When is the best time to study for your brain? Surprisingly, the answer to this question is not as simple as being a lark (diurnal) or owl ( nocturnal ). New research has shown that certain times of the day are better for completing specific tasks, and listening to your body’s natural clock can help you achieve much more in 24 hours.
When is the best time to study for your brain?
The brain is not a muscle. It is something else: it is an organ sensitive to the state of mind, to time, to circadian rhythms, to the environment, and the location. It records much more data than we consciously give it and adds details that we do not notice. Now, knowing the theory, what are the best hours of the day to study and perform to the fullest?
The best time to study: 8 to 10 in the morning
In particular, it has been detected that the perfect time to learn something that contains a lot of academic load or activities of greater intellectual effort is from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and motor activities, for example, physical or artistic education. , must be done in the afternoon. Moreover, some institutions organize their schedules according to these investigations, especially schools.
Night is to sleep, not to study
It is likely that many students do not agree with this statement. The human being is a being of “customs,” and when we adapt to do something in a certain way, we create the illusion that there is no other better way to do it. However, let us talk about what the experts say.
Many students say they prefer to study at night, since by concentrating more, they perform more, for whatever reason. I do not normally have a specific place to study at home, because I share a room with my sister. So I take advantage of the night to be able to do it in the room, without interruptions or distractions. I do not have another, because I can not concentrate on a library.
I do it in the study room of my town, in Seville, which is open 24 hours a day. I usually go with a friend, and there we spend the night almost a month before exams. Both students are aware, in any case, about what the experts say, who discourage, for the most part, studying at night
The dream is the one that ends up consolidating learning. Although we do not create it, sleeping is also learned, so if we do not sleep we leave blank a fundamental activity to consolidate what we want to learn.
Brigham Young University investigated this point of the dream and published its findings in The Eastern Economic Journal. These ideas were conclusive: sleep affects performance. Specifically, they recommend 7 hours to get the best grades, since sleep favors the consolidation of memory and learning, and lack of sleep can cause damage to neural networks.
Sleeping yes, but at night?
Now, why do we have to sleep at night? First, because studying is a task that must be alternated with others, such as eating, exercising, etc. At night we have no choice but to study, or at least try. We must think that our body is made to rest at that time. Moreover, they point out that “at night we are tired, and our brain knows it.”
We give less at night and study, generally, with greater difficulty And what is worse: some students resort to caffeine and even dangerous drugs, such as amphetamines, to keep pace, which generates a false reality of being awake.
However, according to Diego Santos of the examtime.com student portal, studying at night also has its advantages. In the first place because we achieve silence, tranquility and fewer distractions: “during the night there are fewer distractions than during the day. Most people sleep, and neither social networks can take you away from your studies. “Also, he points out that “night can increase your creative capacity and help you see concepts with a different point of view.”
There are the students “owl” and the students “larks,” according to the habit of study that you have. But there are also students “larks,” who are the ones who study better in the morning and can get up perfectly in the early hours and start studying. How do we react when we study with the first rays of the sun?
Start the day studying
In general, as we know, the more we advance the day, the more tired we will find ourselves. The psychologist Angela Anguita notes that “take advantage of the early morning hours, we do not cheat enough energy to develop our task, yes, if we have previously rested the necessary. If you have not rested, do it and study in the afternoon, if you can overcome the nap, sacred to many students and fundamental to end the day with the necessary strength. ” In this case, the afternoon can be your great ally.
For his part, the best hours are in the morning, between 7:00 or 8:00 and noon. For example, when the summer temperatures arrive, the heat makes it more difficult to study, and we must take this factor into account if we do not have the cooling systems to cope with it.
These schedules that Taborda points out are ratified by science itself, specifical research in chronopsychology, a science that seeks to understand what the rhythm of the brain is during the day to optimize learning.
In any case, and as pointed out by an investigation by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), optimal performance is not achieved by resting more at night and perform more in the morning, but ” is achieved when there is a balance between study time and sleep. ” While it is true that many students concentrate better at night, we must bear in mind that we must recover those hours that we have stolen from sleeping for wanting to study. That is why the important thing is to know each other well and adapt the general techniques to the trends and particularities of each hour.
