Study Guides - Are They Helpful?

Have you ever purchased a study guide that promises to teach you the the great and amazing “study secret” that no one has ever heard of? In most cases, this type of hype does not carry any real content or any fulfillment to the many promises they make. Hence, It will be my intention today to try to guide you on how to find out the real study techniques that lead to success in your studies. First of all, let me start out by this premise:
There are no real short cuts or secrets to gaining knowledge, it's a matter of hard word and patience. Hence the saying: “Patience might be sour but its result is sweet”. Although there are no (or very few) real study secrets, there do exist certain study techniques that will make your studying a whole lot easier and even more effective. As you yourself might know, there are numerous ways of studying and I can't compel you to choice a certain way that doesn't fit you, hence I strongly urge you to do the following:
No matter how you learn the best (by visual experience, kinetic etc) make sure that you do not change horses in midstream concerning the way you learn, ie do not flip flop between different learning approaches. This will inevitable confuse you and may even worsen your study results in the long run. Remember that studying a small amount of information each day on a long time period is several times better than studying an immense amount of information over a short time frame. Contingency is a vital component in your studies, never forget that!
This article was not written in order to spell out all the thousands of different study techniques found under the sun but in the hope of making you realize that one can systemize the way one studies and that this change really can make a difference. Therefore, I urge you once again to sit down and reflect for a moment; how do you learn the best? Be sure to write down your answers and review them with your self and see if you can make any general conclusions, you might be stunned to see that you might have had a bad approach for too long.