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Let us assume that you have a long chapter to study. You could try the following method-Glance the major topics in the chapter - Most of us started reading from first page of the chapter. I suggest that you glance over the whole chapter, see the major headings and sub-headings.Make a mind-map - Check out internet to find how to make a mind map (Mind Mapping Software). This is a pictorial representation of any information. It represents main idea, sub ideas and further details of each sub idea. Below is a mind map from Tonu Buzan's website on "being healthy".Use a pencil to read - Our attention span is very small. Our mind is like a horse without reins, it runs away at every opportunity. Writing while you read helps to understand and remember better. You can keep a separate notebook or write on your book, as you feel comfortable. This would also help you in your exams as you would be able to see the main points you have written and recollect the concept.Revise your notes - After you finish the chapter, revise your mind map and your notes. This would move concepts in your long term memory.Hope that helps!All the best and thank you for asking.Edit: The original question asked was - How do I focus on studying when I forget everything I study? So my answer focuses on retaining what one studies. The question has been edited and merged.

Best I can do is tell you why I used to dislike Beethoven. And it boils down to one symbol that Beethoven uses all. the. time. It’s this symbol:Even if you don’t read music, I encourage you to read on anyway! That symbol is a repeat sign. It means, “Take the last few minutes of music and repeat it, exactly note-for-note.” If you pick a Beethoven piano sonata at random and flip back to page three or four, odds are you’ll find a repeat sign. (In fact, this is true for all of Beethoven’s music from solos to symphonies, concertos to chamber music!)1. Here’s probably the most famous example, the blistering third movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I bet you recognize it after just a couple seconds. And again, you don’t have to read music to see that flurry of fast notes in the first few bars:And sure enough, if you flip to the third page, bar 65, in the far right in the picture below…you find the repeat:2. The famous Sonata Pathetique starts like this:And on page five, we find the repeat. (Again, far right in the picture below):3. Pastoral Sonata, intro, truly calming and “pasture-like”, compared to the first two:And after a hundred and sixty one freaking measures and about three minutes (some entire pop songs don’t last that long)…repeat it all, note for note:4. How about later on in his career? Here’s how The Tempest starts:And on page 3, here’s the repeat:5. And best for last, my favorite of all time, the Waldstein:And, like clockwork, on page 4 after 86 furious bars, (if your fingers can make it that far!) repeat it all again. Of course the hardest parts are still yet to come!3 Part Sonata FormIf you know Beethoven’s music, you know I’m not cherry picking. These are bangers. These are some of his most famous piano works! So what’s going on here?It has to do with Beethoven’s preferred form of music called sonata form. See, classical music is divided into sections just like a song in today’s music might be divided into verse, chorus, and bridge. And like today’s music, classical composers give clear signals to indicate when you’re exiting one section and entering another. But, these signals aren’t as obvious to the modern ear as something like a bass drop to signify the chorus! So let me break down sonata form a little bit and give an example.Sonata form has three distinct sections:(1) The Exposition. A piece starts with the exposition. This is where the composer introduces you—or “exposes” you, hence the name—to the musical ideas in the piece. You’re supposed to hear these main ideas, and remember them well enough to identify them later on. This sounds crazy hard, and it is at first. But think about it: When you listen to a pop song, you remember the hook and recognize it when the hook comes back. If it’s a really catchy pop song, you might even remember the hook later that day! So it’s not crazy to think that with a little practice you could listen to the exposition of a classical sonata, and remember the main ideas you hear. Take Beethoven’s The Tempest as an example. The exposition lasts from 0:00 to 2:10. During this period, you get several distinct musical ideas:0:00 to 0:52, You’ll hear some slow, rolling chords and a fluttery intro.0:52 to 1:16, The Beethoven equivalent of a bass drop.1:16 to 1:32, This quietly pulsating dance.1:32 to 1:52, A kind of breakdown followed by a rumbling build up.1:52 to 2:10, The whole thing resolves, but also falls apart.Then….BIG FAT REPEAT SIGN! Do the whole exposition, note for note, again. The second time around, see if you can pick out each of these ideas yourself.(2) The Development. After the exposition comes the development. Here, the composer takes those main ideas from the exposition, and he or she tweaks them. He might take two separate ideas from the exposition and merge them into one. Or take a theme from the exposition and make it bigger, or happier, or sadder. The point is: having introduced the main ideas, the composer is now going to mess around with them.In the example of The Tempest, the development runs from 4:20 to 7:30 (and that link will take you right to the start of it). Without going into too much detail, notice: To start, the development begins with the same slow, rolling chords as in the very beginning. But then at 4:55 it cuts straight to the Beethoven bass-drop. This time though…bigger, harder to play, and LOUDER! Beethoven is beginning to mix and tweak ideas from the exposition.(3) The Recapitulation. Finally, after playing around in the development, a piece in sonata form wraps up with the recapitulation. When you use the word “recap”, that’s actually short for the much fancier “recapitulation”. So, the recapitulation is literally a “recap” of the main themes. In many pieces, the composer will replay the exposition note for note, but maybe now in a new key. You actually hear this same technique in today’s music all the time (key change at 2:32). Pop stars love this technique: at the very end of the song, they’ll play the chorus one last time, but in a higher key (key change at 3:10). It sounds way more intense and the song ends with a bang!For classical composers, the recapitulation is not always as simple as a key change. But in our example of The Tempest, starting at 7:30, Beethoven uses that exact pop star trick! Almost note for note, he replays several sections from the exposition, just now in a higher key. Hear it for yourself! Re-listen to the exposition from 1:15 - 2:10 here. And then listen to those exact same notes, just higher, in the recapitulation here.That’s it: exposition, development, recapitulation.Back to Why I (used to) Dislike BeethovenSo what has this got to do with why I (used to) dislike Beethoven? Well with Beethoven, the exposition almost always ends with that big fat repeat sign. “Play this whole section again, note-for-note.” It’s like you get to the end of chapter 1 in a book, and the writer says, “OK great! Now go back and reread chapter 1 from the beginning, word for word. I’ll be waiting.”To me, it wasn’t just that this repetition seems a little tedious. I was irritated by the fact that Beethoven is so married to this rigid three part sonata form. His music often follows the exact structure I’ve outlined above: exposition and repeat, development, recapitulation.In contrast to Beethoven, my first loves in classical music were composers who came after Beethoven—Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Prokofiev, Chopin, Liszt. (If you’re only going follow one link, choose Prokofiev!) These guys sometimes do follow the sonata form. But never so rigidly as Beethoven. A close study of their music shows that they sometimes do repeat sections…but you’ll rarely find a repeat sign in their music. When these later composers repeat an idea, they always tweak it slightly, it’s never note-for-note the same. It’s like the exposition and the development are happening at the same time.In this context, Beethoven’s music sounds rigid and repetitious. It’s a little like if you listen to modern heavy metal, and then you go back to metal from the 70s. It sounds puny by contrast! Or maybe if you love bebop jazz, and then you turn on Duke Ellington and it just don’t mean a thing ‘cuz it ain’t got that swing. Or maybe it’s like watching an action movie from the 90’s, and you’re like, “They called these special effects??” So I admit I was being a little dramatic when I said earlier that it’s the repeat sign I didn’t like about Beethoven’s music. It’s not literally the repeat sign. It’s the adherence to classical form and the rigid structure (at least relative to later music) that the repeat sign represents!Coda: I Love BeethovenA quick wrap up on this, because all that obviously changed. (And in case it wasn’t clear: I picked only examples I love in this post—Beethoven or otherwise. I’m not making fun of anything I linked to!) The thing that changed for me is I went back and studied music even before Beethoven. And that quickly caused me to appreciate what Beethoven was doing. He didn’t invent the sonata form, obviously. But he did perfect it. He perfected it to such a degree that later composers—Rachmaninoff, etc—just didn’t even bother to strictly adhere to the sonata form anymore. The only way they could expand past the genius of Beethoven was to break the sonata form.And when you go the other way, to composers before Beethoven…talk about rigid and boring! Sheesh! (Unsarcastically: because I came around on Beethoven, I’m optimistic I will eventually start to love earlier composers. I just have to manage once to stay awake all the way through a Mozart piano sonata :P Any tips from the pre-Beethoven fans? Throw ’em my way!)So Beethoven is the sweet spot. I was wrong when I initially thought he was sticking rigidly to classical sonata structure. He wasn’t. He was testing its limits and pushing the sonata form to its absolute breaking point. And those extremely consistent repeat signs at the ends of the expositions? They serve an extremely important function. Beethoven was saying, “OK, that’s the end of the exposition. Now listen to it again, and listen closely. Because this thing is about to go off the chain.”

The first question here is what is your end goal? You can read my answer here to get some pointers.I think what makes reading papers harder is the presentation - sometimes the papers have too much technical content, and the language is often terse. As a result, you need to put in a lot of effort to get the first few paragraphs, and by that time you start to feel exhausted and lose interest.Now, probably the most important technique to deal with this is to do multiple passes. Often, papers will have a lot of peripheral content and technical details other than the main ideas.Skimming through the paper should give you the main ideas and the bigger theme. Specifically, try to see what is the problem that they are solving and what is the general framework they are using (graphical models, neural networks, etc.) The problem will typically be stated in an intuitive language in the introduction and more formally after “Related Works” section. Don’t go through the “Related Works” section now, unless you know that the paper is very similar to one of the papers discussed in the section, and you have read that paper. A high-level idea of the approach may be written down explicitly, or may be obtained from figures or equations, or by skimming through the rest of the paper quickly by searching for keywords.Then, you can do a more detailed pass, where you can now try to see how different sections relate to the theme. Skip the proofs and derivations here. Just understand what all concepts are being introduced / used and how. Also look at the “Experiments” section at this point to get better sense of the ideas.Finally, you should go over the technical details (e.g. the mathematics) if you are required to read the paper to that depth.Other important "tricks" that have worked for me include:Group study: Reading papers with someone makes it a lot easier. What may be hard to understand by reading alone, may be easier when you discuss and explain ideas to each other.Making notes: Sometimes, papers have too much information which is hard to keep up with. Making notes as you go along helps you remember things better. Plus, you tend to write only the important stuff in a concise manner while making notes, which makes more sense to you.