The 80/20 Rule for Secondary School Students!

How can we apply the 80/20 Rule to studying?

So we know that 80% of our results come from 20% of our work. But how do we use this when it comes to sit down and study? What does this have to do with anything?

Well, let’s say you are having a revision day. You are going to revise for 6 hours overall. The 80/20 Rule tells us that 20% of what you do during those 6 hours will give you 80% of your grade.

There are lots of things that we need to do when we revise (e.g. blurting, mind maps, flashcards, reading the text book,etc), but only 20% of these activities count towards 80% of your grade. With this knowledge, you can pick out what activities/techniques allow you to learn more and absorb or remember the most information, and you can really focus in on doing these activities.

Now, the remaining 80% of work you do will give you the remaining 20% of your results, so it’s important that you keep doing all the other activities which may only help you get one or two marks on a test.

When I revise, I know that blurting is a big helping hand for me, but I can’t just blurt every topic straight away. I need to revise that topic by reading the textbook, and writing notes on it, and then I can go in and use blurting to see how much I remembered.

Even though active methods are much better than passive methods, it is still important to do passive tasks like reading the textbook and taking notes, because that will give the knowledge that you need. Then active methods will help to understand and remember the content.

Summary

I know that this post is SOOO short (the shortest I’ve ever written), but it gets all the information across quickly, right? So, we’ve learnt that 80% of your grade comes from 20% of your studying. That 20% of your studying is the really focused and helpful part!

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Thank you for reading this incredibly short post! Don’t forget that I post every Wednesday and Sunday at 12:00. Don’t miss out!