A learning journey is a comprehensive process. High-stakes exams can invoke anxiety and stress, even for the most confident individuals, making it challenging to manage. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by various learning methodologies, especially when they seem ineffective.

But the journey to high performance doesn’t end with simply absorbing information. Learning and development (L&D) professionals can help employees establish healthy learning habits to improve outcomes. By incorporating these daily habits — prioritizing sleep, taking strategic breaks, incorporating movement and maintaining focus — learners can transform their learning experience. They’ll not only retain information more effectively but also approach training and evaluations with a calmer, more confident mindset, ultimately driving better performance in the workplace.

Meaningful Sleep: This Is How You Retain Information

Sleep is when you lock in the day’s learning. Therefore, it is critical to get enough quality sleep every night. The importance of this is often overlooked, yet it is during the deep REM phases that your brain moves information from working memory into long-term memory, allowing you to recall it the next day. In simpler terms, it’s what allows you to recall the information when you need it, for example, on test day. Here are some sleep-related tips:

• Target 7-9 hours of sleep every night. When you begin to dip below the 7-hour mark, it compromises that day’s efforts and undermines performance for the next couple of days (yes, plural).
• Avoid screen time during the last hour (or two) before bedtime; if you are still reviewing until then, do so with old-school printed materials.
• Cold, dark and quiet environments have been shown to support deeper and better sleep.

Take Breaks: Internalize What You Learned

Contrary to common perception, breaks are not lazy, procrastination or underperformance, but rather a way for the brain to stay focused and motivated for longer study sessions. Here are three tips to make your breaks count:

• Take 5-to-10-minute breaks each hour, and in the late afternoon and evening, longer 15-20-minute breaks.
• Rest and relax your eyes and brain. You instinctively may jump on social media, but this is one of the most demanding activities for your eyes and brain and no break at all! It’s OK to be bored.
• Get some movement in! Step outside and relax.

Reframing breaks as an intentional and essential part of the training process helps maintain a healthy mindset during your study journey.

Physical Movement: Supercharge Your Brain

Accelerate learning by maintaining an exercise routine during your study journey. Exercise increases blood flow to the brain, reduces stress and releases neurochemicals that help you process and retain information. A few tips to combine exercise and learning:

• Exercise in the morning. The two-hour post-exercise window exercise allows for enhanced learning because of the release of neurochemicals like Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF).
• How hard should it be? Not that hard! Take 15 to 30 minutes, ideally outside, for some “Zone 2” exercise, a comfortable low-intensity cardio workout where breathing is still comfortable.

Staying active during your study journey is one of the best strategies to ensure you stay fresh both physically and mentally. Frequent physical movement and exercise will further help you achieve the sleep goals discussed above.

Maintain Focus: Don’t Overburden Your Cognitive Load

Focus is all about your aim while doing the work. Where is your mind? Are you multitasking? Interruptions are costly. When interrupting your study, your cognitive load goes up and your retention goes down. Three tips to for focused studying:

• Avoid multitasking. It undermines your learning and progress.
• Disable alerts on your devices, such as social media notifications and even emails.
• Be strategic about checking emails and social media — doing it during scheduled breaks, like lunch or dinner, so you can maintain focus and motivation.

The importance of getting accustomed to working in a distraction-free environment and developing the ability to focus for extended periods is key when prepping for high-stakes exams. This applies to both effective and efficient studying as well as replicating the actual exam when there are no distractions present.

Bringing It All Together

Mindset plays a big role in your learning journey. Believing in your positive outcome will greatly improve your confidence and your chances of achieving them.

Training and evaluations can be stressful, but taking a broader and more holistic view of the path may led to greater learning retention — and help to fill skills gaps. The strategies discussed in this article are not just quick fixes, but rather foundational habits that will elevate your learners’ overall effectiveness on and beyond workplace training.

As your learners implement these practices, they will find themselves better prepared, not only for training and knowledge retention, but for any challenge that comes their way. The path to success is about smart, strategic and balanced preparation.