My AI Study Routine After 3 Months of Trial and Error
Last year, while studying for a certification, I used AI properly for the first time. After about three months of trial and error, I'm sharing the routine I've settled into.
1. First, I read the material on my own and mark only what I don't understand. Then I ask AI about it in that state. If you ask for a summary from the start, you only get the feeling that you understood it, and nothing sticks.
2. When asking for concept explanations, I add "as if you're explaining it to a middle schooler." This really worked. If it answers with difficult terminology, I can't understand it.
3. For problem solving, I don't ask AI for the answer. Instead, I ask, "Point out why my answer is wrong." This sticks with me much longer.
4. At the end of the day, I summarize what I learned in three lines and write it in Notion. Then I show it back to AI and check whether anything is missing.
The biggest change is that search time went down. When I hit something I didn't know, I used to wander for 30 minutes; now it's down to 3 minutes. That said, you shouldn't blindly trust AI explanations, and make sure to cross-check them against the official textbook at least once. It quite often states incorrect explanations with confidence.
5 answers
Got a source? I get that this is a personal review after trying it for 3 months, but numbers like “search time 30 min → 3 min” seem a bit exaggerated lol. Honestly, I don’t really get how someone was wandering around for 30 minutes each time in the first place.
I use it similarly, but the part about cross-checking against AI explanation materials is the most important. I once memorized something wrong for a long time because it confidently explained an incorrect concept. Especially for recent revisions, you can pretty much assume it can't be trusted.
I really resonate with #2. I also use “explain it like I’m talking to an elementary school student” when I write, and it’s great because it doesn’t just simplify the terminology—it also exposes what I don’t actually understand.
For #4, the Notion summary ultimately seems to come down to reorganizing it by hand—so doesn’t that mean you can do it without AI? That said, it’d still be useful for checking what was missed.
Reading alone and marking things → then asking questions as a sequence feels a bit questionable. If you come across something you don't know, asking right away is what saves time—I don't see why you'd force yourself to wait until you've read everything. If you move on without understanding, the later content falls apart along with it.