all done now. That's because it's become an unconsciously learnt skill that no longer needs your conscious thought and you can do it whenever.
So that's what keeping a study diary does, it helps you to move things from the conscious learning part of your brain into the unconscious part.
The best things to do are simply to record your thoughts and what you've learnt during each study day. Then take a moment to reflect and postulate on what that study means to you and you might come to some other new understandings.