Do you tend to order the same dish every time you go there?
I have a tendency to do this.
It’s safe. It’s easy. It’s consistently good.
We can also be like this with the way we study. For instance, I used to be mind map obsessed. It was mind maps for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Mind mapping worked a treat. It helped me go from getting just 5% on my first test at law school to blitzing my exams.
But 10 years ago, thanks to a conversation with a student, I starting testing out new and different ways to study.
This student mentioned she had created some mind maps. And yes, they had helped her a lot. But she had discovered an even better strategy.
“What on earth could be better than mind mapping?” I thought.
Her strategy was so bizarre and left field, I never forgot it. Here’s what she said:
“Every day when I come home from school, I talk to my bedroom wall. I teach my bedroom wall everything I’ve learnt at school that day.”
At the time, it sounded crazy. But this young woman was onto something. In fact, she was using one the most powerful learning strategies – active recall.
Active recall (also referred to as retrieval practice) is where you force yourself to bring information to mind without looking at your books and notes.
In How to use retrieval practice to improve learning Cognitive Scientist Dr Pooja Agarwal says:
“Often, we think we’ve learned some piece of information, but we come to realize we struggle when we try to recall the answer. It’s precisely this “struggle” or challenge that improves our memory and learning – by trying to recall information, we exercise or strengthen our memory, and we can also identify gaps in our learning.”
Doing active recall is like lifting heavy weights.
Every time I do bicep curls with 10kg dumbbells, it feels uncomfortable. But I’m okay with this because I know I’m strengthening my muscles and ultimately, improving my health.
Similarly, when you do active recall, it strains your brain. But every time you do it, you’re strengthening the information in your brain. You’re growing a stronger, smarter brain.
This is how I learn all my talks so I can present freely without notes and/or palm cards. I still mind map out my talks but I also use active recall to help encode the information into my long-term memory.
When I first started using active recall, I found it really challenging. Often, nothing would come to mind. My mind would go blank (“How do I start this talk again? Umm . . . I have no idea”). But as Dr Megan Sumeracki and Dr Yana Weinstein says in Understanding how we learn:
“When you begin practicing retrieval [active recall], you probably will not be able to remember everything, and that’s okay. It does not mean that you aren’t learning anything from retrieval practice, or that retrieval practice is not “working for you”. Retrieval practice is difficult, and this difficulty is good. Keep at it, and you can work your way up to being able to recall more.”
Basically, the more you practice active recall, the better you’ll get at it!
Anything that involves retrieving information from your brain is active recall. There are so many different ways you can do this. Below I’ve listed a few of my favourite ways.
This technique is so simple yet so effective. You have a question on one side of the card and the answer on the back. Then you test yourself.
The beauty of flashcards is they are small and portable. This means you can take them with you wherever you go, even on a walk.
I like using palm cards that I can actually hold and shuffle but you could use apps like Quizlet or Anki. Do what works for you.
Get your hands on as many practice tests as you can (ask your teacher and/or access study guides for these).
Treat each practice test as a proper test. Do your best to answer as many questions as you can. Then check to see how you went.
A lot of students make the mistake of checking the answers as soon as they come across a difficult question (and they don’t attempt the question). The key is to have a shot at the question before you look at the answer.
Don’t have access to practice tests/exams? No problem. Create your own by scribbling out some questions on a sheet of paper. It doesn’t have to be neat or pretty. It’s the process of bringing information to mind that matters most.
Don’t like sitting for long periods? Then try this highly original study method that was developed by three year 11 girls. Here’s what they do:
They start running around a big boardroom table. They yell out questions to one another (e.g. “What is confirmation bias?”) and the others yell out the answers. If someone says the wrong answer, the others correct them.
I love this strategy because it combines movement with active recall. Plus, you’re learning with your friends which makes studying more enjoyable.
Write out a number of different concepts you need to learn on scraps of paper. Throw those bits of paper into a hat or bowl. Pick a concept and then write/draw out as much as you can remember. You’ve only got 2 minutes – go!
When the timer goes off, check to see how you went. It’s okay to get the concept wrong, as long as you find out what the right answer is.
If you need to memorise parts of a system (e.g. skeletal system or cell structure), don’t just stare at the page and hope the terms will magically transfer into your brain.
Make a photocopy of the diagram you need to learn. Then on the photocopy, whiteout all the terms you need to memorise. Then make multiple copies of that test copy (at least three copies). Take a test copy and try to fill in as many terms as you can.
Finally, when your brain can’t do anymore, check to see how you went. What did you get right? What did you get wrong? Where are the gaps in your knowledge?
A year 11 student called Jack developed this method with the help of his swim coach. He does a lap of the pool and then his coach tests him with his flashcards. You can read more about Jack’s highly original study method here.
Richard Feynman was a famous physicist who hated rote memorisation. He believed the best way to learn something was to teach that thing to someone else. So go teach a friend, your pet or the wall.
Get your hands on a whiteboard and start writing and teaching out concepts. Talk out loud (hear yourself explaining the concepts). Don’t know how to explain a concept? That’s okay. Make a note (this is an area you’ll need to work on later).
Flip over your finished mind map (so you can’t see it) and grab a blank sheet of paper. Now try and recreate that mind map from memory. Once you’ve exhausted your memory, flip over the original mind map and check to see how you went.
Grab a sheet of paper and a pen. Now write and/or draw out as much as you can remember from yesterday’s class. When you’ve exhausted your memory, check your notes to see how you went.
There you have it – 11 simple ways to supercharge your study with active recall. For best results, I recommend using a combination of these strategies to learn content over a period of time.
Pick a strategy and commit to testing it out today. Chances are you’ll find active recall challenging. Active recall is simple but it’s not easy. The thing you need to remember is it’s highly effective.
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But if you keep making the same mistakes over and over, it can be demoralising.
In this article, I share 12 common mistakes students make when preparing for exams, and what you can do to avoid making them.
But let me be clear, this article isn’t just for students and it’s not just about exams. It’s for anyone who is up to stuff in life. It’s for anyone who wants to keep learning and growing.
My advice is don’t read this article all in one sitting. Treat it like a practice exam: print it out, put your phone away, and work through 1-3 points at a time. Then, get up and take a fun rest break!
Are you ready to dive in? Let’s go!
Without a doubt, this is where most students go wrong with tests and exams. They don’t give themselves enough time to learn the content properly.
They leave studying until the last minute and try to cram as much information as possible.
First, there are a few things you need to understand about how you learn:
Based on this, start preparing for exams before you feel ready, while you can still think clearly (i.e., you’re not panicking and freaking out).
Not all stress is bad. Stress can be a source of fuel and energy. It can help you focus your mind and swing into action.
But too much stress – the freaking out kind – can mess with your ability to focus and learn. If you’ve reached that point, where you feel like bursting into tears or curling up into the foetal position, you’re experiencing bad stress. You need to stop whatever you’re doing and calm your nervous system.
Start preparing early. The more prepared you are, the calmer you’ll feel and the better you’ll do.
Other strategies you can use to decrease bad stress:
“Be calm and know that you can do this.”
Many students spend all their time leading up to their exams creating beautiful sets of notes. By the time they finish their notes, they’ve run out of time to do practice exams.
Notes can be super handy, but it’s what you do with your notes that really matters. Are you testing yourself with them? Do you create flashcards from your notes and test yourself with those cards?
The best way to ace any exam is to practise pulling information out of your brain. You need to test yourself (i.e., use active recall strategies).
Take it from me, this won’t feel as nice or easy as simply taking notes leading up to an exam. But at least you’ll be grounded in the reality of what you know and what you don’t know.
When your only exam preparation strategy is note taking, you go into the exam with a false sense of confidence (experts call this an ‘Illusion of Competence’).
Sitting tests and exams is also a skill. Whether you do well or not isn’t so much a reflection of your intelligence. It’s more a reflection of your exam technique and how well you have prepared.
Practise in the medium you’re going to be assessed in: do lots of past exam papers (ideally under timed conditions using pen and paper).
Treat it like you’re training for a marathon. At first, you might just do a 30-minute ‘exam’ workout. As you build your strength and stamina, work your way up to 45 minutes, then an hour. Eventually, be brave and attempt the full 2-3 hours.
After wrestling with some exam questions, make sure you check to see how you went (what you got right and wrong). Take note of any gaps in your knowledge, and give that content a bit more time and focused attention.
Distraction is the enemy when it comes to learning. When your attention shifts rapidly from one task to another, you destroy your ability to memorise information.
Multitasking also slows you down (i.e., it take you longer to do your work), whilst speeding up your thinking. Fast and frenetic thinking is the opposite of what you need for deep learning. To deeply understand information, you need slow and deliberate thinking.
Before you sit down to study, deal with distractions from the outset. Put your phone away from your body, on silent in another room. Install an Internet blocker app, such as Cold Turkey or Freedom.
If you use social media, get someone to change the password on your social media accounts so you can’t access them during the exam period.
Do what you need to do to focus your mind for a short, intense burst of study (25-45 minutes).
“Put your phone and other distractions away while studying as this will benefit you in the future … however phones will destroy your future.”
The complex terms, jargon and the text-heavy nature of your syllabus can make it scary to look at. But don’t let those things put you off looking at this document.
Your syllabus is too important to ignore. Referring to this document will help focus your mind and save you hours of time.
Bypass all the jargon and head straight to the unit content section. This section tells you exactly what you’ll be assessed on.
Print this section out so you can easily refer to it without having to go on your computer (and potentially get derailed).
When you start a study session, choose a syllabus point and use an effective study strategy to make it stick (e.g., active recall).
You spent hours re-reading your books, highlighting chunks of information and re-writing your notes before the exam. You can’t understand why you didn’t do better?
I’ll tell you why: you weren’t using effective study strategies.
Swap ineffective ways of studying (e.g., re-reading and highlighting) with effective study strategies, such as active recall.
You can practise active recall in different ways, including testing yourself with a deck of flashcards, doing past exam papers, and teaching a concept to a friend.
You’ve also got dual coding (i.e., using words and pictures to help you learn). I’m a big fan of mind mapping. In fact, I mind mapped my way through my undergraduate degrees in Law and Psychology, and my PhD.
Dual coding is a great way to understand new ideas and how those ideas are connected. But to make those ideas stick, make no mistake: you’ll also need to do active recall practise.
To learn more about how I combine mind mapping and active recall, check out my short online course, Let’s Mind Map!
Entering the exam room (or any important situation) in a chronically sleep deprived state is a terrible idea. Expect to have trouble recalling information and focusing your mind.
Bottom line is: Sleep matters. It matters a lot.
This study found that students who participated in an ‘Eight Hour Sleep Challenge’ and prioritised getting 8 hours of sleep each night leading up to their final exams outperformed those who didn’t take the sleep challenge.
Make getting 8-10 hours of quality sleep a non-negotiable part of your study plan. Plug your phone into charge at least one hour before bed and don’t touch it until you get up the next day.
Remember, sleep is the ultimate performance enhancer. Everything you do, you’ll do better after a good night’s sleep.
“Sleep the night before. Don’t cram.”
By the time you get to your final exam, you’re feeling over it. You’ve lost all motivation to study. You don’t really care how you go. So, you do the bare minimum to prepare. You go in with a plan to … wing it. But winging it isn’t an effective strategy.
If you’re running low in motivation and energy, do little activities to re-energise and feel normal again.
One student shared this piece of great advice that made me laugh:
“Study early, study late, and somewhere in the middle treat yourself to an $11 Medium meatbox from Kebab Lads.”
Perhaps an $11 meat box isn’t the best way for you to restore your energy. But that’s beside the point. The point is you must do things to keep your spirits up during exams.
You’re asking ChatGPT to give you summaries of different topics and create practice exams for you, which you then do on your computer. Perhaps you steer clear of AI, but you type up your notes on your laptop.
The problem is if you’re working at a computer, you’re more likely to get distracted. As soon as it gets boring or difficult, you’ll find yourself running to the fun stuff (e.g., YouTube).
But there’s another big problem that often gets overlooked by schools that invest heavily in EdTech: the Screen Inferiority Effect. Reading on a screen and taking notes using a keyboard are not as effective when it comes to learning as using pen and paper.
As Dr Jared Cooney Horvath writes in his brilliant book The Digital Delusion:
“Learning doesn’t arise from the brain alone, it emerges from the rhythms, movements, and sensations of our entire physical selves.”
Invest in a printer and a big box of A4 paper. Print out your readings, past exam papers, the unit content section of the syllabus, any important emails, and your exam timetable.
By printing out these documents, you’ll shift from passively skimming to active reading. This will allow you to form a deeper understanding and stronger memories of the content.
Students who study in only one location (e.g., at a desk in their bedroom) sometimes struggle to recall information once they get into the exam.
Why would this be?
It’s because information is context-dependent. That means when we study in the same place, our memories become tethered to that environment.
Mix up where you study. You don’t need to abandon your desk, but don’t make it the only place you study.
Do some flashcard practice at the kitchen table, a past exam paper in the library, and explain a concept to a friend outside under a tree. You get bonus points if you can do a past exam paper in the actual exam venue!
When you practise in different settings, you train your brain to be able to recall information anywhere.
Stress is contagious. If you’re hanging around people who are freaking out about exams (saying things like, “I hardly studied! I’m going to fail!”), don’t be surprised if you start to freak out, too.
Before the exam, keep away from people or anything else (e.g., caffeine, too much sugar, and social media) that triggers anxiety in you. It helps to feel calm, steady, and grounded as you walk into the exam room.
After the exam, don’t waste time ruminating about it with your friends. This is a total waste of your time and energy. You can’t change what just happened. What’s done is done!
Instead, shift your focus to what you can control (e.g., taking a fun rest break and preparing for the next exam).
“Get in, do it, and get out!”
I once met a law student who didn’t read the exam question properly. She was visibly distressed as she told me she missed reading the part that said you had to write only two of six essays.
What did she do?
She wrote six essays in three hours.
This may sound extreme, but mistakes like these are all too common.
Read the question carefully. Take your time. It will be time well spent.
As you read the question, look for clue words such as explain, discuss, and compare. These words have different meanings. They determine the approach you need to take to answering the question. Some students find it can help to rewrite the question in a way that makes sense to them.
Not sure what the difference is between the words discuss and explain?
Use effective study strategies, such as dual coding and active recall, to understand and remember the meaning of each clue word.
No one expects you to be perfect at preparing for and sitting exams. Like any skill, this takes practise.
So, what areas could you strengthen? My advice is to focus on just one area.
If you need more sleep, then make getting to bed at a reasonable hour your top priority. If you want to start using more effective study strategies, spend 20 minutes creating a mind map or doing a past exam paper.
A few simple tweaks to your lifestyle and study habits can dramatically improve your ability to focus and learn, as well as how confident you feel walking into your exams.
This usually comes with shiny new pens, fresh notebooks and renewed hope and optimism. But I recently heard someone say:
“I can’t believe it’s already the end of January . . . so much has happened. I feel tired.”
Can you relate?
A lot has been happening in the world. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the news, let alone the tsunami of information we’re bombarded with online.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and tired (like many people are), let’s try to make life a little easier for ourselves. In this article, I share a strategy you can use to make difficult things feel easier to do. I also share how you can apply the strategy to studying challenging subjects.
I remember having a brief conversation with a year 11 student at the start of the pandemic. It went something like this . . .
Me: How are you feeling given the situation (i.e., COVID-19)?
Year 11 Student: Some of us are stressed but not because of COVID. It’s because of what our teachers have just said to us.
Me: What have your teachers been saying to you?
Year 11 Student: They keep saying this year is going to be really hard. The subjects are going to be much, much harder.
Driving home from the talk, I couldn’t stop thinking about what this student had said as well as the worried look in her eyes.
Here’s what happened . . .
I was booked to deliver a presentation to 150 year 10 students. My talk was scheduled for the last period of the school day.
In case you’re not aware, the last period of the school day is not an ideal time slot for a guest speaker. It’s usually a tough gig, as students are tired and they just want to go home.
When I arrived at the venue to set up my gear, I spotted two teachers. I approached them and introduced myself to them as the guest presenter. One of them said in an alarmed, panicky tone:
“Oh! You’re the guest speaker? I need to warn you that these students are a horrible group. They do not warm to guest speakers!”
She continued. . .
“Does your talk have a structure to it? Do you know what you’re talking about? These year 10s are a really hard group to work with!”
I felt my stress levels begin to rise, and by accident, I knocked my glass of water off the stage, and it broke. Glass shattered everywhere. Instead of helping me pick up the glass, the teacher said:
“Look! It’s a sign of things to come!”
At this point, the young IT guy arrived to help connect my laptop to the AV system. He overheard this teacher talking about what a bunch of ratbags these students were. His expression was a combination of shock and horror. He said to her:
“Why are you saying this to our guest presenter? I don’t think it’s helpful.”
The teacher reacted defensively. She blurted out, “She needs to know! It’s important we tell her!” and then she left in a hurry.
I took some deep breaths and continued setting up my stuff.
The students arrived.
I delivered the talk.
The talk went really well. Phew!
It turns out these students weren’t horrible at all. They were a normal group of students who happened to be a bit tired and over it (it didn’t help that it was a boiling hot day).
That day, I learnt an important lesson: Worrying about how difficult something might be doesn’t help. It just uses up your precious brainpower and energy, which you could have spent doing something else (i.e., something more productive).
Whenever I fixate on how hard something will be, I’m filled with fear. Imposter syndrome and self doubt kick in (“Will I be able to do this? What if I fail and it turns out to be a total flop?”). This usually leads to a bad case of avoidance and procrastination.
In the book Make It Stick, Peter Brown explains:
“A fear of failure can poison learning by creating aversions to the kinds of experimentation and risk taking that characterize striving, or by diminishing performance under pressure, as in a test setting.”
If you feel worried that you’re not going to be able to perform well in a subject, this is going to use up a big part of your working memory capacity. Instead of thinking about the content, you’ll be thinking, “Am I going to be able to do this? What if I can’t? Should I drop the subject?”.
In short, you’ll have dramatically less brainpower available for learning.
There’s a simple question I ask myself when something feels hard. And it’s this . . .
How can I make this behaviour easier to do?
Professor BJ Fogg calls this the Breakthrough Question. According to Fogg, there are three ways you can make any behaviour easier to do:
In his book Tiny Habits, Fogg explains:
“Regardless of what your aspiration is, increasing your skills, getting tools and resources, and making the behaviour tiny are what makes things easier to do. . .
Sometimes all you’ll need is the right tool to make a new habit easier to do, like using skinny floss [for flossing teeth], and other times all you have to do is scale the behaviour back to its tiniest version, such as flossing just one tooth. Think of making something easy to do as a pond with three different ways to enter the water. Whether you jump off the dock, wade in at the beach, or drop in from a rope swing, you’ll soon be swimming in the same water.”
In other words, you have options!
There are many things you can do to make studying those ‘hard’ subjects a little easier.
With that in mind, here is a short list of behaviours and ideas that will help you get a better handle on your challenging subjects:
If you can focus better, you can learn and retain more information. If you constantly check your phone, put it on silent and away from your body before you sit down to study. My phone lives in pocket number 1 of a vertical wall hangar in my dining room (well away from my workspace).
Study strategies such as active recall (e.g., flashcards) and dual coding (e.g., mind mapping) are more effective than rereading and highlighting your notes. Like any new skill, they take a little time to get used to, but they’ll save you a lot of time in the long run.
Some textbooks explain ideas better than others. The textbook on your school booklist is not the only one or necessarily the best one out there. You don’t need to feel wedded to it. Check out other study guides and resources.
A good night’s sleep allows you to focus better in class, retain more information and feel better. Make sleep your top priority. Here are some behaviours I engage in to get more and better sleep:
In the evening, I put my phone away in another room to charge (and I don’t touch it until the next day)
I don’t look at any screens at least one hour before bed
I go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time everyday
Create a system to organise your notes, past exam papers and handout sheets. Over time, you may need to tweak and refine your system, but that’s okay. I’ve been tweaking and refining my system for years.
For example, I used to store all my mind maps in an A3 flip file (in no particular order). But when things started to get out of control, I switched to cataloguing them alphabetically.
If you’re confused, don’t suffer in silence. Ask your teacher for help. That’s their job. If you feel shy asking a question in front of the class, approach your teacher after class.
Make life easier for your future self by jotting down key ideas in class. If something is confusing, make a note (you can focus on that in a study session at home). Your memory has limits, and if you don’t write it down, chances are you won’t be able to remember it.
If you feel overwhelmed by the idea of doing several hours of study each day, start with just five minutes. Five minutes of study is infinitely better than doing nothing!
Once you’ve developed the habit of sitting down and studying for 5 minutes, you can ramp it up. But start small.
When you manage to sit down and do a little study, congratulate yourself. Say to yourself, “Good job!” This positive reinforcement makes us feel good, which helps us establish a study habit.
When your teachers say, “This subject is going to be really hard”, I think they’re trying to communicate to you, “You need to sit down and study. You can no longer wing it.” They may be afraid that you’re not taking things seriously.
Instead of worrying, be in action. Pick up some flashcards and start testing yourself. Tidy your desk. File away your notes from today. You’ll feel better and do better if you focus on doing the things that make studying that subject a little bit easier.
You need to practice. And practice in a particular way.
If you’re preparing for a driving test, you can’t just study the Drive Safe Handbook (i.e., the theory and road rules).
You need to get behind the wheel of a car and drive.
Yes, it can feel uncomfortable and scary to begin with. But you’ll only improve your driving skills by pushing through the discomfort, placing your hands on the wheel and your foot on the accelerator.
If a person spent all their time only studying the road rules and never getting behind the wheel of a car, how would they go in the driving test?
It would be disastrous!
Yet, many students are approaching exams in a similar way.
These students are doing the equivalent of only studying the road rules handbook before the exam.
Here’s how they prepare for academic exams:
• By creating beautiful sets of notes
• By rereading their books and notes
• By highlighting their books and notes
• By rewriting their notes
• By summarising their notes
These are not effective ways to prepare for an exam.
Do these ways of revising feel nice and easy?
Yes. They certainly do.
But are they effective ways to remember information?
No.
Think about it like this . . .
What do you need to do in most academic tests and exams?
You have to read questions and pull the information out of your brain. Most of the time, you can’t look at your notes and books.
It’s just you and your brain.
You’re not being assessed on your ability to summarise information, your ability to reread your notes, or highlight information. So, why would you prepare for an exam in that way?
The best way to prepare for an exam is by practising remembering information. This is how you become masterful at answering questions with accuracy, speed, and confidence.
You don’t get that speed, confidence, and deep understanding by rereading your books and notes.
If you reread as an exam revision strategy, the only confidence you develop is fool’s confidence. You delude yourself into thinking you know it (“I’m ready!”). After reading your notes a few times, the ideas feel familiar to you (“I know this stuff”).
But trust me, you’ll struggle to retrieve the information in the exam.
Imagine yourself driving through red lights and failing to take the handbrake off before you leave the parking lot: that’s you . . . and it’s a fail.
I know this may sound harsh. But I’m speaking from personal experience.
In high school, it felt good to highlight my notes and reread them leading up to an exam. However, when it came crunch time, I was stressed out in the exam because I couldn’t retrieve the information. I felt embarrassed and confused by my results.
“But I studied so hard!” I’d cry. Why didn’t all those of hours of reading translate to better grades?
I wish someone had gently explained to me, “Yes, you did study hard. But you didn’t study effectively”.
Fast forward 20 years and I’ve learnt how to study smarter (not harder).
“The best way to prepare for any test or exam is to use a learning technique called active recall.
Active recall involves testing yourself.
You push your notes and books to the side and try to bring to mind as much as you can about a topic you’ve already covered in class. For example, you can use a piece of paper to write or draw out what you can remember on the topic. Once you’ve exhausted your memory, you check your books and notes to see how you went.
Yes, this is challenging. But it delivers results.”
I use this technique to learn content for all my school presentations.
When I speak to a group of students, parents, or teachers, it may look like I’m casually explaining strategies, but all my presentations are carefully planned and practised.
If I didn’t do this critical prep work, I would end up rambling.
This is why two weeks ago, I started doing active recall to learn a new presentation —or at least, I thought I was doing active recall.
I pulled out a copy of my presentation slides that had my notes scribbled all over them.
Within the first five minutes, I had to stop and be honest with myself: I wasn’t doing active recall. I was reading my notes.
Many of us can fall into the trap of rereading when doing active recall.
As the Learning Scientists state in their book Ace That Test:
“When you try to bring information to mind from memory, it often feels really difficult. It can be really tempting to quit or try to look up all of the information in your notes or your textbook, but slipping into re-reading your notes or textbook will reduce learning. Instead, it is better to try to bring as much information to mind from your memory as you can, and only after you have tried this should you look in your notes, textbook, or other course materials to see what you got right and what you forgot or need to work on more.”
Reading your notes/books over and over again feels nice and easy. It doesn’t require a lot of strain and mental effort.
In contrast, active recall can make us feel clumsy and awkward, especially in the early stages of learning something new.
So, I asked myself the question:
How can I stop myself from rereading when I do active recall?
I brainstormed ideas and devised a plan. Then, I broke down the process and practised running through it several times. To my delight, it worked!
Whether you’re trying to learn a new presentation or preparing for an academic test or exam, here is a process you can follow to avoid the trap of rereading.
Clear away your notes, books, and any other distractions. Let’s face it: if your notes and phone are in front of you, it’s like having a packet of crisps or a bowl of lollies within arms’ reach. It’s too tempting.
Your notes are important (you need them for step 4), but for now, take them and place them away from your body in another room.
Active recall requires 100% of your brainpower. If your attention shifts from your study to your phone, the effectiveness of your active recall sessions decreases. This is why I highly recommend you put your phone away from your body in another room before you sit down to do active recall.
Once you’ve cleared away distractions, take out your practice exam paper or list of questions (in my case, a printout of my presentation slides) and get a pen, a timer, and some sticky notes.
Your goal for the next 10 minutes is to recall as much as possible. Exhaust your memory.
I scribble all over my slides (yes, it’s a messy process). If I run out of space on the page, I grab a sticky note, write the additional information on it, and then stick it down on the relevant slide.
During these 10 minutes, expect to experience some discomfort. In fact, welcome and celebrate the discomfort!
The discomfort is a sign that you are on the right track and deep learning is happening.
Active recall can be mentally exhausting. After doing 10 minutes, reward yourself by taking a quick break. I usually get up and move my body. Sometimes, I make myself a warm drink or smoothie.
Before returning to your workstation, grab your notes or the answer sheet from the other room.
It’s not enough to pull the information out of your brain. You have to see how you did (what you got right and wrong and where the gaps in your knowledge are).
So, how did you go?
At this point, enter teacher mode. Pretend to be a teacher giving yourself feedback.
I pull out my red gel pen, fun stamp and sticker collection, and highlighters.
Now is when it’s okay to look at your books and notes. Pull them out and begin marking up what you got right, wrong and anything important you missed.
In my case, if any presentation content is a bit rusty, I’ll highlight that section. The highlighter signals to my brain that this section needs extra practice.
It’s important to celebrate any content you recall correctly. Give yourself a tick, a fun stamp or sticker or draw a smiley face to congratulate yourself.
This is a process. It usually takes a few practice sessions to successfully retrieve the correct information. Encouraging yourself makes the process fun and gives you a feeling of success (“I’m making progress!”).
Once you finish step 4, make a note for your future self: what question or section will you work on for your next active recall session?
This reduces decision fatigue. When you next sit down to study this subject, there’s no need to waste precious mental energy thinking, “What should I revise next?” Your brain knows exactly what it needs to do, and you can begin doing active recall straightaway.
After you’ve decided on your starting point, prepare your workstation for your next active recall session (e.g., put your notes out of sight).
These six steps work for me. But feel free to modify this process so it works for you. For example, it can help to do active recall with others (e.g., in a study group with friends testing each other). When everyone experiences the discomfort together, the process becomes less painful and more enjoyable.
Active recall works, but paradoxically, it feels like it’s not working. Often, when I do active recall nothing comes to mind. That’s normal! Don’t use this as an excuse to abandon this highly effective strategy and return to rereading, which is an ineffective strategy.
My advice is to trust the process. You need to persevere with this strategy for long enough to see with your own eyes that it works. Don’t expect instant results. This process takes time, but the results are well worth it.
