Here are some basic ideas ... I don't know what you're studying, so I can't be more specific....
- If you get easily distracted, create or identify a low-stimulation, quiet place to study. A lot of universities have private study carrels in their libraries for this purpose. When you isolate, also isolate yourself from distractions such as your cell phone and the internet. Also get foam earplugs (~$2 from Walmart or any hardware store). Some people study better with a certain amount of environmental stimulation, though, so if you know that certain music helps you rather than hindering you, that's okay too. If you find yourself singing along in the middle of reading a passage, though, the music has to go.
- Set reasonable goals and plan in breaks where you can do something stimulating. Do not challenge yourself to study for six hours at once. Instead, study for 60 minutes six times, or better yet, 30 minutes twelve times. Once you know what you can accomplish, you can also try defining your study periods by what you want to achieve, but still targeting goals you can get done in that kind of short time. During your breaks, do things that get either your cognitive or physical energy out -- active things, watching fun, low-demand TV, playing games, etc. Also ideally things that you *like* doing -- they should be inter-studying rewards. Schedule and define the time for your breaks also.
- Chart out an overall course starting at the end-point, i.e. when you take your exam, and working backwards to today, defining what you want to learn and when, so you have a plan that lets you sustain studying effort over several weeks.
- Use multiple modes of learning. If you know your strengths, cater to them. But you will learn more efficiently if you use multiple sensory modalities and different techniques together. That is, alternate reading with writing tasks such as creating of visual or textual outlines, flashcards, models, etc, and also using those aids. If you consider yourself fairly intelligent, challenge yourself to transition from studying books (which throw a lot of information and a lot of noise at you) to studying your own notes (which are boiled down) as you near an exam. As above, set reasonable goals. You can memorize a few hundred flashcards or a few pages of outline. You probably cannot memorize several chapters of a book word for word.
- If study groups work for you, fine, although I personally find them usually pretty useless. But if you go to them, go prepared and ready to review. Don't plan on learning anything (although you might) at the group. Instead, you can use the group as a chance to solidify your knowledge by "teaching" it to peers (and they can do the same on you). That teaching exercise will really help you be able to bring back that knowledge on command in a test.
- If you're doing the kind of work that has problem sets or something else you can practice, find samples that you can do in addition to your assignments and spend lots of time solving problems. In most of those classes, you learn more by solving problems than you do by reading the textbook.
