Whether you’re a teacher looking to update your advice for revision, or a student looking to improve your process, one of the best ways to start improving your revision time is to look at the findings of Psychologists. This is because psychologists spend their time researching how the brain works, including how the processes of learning and memorisation, and therefore revision, works.

Research can tell us a lot about the ways in which revision isn’t as effective as it perhaps should be for certain people. For instance, 27% of boys and 39% of girl skip breakfast, and this is in spite of the wealth of evidence indicating its importance for mental activities throughout the rest of the day.

Another big reason why we aren’t necessarily having as successful revision sessions as most people would have 30 or 40 years ago is because we have a lot more distractions available now. Information and entertainment is available at your fingertips throughout the day, no matter where you are, and this is clearly a double-edged sword when you’re trying to learn a subject.

Doing your revision in a mad rush in the day or days running up to crunch time is also ill-advised. Evidence shows that repeatedly reinforcing information over long stretches of time is the most effective learning method; it also means that you are able to take a generally more relaxed approach to revision; spending just a couple of hours every couple of days going over your material.

Surprisingly, teaching is actually one of the most effective ways of improving your understanding of a subject. In psychological circles, the affect of this is known as the “protege effect”, and it can be a massive help for reinforcing recently learned information.

Last of all, and perhaps most importantly, is to remember to get adequate sleep. Without enough sleep humans can quickly lose a lot of the attention span, and thereby limit the productivity of any time they spend revising, so make sure that you get your 7-8 hours a day!