They throw themselves into playing with blocks, singing songs, drawing with crayons, and creating art.
But as we get older, many of us lose our love of learning.
Learning at high school and university can become all about …
• Copying things from the whiteboard, PowerPoint slides or your textbooks
• Reading your notes over and over again
• Re-writing your notes
• Staying up late to study for tests and exams
• Highlighting huge slabs of text
When you feel forced to study something you don’t care about it can kill your love for learning. Studying takes on a torturous quality.
And when this happens, it’s easy to forget that you love to learn.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
With a little creativity and a few simple tools, you can have a lot more fun with your studies.
Fun theory is this idea that if you want to engage in a particular behaviour (e.g. study) then you need to make the behaviour fun and novel for your brain.
For starters, let’s not call it geography. Let’s reframe it to learning about the world (i.e. your home).
Next step: get your hands on the largest world map you can find. Choose the map with the brightest colours (your brain loves bright colours). Now stick it to your wall.
Every time you meet someone new from another country, make it a fun game to find where he or she live on the map. Want to get a really good sense of where they live? Jump on Google maps and look at the street view.
Other strategies to try:
• Get a sense of how people live in this part of the world by visiting Dollar Street (this brings it to life)
• Jump online and find an online paper created in that part of the world. For example, learning about India? Check out The Times of India. This will give you a sense of the issues the local people are dealing with.
Need to bash out a 1,000 word essay in a short period of time? Then try using the Write or Die app.
The Write or Die app is a writing tool that helps you get words down fast. Here’s how it works: you set goals for how many words and the length of your writing session. Then you select either reward or consequence.
If you select reward, every time you hit a writing milestone a picture of a cute puppy will flash on the screen. Consequence mode will punish you with a red flashing screen and sirens if you’re writing too slowly. If you don’t pick up the pace, the computer will start eating up your words!
Other ways to make writing essays fun for your brain:
• Use different coloured pens and paper
• Select a crazy font on your computer
• Storyboard your essay: create a plan of your essay in picture form
• Dress up in a crazy costume or wear some ridiculous over-the-top item as you write (e.g. a feather boa or a crown).
• Give yourself a sticker every time you hit a writing milestone
Reading language textbooks can feel like a hard slog. To lighten things up for your brain, you could try:
• Using the Duolingo app
• Use a verb wheel (it feels a bit like being on the show Wheel of Fortune)
• Get out children’s language books from the library
• Go to a restaurant where the staff speak the language and practice your language skills on them
• Create a kids book in the foreign language
• Watch videos and movies in the language
The thought of having to memorise lines for a performance or speech can be overwhelming for your brain. Try doing the following:
• Use the Line Learner app
• Practice your lines in different accents
• Dress up and get fully into character
• Say your lines in an overly dramatic way
• Stand in front of the mirror and practice with yourself
• Drop your lines randomly into conversation with your friends
• Practice with your friends
• Sing your lines
The key here is to trick your brain into thinking it’s not studying for a test or exam. The best way to do this is to create a party atmosphere.
Here’s what I suggest:
1. Invite your friends over to study for a particular subject or topic.
2. Prepare a couple of platters of healthy snacks (e.g. fresh fruit and veggies sticks and dip), get some ingredients to make smoothies, put some background music on (nothing too distracting) and decorate the place with post-it notes, coloured pens and lined paper.
3. When your friends arrive, spend the first 10 minutes catching up (set a timer for this).
4. After socialising, set a timer for 25 minutes. Remove all phones from the space. It’s time to hit your books and/or flashcards.
5. When the timer goes off, everyone gets up and moves for 5 minutes (e.g. do a dance, go for a walk or do some karate kicks).
6. Rinse and repeat steps 4 and 5 until you feel like you need a longer break.
Not keen on throwing a study party? Fair enough. Try these ideas instead:
• Jump on Ducksters for simple and straightforward explanations
• Explore ideas in children’s books or any book that makes the topic seem fun for your brain (tip: pictures, illustrations and bright colours help).
• Get a whiteboard and some coloured pens and draw out everything you can remember about the topic. Do this for 5 minutes or until you exhaust your memory. Make sure you then check for gaps in your knowledge and things you incorrectly recalled.
• Venture outside into nature with your textbook, notes and/or flashcards.
Studying doesn’t have to feel like a chore. With a few tricks, you can fool your brain into thinking fun times are ahead! And the thing is when you’re having fun and you’re feeling good, you will learn more. It’s a win-win situation!
The key is to experiment and see what works for you. Keep things new and fresh because your brain loves anything that is new and novel.
Have any other ideas on how to make studying fun and novel for your brain? Feel free to post them below!
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On these days, the temptation to procrastinate and distract oneself can be strong.
I recently spent a few days with my family in the countryside, where I enjoyed reading by a crackling fire. But when I found myself back home in my office, I struggled to get back into the swing of things.
I was experiencing a full-blown holiday comedown.
For some context, I had printed out the slides for an upcoming presentation that I needed to practise, but I felt resistance every time I looked at the slides.
My mind screamed, “Nooo! I don’t want to practise!”. Without even thinking, I kept pushing the slides away like a toddler smooshing their vegetables around on their plate.
But at some point, I caught myself in the act. Without berating myself, I managed to turn things around and ease into my practice.
In this blog, I’ll share a couple of simple strategies I use to get a better handle on my procrastination and overcome resistance.
According to Procrastination scholar Tim Pychyl, procrastination isn’t a time management issue. It’s an emotion management issue. If you can get a better handle on your emotions, you’ll have a better handle on procrastination.
Let’s unpack this…
Often, when we procrastinate, it’s because we’re trying to avoid experiencing negative emotions. The task we need to do brings up feelings of discomfort (e.g., boredom, fear, guilt, anxiety, and stress), so we avoid the task to make ourselves feel better.
But avoidance makes no sense when you think about it.
Oliver Burkeman explains the problems associated with avoidance in his book Meditations for Mortals. He writes:
“The more you organise your life around not addressing the things that make you anxious, the more likely they are to develop into serious problems – and even if they don’t, the longer you fail to confront them, the more unhappy time you spend being scared of what might be lurking in the places you don’t want to go. It’s ironic that this is known, in self-help circles, as ‘remaining in your comfort zone’, because there’s nothing comfortable about it. In fact, it entails accepting a constant background tug of discomfort – an undertow of worry that can sometimes feel useful or virtuous, though it isn’t – as the price you pay to avoid a more acute spike of anxiety.”
Dutch Zen Monk Paul Loomans labels the tasks we avoid as ‘gnawing rats’. He says these tasks “eat away at you under the surface”.
Have you noticed that whenever you try to avoid a task, it’s usually still on your mind, using up your precious mental resources?
That’s what Loomans means by the task eating away at you under the surface.
Why does he use the peculiar term ‘gnawing rat’? Looman’s daughter used to have pet rats that would eat loudly under his bed, keeping him awake at night.
Loomans explains that if you can befriend your gnawing rats, you can transform them into white sheep. Just like a white sheep follows you around passively, once you transform a task into a white sheep, it’s a lot easier to make a start.
The question is, how do you transform a ‘gnawing rat’ (a task you are avoiding) into a white sheep?
The key is to approach procrastination from a place of curiosity.
Loomans suggests creating a positive, open relationship with the task you’ve been avoiding. You need to sit with it or visualise the task. Instead of giving yourself a hard time, get curious about why you have such a strained relationship with this task.
Loomans advises:
“… you’re not being asked to immediately do whatever it is that’s gnawing at you. The assignment is only to establish a relationship with it. You let all the various facets sink in and then let them go again.
The rat no longer gnaws at you, and it has settled down. It’s no longer trying to get your attention, but follows quietly behind. It now has white legs and curly fleece – it’s turned into a white sheep.”
I decided to follow Looman’s advice with this presentation I had been avoiding. To begin with, I pulled out my slides and I just sat with them.
I closed my eyes, tuned into my body and asked myself:
“Why am I feeling resistance towards practising this presentation? What’s going on?”
Within 30 seconds, the answer came to me. The resistance came from how I thought I’d feel after doing my speech practice: exhausted and emotionally depleted.
You see, when I practice a presentation, I typically go into turbocharge mode. It’s like I’m delivering the real thing: I gesticulate, project my voice, pace around the room, and rely on my memory and the pictures on my slides to remember the content (I don’t refer to my notes).
All of this takes a lot of mental and physical effort.
So, naturally, when I looked at my slides for this one-hour presentation, I felt flat and heavy.
I equated one hour of presentation practice with having a fried brain by the end.
But then I had a brilliant idea. I thought, “What if this practice session didn’t have to feel like a hard slog? What if it could be fun, light and easy but still effective? What would that look like?”
It immediately occurred to me that I had to shorten my practice session, which brings me to the next strategy . . .
To keep my practice session fun, light and easy, I settled on doing just five minutes of speech practice.
Instead of pacing around my office and practising in turbocharge mode for an hour, I sat myself down with a hot chocolate. I set a timer for five minutes, pulled out a mini whiteboard and started recalling the content (scribbling out and drawing pictures of what I needed to say).
When the timer went off, I checked my notes to see how I went (What did I remember? What did I forget to say?).
Then, I checked in with myself – “How am I feeling after that mini practice session?”. Instead of feeling depleted, I was feeling good! I felt less overwhelmed by this presentation. The resistance had subsided. As Paul Loomans would say, the presentation had transformed from a gnawing rat into a white sheep!
I felt excited, even a little inspired.
I could have easily kept practising for another 10-20 minutes, but I decided to give myself a break to re-energise (I got up and walked on the treadmill for 2 minutes).
This gave me insight into the need to vary the intensity and mode of each study session, depending on my energy levels and what I have planned for the rest of the day. Sometimes it’s good to go into turbocharge mode, but not always.
Not every study/work session has to be hardcore. Work sessions that leave you feeling completely drained by the end can be counterproductive. As Professor BJ Fogg says, “Tiny is mighty”.
Firstly, tiny study sessions are less scary for your brain. Five minutes of speech practice and flashcard practice feels easy. You think, “I can do 5 minutes!”.
In contrast, one hour of study feels scary for your brain, which means you’re more likely to procrastinate.
When you go tiny, it’s also easier to give your full focus to the task at hand. Here’s the thing about focus: focusing your mind takes a lot of your brainpower. And you have a limited supply of brainpower!
As you sit there and study, your brainpower gets depleted. But research shows one way to boost your attentional resources (i.e. your brainpower) is by taking regular breaks. If you study in short focused bursts and then take a break, you can stay refreshed and ensure your study sessions are effective.
But most importantly, tiny study sessions help to create momentum, and they leave you feeling good!
I tend to push myself to the point of exhaustion when I practise my talks. But I can see now that this makes it hard for me to want to practise in the future.
By dedicating just 5–10 minutes to the task and enjoying it, I’m more likely to do another 5 minutes (or more) of practice tomorrow. Doing five minutes of practice every day is infinitely better than doing no practice or cramming a long practice session in the day before.
You’re not going to go from good to great in one tiny study session. But you can make meaningful progress and create the momentum you need to keep going.
So, don’t turn your nose up at five minutes of flashcard practice or 10 minutes of doing a practice test. If done with focus and intention, that’s a solid study session that can set you on the path to success.
Image credit:
Toddler (featured in image 2): “Skeptical” by quinn.anya is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Rat: “Fancy rat blaze” by AlexK100 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
I didn’t know how to relax. I had one speed and one speed only . . . GO!
When I started dating my husband, he made a comment I never forgot. He said, “You’re intense.”
I laughed it off, thinking, “How ridiculous!”. But looking back, he was right.
Over the last few years, I’ve learnt to live life at multiple speeds and different intensities.
I’ve also learnt how to manage my energy better and pace myself. One thing the pandemic taught me was the importance of slowing down and taking regenerative breaks.
For many years, even though I intellectually understood the importance of rest, I struggled to do it.
For some reason, I thought I had to be always working.
My to-do list was something I had to power through. One thing after another. Got that thing done? Quick! Cross it off the list! Onto the next task.
As a student, I developed a bad habit of staying back late at university. As an undergrad, I’d hang out with my psychology friends in the computer labs until nearly midnight (I had to call the university security service to escort me to my car!).
Then, as a PhD student, I’d be in my office working late when everyone else had gone home. I’d buy takeaway that I’d eat alone at my desk. I’d get home late. I’d get to bed late.
How did I feel the next day?
Not great.
The problem with this approach is now glaringly obvious to me: because I was getting less sleep, I started to feel run down, which made it hard for me to focus, do my best thinking, and work efficiently.
Going fast all the time was actually slowing me down.
Then, I met a Brazilian PhD student called Carlos.
Carlos showed me there was a different way to work. A better way. A more sustainable way.
When I first met Carlos, I was taken aback by his beaming smile and infectious laugh.
He seemed genuinely happy, which wasn’t the case for many PhD students.
It wasn’t uncommon to see PhD students glued to their seats for hours with a 2-litre bottle of Coke on their desks. But this was not Carlos’s style.
I learnt that Carlos rode his bike to university every day (partly to save money and partly to clear his mind). He’d take breaks to play soccer and go rock climbing.
With all this activity, you might be wondering whether Carlos was managing to get any work done on his PhD.
He certainly was.
Carlos was super productive as a PhD student.
He was publishing papers and on track to finish his PhD on time, all with a big smile.
Here’s the really interesting thing about Carlos . . .
When he started working on his PhD, he was like me: pushing himself to work long, ridiculous hours.
As an International student, Carlos had a strict deadline for submitting his PhD thesis. At the beginning of his PhD, he told me he was driven by fear that he might not finish the work in time, so working nonstop seemed like the only path forward.
But then Carlos had an epiphany.
He realised he was just as productive when he allowed himself to engage in fun activities (e.g., rock climbing and playing soccer) as when he insisted on pushing himself to work crazy hours without taking any breaks.
This made Carlos realise that he needed to get serious about these fun rest breaks and prioritise them.
Whether Carlos realised it or not, he was emulating the behaviour of top research scientists.
In one longitudinal study, 40 scientists in their 40s were followed for 30 years. These scientists had attended top universities and showed promise in their careers.
The researchers wanted to know the difference between the people who had become top scientists and those who became mediocre scientists.
In other words, what were the top scientists doing that the mediocre scientists weren’t doing?
One of the key differences that stood out was movement.
The top scientists moved a lot more than the mediocre scientists. They engaged in activities such as skiing, hiking, swimming, surfing and playing tennis.
In contrast, the mediocre scientists did a lot less physical activity.
They were more likely to say, “I’m too busy to go hiking this weekend. There’s work I need to catch up on.” They saw physical movement as eating into the time they could be working.
The top scientists thought differently about movement. Moving their bodies was critical to doing good scientific work. It was something they needed to prioritise in their lives.
When I first read about this study, I immediately thought about Carlos. Riding his bike, playing soccer, and rock climbing were all activities that helped him work effectively on his PhD. These weren’t time-wasting activities; they were necessities.
Movement gets you out of your head and grounds you in your body. It also gives you space away from your work, which our minds need when doing complex and challenging tasks.
In addition, as you move your body, your brain is bathed in feel-good chemicals. It’s easier to get things done when you feel good and less stressed. You can have more fun. You come back into balance.
But do all breaks need to involve movement?
Not always. But you should try to find fun activities that you can do away from your desk, phone, or computer.
Do something that lets your mind loose and requires little to no mental effort to execute.
Here are some of my favourite fun break activities:
These fun break activities may not seem like much fun to you. I understand if steaming your clothes sounds boring (I’m even surprised by how much fun this is).
Your job is to discover your own fun break activities. But how do you do this? It’s simple – you follow the Rules of Fun.
Psychologist Risa Williams lays out the Rules of Fun in her brilliant book The Ultimate Anxiety Toolkit.
The Rules of Fun are as follows:
What was fun for you yesterday may not be fun today. That’s okay. Focus on what you find fun today. Only you know what that is.
The activity isn’t something you should find fun. It’s actually fun for you (it brings a smile to your face and a sense of calm).
For example, many Australians love watching the footy, but I don’t enjoy it. I’d much rather head outside, run around, kick a footy, or throw a frisbee. This is fun for me!
Risa Williams also points out that your list of fun activities will need to be updated regularly. She explains that we are constantly changing and evolving, so naturally, what we find fun will change and evolve, too.
Stay flexible and trust your intuition when it comes to the activities you find fun.
Start to listen to your body. Begin to notice what activities leave you feeling good.
The break activity shouldn’t leave you feeling mentally fried or emotionally wrecked. If it does, you’ve violated this rule.
For example, I never feel good when binge-watching a Netflix series or sitting for long periods. In contrast, I nearly always feel good after a walk.
As I mentioned, you need to get out of your head and get grounded in your body.
If you’re stuck in an anxiety loop about a comment or post a friend made on social media, the last thing you want to do is go online. You need to calm down by engaging in a fun activity (away from screens) that brings you back into balance.
You don’t need to fly to Bali or have an expensive massage to take a fun break. You can engage in many free and cheap activities at home and on your own.
Going for a walk around the block is free and easy. Drawing some silly faces on a scrap of paper is free and fun.
In contrast, travelling to the gym to take a cardio class (and getting there on time) feels much harder.
Let’s face it: if the break activity feels difficult or requires a lot of mental or physical effort, time, or money, you’re probably not going to do it.
However, when your fun break activities are easy, you’re more likely to do them again and again.
Little kids know how to have fun. They will happily and instinctively pick up some crayons to draw. They’ll nap without guilt. But as we grow older, many of us lose our sense of fun and our ability to rest. We start to take ourselves too seriously.
But no matter your age, it’s time to get serious about taking fun breaks.
I’ve discovered that the key to feeling satisfied and content is to feel calm and grounded. But you can’t feel calm and grounded if you constantly push yourself to do more and more.
To keep your body and mind in balance, you need to insert fun breaks into your day. These fun breaks are not a waste of time. They are essential for feeling good, fully alive, and doing your best work.
So, in the spirit of fun, what will you do to give yourself a fun break? Follow the rules of fun and experiment with different activities. Be playful!
Finally, do you know what happened to Carlos? He’s gone on to become a respected Senior Lecturer at a top university in Australia . . . and he still enjoys going rock climbing.
Research shows active recall (aka retrieval practice) is a highly effective strategy for remembering information. This strategy will take your studies and your grades to the next level.
Active recall involves bringing information to mind without looking at your books and notes.
I have spent the last 30 days experimenting with this excellent learning strategy. In this blog, I’ll share what I did and how I kept the process interesting for my brain.
I no longer need to study for tests and exams.
So, why did I spend 30 days using active recall strategies?
In my line of work, I need to constantly come up with new and original content to present to students. I also need to memorise this content. Why?
Because if I was to read from a sheet of notes or text heavy slides that would be really boring for students. I want to connect with students and to do this, I have to be able to deliver the content off the top of my head with speed and ease.
This is where active recall enters the picture.
Active recall helps to speed up the learning process. It allows you to learn more in less time.
Below I share some of the ways I use active recall to learn new presentation content. Keep in mind, you can use all of these strategies to prepare for an upcoming test or exam.
Whiteboards are wonderful learning tools. Here’s how I use a whiteboard to do active recall . . .
I push my speech notes to the side, so I can’t look at them. Then I grab a marker and say to myself, “What can you remember? Go!”.
I write out everything I can remember on the whiteboard. Once I’ve exhausted my memory, I pick up my notes and check to see how I went (using a red marker to make corrections).
No whiteboard? No problem!
I pick up a pen and sheet of paper and start scribbling out whatever I can remember on the topic. When I get stuck, I pause and take a few deep breaths as I try to scan my brain for the information.
I regularly remind myself that it is okay to not remember the content. “This is how the process goes!”, I say to myself. There is no point beating myself up. That only leads to feelings of misery and not wanting to do active recall practice.
After having a shot at it, I take out my notes, pick up a red pen, and begin the process of checking to see how I went.
Sick of writing? I get it.
Try drawing out the information instead. Alternatively, you can use a combination of words and pictures, which is what I often do.
Grab a blank piece of paper (A3 size is best) and create a mind map of everything you can remember on a topic (no peeking at your notes). Then check your notes or the original mind map to see what you remembered correctly and incorrectly.
Writing and drawing out information can take time. If you want to speed up the process, you can talk to yourself.
But don’t do this in your head. It’s too easy to just say “Yeah, yeah, I know this stuff!”. You need to speak it out loud as this forces you to have a complete thought. Then, check your notes to see how you went.
The only downside with this approach is you don’t have a tangible record of what you recalled, which brings me to the next strategy . . .
I make videos of myself presenting the content (without referring to my notes). Although I use special software and tools to make my videos, you don’t need any fancy equipment. Your phone will do the job. Here’s what you can do . . .
Set your phone up so the camera is facing you. Now hit the record button and tell the camera what you’re going to do active recall on. Have a shot at explaining the idea. Then stop recording and hit the play button.
Watching yourself struggle to remember information is often hard viewing. But this is where it’s super important to double down on telling yourself kind thoughts (e.g., “I’m still learning this content. It’s going to be rusty and feel clunky – that’s okay!”).
You need to take a deep breath and keep watching because the video will give you valuable feedback.
For example, if you stop midsentence and you don’t know how to proceed, that tells you something: you don’t know this stuff so well! Make a note. This part of the content needs your attention.
Hand your notes over to a friend, parent, or sibling. Now get them to ask you questions on the content.
I sat with my mum and showed her a print out of my slides for a new presentation. The slides were just pictures (no text).
As I went through the slides, I explained the ideas to mum. I made notes of any sections I was rusty on. Mum also asked lots of questions, which allowed me to think more deeply about the content.
When it came crunch time (a few days before the final presentation), I printed out my presentation slides (16 per page) and used each slide as a prompt. I’d look at the slide and say, “What do I need to say here?”.
Sometimes I wrote out what I’d be saying in relation to each slide (without looking at my notes). Then I checked my original notes to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.
It’s really important that you don’t skip the stage of checking to see how you went, especially as you become more confident with the content.
At times, I found myself thinking “I know this stuff! I don’t need to check my notes” but then another part would say, “You better just check . . . just to be on the safe side”.
I’m glad I forced myself to check because more often than not I would discover that I had missed a crucial point.
Zines are cute little booklets you can create on any topic you like. They are fun to make, so I thought I’d try making a mini zine on the main points of some new content I had to learn.
I folded up an A4 page into a booklet and then I sketched out the main points on each panel.
I create a deck of flashcards on some key ideas (question on one side and the answer on the back) and then I test myself with them.
I read the question and before flipping the card, I write out the answer on a sheet of paper or say it out loud. Then I check to see how I went.
The beauty of flashcards is they are small and portable (they can easily fit in your pocket or bag). Whenever you have a spare minute or two, you can get a little active recall practice in.
It’s not enough to do active recall just once on the content you need to learn. For best results, you want to practice recalling the information several times over a period of time.
I didn’t follow a strict schedule for the 30 days. I had my notes for each important chunk of information I had to learn pinned to eight different clipboards.
Every morning, I’d pick up a different clipboard and I’d practice that specific content. I knew as long as I’d had a good night’s sleep in between practice sessions that the information was being strengthened in my brain.
Doing active recall is a bit like doing a high intensity workout: it can be exhausting. But you must remember, just like a high intensity exercise session is an effective way to train and get fit, active recall is an effective way to learn. Unlike less effective strategies (e.g., rereading and highlighting), you can learn a lot in a short space of time with active recall.
The key is to expect the process to be a little uncomfortable. Don’t fight the discomfort. If you trust the process and persevere, it won’t be long before you begin to see amazing results.
Just because active recall is challenging to do that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it.
Using a combination of different active recall strategies is one way to keep things fresh and interesting for your brain. But you may wish to try the following things to add a little boost of fun to your active recall sessions:
• Use a different type of pen
• Use a different coloured pen
• Change the type of paper or notebook you use (e.g., instead of using lined paper, use blank A3 paper)
• Incorporate movement into your active recall sessions (e.g., walk and test yourself with some flashcards)
• Change your study environment (e.g., go to the library or study outside)
Like I said, active recall is challenging to do, especially when you first start learning new content. You can feel awkward and clumsy. For this reason, it’s easy to make excuses to get out of doing it (e.g., “I’m too tired”, “I’m not ready to do it”, and “It’s not the right time”).
This is where you need to harness the power of habits.
Find a set time in your day to do a little active recall practice. For instance, during my 30 days of active recall, I scheduled my practice sessions for first thing in the morning. I knew after I washed my face, I would sit down to practice.
Incorporating active recall into my morning routine worked really well for me. I was getting the hardest thing done first thing in the day. And once it was done, I could relax. It was done and dusted!
At a certain point, I became more confident with the content and I found I was on a roll. I felt motivated to do active recall.
This is when I started to look for spare moments in the day to squeeze in a few extra mini practice sessions.
For example, one day I found myself waiting in a car. I grabbed a paper shopping bag and started scribbling out the content onto the bag. As soon as I got home, I checked the shopping bag against my notes.
I hope you can see that there’s no one set way to do active recall. This is a highly effective strategy you can be creative with. As long as you’re testing yourself and checking to see how you went, you can’t go wrong.
And if you do make a mistake? It’s no big deal. If you check to see how you went, you won’t embed the error in your long-term memory.
