HIGH UTILITY
Test yourself
Close the book and pull the answer from memory: flashcards, practice questions, or a blank page.
See the experimentThe habits that feel productive are not always the ones that work.
Rereading and highlighting feel like progress. Decades of memory research point somewhere else: pull the answer out of your head, spread the work out, and mix it up. Here is the evidence, in plain English.
Plain English, with the sources linked.
Updated
Check your study habitsTHE SHORT ANSWER
Recall it, then space it.
Of ten common study techniques,
a major 2013 review rated only two highly.
HIGH UTILITY
Space it out
The same hours spread over several sessions beat one long cram, especially for things you need to keep.
How far apart?
LOW UTILITY
Rereading and highlighting
They feel productive because the page grows familiar, but they rated low as ways to learn.
Check your habitsA QUICK HABIT CHECK
How does your
study habit rate?
Pick the thing you do most when you sit down to study. The rating comes from a 2013 review of ten learning techniques in Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
Low utility does not mean useless. It means the evidence for it as a main way to learn is weaker, or narrower, than for the top two.
TWO EXPERIMENTS WORTH KNOWING
Effort now,
memory later.
The approach that feels harder during study
is often the one that lasts.
61% vs 40%
Recalled a week later
Students who practised recalling a short passage remembered far more after a week than students who spent that time rereading it, even though the rereaders read it about 14 times to the testers' 3 or 4.
TEST YOURSELF · 2006
Mixed > blocked
Maths practice, tested a week later
Students who practised a shuffled mix of problem types did far better on a test a week later than students who practised one type at a time. The researchers called mixed practice "vastly superior".
MIX IT UP · 2007
Both effects run against intuition. Blocked practice and rereading feel smoother in the moment, which is exactly why they are easy to overrate.
TRY IT TONIGHT
Four habits
that make it stick.
Close the book first
Before rereading, write down everything you can remember on a blank page. Then open the notes and fill the gaps.
Turn notes into questions
Write a question on one side of a card and the answer on the other. Answer out loud before you flip it.
Split one long session into three
Three short sessions on different days beat one long evening. Put them in your calendar now.
Shuffle the practice
Mix question types and topics instead of doing ten of the same in a row, so you practise choosing the method too.
MEMORY FACTS
Five things worth
remembering.
It started with nonsense
In 1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus published experiments in which he memorised about 2,300 nonsense syllables himself, and found that spreading practice out beat cramming it into one session.
The best gap depends on the deadline
A 2006 review pooled 839 assessments of spaced study. The gap between sessions that gave the best retention grew as the time until the final test grew.
Ten techniques, two winners
The 2013 review rated ten common techniques. Only practice testing and distributed practice earned its highest rating; rereading, highlighting and summarising rated low.
Familiar is not the same as learned
In the 2006 testing experiment, the students who reread the most remembered the least a week later. Feeling fluent with a page is a poor guide to what you will recall.
Pen or laptop matters less than you think
A famous 2014 result favoured handwritten notes, but a 2021 replication with 145 students found no measurable difference in quiz scores.
QUICK QUESTIONS
Studying, answered.
Short answers to the questions people ask most.
What is the most effective way to study?
A major 2013 review of ten common techniques gave its highest rating to two: practice testing, meaning recalling material from memory, and distributed practice, meaning spreading study over several sessions instead of cramming.
Is rereading notes a waste of time?
Not a waste, but a weak use of time on its own. Rereading was rated low utility in the 2013 review. It helps more to close the notes and try to recall the main points, then reread to check what you missed.
Does testing yourself really work better than studying more?
In a 2006 experiment, students who practised recalling a passage remembered 61% of it a week later, against 40% for students who spent the same time rereading it, even though the rereading group read it far more often.
How far apart should study sessions be?
A large review of spacing studies found that the best gap between sessions grows with how long you need to remember. For an exam next week, a gap of a day or so helps; for something you need in months, wider gaps work better.
Is it better to take notes by hand or on a laptop?
A well-known 2014 study favoured handwriting, but a 2021 replication with 145 students found no measurable difference in quiz scores. What you do with your notes afterwards matters more than how you took them.
Sources
Where the facts come from
- Which study strategies make the grade? (Dunlosky et al., 2013)Association for Psychological Science
- Repeated test-taking beats repeated studying (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006)Washington University in St. Louis
- Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks (Cepeda et al.)Psychological Bulletin, 2006
- The shuffling of mathematics practice problems boosts learningInstructional Science, 2007
- Ebbinghaus publishes Memory (1885)History of Information
- Replication finds no advantage to handwritten notes (2021)Association for Psychological Science
A NAME THAT STICKS
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