I think ultimately you can use the techniques suggested (and many others) to improve your learning. But speed learning is, I think, really hard to develop if yo

I think ultimately you can use the techniques suggested (and many others) to improve your learning. But speed learning is, I think, really hard to develop if your not natural at it. Im a natural speed learner and always have been; but this comes with some serious side effects too. My rote learning is pretty poor and I sometimes pass over minutiae. Also while I can quickly learn a topic and sound fairly expert I tend to struggle to fill out the rest of the detail: as a result I know a lot of stuff - but much is in no real depth (that's only partly problematic now; in my fields of interest I have developed the deep knowledge but it was not easy). Focus is a problem too. I cant concentrate on learning anything for long periods. And hour at most - and if it isnt gone in by then I will move on. A couple of physics text books I bought months ago are still sat on my desk 50% finished because I lost interest in the ending. These are not techniques you should really try to employ to pass exams. I can do it because it's a natural process for me (scan text books for a few hrs before exam etc.) but friends that have tried the same (and are natural rote learners) struggled to connect information together in the exam. And a fun anecdote: one of my best final year university exam results was in a class I ignored after the first lecture (Opto electronics, my god it was boring). I skimmed the text book the morning of the exam with a friend and he suggested we go grab a drink because "we really need to go to an exam drunk at least once. and as were going to fail this anyway....". 4 pints and another skim read later we both aced the exam (top marks of the year). It's no proof of course but I think it's interesting evidence that this is a) a skill you either have or not and b) a lot of luck is involved. :)