A guide to learning

Rote Memorization

The memorization strategy you’re probably most familiar with is rote memorization, where you try to memorize something by just repeating it to yourself over and over. And while this might work if you have a short test the day after, it’s one of the worst ways you can memorize something. It’s horrendously inefficient. It won’t help you deeply understand a subject. And it’s not going to help you remember things in the long term. But we can do better.

Developing a Better Strategy

There are loads of little techniques you can use to help you remember things, but what’s most important is going to be your overall strategy when it comes to approaching memorization, and a really good strategy is probably going to be incorporating these in some way.

Encoding

Let’s start with encoding. Encoding is all about organizing information, and it’s the first step you take when you’re committing something to memory. How you encode information determines how easily you can store it in your memory and retrieve it later on. If you have poor encoding, you’re going to have poor retrieval. Good encoding can build connections between ideas, so that when you think of one concept, you’re reminded of all the concepts that it’s connected to.

Practicing Encoding

Let’s look at an example. Imagine if i told you to memorize a set of letters, not caring about their order. You could memorize this without much trouble. But if we reorganize the information it becomes ridiculously easy. That’s encoding for you. What we just did is we took several lower bits of information and encoded them into just a few large bits that are effortless to remember.

Structuring Your Notes

Now, what is the point of all this? The point is you need to structure your notes. When you’re writing something down, don’t copy it word for word. Write it in your own words, connect it to ideas you already know about. Reorganize the information so it’s easiest for you to remember. Use the Cornell note taking method, use mnemonics, mind webs, diagrams, whatever. It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as it works for you.

Active Recall

The next strategy is active recall. The idea behind active recall is that testing is better than review. Let me explain.

Simply reading your textbook or reviewing your notes, is largely a passive process. You come across a concept, recognize that you “know” it, and you move on. You don’t get the textbook on your test. You don’t have your notes. On the test, you have to use the cues in the questions to recall everything from memory. So if you want to do well on tests, all you need to do is practice recalling information from your memory.

Practicing Active Recall

Now, what does this look like? Well, it could be something as simple as reading a chapter in the textbook, closing the textbook, and then writing out everything you can remember from memory. It could be explaining a concept to somebody else. It could be doing practice questions before you review notes. The key is to reduce the amount of recognition you’re doing and increase the amount of recall.

If you’re learning something for the first time, this can be really tough. But it will do wonders for your memory. And what’s really great about active recall, is that because it forces you to truly recall information from your memory, you’re able to get a much better understanding of what you actually remember and what you don’t. And that’s going to help you fill the gaps in your knowledge way better than just rereading your notes will.

Spaced Repetition

And finally, we have the glue that keeps everything together and makes sure you don’t forget what you memorize: spaced repetition.

To truly understand spaced repetition, you need to first understand something called the forgetting curve. Right after you first learn something, that information is fresh in your memory. But what happens is that, overtime, if you don’t revisit that information, your brain is going to replace it with something else it thinks is more important. The longer you don’t review something, the more you’re going to forget about it. And most of the forgetting is going to happen right after you learned it.

This is where spaced repetition comes in. When we review that information, we reset the curve, and retain that knowledge for longer before we begin to forget it again. And so by spacing out your studying so you review right before you’re about to forget, something you might’ve remembered for just a week, becomes something that lasts a month, or longer.

This is why choosing to study for a test over several days is a lot better than just cramming the night before: later, when you have to use this information again, you have to spend a lot less effort and time relearning because you used spaced repetition.

Another great thing about spaced repetition is that, like active recall, it gives you feedback on your memory. If you review consistently over a period of time, you get a good idea of what you know and what you don’t, and so you’re able to organize your studying a lot better than if you just crammed for one day.

The minutiae of how everybody learns is different for every person. But when coupled with habits that incorporate these study strategies optimized for long-term understanding, learning can become a whole lot easier of a process.