Altering study material helps to retain more information than focusing on one topic at a time for long periods of time. This is especially efficient when the topics are interconnected and can be linked together. However, altering the topics often feels more laborious to study, which easily misleads our intuitions on its effectiveness.

• When you schedule your studies, it is better to alter the topics frequently instead of dedicating full workdays for one topic at the time.
• In an online course, the assignments can be designed to combine both previously studied information with the new topic just studied. The same case examples can also be studied from several different perspectives.
• Retaining the information from two books can be more efficient if you alter the book to study instead of reading one after another. This is especially efficient if the books have complementary content.
• It is often better to schedule a training in various shorter sessions instead of one long training session. This also gives more time to process the information.

Studying complementary topics and altering from a topic to another frequently helps to connect different viewpoints and to remember what has been learned. It also makes the studies easier to schedule.

How could you schedule your studies to use your time efficiently?

Which overlapping or complementary topics could your team study together?