“In reality, cramming is associated with emotional, mental, and physical impairments that reduce the body’s ability to cope with its environment,” wrote journalist Ralph Heibutzki in the Seattle 'Post-Intelligencer'. He cited a Harvard Medical School study that indicates that cramming leads to many unwanted side effects, including impaired mental function.

In addition, cramming usually requires forgoing all or at least much of one’s normal amount of sleep, and this can wind up undermining the very purpose of cramming. UCLA professor of psychiatry Andrew J. Fuligni coauthored a study on cramming and came away with a clear connection between this by-product of cramming and the expected results. “No one is suggesting that students shouldn’t study,” he said, “but an adequate amount of sleep is also critical for academic success. These results are consistent with emerging research suggesting that sleep deprivation impedes learning.”

In working with students of all ages, I have learned that cramming is rarely as useful as we would like it to be. Concentrating on one subject for many, many hours makes it less likely that you’re going to retain the information. Earlier, we talked about the effect of primacy and recency on memory. If you tend to remember the first thing and the most recent thing best, cramming a huge amount of information between that first and most recent thing is only going to lead to your having more things that you forget. We’ll talk about a better alternative in a moment.

Whether you’re a high school junior taking five AP classes with the goal of gaining acceptance to a top college or a corporate head faced with the need to stay on top of your rapidly changing industry, you’re likely facing two challenges simultaneously: a mountain of information to scale, and little time in which to scale it. If this is you, you’re going to want to make sure you’re studying as efficiently as you can. Over my years of helping people to learn faster and study better, here are seven of my favorite simple habits to unlimit your studies.