Breaking the Study Aesthetic Myth
Let’s cut through the noise right away. The internet has sold us this polished fantasy of what studying should look like—spotless desks by a window overlooking the sea, three perfectly aligned monitors, a fancy coffee mug, notes that look like artwork, and two scented candles burning in the background for that final touch. We’ve all seen it, and let’s be honest, many of us have felt like failures for not living up to that image.
But real studying? It’s rarely that pretty. It’s messy, raw, and often chaotic. Your desk might be buried in crumpled papers, textbooks that look like they’ve survived a war, and notes that are half-legible at best. Sometimes it’s 2 a.m., your coffee is cold, and your only goal is to get through one more page before your brain taps out. And you know what? That’s perfectly fine. Because none of the aesthetic matters if you don’t have a system that actually gets results.
What Is SMS?
That’s where SMS—Skim, Memorize, Scan—comes in. I built this method out of pure necessity. I was overwhelmed, like most med students are, and I needed something that worked without all the fluff. SMS is simple on the surface, but it taps into how your brain naturally processes and locks in information.
Step One: The Skim
The first step, the skim, isn’t about rushing blindly through the pages. It’s more intentional than that. You read to get a feel for what’s coming. You don’t aim to understand every detail yet, but you want to start piecing together the big picture. For example, if you’re studying anatomy, you might notice that a certain muscle is involved in flexion, even if you don’t fully grasp its name or action yet. The point is to create a rough mental map—something your brain can latch onto later. It’s like walking into a new gym for the first time. You don’t know where all the equipment is yet, but by just being there, you break the ice.
One key thing I always emphasize is that no matter how long or overwhelming the material is, you need to commit to skimming through all of it. The goal here isn’t full understanding yet—it’s about forming a basic sense of what each section covers. For example, you should walk away knowing that the first page is about X topic, even if you don’t yet know the full details or technical terms. This process helps your brain initiate connections and sparks that natural drive for completion; it starts looking for answers to the gaps you’ve just opened up. That’s the foundation you lay before moving into memorization.
Step Two: Memorization
Next comes memorization, and this is where about 70% of the real work happens. This is the phase where you’re aiming to use your brain’s peak efficiency. You sit down and tackle the material head-on, working through every detail and starting to make those crucial connections and mini-notes that clarify things. Because your brain has already been exposed once, even partially, it’s now far less resistant to absorbing deeper information.
I usually break this phase into focused 90-minute chunks followed by a 20-minute break, adjusting depending on the material. For smaller sections, one 90-minute block might be enough; for heavier topics—like if you’ve got the classic med student syndrome of thinking you’ll master 32 pathological bone defects in one night—you’ll need several rounds of 90-minute sessions, and yes, sometimes a lot of them. The material no longer feels completely foreign at this point, and you’ll notice that memorizing becomes faster, more structured, and way less painful than it would if you skipped the groundwork.
Step Three: The Scan
Finally, the scan. This is your wrap-up pass. After you’ve done the memorization, you come back and move quickly through everything again. This is when you lock in the flow—where each piece of information sits, what follows what, and how it all fits together. It’s not about relearning but about reinforcing and cementing.
And here’s where a lot of people underestimate its power. In reality, this final scan can be the difference between scoring 20% and 80% on an exam because it taps into how your brain actually works. Your brain is smarter than you think—it remembers everything you’ve studied, but it doesn’t always present all that info to you unless it knows where to find it. This last part is like unlocking areas on a map in an open-world game. The information is there, but it’s hidden until you revisit and open it up. Once you scan through it again, those sections of your memory become clear and accessible, and suddenly all those details you thought you’d forgotten are right there, ready when you need them.
The Science and Flexibility Behind SMS
What’s beautiful about SMS is that it embraces imperfection, but it’s also built on clear, scientific logic. Each part of the method is designed to target specific cognitive processes: the initial skim taps into your brain’s natural pattern recognition and helps form the first neural pathways; the memorization stage strengthens those connections through active recall and repetition; and the final scan triggers retrieval cues, which are essential for long-term memory consolidation.
People often neglect how powerful this layering effect is, but in practice, it can be the defining factor between scraping by and excelling. What’s also important is flexibility—SMS can be spread out over different days for maximum absorption, but in crunch times, like the night before an exam, it can be compressed if you have enough hours. You can even add practice questions after scanning to solidify understanding.
One technique I personally love is, after scanning, using the W’s—what, where, when—to test my recall quickly. For example, if I know page 32 covered a certain topic and I’m 80% confident in that section, I’ll challenge myself with questions like: What was on that page? Where in the process did it fit? When is it relevant? These quick hits give me a map of the material so that even without deep practice, I have enough context and mental hooks to reason through tricky exam questions. That’s the real strength of SMS—it’s simple, adaptable, and taps into how your brain truly works, not how we wish it worked.