You Should Know

rewriting notes based on lecture recordings and readings were the most effective way I learned but boy it is time consuming and hard to keep up.

"Learn" is too vague. A good example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37440162/

Would love to see references for this post. 😉

I work in kitchens, and so I have to learn new techniques every so often. One thing that I've found that works REALLY well for me is to have an imaginary student that I'm teaching as I'm learning it myself. It forces me to repeat the things I've learned, but also put them in my own words. I can catch on to techniques much more quickly when I'm doing that.

That last paragraph makes this post seem kind of hypocritical doesn't it? Lol

Hey player, don't play the game. You make the game.

I think there's a name for this, but I'm tired and will rely on Cunningham's whatever.

You should've made a flash card and read it out loud after highlighting it

I'm seeing this post a bit late, but I feel like I have to weigh in slightly, though it's not my research area.

Note that my information extends more to academic studying, don't know if it's quite as true for learning more physical skills.

The main concept for learning is deeper learning. Which basically just means actually using your brain to think about the material. Things like connecting it to other ideas, pondering different implications, that sort of thing.

The reason flashcards work is because you think about what questions you could ask about the material. The reason you write by hand vs type is because it's slower and you have to think about what's more important or how you'd summarise the information.

I believe reading aloud typically works because it forces you to be slower and more deliberate, giving you time to actually process what you're reading.

That said what you've written is helpful and mostly correct, I'm just not so certain about the framing. It could mislead some people into just rewriting notes while reading them out, for example, which is inefficient and not very helpful for learning.

A very easy-to-read source with practical tips:

• Optimizing Learning in College by Putnam et al. (2016) (Look it up on Google scholar for a free pdf)

Also as a final tip, my favourite exam prep technique: do a past paper without having looked at any notes or done any prep. Answer as much as you can just thinking about what you remember. Then go through with notes. It primes your brain for processing and storing the information.

Don't just read the paper, smell & lick it too :)))

But in all seriousness, I'll give it a try. It makes sense to activate more of your brain.

What if we used 100% of the brain?

Very similar to what my middle school geography teacher told us. It takes consuming knowledge 7 different ways to really cement it into memory.

No no, disengage entirely. Let chat bots do everything for you. Don't do research, don't try to understand, just copy and paste. Best put your brain in a jar and set it on the nightstand. /s obviously.

Sources?

I do this for certification exams. Some of the ones I take are open book tests, so I create an index as I read along with the books. By the time I’m done, I basically compiled multiple books into a <30 page document and at the same time internalized what I’ve read. By the time I take the exam, I barely need to open any of the books and just use my index as reference.

Yup. I horrible memory, but when I do something that engages more senses when i need to remember something, it's more likely to stick.

ive found this actually just exhausts me to the point that I don't end up learning anything and just become a tad upset. i respond far better to brute repetition with minimal other busy work, like pre-made flash cards or studying with someone else. I also like rereading articles/study materials until I can imperfectly recite them comfortably :)

i know this wasn't necessarily an invitation to anecdotes but i just wanted to make it known that this is NOT universal

One of my best highschool teachers taught us this ~25 years ago, basing it on some research his academic wife had done.

The way i heard it was everyone remembers better if they see, hear and speak the information. The whole "i'm a visual learner" thing has no evidence behind it.

Everyone remembers more the more senses they engage.

How do I do this when learning piano?

Same principle applies to writing notes by hand vs typing them, for whatever reason people remember things they’ve written significantly better than things they’ve typed.

Writing all over the text you’re reading is also a great way to organize your thoughts! I use Zotero for highlighting and writing notes to myself if I’m reading a bunch of stuff too long to reasonably print.

Great advice. I would suggest as you're reading through whatever material you're trying to understand, there are parts that you don't quite "get it". Try to formulate answerable, isolated questions that would help you "get it" or solidify your understanding and try to answer them by re-reading, finding the relevant parts or doing a bit independent research. In general, creating questions to strengthen your understanding is a great way to make learning more like a game and it prevents your mind from feeling frustrated as it wants to understand everything all at once. You just need to answer that one question and for the most part your brain will handle the rest when it comes down to the bigger picture.

Obviously, you need to strike a balance here.

I sometimes let AI create Turkish flashcards for me... and I just manually retype them for this reason, lol.

And I know AI can sometimes make mistakes, but from my experience, it's not a big deal in language learning, because eventually you will notice it, and who doesn't make mistakes when learning a language anyway?