Studying isn’t about memorising facts—it’s about building lasting knowledge. Discover 10 practical principles to study any subject, think critically, and turn information into mastery.
Before we dive into the ideas around how to study, it’s worth mentioning that having a personal knowledge management system makes the process much easier.
Mine follows four stages: Capture, Curate, Crunch, and Contribute. Capture information that matters, curate it into meaningful categories, crunch it into insights by trying and applying it, and then contribute by teaching or sharing it. With a system in place, you’ll study with purpose rather than drowning in information.
What follows are some solid ideas on how to study effectively, enjoy the process and how to make what you learn stick. Let's jump in.
Studying is not a passive process. Sitting back, highlighting lines in a book, or memorising facts might feel productive, but it’s not the same as learning. Real studying means actively engaging with material — challenging it, questioning it, applying it, and weaving it into your own experience.
Think of it like strength training. Watching someone else lift weights won’t make you stronger. You have to pick up the bar yourself. The same is true for knowledge: unless you engage, test, and practise, it won’t stick.
Many workplace training programmes fall short here. They often focus on feeding information into people, but don’t provide the opportunities to apply that knowledge in the real context of work. Without practice, information stays abstract. With practice, it becomes skill.
As adults, we often have the privilege of choosing what to study. Interest matters. When you’re genuinely curious about a subject, energy and attention comes easily. You’ll seek out extra resources, wrestle with harder problems, and stay with it when the material gets tough.
On the other hand, if you’re forcing yourself to study something you don’t care about, the process feels like wading through mud. You can get through it with discipline, but it’s harder to maintain momentum. The chances are you'll find it harder to make the information stick too,
So start where curiosity lives. Ask yourself: What do I want to understand so badly that I’d read, think, and practise even if nobody asked me to? That’s where studying comes alive.
Nothing is true just because it’s written in a book or repeated by experts online. To really learn, you have to think critically about every idea.
👉 Check out this article on critical thinking
Critical thinking is the bridge between information and knowledge. It means testing ideas against experience, comparing them to other perspectives, and asking: Does this hold up in practice? Does this work? How might this not work?
Take public speaking as an example. There are hundreds of books and articles on presentation skills. Some advice is useful, some is outdated, and some flat-out doesn’t work. Of course, my own book Zero to Keynote is in the useful category.
Until you try it yourself — on stage, in front of real people — you won’t know what sticks.
My book Zero to Keynote is now out in print and digital. It’s a step-by-step guide to speaking at conferences—from sparking ideas and submitting proposals to crafting your talk, rehearsing, and delivering a presentation that stands out.
The goal isn’t to sound clever by reciting what others say. The goal is to understand ideas so well that they become part of your own behaviours and decisions.
Teachers, mentors, and books are guides, not solutions. They point you in useful directions, highlight possibilities, and suggest tools. But education itself is an inside job.
Self-education is the process of taking external input and making it your own. You decide what to study, how deeply to go, and how to apply it. The more responsibility you take for your own learning, the faster you grow.
A good teacher doesn’t hand you knowledge. They hand you a compass and a map, but you still have to walk the terrain yourself.
Francis Bacon famously said:
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”
The goal of studying is not to race through hundreds of books or binge hours of online courses. The goal is to digest a few good sources deeply.
The online memes and themes about reading hundreds of books a year is misleading. It’s tempting to brag about reading 200 books in a year. But if none of those ideas stick, what’s the point? Real learning happens when you chew over a insights and information — revisit it, wrestle with its arguments, and apply its lessons.
For example, I’ve re-read Growing a Business multiple times. Each reading gives me something new because I’m in a different stage of experience and seasons of life. In contrast, I’ve found many sales books are just variations of a single classic: How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling. Once you grasp that one deeply, the rest mostly echo it.
The point: study less, but better.
If you want to test how well you understand something, try to explain it to someone else.
Teaching forces clarity. To explain an idea, you have to break it down into simple steps, build it logically, and anticipate the questions someone might ask. If you can’t do that, chances are you don’t fully understand it yourself.
When you teach, you also discover the gaps in your knowledge. You realise where you've not fully understood something. Teaching other people forces you to deeply understand the topic at hand.
A good test is this: could you explain the idea to a 10-year-old? If not, you might not have a deep understanding.
👉 Workshop Mastery is your essential guide to designing and running engaging workshops that inspire lasting impact. Packed with proven facilitation techniques, practical strategies, and real-world insights.
The best way to study is to dig until you find the fundamental principles or laws or rules. Details can change, trends come and go, but principles last.
For instance, in communication, one principle is that all communication has a purpose, an audience, and a context. Once you understand that, you can evaluate any tactic — slides, body language, storytelling — through that lens.
If you only focus on details (“use this gesture,” “say this phrase”), you risk missing the point. Details without principles are like leaves without roots: easily blown away.
Ask yourself: What’s the principle underneath this idea? What is always true, no matter the setting? Once you find that, you can build everything else on top of it.
Mastery is never magic. It’s a ladder built one rung at a time, one lesson at a time, one safe nugget of wisdom at a time.
Great speakers don’t just show up one day and deliver a stunning talk. They start small, practise, fail, refine, and climb step by step. The same is true of managers, artists, athletes, or anyone else who excels.
Musicians master scales before symphonies. Painters learn perspective before portraits. Writers practise sentences before books.
When studying, identify the small steps that lead to larger skills. Nail the basics first, then stack skills in logical order. Resist the urge to skip ahead to the flashy part.
Studying isn’t just about effort; it’s also about recovery. The brain needs downtime to process what you’ve taken in.
Think of it like sleep after exercise. Muscles grow not during the workout, but during rest. Knowledge works the same way.
Sometimes the best thing you can do for your learning is to step away — take a walk, do something creative, sleep on it. Ideas settle, connections form, and insights emerge when you give your mind space.
Studying doesn’t mean clinging dogmatically to one method. Once you understand principles, you’ll see that there are many valid ways to apply them.
Different people might approach the same subject in different ways and still arrive at success. By understanding fundamentals, you can appreciate multiple methods and learn from them — even if they contradict your own approach.
Knowledge is flexible. Confidence without principles leads to arrogance. Principles without openness lead to rigidity. The sweet spot is to ground yourself in truth, but stay curious about alternatives.
As one of my lecturers once said:
“A half knowledge is not useless, but the other half is needed too.”
Studying anything comes down to a simple sequence:
When you weave these principles into your study habits, you won’t just collect information—you’ll build lasting knowledge that changes how you think, act, and create.