How to Study Smart

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Why do some students study very hard, spending most of their time doing their revision but they aren’t the best in their study group? And why are there some students who only spend a fraction of the time studying but they often get good or even outstanding results? This was not due to the lack of natural talent in studies but it simply means that they have not found an effective tool which acts as a knack for understanding concepts and learning new ideas. One of the smart study habits is by using mind-map to promote effective and accelerated learning experience. A mind map is a useful web-like structure which emphasizes visual imagery that helps to engage in critical thinking and seeing a bigger picture. Empirically, mind-mapping is proven as an effective method of note-taking as an active learning (Abi-El-Mona and Abd-Ei-Khalick, 2008; Liu, Zhao and Ma et al., 2014). Mind mapping makes learning more vivid, thus promotes creative thinking and encourages brainstorming. Th...
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Paradox of CHOICE- When You Have Many More Choices, You Will Have More 'Freedom'

         

The world is of unlimited choices. It seems to be logic that when a person has more options in their choice domain, they are better off. But the question now is, do more choices create troublesome or the perfect solution? I went to the supermarket a few days ago. I was asked to buy juice drinks, and as I stood in front of the rack, I was stunned. There are so many choices of juice drinks varied from the brands, flavor, sugar content, packaging and so on. I was not given instruction of which specific drink to buy, but instead “juice drinks” was the only piece of information given by my mum.

The paradox of choice introduced by Schwartz (2004) concluded that some choice is good, but it doesn’t mean that more choice is better because we can be easily overwhelmed by the options, hence no choice is made or you might end up making the worst choice. Not just affecting the decision, but we can be "mentally abused" and have doubt of our decision made, especially when it requires immediate feedback.

However, Tom Harford questioned this theory in the year of 2009 that the initial findings were merely social science that does not replicate. If it is the truth that choice is bad, then why does Starbucks boasts over 80,000+ drink combinations or why do the supermarkets offer numerous varieties of snacks or even nearly-identical yogurt and milk products? The marketers or entrepreneurs should have taken advantages on this theory and only offer limited products, but in fact, there are millions of choices out there for us to make. 

Let’s come back to the story. So I stood in front of the rack for 15 minutes, did countless battle of the choices inside of my head choosing the best drinks. In the end, I managed to buy the drink that wins the battle, hurray! The process was kinda time-consuming, but I was very satisfied that I have chosen the best of all.

In life, we will make countless decisions that some might bring greatest impact to our life. It’s good to have choices, but it is even better when we are determined of what we are supposed to do and choose the option that sticks best to our planned schedule. Yes, sometimes choices can paralyze us with anxiety and torture us. But sometimes, it can reduce our anxiety by making us feel like we have searched exhaustively, and now we’re ready to buy.

References

Schwartz, B. (2004) The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less [online], Pymble: HarperCollins. Available at: http://wp.vcu.edu/univ200choice/wp-content/uploads/sites/5337/2015/01/The-Paradox-of-Choice-Barry-Schwartz.pdf 
[Accessed: 14th July 2017]

Harford, T. (2009) Given the choice, how much choice would you like? [online], Nov 14th, Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/9cebd444-cd9c-11de-8162-00144feabdc0
[Accessed: 14th July 2017]
By: Yau Che Yan, BAF1541 
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