Made it stick

by Wojciech Adam Koszek   ⋅   Apr 24, 2015   ⋅   Menlo Park, CA

How to study effectively.


Accelerating learning should probably be my logical step before I started to read and listen to (audio) books, yet I came to this topic quite late. During one of the trips back home in KQED I’ve listened to a great podcast entitled: “Science of Smart” where a research of Roedriger was mentioned.

General message out of this book is that studying-by-repeating and cramming for exams are the most common “learning” techniques applied by students of high-school and universities. Yet the research proves that it’s testing and quizing that actually helps us retain the knowledge and actually master it.

One of the examples given is that good teachers (couches) know how to diversify a training for their teams so that th

Spaced repetition is one of the techniques mentioned too. According to the research spaced-repetition leads to much more effective retention than anything else.

Diversifying the practice also brings good results, and trying to use as much of a power of our associative minds leads to much better results. This is a theme mentioned by Brian Tracy in his “Accelerated Learning Techniques” where he’s

One of the colleges mentioned was said to have teachers give assignments for classes that were to happen in the future, so that students unfamiliar with the topic can challenge their minds and try to solve problems by doing individual research.

Reading and understanding is just an illusion of knowing. Quite likely this illusion comes from the fact that while reading, we think that by understanding words, sentences and general meaning of a text we actually assimilate the knowledge.


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About the author: I'm Wojciech Adam Koszek. I like software, business and design. Poland native. In Bay Area since 2010.   More about me