07. How to Learn Things
Episode 07
Learning things is a lifelong activity. It’s not something that stops happening once we graduate. Students and working professionals will always be faced with the challenge of learning new things, and … wait for it … there’s an actual WAY to learn. (I know! If only they taught this in school!)
This week’s episode is all about HOW to learn.
The learning process — the actual steps our brains take to acquire information — takes a certain amount of time that we don’t have much control over. The problem is that many people try to hack this process with pseudo-science “strategies” that do not work. They don’t work because they don’t respect the fact that learning is a real biochemical and neurological process that has a few of its own terms.
In this episode, I teach you the real strategies for how to learn things.
Free Resources
Free Study Planner Template → simple pdf download that helps you implement the strategies you learn in the episode.
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them. :)
[00:00:00]
So often in life, we need to learn things, whether you're in high school and you're learning subject content like economics.
Or you're working and you're learning industry content for your job. Maybe something like professional development, maybe something like a new software for your company. Or maybe even earning credits towards some kind of professional license, or maybe you're on some personal journey to learn a language or some skill.
In nearly all of these cases, the emphasis is on the what.
The what of learning?
So a student taking an economics class is focusing on learning what implicit costs and the law of supply are.
Our real estate agents studying for a licensing exam focus on what questions are going to be on the test.
And someone maybe trying to learn Spanish before they take a trip to Spain is focusing on what those key phrases are for, you know, navigating a new [00:01:00] city.
But we have it all wrong.
We should never start with the what, cause that is only going to take us so far.
Instead, we need to focus on the how.
How to learn.
How to learn concepts from an econ course, how to study for a licensing test. How does self-study a foreign language?
Believe it or not, there is a how.
There is a way to learn that has to come before what we learn.
In this episode, I'm going to teach you something you probably wish you learned a long time ago.
And that is how to learn.
I'm going to teach you about what the learning process really, really is.
And what are the two most important things that you need to do?
To get information that is outside of your brain to inside your brain, which of course is called knowledge acquisition.
Because without these two things. There is [00:02:00] no learning.
There's short-term memorizing and there's fake learning, but there is no real true knowledge acquisition without these two things.
Now to begin, I want to paint a picture of what it looks like when I'm working with my one-to-one clients.
So often, this is what it looks like, of course, until after they've been working with me for a while. Right. But sometimes they come in. And they are stressed out because they have a test the next day. Okay. So this is for my students. I work with working professionals as well, but their tests are often different. It's in the form of a presentation [00:03:00] or a meeting or review or something like that.
Okay. But picture this, a student comes into my office. They're all stressed out because they have a test tomorrow.
Which they haven't started studying for.
And they come in and they want me to help them study. And yes, that is what I do. I will study with students. And while I'm doing that, I'm teaching them the study methods so they can see how it works in practice. Okay.
And at the end of the sessions, my sessions are one hour, they feel confident in the material or at least in part of it, whatever we can cover in one hour.
Okay. But I am always dismissing them with the greatest warning that “you're not done. What we did in this study session is not the complete picture of studying.” Okay. And then sometimes I get like, “yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I feel good. We studied today. I'm going to take the test tomorrow.”
And then they come back to me the next week and they didn't do that well on the test.
And they're wondering why they were like, well, I studied, in fact, we studied together. Okay.
[00:04:00] But what is happening in this scenario is, they are not respecting the learning process.
Not respecting the actual amount of time that it takes our bodies and our brains to take information from the outside and put it into the brain in the form of new neural networks and electric connections and all of the cool things that happen inside of our brain when we learn.
Learning is not just saying, oh, now I know the definition of a word, like, cause it can come out of my mouth when I'm prompted.
No, there are things that have to happen in our brain for us in order for us to have true knowledge acquisition and that process needs to be respected because it takes the time it takes regardless of how we feel about it.
The learning process at the neurological level does not care that [00:05:00] our test is tomorrow that our meeting is tomorrow that our performance is tomorrow. Okay. It doesn't care about our feelings. Sadly. So we can't rush the learning process. We have to respect that it does take time.
Now I have a weird analogy that I think makes sense.
It's kind of occurring to me now. So if, hopefully, this makes sense. I feel like I should have thought this one through, but hold on, let me see if I can, let me see if I can use it and see if it makes sense.
Think of digestion. It's going to be really bad. But that is a physical process that, you know, most of us are somewhat at a basic level aware of.
Right. We understand it decently well. Digestion is that process that takes the amount of time it takes again, no matter how we feel about it. From the time we take a bite of food and we chew it and it travels down our esophagus and goes to the stomach and the intestines and all that stuff. Okay. Not a doctor don't know the entire [00:06:00] process, but that doesn't go faster just because we want it to go faster. And we understand that there is a process in the digestion process that just takes the time it takes.
And we understand how absurd it would be for us to try to command our bodies to digest faster.
Right. That sounds absurd. We would never do that. But why do we do that with the learning process? It's just as absurd.
Now, I'm going to stick with the digestion analogy for a minute because I'm not done with it. Okay.
Now, there are things that we can do that can drastically improve our digestion. We can chew better. We can stay hydrated. We can make sure that we are eating enough fiber. We can exercise. We can get a good night's sleep.
Right. We do these things and our digestion is going to be more effective. It's going to be smoother. It's just going to be a better experience. Okay. [00:07:00] More complete. I probably should have picked a different uh, body process to go with, but I feel like this is making sense.
The learning process happens the same darn way. In order for information to come from outside – so, um, a lecture class, a textbook a book, a video, a slide presentation, maybe something that you're learning for work - right, in order for that information that's currently external to become internal, it takes the time it takes. But there are things we can do to facilitate that process.
Not to make it happen faster, but to make it happen more completely, more effectively and more smoothly. Similar to the things that we can do to improve our digestion.
Okay. I really hope that analogy didn't go too far and I hope it made sense.
Now, in the beginning of the episode, I alluded to the fact that there are two things that we [00:08:00] can do, that we must do to make the learning process happen. Really, there is no learning without these two things and they are active recall and spaced repetition.
So let's start with active recall.
It is the opposite of what most people do when they're trying to learn something. Most people use something called passive recall in which they are simply inputting information. They are reading something from a textbook. They're listening to something their teacher is saying, or their colleague or their bosses saying. They are perhaps reading through slides, watching a video.
They are putting the information in. And that's wonderful. That's the first step, but that is by no means studying. Studying is not reading your notes. Looking through slides. It is not reviewing material. Okay. That is absolutely not studying. That's reviewing- that's different than studying. That's looking [00:09:00] through your notes is nothing more than looking through your notes.
It's a visual process. Like you're looking at things you might as well look at a painting. Okay. True studying involves active recall. Now what that is active recall requires us to output information. Okay. Produce information, recall it, and then produce information without any materials in front of us.
Okay. So picture this, you made yourself a set of flashcards - I'm just going to go basic here and use vocabulary. So you put a word on one side of the flashcard and the definition on the other side of the flashcard, right. And you're feeling good about that. Cool. All right. You made flashcards, you feel good.
You look at the front of the flashcard. You see the vocab word. You're kind of stuck for a moment. You're like, oh, shoot. I remember that. I kind of think, and you'd give yourself like a quick little peek at the back of the card. Right. And you see the answer or you're like, “oh yeah, definitely. I knew that. I knew that. Cool.”
And, and you get this false sense of security that you knew [00:10:00] that answer.
No. You did not. You had to flip the card over. You had the answers and your materials in front of you in the form of the back of the card. Okay. So active recall involves having no materials in front of you. Just having a trigger, cue, a question, a prompt, a simple vocabulary word.
If you're studying something like history, it could be the date of like 1939. Okay. That is a trigger cue. And then without having any notes in front of you, you put yourself in the position of forcing yourself to recall what the answer is. Are you going to get it every time? Absolutely not. Particularly in the first few study sessions and you're having okay.
But eventually, you're going to go “oh, 1939. That was the, um…” and it's going to be in the tip of your tongue and you're going to get uncomfortable and you are going to be itching so badly to flip that card over to look at your notes. Sit in that pocket of [00:11:00] discomfort, just for a little longer, this is your brain doing its thing.
This is the learning process. And you can't rush it. Eventually, what will occur to you is, oh, that's when World War II started. Okay. If that's, when you're studying, for many things happened in 1939, but like let's pick a big one, right?
Now up until you get to the point where you're able to actively recall the information, you might have to peek at it for a little bit.
Right. And you might have to look at your notes. You might have to write over and over again on a piece of paper in 1939 start of World War II, 1939 start of World War II repeated out loud, like chew on the material, play with it, draw it out, write it out. You know, study it in a way that's like, you're, you're almost like playing with it and then test yourself on it.
Again, sitting in that pocket of discomfort, resist the overwhelming temptation to peek at the answer.
See, if you can recall it yourself. Every single time you resist the urge to look at your notes and you give yourself the opportunity to sit [00:12:00] in that moment of, um, like tip of the tongue -ness. You know what I mean?
When he's like right there, you are strengthening all of the amazing magic that is happening in your brain. Okay, you cannot bypass that. There is no hack for that. Just cause you don't want that process to exist doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. That is how we learn. We use active recall. Okay.
You need to output information. It could be someone testing you on flashcards. I keep using flashcards because that's the easiest way to explain this, it could be filling out a study guide. It could be taking quizzes that you've made or that you found online. It could be any way that you're testing yourself using trigger cues.
So, like I said, words, questions, even just simple statements, a picture, anything that prompts your brain to go, okay, I know what this is asking me. And now I need to generate an answer.
Okay, so that is number one, active recall. If you're trying to learn something [00:13:00] and you are not studying using active recall methods, then unfortunately don't shoot the messenger, you're not actually studying. Okay. And that's why you're probably having a hard time learning.
Now let's talk about number two, which is spaced repetition, active, recall, and spaced repetition go hand in hand. You could hardly have one ever really without the other. Spaced repetition is a framework that I want you to use or that we need to use. Really. It's not even. It's not a personal preference of mine.
Again, this is related to what our brain needs in order to learn new information. Okay. So spaced repetition is a framework for timing and spacing out your study sessions over a period of time. So let's think spaced, repetition, two words there. Spaced: you have to space out your study sessions. Okay.
Usually, a good rule of thumb is to give yourself in this isn't for like you know, the LSAT or the bar. It's not for like giant, giant [00:14:00] exams, but five days I think is a good starting point. Five days to seven days of a span of time for you to space out your study sessions.
And the repetition part is where you have to come back to the material over and over and over again, using active recall.
So here is what this could look like. Let's say it's Monday and you have a test on the following Monday. Or let's say you're giving yourself a week to learn something that you are on this like independent self-study to learn a language or whatever you're giving yourself a week.
Okay. So whatever your context. And that first day that you find out you're having a test or that you're giving yourself a deadline, you would actually start studying, using active recall.
Okay. So your study session would be fairly short. We're talking 25 to 45 minutes. Epic study sessions of hours and hours and hours on end do not [00:15:00] work.
Hear me loud and clear: long study sessions do not work because we remember what happens at the beginnings and the ends of a period of time.
This stuff in the middle becomes a blur. That's something called the primacy recency effect and it's science. And it's really neat. And it's really helpful to know. Okay.
That's why you can study for four hours and feel like you didn't learn anything because you didn't. You learned 20 minutes at the beginning 20 minutes at the end, but all that time in the middle was like the little like blowing bubbles. Okay. So if you study for 25 to 45 minutes on a Monday. And then you come back to that same material on Tuesday.
Here's what's going to happen. You've given yourself time for that information that you've learned that you felt so good at the end of your study session, right? You'd be like, I think I know this. This is what happens, I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, when I'm working with students at the end of the session, they work with me and they're studying, like, I feel really good and I'm like, no, You're not done studying.
You got to come back to this. [00:16:00] That's because the next day you come back to the material, you might be a little bit bummed at how much you have forgotten from the day before. And a lot of students just stop there. They're like, okay. I already study at once. I know it. I'm just going to go into the test.
Here's the thing, that information that you studied from day one, or if you were with me studying, you know, for that one hour, it's in your short-term memory. That's neat. That's where it goes for the time being. But short-term memories are not permanent. They are not your long-term memory. That information needs to make its way into the long-term memory, which is knowledge acquisition, which is learning things. Okay.
The stuff in our short-term memory is short term and it will leave. That's memorization. Right? The stuff we memorize, like it doesn't stick around very long. Okay. Like people's names. Five minutes later when you forgot them.
So when you come back to a second study session using spaced repetition, be gentle with yourself if you forgotten nearly everything. We tend to forget -the statistic that I've seen more [00:17:00] than anything else is we forget 80% of what we learn until we come back to it repetitively.
So expect that. Like, “Shoot! I made, you know, a hundred flashcards and I only remember 20.”
Okay, cool. Well then use that 25 to 45 minutes on your second study session to reacquaint yourself with those other 80 flashcards. You'll relearn them quicker this time because they were already sort of like leaving paper trails in your short-term memory.
Okay. Then give yourself the opportunity to nearly forget that information again.
This is how we learn things. You have to give your brain the chance to kind of clean out the short-term memory. And then well, I’m oversimplifying this, but I'm trying to reduce this into language that like is accessible.
Okay. So, I'm foregoing all of the science, science words, but you have to give yourself the chance for the information that you put in your short-term memory to leave. Usually that happens overnight. Okay. And then you go back to your third study session. So Monday, Tuesday, this is [00:18:00] Wednesday now. And you hit that information again.
If you're feeling good about it, add some new information. If there's more material to study.
Spaced repetition involves spacing out your study sessions, 25 to 45 minutes, max. Multiple study sessions. You can have more than one in a day. You can do one in the morning. You can do one in the evening. Okay.
If you just using something like, I don't know, like an app to learn a foreign language before your trip to Spain, do a little in the morning, do a little bit at night. Okay. But do it every single day leading up to, you know, I'm using air quotes, but like the test, or I guess in fact, the real test as well. Spaced repetition using active recall study techniques is how we learn.
There is no other way for knowledge acquisition to happen.
Okay. So, you know, what's kind of cool. He, I think it's cool. Is that in the show notes to this episode, or if you're watching this on YouTube, I have also put it in the description box. I [00:19:00] have a free study planner, that is a free PDF download.
It's an awesome template. And it is exactly built around the concept of space repetition. So if you are studying anything, this template, this planner is very robust. There's a lot to it. It's multiple pages. There are different options.
And it explains spaced repetition. It gives you an example of planning out a study schedule using spaced repetition. So again, the free PDF download to that is in the show notes and then in the description box.
Okay. So the moral of the story is that is how we learn things. Spaced repetition, active recall, no skimming through your notes, rereading your textbook, um, looking through things right.
As much as we want that to be studying, because that feels easier and it feels better, it is not studying. It's just not how we learn information.
If you want more details about active recall and spaced repetition, I have very thorough [00:20:00] tutorials for each of those. So I will leave those in the show notes and in the description box as well.
So there's one for active recall, and one for spaced repetition. If you're looking for more robust, like exactly, step-by-step how to do this.
And remember I will be answering listener questions once a month on my monthly Q&A episodes. Our first Q&A episode was last week. And I absolutely loved doing it.
If you want to submit your own questions – they can be nitty-gritty specific questions about school work, productivity, organization, mindset, systems, all of those things – there's a form on the homepage of LearnAndWorkSmarter.com. It asks you for your name.
Don't worry: on the show I will not read your name. So all submissions are anonymous.
And that takes us to the end. Please leave a review if you would be so kind. Be sure to follow with a show so you don't miss future episodes.
And most importantly, more important than anything I taught you today, is never stop learning.
