How can you optimise learning, and enhance return on investment from study? How can you apply principles from your studies most fluently? How can we program ourselves to succeed?

In September 2024 I graduated with honours from the Executive MBA course at Quantic School of Business and Technology. I completed all core requirements (8 core concentrations plus 6 projects), and all specialisms (13 completed out of 3 required). I previously completed a computer science degree at Cambridge University. I speak several languages. I have worked successfully as an educator, trainer, and team developer/ senior manager. I have four children: all are excellent students. As a lifelong learner and passionate educator, I will share what I have learned about how to optimise your study programme.

To work achieve the best results, I have consistently applied simple strategies & techniques. These are like tools in your toolbox. I recommend to:

1. Understand and work with your resources! Personalise your study programme.
2. Avoid distractions! Maintain motivation.
3. Aim high! Measure & celebrate progress.
4. Organise your study programme!
5. Program yourself for success.
6. Contextualise your Studies.
7. Select & combine techniques.

(1) Personalise your Study Programme

Everyone is different! Identify days & times that are best for >30 minutes of concentrated individual study. Identify remnants (2–15 minutes) in leftover corners of your calendar that can be used for revision, exercises, ideation, or studying simple concepts. Use the right tool for each type of study: computer, phone, e-reader, audio, books, printed materials. Identify topics you might find challenging: allocate your best study periods to those subjects.

Maintain a healthy balance & rhythm of work, rest, play, & maintenance: use different tools, media, methods, and activities to signal & trigger different moods & phases of your routine, e.g. settling down for sleep.

Adapt study methods to your levels of alertness. Your biorhythms and your efforts/ performance at work are mutually dependent and influence each other: your study activities can help control biorhythms, and biorhythms can affect learning.

Learning and retention are enhanced by studying before sleep and soon after waking up: this is “prime real estate” on your calendar. Intense study & problem solving before sleep can trigger additional processing of new information while you sleep. Studying important topics after waking up could help you to apply lessons from your studies more effectively to challenges you encounter during the day.

Everyone is different: we work under unique circumstances & constraints, in diverse cultures, with unique combinations of responsibilities. Determine what works best for you, experiment, monitor the results (both for mood and performance), and continually fine-tune your approach.

(2) Maintain Motivation and Prepare for Unexpected Disruptions

Socialise! Develop mutually supportive relationships with other students. Show appreciation for family members and friends who support you. Consider developing student societies, clubs, circles, or ad-hoc meet-ups for discussion & permissible co-working. Share your unique personal & professional insights into the topics you are studying, learn from others’ insights, and collaborate: this will spur & lift all of you to achieve more!

Maintaining physical & mental health will enhance capacity for learning. Get sunlight, fresh air, exercise, rest, hydration, and good food on a schedule that works for you. Monitor stress levels. Create routines. Segment your time: give full attention to each audience or stakeholder when it’s their turn to be served. Be honest with yourself and your stakeholders. Implement pressure release processes to protect your well-being while you make steady progress with your most important responsibilities.

Protect your attention: don’t allow distractions e.g. unrelated social media or computer games to disrupt and dilute your attention or to subvert your psychological reward system. Eliminate the non-essential. Allow your mind space to develop useful connections! Create a safe environment for exploration and playful learning. Human beings have developed many ways to avoid work: this instinct can help us develop new techniques & technologies, but you should recognise when your instincts lean toward work avoidance in your studies, and refuse to cooperate. Don’t indulge childish instincts with mere entertainment! Instead harness your playfulness in explorative & creative pursuits.

Prepare for unexpected disruptions! During my Executive MBA degree, I was sick twice. Unable to look at a computer screen, I lost 8–10 weeks of study. Fortunately I’d got ahead of the recommended schedule. I used this insurance policy. I did not defer my studies. If you need to defer to a later cohort, explore options with your school: deferment is disruptive because it forces you to start again in making social connections which are important both for mutual support and as a pool of candidates for group projects.

Professional educators sequence their programmes to teach principles systematically: this maximises synergy, minimises task switching penalties, and enables you to learn advanced concepts when your mind (fresh from learning the basics) offers fertile terrain for learning related principles. If you’re in a formal programme follow the official recommendations; if not organise your own systematic study programme. Staying together enables students to work together and help each other to learn the most challenging & beneficial topics.

(3) Aim High! Invest! Then Measure & Celebrate Progress.

“Shoot for ground. You’ll never miss!” (i.e. If you aim for an easy target, you won’t fail: so you can stay in your comfort zone!) What do you think of this philosophy? I don’t like it. You can do better! If you’re not failing frequently, then you’re not trying hard enough. Ask “stupid” questions where necessary to learn! While learning; suppress the instinct to demonstrate competency: instead desire an insatiable thirst to develop competency.

Maximise attention while studying. Get emotionally engaged in your studies (and invested in the results). Before each session review the potential impact and remind yourself why you are studying. This will open mental pathways & triggers for the formation of rapid-recall mid-term & long-term memories, and the development of new analytical capabilities and skills.

Activate the correct parts of your brain, and warm up your reflexes and muscle memories with exercises. Analytical activities (“left brain“) and performing arts (“right brain“) require different kinds of exercises for activation, and you may need a sequence of progressively challenging or increasingly complex exercises to reach optimal study performance.

Aim high, but don’t be demoralised when you miss a difficult target. Measure and celebrate your progress! Instead of agonising over perfect planning & execution; apply a bias for action: make a shortlist of topics you might start next, randomly select one, begin work, and enjoy the process. Forget about other topics until you’ve done with the first.

Consider maintaining dual targets:

1. Identify core responsibilities. Determine the minimum standards required. If resources (e.g. time & energy) might not support all minimum standards; eliminate, delegate, or renegotiate the lowest priorities. Allocate time & resources to each core responsibility so you can deliver what is required. Celebrate success in hitting core objectives.
2. Identify stretch goals (e.g. achieving a defined, measurable high standard of performance in your exams, or completing experiments with new knowledge). Evaluate time left after core activities. Allocate surplus resources to activities that support or complement your stretch goals. Celebrate with friends when you hit your special stretch goals!

Never punish yourself for failing to hit objectives. Instead: learn lessons, recalibrate workload, reallocate resources, monitor remaining tasks, correct course toward your objectives, and aim for success. Adopt a growth mindset.

(4) Organise your Study Programme

Break your curriculum down into parts according to the pyramid principle. Whenever you study, decide which part of the pyramid to focus on:

• Which level of hierarchy you are focussing on, i.e. how far to zoom in on details or zoom out for a more integrative approach.
• Which combination of principles to explore within the current area of focus, and which order you should study them in.

Sometimes it’s best to study the details first and then integrate them; other times it’s best to study the overview first and then learn the details. In all cases: prioritise learning skills that you can immediately apply, and apply the skills you learn.

Most study programmes explore one to six major topics at a time. Where students need a solid understanding of a functionally complete body of foundational theoretical knowledge, in my experience concentrated effort can enable students to progress >20× faster. Be curious about the most beneficial & challenging topics within scope of what you are studying.

Use a combination of theory, playful experimentation, and practical application to internalise new theoretical knowledge and develop new skills. Enjoy studying new topics and accepting new challenges. Complete assigned practical work alongside theoretical study. Complete mini-projects or practical experiments to explore and master theoretical principles.

Depth-first search: Fully understand each topic and its relationships with other topics before moving to the next task or changing context. Task switching is expensive: you can only master the most challenging topics with deep concentration! When you become curious enough to explore details & lose desire for diversions, you will progress with deep work.

Breadth-first search: Before commencing each new topic, survey context and prior learning. Review course summaries, and develop your own roadmap for studying the topic. Later, when you study each section you will already understand its place in the subject.

Begin with basics: Treat each topic like climbing a mountain! Ascending the peak requires the right equipment and preparation: master prerequisites before proceeding to the next level. In some cases, you may need a supporting team including professional guides (e.g. academic tutors, librarians), fellow students, etc. to get you to the summit.

(5) Program your brain

Repetition: Some topics are hard! Regardless of how deeply you concentrate, you may not master the most challenging topics first time. You might only understand the theory after experimenting with nascent theoretical understanding. You will need repeated study & experimentation to develop advanced knowledge, consolidate new skills, master new topics, and learn to apply new knowledge & skills effectively.

Variety: Each time you study a topic change your methods, media, or context! This will stimulate new learning and new muscle memories that can be combined into complete, efficient solutions to real world problems.

Interval training: To improve retention & recall and to build confidence in your capability, interleave periods of concentrated study with periods studying other topics. Return to previous studies or projects with a fresh mind, test your knowledge with exercises, identify your weaknesses, and gradually turn your weaknesses into strengths.

Optimise your efforts: It’s often easier to achieve 96% by eliminating 80% of your defects in two iterations (80% of 100% remainder 20%, then 80% of 20% leaving 4% of the original defects in place) rather than trying to achieve 96% perfection at step 1. Then: if you want to achieve >99% or even >99.8%, you simply need another iteration or two (rather than a miracle!) Take a series of small steps rather than expecting giant, monolithic leaps in understanding or performance!

Circuit training: When studying a set of related topics, use circuit training to acquire a more holistic understanding of how the topics relate. Develop fun side projects where you need to apply principles together: return frequently to these projects to make improvements to your creation based on what you learned since your last creative study session.

(6) Contextualise your Studies

Background Reading: Recognise topics you are studying in news of current events. Read around each topic. Use topics you are studying as frameworks for understanding the world. Compare new perspectives with previous insights. Think critically: look for contradictions to challenge your understanding: develop a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis for each principle. Create and test hypotheses: ask curious questions. Anticipate what might come next. Explore the edges of the landscape that has been revealed to you, and beyond!

Contemplate how each principle can be profitably applied in your employment, your home life, your personal investments, or in civic & community affairs. Perform experiments with new knowledge. Complete assigned homework & optional exercises. Attend seminars ready to answer questions, share insights, and discuss issues with other students to challenge and develop interpretations and applications of the principles you are learning.

Use a variety of media, senses, sources, and methods! Read books and blogs, or listen to podcasts. Speak to others about what you are learning. Create notes & reference resources, or draw diagrams to systematise the most confusing or challenging topics.

Read ahead into topics you haven’t explored previously. Allocate time for contextualisation, orientation, and playful exploration: find applications & perform experiments before returning to the theory with fresh perspectives.

(7) Select & Combine techniques

“Revisiting the lessons multiple times and interspersing them with background reading is an excellent strategy to deepen understanding. I agree that taking a more systematic approach—studying, testing, and then revisiting challenging topics—can really cement key principles.”
— Humaira Moola

Everyone is different. The best combination of techniques depends on subject and situation. If in doubt, make a start, and begin to celebrate your success! Don’t aim for perfection first time: just make an effort, test your understanding, and then focus on the residual defects. Continue working to reach your desired destination. Fine-tune methods and objectives as you progress.

Use one of the right tools for each problem you encounter:

• If you feel unmotivated, build a community. Encourage each other. Work with the rhythms of your life. Eliminate non-essentials. Enlist support & friendship. Clarify objectives.
• If you are struggling to concentrate, do physical exercise (while thinking about the topic), and then return with fresh focus. Freshen perspective by changing media & environment.
• If you can’t see the context or application, do background reading. Read ahead. Make summary notes. Look for applications. Contemplate and imagine. Then make a start.
• To step outside your limited perspective, speak to others. Debate & challenge your perspectives: find weaknesses in your views & arguments, or chinks in your armour.
• If you encounter important principles you don’t understand, concentrate study on prerequisites. Repeat graded exercises. Develop strength to overcome the challenge.
• If you lack confidence, test knowledge with exercises. Use interval training to identify your strengths and systematic weaknesses. Work on each weak point until you feel secure.
• Where there are gaps in your understanding of critical points, use depth-first search. Ask curious questions. Run experiments. Create something based on those principles.
• For a holistic understanding of how to apply principles together, use circuit training. Create a project that requires complementary principles for different parts to work.
• If you struggle to switch tasks or contexts or if it takes an inordinate amount of mental energy to do so, use circuit training. Practise the art of switching tasks & contexts!
• When confident and secure in your understanding of a principle, start a conversation. Teach that principle to someone else (preferably a child). Test & solidify your knowledge!
• Listen to your mood, your body, and your mind; but know that you are ultimately in control. Your brain is a tool. Learning is a skill: you can learn how to learn more effectively!

Before long you will instinctively know which tool to use when you struggle or feel in the wrong mood for study.

What do you want to achieve?

On the Executive MBA at Quantic School of Business and Technology, if you want to graduate with a basic general understanding of each topic, you can achieve that in 16 months with 5–10 hours of study and project work per week. Graduating with honours requires about 10–15 hours per week.
To exceed 99% score on my final official transcript I needed 15–20 hours of study, background reading, and project work each week organised according to the principles discussed in this article. I never consume alcohol, tobacco, stimulants, or other psychoactive substances. I maintain a regular schedule of exercise, rest, and good food. I maintain motivation, conserve energy, and concentrate attention. I have tried and tested these principles!

If you would like a personalised discussion or coaching & training methods tailored to your background, situation, and objectives; schedule an introductory call: I’d be delighted to help.