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One of my favorite computer games growing up was Sid Meier’s Civilization. I mostly remember playing the original version[1] on my 386DX clone PC and still have fond memories of conquering competing civilizations that are generations behind in tech, the normally peaceful Gandhi “going nuclear”[2], and the triumphant launch of your civilization’s colonists into space at the end game.Besides learning the names of foreign cities both past and present, and remembering not to piss off Gandhi, one of the key takeaways from the game was the Research Tree, or the idea that developmental progress is built off a foundation of past enabling technologies or ideas.For example, in Civilization, to develop or “unlock” Automobiles, you first needed to develop Combustion and Steel. To develop these two, you need Industrialization, which itself is based on Banking and the Railroad. And so on and so forth until you get back to basic building block innovations like the Alphabet and Pottery.Source: Research Tree from Wikipedia Commons (Freeciv version 2.1.8 GTK client)Not only was the Research Tree idea a core gameplay concept for an entire generation of real-time and turn-based strategy games, it is also quite applicable to the real-world and to thinking about this question about Chinese innovation.Another key takeaway from Civilization is that different civilizations do not need to follow the same exact path down the Research Trees. A civilization’s ability to unlock certain technologies is often dependent on its history and the natural resources with which it had been endowed. For example, civilizations without early access to coal reserves would have found it more difficult to unlock “Industrialization”.These two takeaways from Civilization feature heavily in the way I thought about this question. But before we dive in, I just wanted to spend a few moments defining the term “innovation” and what it means to “innovate”.While many people think about innovation as the advances that are happening at the “bleeding edge”, I define innovation as anything that “increases the productivity or efficiency of an economy” — i.e. things that help you advance along the Research Tree. This is not merely well-known inventions like the incandescent light bulb, the integrated circuit or the smartphone; it can also be something like the standardization of the container ship and how it dramatically lowered global shipping costs in the latter half of the 20th century[3].Moreover, innovation is relative. As civilizations or economies are all at varying stages of development (i.e. some farther along the Research Tree than others), something that is considered new and novel in a poor country may have already been implemented many decades ago in a wealthy economy and is therefore not considered “innovative” in the traditional sense of the term.This is why before we talk about China’s innovation potential, we must discuss American innovation.I joined Investcorp’s Technology Investments Group (as it was known back then) as a young investment professional in early 2005[4]. One of the first investments I worked on was a small growth equity investment we made in a company called SavaJe Technologies[5] — pronounced “savage” and not “sah-vah-hey” as my high school-level Spanish-honed instincts led me to utter the first time I met with the management team.We were intrigued by the idea that the mobile phone could eventually become more than just a voice communications device. Already, we were seeing Blackberry add e-mail functionality and Java-based proto-apps show up on Nokia handhelds. SavaJe’s approach was to leverage a large and growing Java ecosystem and existing Java application library by building a Java-based operating system in a mobile phone format — hence the name of the company (I’ll let you figure this one out; hint: why the capitalized “J”?).I would expect very few of you to have ever heard this name because as you might have guessed, the investment was a complete and utter failure. SavaJe did manage to produce its first series of Java-based “feature phones”[6] but the hardware was too expensive, distribution too hard, and the software too buggy to be commercially viable.Less than a year after we made our investment, the company ran out of funding and essentially wound down. It was later acquired by Sun Microsystems — the company that had originally developed Java — presumably for its intellectual property. In 2010, Sun was acquired by Oracle. Two years later, Oracle would sue Google[7] for adopting Java naming protocols for Android app developers. When the court documents were released publicly, I had a nice chuckle when an old friend whose name I once had trouble pronouncing flashed across a legacy news alert that I had forgotten to shut off.But hey, at least I got to keep what is probably still today one of my favorite deal toys — an orange & white, fully functional (albeit somewhat buggy) Java-based Jasper S20 feature phone:The other thing I got out of the experience was a front row seat to the smartphone revolution that was just beginning to unfold. Unbeknownst to us and the SavaJe team — who viewed Symbian[8] as its primary competition — there were some really smart, determined teams out there working on the same idea. And unlike Symbian, these guys were re-thinking everything from the ground up.On January 9th, 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs stood in front of an excited crowd at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and announced the iPhone[9]. Leading up to the big reveal, he toyed with the crowd, discussing the introduction of three new Apple products — a wide-screen iPod, a mobile phone and an Internet communicator — before unveiling a single, combined device in its now-iconic glory.Picture: TechnobuffaloMany people have heard this story that is straight out of the annals of canonical Apple lore. Fewer people know that many years earlier, the company had tried to produce a similar kind of device. In 1993, after six years of development and $100 million of development expenses, Apple unveiled the Apple Newton[10], an early “personal device assistant” that ran its own proprietary operating system and featured cutting-edge handwriting recognition.But like our investment in SavaJe a dozen years later, it too was a failure.Why did the iPhone succeed in such a spectacular, massive way while the Newton failed?This brings us back to the Research Tree.They say that timing is everything. This is certainly the case in the world of high technology, where the underlying currents flow fast, driven by the tireless march of Moore’s Law[11] and its various cousins (i.e. Metcalfe, Reed, etc.).Back in 1993, my aforementioned 386DX PC featured a 120-megabyte hard disk and 4 megabytes of memory and cost my dear parents close to $2,000 to purchase — $4,000 in today’s dollars, if you adjust for inflation. The screen was a 15 lb. color VGA monitor that could support resolutions as high as 640x480. Earlier that year, we had just purchased our first cordless phone to replace our landline POTS[12] hardware.The technology frontier of the early-to-mid-90s allowed Apple to develop a handheld device that featured[13]:A black and white screen with 336 x 240 native resolution640 kilobytes of memory4 megabytes of storage9.6k baud internal modemThis device weighed around 1 pound and cost $700 ($1,400 in today’s dollars).The problem is that the underlying enabling technologies had not yet developed to the point where the Apple Newton could perform the jobs it wanted to replace — your calendar and diary, your watch, your index cards, your Rolodex and perhaps even the PC game version of Civilization — at a satisfactory level, for the price that Apple had to charge to make any sort of profit.In other words, before we could unlock commercially-viable smartphones we had to first unlock other enabling technologies. If we were to look at a simplified, Civ-esque Research Tree for Smartphones, it might look something like this:In reality, it is a lot more complicated and certainly not as linear or direct cause-and effect as the Research Tree above might suggest.Semiconductors as a category is more of a moving target (again, Moore’s Law) and that unlocks features on a rolling basis as you achieve new $/capacity milestones. For example, 640 kb of memory can’t really enable functionality that is superior to non-electronic alternatives, but perhaps an amount 200x that[14] could. 4 MB of storage can’t really move the needle, but an amount 1,000 times could.Similarly, modems that can transmit 9,600 bits per second in 1993 were too slow, but soon-to-debut 3G standards (200 kbps and up) in 2007 began to make downloading music bearable. Stylus pens are too much of a hassle but using your fingers turns out to be great if you can get the response times under a certain threshold.And as you can see above, it is not just about pure technology milestones. Progress in non-technology related areas also matter. For instance, developing laws, regulations and processes around how to manage and license digital content like music enabled transacting at scale in ways that were not feasible before. Another contributing factor was the development of the consumer electronics supply chain in East Asia so that you could make these devices affordable and available in a timely manner for hundreds of millions of consumers[15][16].It took several generations and multiple intermediate products — such as voice-only cellular phones and specialized devices like Blackberries and the iPod — before all the stars aligned, and all of the necessary technology and non-technology milestones were “unlocked” such that “Smartphones” were finally enabled.On December 18th, 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China commenced in Beijing[17]. It was here that a diminutive man of Hakka ancestry from Sichuan became the paramount leader of the People’s Republic of China (note: not the man in the graphic above). This was to be a pivotal turning point in the modern Chinese Civilization’s economic and political history.On its Research Tree, China had unlocked “Communism” in the first half of the 20th Century, culminating with “Most Wise Emperor Mao Tse Tung” leading the People’s Liberation Army into Beijing on October 1st, 1949. While Communism proved effective in finally bringing some semblance of political stability after a century of turmoil, it had proven less capable in fostering modern standards of economic prosperity.As fans of Civilization would know, Communism helped civilizations on their defense metrics, but not on economic productivity. Back in the real world, the productivity gap was widening between planned economies and free market economies that were leveraging technology-centric innovations to push them to heretofore unseen levels of wealth and prosperity.It was that diminutive Hakka man, Deng Xiaoping, who had long realized this but was unable to push forward the necessary reforms having been purged not once but twice over the previous two decades. But as he took over the reins of the country, the Chinese Civilization finally began to take steps to unlock “Capitalism”.Capitalism was the key to unlocking innovation for China. It turns out that private asset ownership and the potential to generate profits and accumulate capital are incredibly motivating factors for our species. It pushes us to work hard, to strive and to be creative: Capitalism unlocked human potential in ways that Communism never could.China’s early reforms were focused on its agriculture sector which had long been mismanaged by the Communist Party. Deng unwound the disastrous collectivization policies and promoted a “household responsibility system” which essentially allocated land to individual households. As had been demonstrated in other densely populated Asian countries like South Korea and Taiwan two decades earlier[18], quasi-private land ownership provided much more incentive for “farmer-entrepreneurs” to work hard — and that led to step-change gains in agricultural productivity that not only benefited themselves but society at large.Similarly, reforms were implemented in the cities to improve industrial productivity. A dual-price system was introduced which was the first step towards introducing market-based pricing and allow market signals (vs. central planners) to determine production. Private businesses were allowed to operate for the first time since 1949 and the economy started opening itself up to foreign investment after being closed for nearly thirty years.While these reforms seemed primitive, they were really the first steps in what was to be a very, very long journey — a journey that the Chinese Civilization is still on today. There have been a few stumbles along the way but for the most part, it has moved in a continuous forward direction.I still remember one drizzly afternoon in Shanghai several years ago[19] when I got a bit hungry and headed out from my hotel to grab a bite at a small dumpling shop at a nearby side street. It was a cozy, family-owned restaurant and because it was the lunch hour rush, there was a long queue to the cash register.As I checked my wallet to make sure I had brought enough Renminbi, I noticed that everyone on line — young and old — had their smartphone out tuned to the same medium-blue color screened app. As I looked more closely, I realized this was the “cool new payments app” that everyone had been talking and this was the first time I was seeing it live. When I got to the cashier and started pulling out cash, she looked at me kind of funny, paused for a few seconds as she figured out how to handle it. Finally, she managed to pry open the cash register and rummage through a small pile of haphazardly strewn bills before collecting the appropriate amount of change.After overcoming the initial embarrassment of it all, I started thinking about what I saw and thought to myself, “man this seems like it might be pretty big.” A short while later, I signed up to Alipay[20] and essentially overnight stopped using cash in China.The Chinese Civilization had just unlocked “Mobile Payments” on its Research Tree.Mobile Payments itself was a direct result of Smartphones having been unlocked several years earlier by the American Civilization as described above. As I write about here[21], the rapid proliferation of smartphones and the lack of existing credit-card infrastructure allowed China to jump straight to a mobile-centric payments solution built around the latest software and hardware paradigms.At first glance, Mobile Payments does not really offer significantly better features than the existing “Credit Card” milestone that had been unlocked decades earlier in the advanced economies of the world. The biggest direct benefit was rendering the invention of “Cash”, unlocked over a millennium earlier during the Song Dynasty[22], largely obsolete with lower friction costs, easier accounting etc.But as you dig beneath the surface, the more robust, modern technology behind Mobile Payments has started to unlock some truly “bleeding edge” innovations. In other words, Mobile Payments unlocks next-generation advances on the Research Tree in ways that payments infrastructure based on Credit Cards cannot.For example, the ability to make mobile, micro-payments led to the invention of dockless bike-sharing[23] as well as other novel online-to-offline (O2O) business models. The rich transaction data generated from mobile payments (which captures many more data points than typical credit cards) is a treasure trove for AI/ML companies looking to mine the data for actionable insights. Each of these second-order innovations can lead to the unlocking of future third- and fourth-order milestones as well.The Research Tree for Mobile Payments might look something like this:At this point, I think it is very hard to argue that China is not already innovative. And if you use this definition of “innovation”, then China has been quite innovative for the past four decades after Deng Xiaoping kicked off its economic reform program. It’s just that up until recently, most of its innovations were of the “catching up” variety.Now, with China starting to reach the “bleeding edge” technology frontier[24] in areas like Internet, e-commerce and mobility-related infrastructure and applications, other civilizations are taking notice even as it remains far behind in other sub-segments (e.g. core industrial technology in areas like aviation and semiconductors).My hope, perhaps optimistic, is that unlike some of the more “winner-take-all” victory paths in Civilization, the real-life game is won when the various civilizations come together and help each other advance up the Research Tree to the point where humans can live in harmony in a world of “distributed plenty”.At the very least, it is a noble goal to strive for and look forward to.Footnotes[1] Civilization | Homepage[2] Why Gandhi Is Such An Asshole In Civilization[3] Glenn Luk's answer to How does innovation affect the economy?[4] https://www.investcorp.com/businesses/private-equity/tech[5] SavaJe - Wikipedia[6] SavaJe releases Jasper S20 Java phone[7] Everything you need to know about the Oracle lawsuit against Google[8] Symbian - Wikipedia[9] Steve Jobs Introducing The iPhone At MacWorld 2007[10] Apple Newton - Wikipedia[11] Moore's law - Wikipedia[12] Plain old telephone service - Wikipedia[13] https://everymac.com/systems/apple/messagepad/stats/newton_mp_omp.html[14] Apple iPhone price, specifications, features, comparison[15] Glenn Luk's answer to Why is China so good at making drones?[16] Glenn Luk's answer to Where does the money I pay for an iPhone go?[17] 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China - Wikipedia[18] Glenn Luk's answer to What are the most fascinating stories of nations who went from poor to rich? What made those countries able to turn around?[19] Glenn Luk's answer to How does Alipay compare with Paypal?[20] Glenn Luk's answer to Can foreigners easily use WeChat Pay and Alipay in China? Do you need a local bank account? Are the payment apps available in English?[21] Glenn Luk's answer to Why aren’t credit cards popular in China, the world's second largest economy?[22] Banknote - Wikipedia[23] Glenn Luk's answer to Is the dockless bike-sharing model a failure in China?[24] Glenn Luk's answer to What will happen to the United States if China's technology continues to advance?

How To Study ?When you sit down to study, how do you transfer that massive amount of information from the books and notes in front of you to a reliable spot in your mind? You need to develop good study habits. At first, it'll take a good deal of conscious effort to change your studying ways, but after a while, it'll become second nature, and studying will be easier to do.Preparing to StudyManage Your Time:- Make a weekly schedule and devote a certain amount of time per day to studying. This will also improve your grades. That amount will vary depending on whether you're in high school or college, and also varies by field of study. Make sure you stick to your schedule as much as possible but don't be afraid to go off of plan sometimes to study more for the most recent upcoming exam. Make sure this study plan is realistic and not impossible. Don't forget to schedule in everything, from eating, dressing, and commuting, to labs and scheduled classes.You need to balance school, work, and extra-curricular activities. If you are really struggling with your classes, you may want to give up the after school job or an extra-curricular activity until your grades come up. You need to prioritize your time. Remember: your education is the most important thing because it is the foundation of your future success. For college classes, you should base the hours you study per class on how difficult the class is and how many credit hours the class is worth. For example, if you have a 3 hour physics class that is really hard, you want to study 9 hours a week (3 hrs x 3 for hard difficulty). If you have a literature course that is worth 3 hours and is kinda hard, you may want to study 6 hours a week (3 hrs x 2 for medium difficulty).Pace yourself:— Find the best speed for you to study and adjust accordingly. Some concepts or classes will come to you more naturally, so you can study those more quickly. Other things may take you twice as long. Take the time you need and study at the pace you feel comfortable.If you study more slowly, remember that you will need more time to study.3Get enough sleep. Make enough time in your schedule to get enough sleep. Get a good night, sleep every night and you'll be making the best of your study time. This is important as you lead up to the test, and especially important right before you take the test. Studies have shown that sleep positively impacts test taking by improving memory and attentiveness. Staying up all night studying may sound like a good idea, but skip the all-night cram session. If you study throughout the weeks, you won't need to cram anyway. Getting a good night's sleep will help you perform better.If you end up a little sleep deprived despite your best efforts,take a short nap before studying. Limit your nap to 15-30 minutes. After you wake, do some physical activity (like you would do during a break) right before you start.Clear your mind of anything that doesn't have to do with the topic you're studying:- If you’ve got a lot on your mind, take a moment to write yourself some notes about what you're thinking about and how you feel before you start studying. This will help to clear your mind and focus all your thoughts on your work.Eliminate electronic distractions:- One of the worst distractions for studying is electronic devices. They are hooked up to social media, you receive texts through your phone, and your laptop is hooked to the internet. Silence your cell phone or keep it in your bag so it's not there to distract you if someone calls or texts you. If you can, don't open your laptop or connect it to the internet.If you are easily distracted by social networking sites such as YouTube, Facebook, or others, download one of the available applications to instantly block some of the distracting sites on your computer. When you are done with your work, you can unblock access to all the sites as before.Setting Up Your Study SpaceFind A Good Study Spot: Gain control of your study space. You should feel comfortable so that studying is more enjoyable. If you hate sitting at a table in the library, then find somewhere much more pleasant, like your sofa or a beanbag chair on your floor. Try studying in comfortable clothes, like a cozy sweatshirt or yoga pants. The place where you study should be free from distractions and relatively quiet.Don't choose a place so comfortable that you risk falling asleep. You want to be comfortable, not ready to fall asleep. A bed isn't a very good study spot when you're tired.Traffic outside your window and quiet library conversations are fine white noise, but interrupting siblings and music blasting in the next room are not. You may want to go somewhere away from people who may provide distractions.Choose background music carefully:- Some people prefer silence while they study, others prefer music in the background. Music can be beneficial to your studying by helping you be calm, elevating your mood, and motivating you. If you listen to music, stick to instrumental music, which is music that has no words like classical, movie scores, trance, or baroque.If it doesn't distract you, listen to familiar music with words. Turn off anything that distracts you from your studying. You may be able to listen to rock music with words but not pop. Figure out what works for you.Make sure to keep the music at a moderate to low volume. Loud music can distract you while quiet music can help you while studying.Skip the radio. The commercials and the DJ's voice can bring you out of your study zone.Listen to background sounds:- Background sounds can help you "get in the zone" and focus on your studies without getting distracted. Natural sounds such as waterfalls, rain, thunder, and jungle sounds can give enough white noise to keep you focused and block out other sounds. There are many places online to find these kinds of sounds, including Youtube.Keep the television turned off:- Having the television on while you study is generally a bad idea. It can distract you a lot and make you focus on the TV show or movie instead of the book. Plus, voices are extremely distracting because it engages the language center of your brain.Snack smart: Eat healthy, nutritional foods while you study instead of foods filled with sugar and fat. Go for energy boosting foods, like fruit, or foods to make you feel full, like vegetables and nuts. If you need something sweet, eat dark chocolate. Drink water to keep you hydrated, and drink tea if you need a caffeine boost.Avoid foods with high amounts of sugar and carbs, like instant noodles, chips, and candy. Don't drink energy drinks and sugary sodas; they contain high amounts of sugar which will cause you to crash. If you drink coffee, skip the sugar heavy drinks.Have your snacks prepared when you begin a study session so you don't get hungry and go rummaging for food.Using Effective Study TechniquesUse SQ3R :- SQ3R is a study method that involves active reading to help you comprehend and start learning the material. The method gets you to preview the material and actively read so you are more prepared when you read a chapter or article.Start with Survey, which means to glance through the chapter to look for tables, figures, headings, and any bolded words.Then Question by making each heading into a question.Read the chapter while trying to answer the questions you made from the section headings.Recite the answers to the questions verbally and any important information you remember from the chapter.Review the chapter to make sure you include all the main ideas. Then think about why this is important.Use the THIEVES strategy:- When you are beginning to study a new chapter, it will make the information it contains much more meaningful and easier to learn if you preview the chapter using THIEVES.Start with the title. What does the title tell you about the selection/article/chapter? What do you already know about the topic? What should you think about while reading? This will help you frame your reading.Scan the "headings" and subheadings. What do these headings and subheadings tell you about what you will be reading? Turn each heading and subheading into a question to help guide your reading.Move to the introduction. What does the introduction tell you about the reading?Read the first sentence of every paragraph. These are generally topic sentences and help you think about what the paragraphs will be about.Look at the visuals and vocabulary. This includes tables, graphs, and charts. More importantly, look at the bolded, italicized, and underlined words, words or paragraphs of a different color, and numerical lists.Read the end of chapter questions. What concepts should you know by the time you finish reading the chapter? Keep these questions in mind as you read.Look at the chapter summary to get a good idea of what the chapter is about before going on to read the chapter as a whole.Highlight important details:- Use a highlighter or underline the most important points in the body of the text, so that you can spot them more easily when you review the material. Don't highlight everything - that defeats the purpose. Instead, only highlight the most important phrases and words. It also helps to make notes in pencil in the margin in your own words to summarize or comment on important points.You can also read just these portions in order to quickly review the material you have learned while it is still fresh in your memory, and help the main points to sink in.If the textbook belongs to the school, then you can use highlighted sticky notes, or a regular sticky note beside the sentence or paragraph. Jot your notes on a sticky note and paste it beside the paragraph. It's also a good way to periodically review in this manner to keep the main points of what you have already learned fresh in your mind if you need to remember a large amount of material for a longer period, like for a final examination, for a comprehensive exam in your major, for a graduate oral, or for entry into a profession.Summarize or outline the material:- One good way to study is to write the material in your notes and in the textbook in your own words. That way you can think about it in your own terms instead of textbook language. Incorporate your summaries into your notes, if there is a connection. You can also make an outline. Organize it by main ideas and only the most important subpoints. If you have enough privacy, it also helps to recite your summaries aloud in order to involve more senses. If you are an aural learner, or learn better when verbalizing it, then this method could help you.If you're having trouble summarizing the material so that it sticks in your head, try teaching it to someone else. Pretend you're teaching it to someone who doesn't know anything about the topic. The brain remembers information more easily when it is associated with color.Make flash cards :- This is usually done with index cards. Place a question, term, or idea on one side and have the other side contain the answer. These are convenient because you can carry them around with you and study them when you are waiting for the bus, for class to start, or have a few down moments.You can also download computer programs that cut down on space and the cost of index cards. You can also just use a regular piece of paper folded (vertically) in half. Put the questions on the side you can see when the paper is folded; unfold it to see the answers inside. Keep quizzing yourself until you get all the answers right reliably. Remember: "Repetition is the mother of skill."You can also turn your notes into flash cards using the Cornell note-taking system, which involves grouping your notes around keywords that you can quiz yourself on later by covering the notes and trying to remember what you wrote based on seeing only the keyword.Make associations:- The most effective way to retain information is to tie it to existing information that's already lodged in your mind. Using memory techniques can help you remember difficult or large amounts of information.Take advantage of your learning style. Think about what you already learn and remember easily--song lyrics? choreography? pictures? Work that into your study habits. If you're having trouble memorizing a concept, write a catchy jingle about it (or wite lyrics to the tune of your favorite song); choreograph a representative dance;draw a comic. The sillier and more outrageous, the better; most people tend to remember silly things more than they remember boring things.Use mnemonics (memory aids). Rearrange the information is a sequence that's meaningful to you. For example, if one wants to remember the notes of the treble clef lines in music, remember the mnemonic Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge = E, G, B, D, F. It's much easier to remember a sentence than a series of random letters. The end result of mapping should be a web-like structure of words and ideas that are somehow related in the writer's mind.Use visualization skills. Construct a movie in your mind that illustrates the concept you're trying to remember, and play it several times over. Imagine every little detail. Use your senses--how does it smell? look? feel? sound? taste?Break things into smaller parts:- One way to study is to break things into smaller sections. This helps you learn the information bit by bit instead of trying to understand everything at once. You can group things by topic, keywords, or any other method that makes sense to you. The key is to lessen how much information you learn at one time so you can focus on learning that material before moving on.Make a study sheet:- Try to condense the information you will need into one sheet, or two if absolutely necessary. Bring it around with you and look at it whenever you have downtime during the days leading up to the test. Take your notes and the chapters and organize it into related topics and pull out the most important concepts.If you type it up onto the computer, you can get a lot more control over your layout by changing font sizes, margin spaces, or bullet lists. This can help if you are a visual learner.Studying More EfficientlyTake breaks :- If you are studying for a few hours at a time, take 5-minute breaks every half hour or so. This helps your joints by moving them around after sitting for a long while; it also helps your mind relax, which can help you more effectively remember the material. Do just enough to get yourself pumped, but not worn out.Try integrating standing into your studying. This may mean walking around the table as you recite the information to yourself or standing against the wall as you read your notes.Use a keyword to refocus yourself:- Find a keyword related to what you are studying, and whenever you lose concentration, feel distracted, or your mind wanders to something else, start saying that keyword repeatedly in your mind until you come back to the topic at hand. The keyword in this technique is not a single, fixed word but keeps changing according to your study or work. There are no rules to select the keyword and whichever word the person feels that it will bring back his concentration can be used as a keyword.For example, when you are reading an article about the guitar, the keyword guitarcan be used. While reading, whenever you feel distracted or not able to understand or concentrate, start saying the keyword guitar, guitar, guitar, guitar, guitar until your mind comes back to the article and then you can continue your reading.Take good notes in class:- When in class, make sure you take the best notes you can. This doesn't mean going for neatness or writing everything in complete sentences. You want to catch all the important information. Sometimes, you may write down a term the teacher says, then go home and copy the definition out of your textbook. Try to write down as much as you can.Taking good notes in class will force you to stay alert and pay attention to everything that is going on in the class. It'll also help keep you from falling asleep.Use abbreviations. This helps you so that you can quickly jot down words without spelling anything out. Try coming up with your own abbreviation system, or use common ones like b/t for between, bc for because, wo for without, and cd for could.Ask questions in class as they pop into your brain, or make a contribution to the class discussion. Another way to question or make a connection is to jot it in the margin of your notes. You can look the question up when you get home, or you can piece together the connection when you are studying that day.Rewrite your notes at home:- When you take notes, focus on recording the information over understanding or neatness. Rewrite your notes as soon after the class as possible, while the material is fresh in your mind so that you can fill in any gaps completely from memory. The process of rewriting your notes is a more active approach to studying by making you actively engage your mind with the information. You can easily zone out if you're just reading. Writing them makes you think about the information.That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to understand or organize your notes at all; just don't waste time doing something in class that you can figure out or neaten up at home. Consider your in-class notes a "rough draft."You may find it easier to keep two notebooks--one for your "rough draft" notes, and another for your rewritten notes.Some people type their notes, but others find that handwriting enhances their ability to remember the notes.The more paraphrasing you do, the better. Same goes for drawing. If you're studying anatomy, for example, "re-draw" the system you're studying from memory.Make things interesting:- Logical arguments will not give you motivation to study. Thinking, "if I study hard, I will get into a good university and get a good job," will not interest you. Find something interesting in what you study. Try to find the beauty of every subject, and most importantly, try to link it with the events of your life and things that interest you.This linking may be conscious, like performing chemical reactions, physical experiments, or manual mathematics calculations in order to prove a formula, or unconscious, like going to the park, looking at the leaves, and thinking, "Hmm, let me review the parts of the leaf we learned in bio class last week."Use your creativity to make stuff up. Try making stories to go along with the information you are studying. For example, try to write a story with all subjects starting with S, all objects starting with O, and no verbs containing V. Try creating a connected story with vocabulary words, historical figures, or other keywords.Study hard subjects first:- Start with the most difficult subjects or concepts at the beginning of your study session. That way you have enough time to study them and you are more energetic and alert. Save the easier stuff for later.Learn the most important facts first. Don't just read the material from beginning to end. Stop to memorize each new fact as you come to it. New information is acquired much more easily when you can relate it to material that you already know. Don't spend a lot of time studying things that won't be on the test. Focus all your energy on the important information.Study the important vocabulary:- Look for vocabulary lists or words in bold in the chapter. Find out if your textbook has a vocabulary section, a glossary, or a list of terms and make sure that you understand these completely. You don't have to memorize them, but whenever there is an important concept in a particular field, there is usually a special term to refer to it. Learn these terms, and be able to use them easily, and you will have gone a long way towards mastering the subject itself.Make a study group:- Get 3-4 friends or classmates together and have everyone bring over their flash cards. Pass them around and quiz each other. If anyone is unclear on a concept, take turns explaining them to each other. Better yet, turn your study session into a game like Trivial Pursuit.Divide concepts among the members and have each member teach or explain the concept to the rest of the group.Divide lectures among the group and have each group summarize the key concepts. They can present it to the group or create an outline or 1-page summary for the rest of the group.Develop a weekly study group. Spend each week covering a new topic. That way you study throughout the semester instead of just at the end.Make sure they are people who are actually interested in studying.Upvote & Comment if you like :)Thanks :))

1) The best way to double your money is fold it in half and put it in your pocket.2) Stop going to Starbucks. Make coffee or tea at home and put it in a thermos. You could save 1500 dollars a year or more.3) Stop drinking soda. Drink more water. Or if you must have soda buy it by the 2-litre and fill a thermos. Or get a Sodastream. You can save at least 1500 dollars a year not drinking soda.3) Eat out less. Make lunch and bring it to work instead. It’s healthier and cheaper. You could save many thousands every year just from this. Even is it only costs you 12 dollars a day for lunch at the local Choke and Puke that’s almost 2700 dollars a year. You can make your lunch at home and bring it for a fraction of that price.4) If you must eat out from time to time to be social with friends, then just order the entree. Skip the appetizers and desserts and get water instead of soda. If you eat out once a week with friends you can save almost 20 dollars per meal this way. *** Never, ever divide the check equally. Pay YOUR share and be generous with the tip but dividing the bill equally means YOU are subsidizing someone else’s expensive entree, Super Call booze and appetizers. Pay for what YOU eat, not what THEY eat.***5) Reduce your time in bars. Bar drinks are a total waste of money. With tip a single round is 10 dollars. How many rounds do you have a night? You want to be social but you don’t need to go round-for-round. And go home earlier.6) Cut back on your phone and cable services. What do you really need?7) Cut back on subscriptions and impulse buys. Make lists of things you need at the store and stick to it.8) Forget about driving around town looking for the best gasoline price. You might save 60 cents or maybe a dollar over a tank of gas. It’s not worth your time.9) Here’s one that I do every year that always pays off. Use the “box strategy” for saving money for the holidays. There are three essential ways you can do this. Every Saturday put some money in a box, starting right after New Years. The first week put in 1 dollar; the second week put in 2 dollars; the third week put in 3 dollars and so on until Christmas. The last week you put in 52 dollars and you have 1378 [52 weeks, 1+2+3…+52=1378] dollars in the box. Or if it gets too hard over time then start with 52 dollars a week, then 51, then 50 and so on and the burden gets lighter with each week. Or if that is too hard then decide to put 20 dollars every week in the box. Or 10 or pick a number. By the end of the year, you’ll have a little pile of cash for that vacation or to pay off the bills.10) Save all your change in a box or bowl. By the end of the year you’ll have about 200 dollars saved at a minimum.11) Make a budget of what things cost on a monthly basis and prepare for it. Stick to the budget.12) Always “pay yourself first”. This means anytime you get paid, put at least 10 (and better if it’s 15) percent into a retirement fund. Use a Roth IRA or a Vanguard SP 500 index fund or 401K or Keough or some plan but put the max into it every week, then make your life on whatever is left. Plan for the future.13) Get rid of credit cards. The average American pays $1300 a year in interest alone. Just insane. Make certain you have the minimum number of credit cards and consolidate all the debt on one card. Pay off your credit cards on time, in full every month. Make sure your bank pays at least the minimum automatically at the same time every month, therefore eliminating the late fees, which are 35 dollars or more and cause your interest rate to jump. Interest rates on credit cards should be irrelevant to you because you’re paying them off every month. If you can’t pay off your credit card every month then your spending is out of control. Get it under control. Until you get it under control consolidate debt on the lowest interest rate card you can find.14) If you are buying a first time house then go for the 30 year fixed rate mortgage with no closing costs, no fees. The rate is a little higher but you can get into it with less money. You can find ways to avoid paying PMI by using multiple loans. If you cannot eliminate PMI then keep track of your house appreciation. As soon as your debt-to-value hits 20 percent then call the bank and tell them to cancel the PMI. *** If you do not actively kill PMI the bank will charge you for it forever. That’s 60 - 300 dollars a month you are wasting ***. Note that with mortgages you can pay off a 30 year mortgage in 23 years by making just one extra payment a year. Pay your mortgage biweekly (every two weeks) and that’s the same thing as making an extra payment a year. Or make your January payment in December to get the extra interest deduction on your taxes. Once you’ve been in your house a couple of years, try to refi to 15 years if you plan to stay in it, then make one additional payment per year and pay off that loan in 12 years. You will save tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars in interest costs.15) Never, ever buy a new car. Buy a good used car with 30,000 miles on it. The car will still have the warranty and cost thousands less. Except for ego and pride there is no valid reason to buy a new car. It’s a total rip off. Never, ever go for the 5 year car payment scheme. If at all possible, go for the three year scheme and pay it off as quickly as possible. A paid-off car is money in the bank and you can save that payment in a fund as down payment for the next car. Many people say the “extended warranty” isn’t worth it but I disagree. It usually pays for itself with the first use. And look at cars with great gas mileage. If you can swallow your pride a little bit, you can save 500 dollars a year or more on gas.16) If you have to make a huge purchase such as a roof, note the life span and the cost, divide it up and put that money in a mutual fund every month. For example, if a new roof costs 20,000 and is expected to last 20 years, put 35 dollars a month away and when it’s time for a new roof you’ll have most of the cost on hand, no extra unplanned burden.17) Discover what kind of frequency of services you can reduce, such as house cleaning and yard maintenance. Even a small reduction in frequency saves hundreds of dollars a month.18) Invest in LED bulbs, and programmable thermostats. These are cheap and easy to implement and can save hundreds per year. Raise the thermostat higher in summer and lower in winter and save hundreds on heating and cooling costs. One of the best ways to save money on heating is to lower the temp on your hot water tank, especially in the summer. You burn an incredible amount of fuel to keep that water at the set temperature. And if you are going away for even a few days, set it to “vacation” or the lowest level. The furnace doesn’t care if you use the water or not - it’s going to keep it hot all the time.19) Donate old clothing and other goods to charity for a tax write-off. You might need to itemize but it’s worth it. Take the charitable deduction for religious services or keep track of money you donate. Up to a certain limit it is worth deducting.20) Seriously, give up smoking if at all possible. A pack-a-day habit costs between 3600 to 5000 dollars a year. If you must smoke, then invest in bulk tobacco and pre-rolled tubes. You can smoke for half the price.21) Use coupons whenever possible. In some cases, two-for-one coupons at restaurants make the food cheaper than you could make it for yourself - as long as you order the water and don’t order appetizers or desserts or booze. Eat the food, pay the bill AND LEAVE. This strategy only works if you can avoid the extras. But remember: a coupon for Prilosec (etc) STILL leaves the prices higher than for generic Omaprezarole and it’s the exact same thing. Where quality is NOT an issue, buy the generic.21) If you are a frequent traveler, take advantage of frequent flyer miles and points and play up the schemes where it’s profitable. Check out Deals We Like - The Latest Travel Deals for the Savvy Traveler for the latest on points and deals.22) Buy the quality item when you can afford it. Quality doesn’t necessarily mean higher price but it usually does. Quality counts in many things, such as tools and clothes and maybe even paper towels. But it doesn’t in aspirin or many cleaners or other things. Decide WHERE you want to spend on quality and where you can be cheap. Buy quality where it counts, such as in boots or coats and sweaters. Forget about buying high octane gas unless your car calls for it. It’s a total waste of money. Remember: Only the rich can afford to buy cheap because only the rich can afford to buy twice.23) Here’s some advice I cannot emphasize enough: Never, ever discuss your financial dealings with your friends and acquaintances. Don’t boast, don’t allude to the money you have, don’t flash cash. Be humble, be discreet and be silent. Nothing sets up jealousy or gloating like people who think you have something they don’t or that they are better off than you are. It sets you up for resentment, cavalier attitudes and people who expect you to act in their best interest “just because”. Never pass up the chance to shut the hell up.These are the easy tips for small potato savings that add up. The bigger tips are these:1) Never lend money you cannot afford to lose. There’s a better than even chance that you will never see lent money again. It’s the price you pay for finding out who your real friends are. Make anyone you lend money to sign a contract. A contract must contain the basic things: who it’s between, what the agreement is, what the start and end time frame is expected to be and what the “consideration” is to be. Consideration is either interest or penalty for non-performance. If someone borrows money for you and puts up their car, put that in the contract. If they give you an expensive watch to hold, put that in the contract. Remember: if it’s not in the contract, it never happened. Putting it in the contract gives you moral as well as legal high ground2) Never focus solely on cutting costs; focus more on improving your source of income. No one gets rich cutting costs. You get rich by improving revenue3) Never underestimate the power of interest in small amounts. Pay off all debts in full and on time, especially credit cards.4) It’s almost always better to buy a bad house in a good neighborhood than a great house in a bad neighborhood5) Set your financial goals. What are you trying to achieve and how will you get there. Make a plan for getting there. All goals must be sufficient, feasible and realistic. All plans must be specific, achievable and measurable. Any goal or plan that does not meet these criteria WILL fail. If you plan to pay of “X” debt in “Y” years then work out what that takes to accomplish and how you will do it. If you can’t do it, then don’t bother trying. You will fail and it will hurt you more.6) Invest the maximum in any retirement scheme and start as early as possible. Almost all the money made in a retirement scheme is made in the early years so the earlier you start, the more you will have when you need it. Read about the “Rule of 72” which shows how quickly money doubles at a particular interest rate. If you plan to retire at 67 and your investment doubles every seven years, then 10,000 dollars invested when you are 25 is worth $320,000 when you retire while 50,000 dollars invested when you’re 35 is only worth only $400,000 when you retire. It’s MUCH better to invest less for a regular period when you’re young than struggle to make it up later.7) Avoid get-rich-quick schemes you don’t understand. You WILL lose. Avoid any broker or planner who uses big words you cannot understand. Anyone who is being honest can tell you how their scheme works in a way a five year old will understand it. If you can’t understand it and they can’t dumb-it-down for you then they are cheating you every single time. They make money whether you win or lose. And with Trump’s new financial rules, brokers can advise you to invest in positions they know will fail; where they have a conflict of interest; and where they can invest against you for their own benefit.8) The easiest and most productive long term investment strategy using stocks in the SP 500 Vanguard Index funds. If you put money in these funds you will most likely do better than the market over the long term - the long term being 20 years or more. If you invest in these funds, put in an initial amount of 5000 dollars then put in 500 dollars a month (minimum) and using “dollar cost averaging” always put in that minimum (you can always add more than the minimum) whether the market goes up or down. If the market goes down, you get more shares for your money so that when the market goes up, your value will appreciate faster. In the long run, most of the money is made as the result of a “down” market.9) Don’t play games with individual stocks unless its a hobby where you set aside the same kind of money you would for a trip to Vegas. Betting on individual stocks is like gambling. If want to do it for fun, that’s great but don’t depend on it and don’t sweat over it. Don’t try “day-trading” where you buy a stock you think will go up and sell it very soon. You will lose. Don’t trade on margin. Don’t try to time the market. Don’t short-sell stocks. This means selling stocks you don’t own and then buying them three days later in the hope the price fell. You can lose your shirt. Look into buying on “Puts and calls” if you can figure out the complex schemes. If you like to play in the stock market then this is a way to play at low cost. If you must do the stock market thing open a discount brokerage account at TD Waterhouse and do it through there. Don’t expect to get any decent advice.10) Do not ever purchase any of the hundreds of “investment pornography” publications out there. They are all selling the latest bullshit that will get you rich and you will only feel anxious and inferior. If you stick with Index Funds then you never have to worry too much.11) Remember that the adage to “buy low - sell high” is always true. Set limits for when you will sell AND STICK TO THEM. If the stock you bought goes down 10 percent, then sell it (if 10 percent is your strategy). If it goes up 10 percent then sell it. If it goes up more, forget it. Always forget about what happens AFTER you sell a stock. That happened in the past and all the “if onlys” never got anyone successful. Remember two things: “No one ever bet enough on a winning horse” and “It’s never too late to make a losing bet”. Cut your losses, take your profits, forget what happened yesterday or what you woulda, shoulda, coulda done. You cannot change the past so don’t dwell on it.12) Remember that when there is blood in the streets it’s time to buy more stocks. When the stock market crashes is when ordinary people get rich. So far, the stock market has ALWAYS recovered. When something bad happens, be bold and take a risk on something you like and have confidence will pull through. This is the only time I ever recommend buying anything other than individual blue chips that pay dividends. And always remember: Sometimes you have to make it “real”. Stocks are NOT money until you sell them. Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched.13) It is never a mistake to buy more bonds, unless you believe the US Government will default in the next 30 years. As you get older, for every year, one percentage point of your investment money should be switched from more risky investments to bonds. Even if the stock market collapses, you will still preserve your capital. If you need this for your retirement then you must consider it. What about gold and silver? There’s always a tiny place for precious metals - but keep it tiny, like much less than 10 percent. And remember, if you’re buying metal because you think the shit is going to hit the fan, then you MUST have the metal on hand. Gold funds, gold held in escrow, etc is all going to disappear when the catastrophe comes. If you MUST buy gold, buy 1 oz .999 fine gold in recognized coins such as Maple Leafs. Avoid crappy corrupted American gold coins unless it can be shown they are highest possible carat weight. NEVER under any circumstances buy the promotional gold or silver coins, stamps or whatnot you see advertised on television. They are a complete and total RIPOFF.14) Property is almost always a good investment but return depends on three things: location, location, location. Stocks can fail but land always retains some residual value. Owning property is an excellent way towards generating extra income along the way and a giant nest-egg for when you retire. I cannot recommend it highly enough. There are too many factors to get into here about how to be smart but generally, buying property is a good bet.15) If you plan to “buy and flip” remember that time is your enemy. Get in and get out fast. Don’t fall in love with a house and never gold plate it. Do the minimum necessary to unload it as quickly as possible at your goal price. Flipping houses is like playing musical chairs. If the market turns or interest rates change you can be stuck with a piece of shit property you cannot unload.16) Plan to retire later. The later you can retire the more Social Security dollars you can get. You can start collecting at 62 but there is a huge financial incentive to wait until you are 67. If SocSec survives (and there is grave doubt of that right now since Trump is working to kill it) then waiting longer means more money for you - a lot more money.17) If you want to be healthy in your dotage then follow the Big Seven rules for living longer, healthier: Drink less booze; stop all tobacco products; drink more water (less soda); get more exercise (even if it’s just a little); eat more vegetables (lots more vegetables); Get (and stay) married; own a dog or cat. If you do these things you maximize not just your chance of living longer but enjoying a better quality of life.18) Get a lawyer to make your will. Do not die intestate. It’s misery for your survivors and the state gets a great deal of your money. Assign a proxy and power of attorney that you trust; make a living will; assign power of attorney over medical decisions; decide how you want your life to end. Don’t delay. Some day tomorrow is not going to come.19) Consider joining the military at a young age so you are always eligible for VA benefits, extra points and other perks that go with that job. Consider civil service as a way of getting good pensions or retirements and early retirement so you can do something else if you want. “Double Dippers”, people with 20 years in two civil service jobs make enormous retirement sums.20) Involve your spouse or significant other in all your financial dealings. Do it all together, not just so you have a plan but so that both of you know what to do if the other dies. It’s inevitable. Make sure they know the passwords, pins and combinations or where they can get them if they need it, and vice-versa.21) Consult and actuarial table and determine how long you will live and how much you will need to survive during that time and how you will live, No one can plan when they are going to die but you can get an idea on average and plan accordingly. This includes Assisted Living, which can run 5 - 10,000 dollars a month. If you run out of money you WILL find yourself on a stained mattress in a filthy state-supplied indigent nursing home being molested by the staff and robbed blind when you are most helpless. Don’t let that happen.22) Most of financial planning is about planning for the future and the biggest piece of advice I ever got was “Don’t be stupid”. That seems rather facile but it’s also true. Use common sense; don’t trust people you don’t know; if something seems too good to be true, then it probably is. And so on.23) Don’t skimp on insurance for your home and property. Review your policy once a year. Insurance is the biggest scam in the universe and if there is a way for them to NOT pay when you need it, they will find it. Insurers are one step to the left from hardcore criminals. You need insurance but you can never, ever trust an insurance firm. Ever. They change the policy you pay for every year and the burden is on YOU to know what’s no longer covered.24) Find a good lawyer and put him on retainer. That means you give him 5000 dollars and for that money you get a business card you can call in an emergency. It’s better to have a lawyer on hand who can advise you (even if it’s to a specialist) than to be scrambling for one in an emergency. Any work he does for you is paid for by the retainer until it is exhausted. He can handle real estate, torts, wills and other things or direct you to someone who can.25) Have an emergency fund set up with at least 3 months gross salary in a money-market or rapidly liquid account. I think 6 months is better and if you don’t need it, it’s accruing interest. But if you lose your job or an emergency comes up you will have something to turn to right away. This is important.26) it might be worth it to pay off high Interest school loans by refinancing your house to 30 years. It will at least lower the payments.27) When it comes to college, it ALWAYS pays to do two years at a cheaper school than to spend four or five years at a more expensive school. Socially, this is a very difficult choice but financially the savings are enormous. In addition, if you MUST take school loans then spend the money parsimoniously. Using school loan money on food or clothes means those things will end up costing you five times the price by the time you pay off the loan. Do anything you can to avoid school loans. They are a complete and total ripoff.