Benedict Carey is a New York Times science writer who decided to sift through decades of education research and studies to uncover the truth about how our brains take in and retain information.

After reading through all the research Carey discovered that memories form a network of linked cells created by neurons that fire when activated.  When that Memory is formed, it lies in the hippocampus until it eventually consolidates along the neocortex.

According to Carey, scientists believe that we have enough storage in our brains to hold 3 million hours of TV shows, which is enough memory to store an entire lifetime of experiences. From this revelation it would make sense that we all should be able to learn and remember everything we encounter in our lives. We all have the capacity to remember everything we learn, so why is it that some people learn more efficiently than others? And why can’t we remember what we ate for breakfast on the 15th of October 2008?

The reason why we don’t remember everything has a complicated science behind it and Carey goes in depth about many Learning theories in his book How We Learn, but the gist of it is that we only etch things into memory if it is important for us to remember. Using this insight along with decades of learning science findings, Carey has come up with 5 tips for successful learning in his new book:

1- Water Your Brain

Our intuition tells us that if we want to learn something, we need to sit down and study. We need to focus for an extended period of time to learn something more effectively.

This sounds reasonable and a lot of people use this strategy to learn new things everyday, but the research is unequivocal, you’re much better off splitting your study time into two or three segments. It’s much better to have 1 hour study sessions spread out over a few days then cramming 4-5 hours in one day.

The reason why this strategy is better than cramming is because in the process of spacing a little forgetting occurs, which ultimately helps you learn more effectively. When you cram too often, you run into the problem of fluency. This is when you feel like you really understand something but you may or may not have reached a deep level of understanding.

If you distribute your learning, the benefits are huge because you are forcing your brain to recall information that you’ve forgotten, emphasising its importance to your brain and making it stick stronger into your memory.

One way Carey described this learning process is by using a metaphor of watering your garden plants during summer. If you were to water your lawn once a week for 1-2 hours, it will keep the lawn looking fresh for a few days but eventually the greenery will fade and your plants will start to die. If you spread out watering your plants every 2 days for 15-20 minutes, then your lawn will look healthier almost every day. This is similar to how you should approach studying, water your brain with knowledge everyday, instead of flooding it with information in a single day.

2-Enemy of fluency

The biggest threat to learning is that we can get trapped into the fluency illusion. One of the most practiced study techniques in school is to reread notes or to review highlighted Material. When you review your notes or when you look over your highlighted notes, you create the fluency illusion. This is when familiar cues fool you into thinking that you’ve learned the material. The reality is that if you were to remove the cue, it’d be much harder to recall the information, which ultimately illustrates how poorly you understand the material.

The problem with fluency is that it feels good. You feel like you understand the material, but this is an illusion. The better way to see if you have true mastery is to close the book and to test yourself and ask yourself – what was that chapter really telling me?

When you shut your book and test yourself, you actively try to retrieve a memory. This doesn’t feel good and this is why most students never use this technique, but all the researchers in the science of learning agree that you need to experience a level of discomfort  when you study to truly master the material.

3- Test, Teach And Mix

The best way you can get rid of fluency illusion is to test yourself. Self testing is an extraordinarly powerful way to deepen your learning. By actively trying to retrieve your memory you are strengthening the storage of your memory and your ability to retrieve it.

Teach whatever you’re learning instead of reviewing your highlighted notes. Explain what it is you’re learning to someone else and teach it to them as if they were 5. Teaching is a studying technique so you don’t need to be a master at a material to teach it, mastery comes from actively teaching the material itself.

Mix up what you’re practicing and start interleaving what you’re doing. Interleaving is  when you don’t do the exact same thing again and again. Variety is the spice to learning, so use as much as you want.

4- Sleeping And Naps

We all know how important sleep is for memory consolidation but so are naps. A researcher named Sara Mednick has studied the effects of naps for almost a decade.

In her research Mednick brought people into her lab and made them learn new material. Half of her research participants were told that they were free to leave after the study session and the other half were told to take a nap. At the end of the day, both groups were brought in the lab again and were tested on the material they were taught earlier in the day. It turned out that those who napped after learning the new material outperformed those who didn’t in her studies.

Sleep and naps are important part of your study process, so don’t ignore it and try not to pull all nighters. You might just be doing more harm to your learning than good by ignoring sleep.

5- Embrace The Zeigarnik Effect

In the early part of the 20th century a researcher named Bluma Zeigarnik learned that waiters who had been paid have different memories than those who hadn’t. In Zeigarnik’s study it was discovered that if waiters hadn’t been paid then it was an unfinished task so they remembered the order better than someone who had been paid for the order.

Procrastination can really hinder someone from accomplishing tasks so the Zeigarnik effect can be very useful for learning because it allows us to finish unresolved tasks. If you’re having trouble studying because it feels overwhelming than just get started on the task you’ve been avoiding and you’ll soon try to find a way to get it done.

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