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4 Strategies For Remembering Everything You Learn

4 strategies for remembering everything you learn: 1. Force yourself to recall information by using flashcards which require supplying answers without cues, as recalling information makes learning more durable. 2. Don't rely on fluency, as information that feels easy to understand may soon be forgotten; instead test your recall before moving on. 3. Connect new information to prior knowledge by finding real-life examples, as elaborating strengthens understanding and creates more connections to remember later. 4. Reflect on what you've learned so it soaks in better, as reflection boosts confidence and leads to achieving more.

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Magaly Aguilar López
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71 views

4 Strategies For Remembering Everything You Learn

4 strategies for remembering everything you learn: 1. Force yourself to recall information by using flashcards which require supplying answers without cues, as recalling information makes learning more durable. 2. Don't rely on fluency, as information that feels easy to understand may soon be forgotten; instead test your recall before moving on. 3. Connect new information to prior knowledge by finding real-life examples, as elaborating strengthens understanding and creates more connections to remember later. 4. Reflect on what you've learned so it soaks in better, as reflection boosts confidence and leads to achieving more.

Uploaded by

Magaly Aguilar López
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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4 strategies for remembering everything you

learn
If you're going to learn anything, you need two kinds of prior knowledge: 

• Knowledge about the subject at hand, like math, history, or programming

• Knowledge about how learning actually works

The bad news: Our education system kind of skips one of them, which is problematic, given that
your ability to learn is such a huge predictor of success in life, from achieving in academics to
getting ahead at work. It all requires mastering skill after skill. 

"Parents and educators are pretty good at imparting the first kind of knowledge," shares
psychology writer Annie Murphy Paul. "We're comfortable talking about concrete information:
names, dates, numbers, facts. But the guidance we offer on the act of learning itself — the
'metacognitive' aspects of learning — is more hit-or-miss, and it shows."

To wit, education research shows that low-achieving students have "substantial deficits" in their
understanding of the cognitive strategies that allow people to learn well. This, Paul says,
suggests that part of the reason students perform poorly is that they don't know a lot about how
learning actually works. 

It's a cultural issue.

Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, psychologists at Washington University in St. Louis and


coauthors of "Make It Stick: The Science Of Successful Learning," say that "how we teach and
study is largely a mix of theory, lore, and intuition."

So let's cut through that lore. Here are learning strategies that really work. 

Force yourself to recall.


Flashcards force you to really think.

The least-fun part of effective learning is that it's hard. In fact, the "Make It Stick" authors
contend that when learning is difficult, you're doing your best learning, in the same way that
lifting a weight at the limit of your capacity makes you strongest. 

It's simple, though not easy, to take advantage of this: Force yourself to recall a fact. Flashcards
are a great ally in this, since they force you to supply answers.

Don't fall for fluency.

Don Arnold / Getty Images

Test your recall before you move on and forget important information, like your gate number.

When you're reading something and it feels easy, what you're experiencing is fluency.

It'll only get you in trouble.

Example: Say, for instance, you're at the airport and you're trying to remember which gate your
flight to Chicago is waiting for you at. You look at the terminal monitors — it's B44. You think
to yourself, Oh, B44, that's easy. Then you walk away, idly check your phone, and instantly
forget where you're going. 

The alternative: You read the gate number. Then you turn away from the monitor and ask
yourself, What's the gate? If you can recall that it's B44, you're good to go. 

Connect the new thing to the old things.


Getty Images

Relate abstract concepts, like heat transfer, to something more tangible, like hot coffee.

"The more you can explain about the way your new learning relates to prior knowledge,"
the "Make It Stick" authors write, "the stronger your grasp of the new learning will be, and the
more connections you create that will help you remember it later." 

When you're weaving in new threads into your pre-existing web of knowledge, you're
elaborating. 

One killer technique is to come up with real-life examples of principles you've just uncovered. If
you've just learned about slant rhyme, you could read poems that exhibit it. If you've just
discovered heat transfer, you could think of the way a warm cup of coffee disperses warmth into
your hands on a cold winter's day.

Reflect, reflect, reflect.


Reflect on what you've learned so that it soaks in.

Looking back helps. In a Harvard Business School study, employees who were onboarded to a
call center had 22.8% higher performance than the control group when they spent just 15 minutes
reflecting on their work at the end of the day.

"When people have the opportunity to reflect, they experience a boost in self-efficacy," HBS
professor Francesca Gino tells us. "They feel more confident that they can achieve things. As a
result, they put more effort into what they're doing and what they learn."

While reflecting may seem like it leads to working less, it leads to achieving more. 

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