How We Learn

Distributed learning. Aka the spacing effect.

Basic idea: If you have, say, three hours to study, you’d be better off breaking them into three, 1-hour chunks spread over a few days, than one, 3-hour chunk in one day.

Why? Because that break gives your brain a chance to do a little forgetting such that when you show up for the next study session you have to work a little harder to bring to mind what you had studied. That difficulty is a VERY good thing—the process of revisiting the material makes it stick MUCH (!!!) better than just buzzing through it in one session.

As I read about this research on the power of distributed learning/the spacing effect, I was reminded of the same type of wisdom shared in our recent Notes on movement.

In Move Your DNA, Katy Bowman tells us to space out our walks—three, 1-mile walks are better than one, 3-mile walk.

And, in True to Form, Eric Goodman tells us: “It cannot be stressed too often or too strongly that restoring your body’s natural strength and flexibility comes not through intensity of effort but through consistency.”

We can apply the same wisdom (and watering metaphor) to our meditation practice. Here’s how Matthieu Ricard puts it in Why Meditate?: “For a plant to grow well, you have to water it a little every day. If you just pour a bucket of water on it once a month, it will most likely die between waterings. The same applies to meditation.”

Consistency over intensity.

THAT’s where it’s at—whether we’re talking about learning or movement or meditation or anything else we want to master. Keep the long view in mind.

. s . p . a . c . e … o . u . t . your studying!

P.S. One thing with which Benedict tells us we *don’t* need to be consistent is the location of our studying. Fascinating research points to the benefits of varying the location—which, for some mysterious reason, appears to deepen the learning!

The fluency illusion.

That’s what learning scientists call the feeling of “getting” something.

You know, when you (or your kids) are re-reading your notes or highlights of a chapter and you’re saying to yourself, “Oh, yah. Totally get that. Yep. Easy. Got it.”

That sense of perceived mastery or “fluency” FEELS good, but it’s D.A.N.G.E.R.O.U.S. for true mastery. In fact, Benedict tells us that fluency is THE primary culprit for poor test performance.

Why? Because we *think* we get it but, alas, we don’t.

The antidote? Test yourself.

Close the book, and ask yourself, “What was that chapter/lesson/whatever all about?”

See if you can “actively retrieve” the information you’re trying to learn. That pops the bubble of fluency immediately. In fact, it feels uncomfortable.

Researchers call THAT feeling “desirable difficulty.”

Here’s how the Make It Stick guys put it: “To be most effective, retrieval must be repeated again and again, in spaced out sessions so that the recall, rather than becoming a mindless recitation, requires some cognitive effort. Repeated recall appears to help memory consolidate into a cohesive representation in the brain and to strengthen and multiply the neural routes by which the knowledge can later be retrieved.”

In The Talent Code, Dan Coyle talks about the research done by Robert Bjork who tells us: “We think of effortless performance as desirable, but it’s really a terrible way to learn.”

Remember: Testing yourself is, in and of itself, a SUPER effective studying technique—one of the best ways to really master something.

Let’s do a little pop quiz!

What have you learned so far in this Note? Pause for a moment, embrace the discomfort of digging around in your brain for some goodness and KNOW that the process of trying to retrieve that wisdom is helping you more deeply embed it!

P.S. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a whole (fascinating) book on the basic theme of embracing desirable difficulties. Check out our Notes on David and Goliath for more.

Want to really master something?

TEACH IT.

This is a key idea shared in all the great books on how to learn.

The Make It Stick crews call it “elaboration” and put it this way: “In a cartoon by the Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson, a bug-eyed school kid asks his teacher, ‘Mr. Osborne, can I be excused? My brain is full!’ If you’re just engaging in mechanical repetition, it’s true, you quickly hit the limit of what you can keep in mind. However, if you practice elaboration, there’s no known limit to how much you can learn. Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know. The more you can explain about the way your new learning relates to your prior knowledge, the stronger your grasp of the new learning will be, and the more connections you create that will help you remember it later.”

Barbara Oakley echoes this wisdom in A Mind for Numbers, telling us: “The legendary Charles Darwin would do much the same thing. When trying to explain a concept, he imagined someone had just walked into his study. He would put his pen down and try to explain the idea in the simplest terms. That helped him figure out how he would describe the concept in print. Along those lines, the website Reddit. com has a section called ‘Explain like I’m 5’ where anyone can make a post asking for a simple explanation of a complex topic.

You may think you really have to understand something in order to explain it. But observe what happens when you are talking to other people about what you are studying. You’ll be surprised to see how often understanding arises as a consequence of attempts to explain to others and yourself, rather than the explanation arising out of your previous understanding. This is why teachers often say that the first time they ever really understood the material was when they had to teach it.”

Explain what you’re studying to someone. Teach it to them.

And, remember: The process of teaching something is often what helps us truly understand it!

Your homework assignment, should you choose to accept it: Teach your favorite Big Ideas from this Note to your spouse, kid, brother/sister, friend, whomever!

Introduce a little more desirable difficulty into your life and take a step toward deeper mastery!

Alright. So, we know that spacing out our learning is wise. So is testing ourselves. And, so is teaching others. All of those add a level of “desirable difficulty” to pop the fluency illusion bubble. Here’s another trick: Rather than practice one skill at a time in what researchers call “blocked” or “massed” practice, mix it up!

Whether it’s math problems or badminton serves, the research CLEARLY demonstrates that varied practice results in far superior performance than massed practice.

Researchers call this “interleaving.”

Get this: You can bring kids into a lab and have them throw beanbags at a target (blindfolded, no less!). One group practices throwing bean bags at a target three feet away. Another group practices by throwing the bags at targets that vary between two and four feet away.

Then, they’re tested on a target that’s three feet away. Who do you think does best?

You’d *think* the group that’s been practicing on the three-foot target would crush it, but the group that VARIED their practice does the best.

Another example: Badminton. Apparently there are three different types of serves: the short serve, the long serve and the drive. Researchers had people practice for three days a week over three weeks, thirty-six serves each time. They split them into three groups: One group performed blocked practiced: twelve short serves, then twelve long serves, then twelve drives. The other group did serial practice: one short, one long, one drive; repeat. The final group did random practice: doing any serve they wanted but never the same twice in a row.

Who did best? The random group. By a wide margin. Same results apply to math problems (much better to mix up different types of problems rather than the same.exact.types), hitting curveballs, learning art styles, and a bunch of other stuff.

Lesson for us: VARY your practice.

Here’s a fun example: Shooting free throws. Practice them a foot closer than the free throw line, a foot behind the line, a few feet to the left, a few feet to the right. Sounds weird but that varied practice is better.

How can you introduce this a bit more?

P.S. The funny thing about this (and other techniques) is that the “massed” practice *feels* better. “Hello, fluency illusion!” Benedict tells us: “This much is clear: The mixing of items, skills or concepts during practice, over the longer term, seems to help us not only see the distinctions between them but also to achieve a clearer grasp of each one individually. The hardest part is abandoning our primal faith in repetition.”

Sleep. It’s a HUGE driver in effective learning. So much so that Benedict has a chapter called “You Snooze, You Win” in which he walks us through all the research that proves its power.

For now, check out our Notes on Sara Mednick’s Take a Nap, Change Your Life! plus Power Sleep by James Maas and Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stephenson. And, of course, Sleep 101!

Remember that even naps as short as SIX minutes can give you a boost!

And, keep this in mind: “I’ve always loved my sleep, but in the context of learning I assumed it was getting in the way. Not so. The latest research says the exact opposite: that unconscious downtime clarifies memory and sharpens skills—that it’s a necessary step to lock in both. In a fundamental sense, that is, sleep is learning.”

Plus: “I no longer think of naps or knocking off early as evidence of laziness, or a waste of time, or, worst of all, a failure of will. I think of sleep as learning with my eyes closed.”

This is from the final section that has some great, succinct Q&A on how to optimize learning. That idea is inspired by what’s known as the Zeigarnik Effect.

Benedict walks us through the fascinating research conducted by Bluma Zeigarnik in which she demonstrated that our mind best recalls stuff that isn’t quite complete. (Specifically, she found that waiters who hadn’t been paid yet remembered orders better than those who had.)

We chatted about it in Organize Tomorrow Today where Jason Selk tells us: “Working from Zeigarnik’s research, Lewin came up with the concept of ‘task-specific-tension,’ which persists in both the conscious and subconscious mind until the task is completed. In other words, the mind doesn’t like unfinished business! High-level mathematicians and successful writers have been using this technique for years as a tool for pushing their work forward. Before going to bed, they take a few minutes to read over the mathematical or literary work they did during the day—especially if they’ve reached a plateau or feel stuck. The mind then works all night to close the loop, and they wake up in the morning with ‘inspiration.’ It seems magical, but it isn’t so much magical as it is the result of the effective priming of the mental pump.”

So, know that your subconscious mind is there to help and that taking breaks and distracting yourself can actually help you (when done wisely, of course!). And… It’s always fun to prime the mental pump before we go to sleep! :)