PNTV: Make It Stick by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger & Mark McDaniel (#280)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, Make It Stick. Make It Stick by Robert Brown, Henry Rodechir and Mark McDaniels. Subtitle The Science of Successful Learning. It's written by one novelist, storyteller and two leading cognitive scientists who have spent their careers studying memory and learning. They tell us that a lot of the things we think work in terms of learning do not. Conventional wisdom is often wrong. And they walk us through the evidence based, research based wisdom on how to learn more effectively. The Science of Successful Learning. We've got a bunch of big ideas in that Philosopher's Note. Five of my favorites here. First, let's talk about fluency versus mastery. One of the problems that we have with our traditional ways of approaching learning is that we're thinking more about fluency, being familiar with content, than with mastery, truly understanding it. So what most people do when they study is they read, which is a good thing. Everyone needs to read. But then they reread, they look at their highlights and they're just constantly kind of rereading and gaining a level of fluency. They're familiar with the text. It feels good. Oh yeah, I know that. But it isn't actually in a state of mastery. They haven't actually learned it, they've just gotten fluent in it. So we need to be aware of when we think we have a level of mastery, when what we really have is fluency. So rereading and highlighting and cramming and massed practice, where you spend a ton of time on something in one block are some of the ways that we fail to learn. We think we're learning because we see gains. You cram for a test, you may know it, but the next day or two later it's gone. Whereas if you employ some of their other strategies, you can adopt mastery. Let's look at some of those other things that work, that we know scientifically work. The first chapter in which they talk about these big ideas that work, they focus on this one, Active retrieval, AKA the testing effect. Merely testing yourself on something is one of the best ways to actually drill the wisdom deeper into your mind. They call it active retrieval. So for example, we could press pause right now and I can say, hey, what have you learned so far? Literally press pause right now. Think about it. Retrieve, actively retrieve the memory that you're forming right now and articulate. And we'll talk about some of the other ways you can do this. But test yourself on what you've learned so far. Quiz yourself. It's a really, really productive way to move from fluency to mastery. You could rewind it and listen to it again, but you'd be much better off testing yourself, actively retrieving. Then it hurts a little bit, because if you actually did it, you would say to yourself, let me think about that. And it would be much harder than just rereading text. It's a lot easier to reread something than it is to close your book and challenge yourself to remember what it is you supposedly just learned. And this is one of the big.

Themes in the book.

Just because something's easy doesn't mean it's effective. In fact, you need to actually work out your neurons if you want to have deep lasting memory trace and deep true learning and mastery. So testing active retrieval is a really, really cool idea. When you read a book or you watch one of these, or you read a philosopher's note or watch a TED Talk or whatever, at the end of it, practice testing yourself active retrieval. It's one of the reasons why I ask. I didn't know this from the research side of things, but I'm going to ask even more. What's your favorite big idea? Write it down, remember it, retrieve it, and then, most importantly, embody it. Put it into practice. Here are some other ways to attain mastery. They talk about a fun study where Cal Poly baseball players were basically studied and split into two different groups to study different types of practicing, right? To see if they could learn, in this case, how to hit a curveball. So they had this exercise where they had one group who would get curveball after curveball after curveball, right? Then they'd get fastballs, then you'd get changeups. Say they practiced for 45 pitches, 15 curveballs, 15 fastballs, 15 chain jumps, right? That's how almost everyone practices. Hey, practice the curveball, curveball, curveball, curveball, right? They said, we don't think that's going to be as effective as interleaved practice. Fancy word interleaved, which basically means rather than going curveball, curveball, curveball, curveball, curveball, they interleaved a curveball with a fastball with a changeup, but in a random order. So the hitter, when he's waiting for the curveball, he actually gets really good because he knows a curveball is coming. And he can get a little bit better with each swing because he knows it's coming. He builds fluency, but it's really just performance based on short term memory. Seeing how the ball is spinning and timing it, et cetera. It's A lot harder to do it when you don't know whether the next pitch is going to be a curveball. So the person who's doing that training interleaved doesn't look anywhere near as good as. As the guy who's doing the curveball after curveball after curveball, right? It's a lot harder, but as they say throughout the book, it's a lot more effective. The guys who interleave their curveballs, and they have to always be on the ready and figure out how they're going to respond, perform at a way higher level than those who have the fluency of hitting curveball after curveball. Massed practice, where it's all in one chunk and then another chunk and then another chunk, is not as effective as interleaved. They talk about how this applies not just to curve balls, but to math problems and anything else you're learning. It's paradoxical, but when you take a little bit of time away from a subject, right? Or you have it mixed up, it forces you to work harder, which forces you to get the wisdom in deeper. So remember the curve balls. Another subject in that. Another topic in that chapter they talk about is desirable difficulties, which we talked about with Malcolm Gladwell, right? Desirable difficulties. Sometimes having challenges are actually good for you. This is one of those situations where it's easier to do it in mass, but it's more effective to make it a little bit more challenging. Fourth Big Idea is one of my favorites, Elaboration. This is a really effective way to deepen your learning. So again, rather than reread something or look at your highlights or mass practice and cram, etc. And study like that, see if you can describe an idea in your own words, write it down in your own words. And again, they talk about all the research on this. That's super cool. Where at the end of a lecture or a lesson, can you write down what you just learned in your own words? That is unbelievably more impactful than simply reviewing it on a high cursory level. And then an idea I connect this to in the note is Barbara Oakley, who taught the class Learning how to Learn and wrote the book A Mind for Numbers. She talks about the same research and says we need to tap into Reddit.com's explain like I'm five. You can explain, elaborate something to someone else in simple terms such that they understand it. That's a pretty good sign that you have mastery. If you can't do that, then you may be sitting in fluency level, right and so work on using your own words to explain an idea and connect it to other wisdom you have. This is an important point they make that you can learn basically any anything. If you connect it to something you already know, then you have this infinite ability to expand your knowledge as you connect it and explain it in your own words. Elaboration. This is a huge practice. Obviously this is what I do to drill the wisdom down right? I use different mediums and space it out and all this stuff. But this is really the concrete style. Can I explain it in a meaningful way that helps me gain a deeper level of mastery? Explain it like I'm five and elaborate. The fifth big idea. It's all about mindsets. They talk about different particular techniques you can use, from active retrieval to interleaving to elaborating a bunch of other ones. Then there's the mindset of Carol Dweck's growth mindset versus fixed mindset. It's impossible to read one of these books and and not rub up against Carol Dweck's research in one way or another. So if you don't think that you can master a given topic right, then you're not going to put in the effort and you're not going to succeed in learning it. So whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. And they say there's as much wisdom as wit in that line. Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So the question for you is, what do you want to master in your life? Is it a particular subject? If you're a student, is it your business learning what you need to learn in order to master your business or your new coaching practice or relationship challenge or whatever? You need to start with the mindset where you know you can gain more competency as you put in more effort. That's the growth mindset vis a vis the fixed mindset, which is, no, I either have it or I don't. I'm just going to give up. When that mindset encounters challenges and failures, they give up. When the growth mindset encounters inevitable challenges, they work harder, they try new strategies, they persist. It's extraordinarily important. If we want to make it stick, we want to learn anything in our lives, we have to have the mindset where we believe we can do it. So remember that if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. That has as much wisdom as wit to it, according to these cognitive scientists. So get your Mind, right? Elaborate. Use your own words, connect it to stuff you already know and explain it to people like they're five. It's a great way to mastery interleave. Mix up the things that you're studying. Paradoxically, when you create some spaced repetitions, if you just have rep, rep, rep, rep, that's less effective than spaced repetitions. You do it, you give it a little bit of time, whether that's hours or days or whatever, then you come back to it. That forces you to remember what you were thinking about, which drills the wisdom in deeper, which you don't get if.

You go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Curve ball, curveball, curve ball is not as effective as interleaving it and then spacing it. Active retrieval. Can you quiz yourself on what you've learned? Whenever you're studying anything, do that and gain mastery.

Avoid fluency.

That's a quick look at making it stick. I will challenge you now to open up a journal or a piece of paper and in your own words, retrieve and elaborate on what you most enjoyed. So what was the big idea that jumped out at you? How are you going to apply it to your life? And if you're feeling it, capture it, write it down and explain it to someone like their five. Alright, let's make it stick. Have another awesome day. See you.

Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that PNTV episode.

A lot of people don't know all.

The stuff I do beyond these free videos I share on YouTube. So I thought I'd do a quick video to give you an overview of our membership program that you can get access to and get a ton of other stuff. So here's a quick look. Ten bucks a month. Join the Optimal Living Membership program. You get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes on some of the best optimal living books out there. Old school classics, positive psychology, modern stuff, mindfulness, peak performance, purpose, neuroscience, wealth, etc.

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That in addition to the PNTV episodes, I create PDFs on all these great books. So six page PDFs. Let's take a look at one of them. Joseph Campbell. You want to figure out how to live your hero's journey? Well, this is a great place to start.

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Ideas, riff on them, connect them to other books and other ideas, and help you apply this wisdom to your life today. That's what the PDF looks like again. We have 250 of these on all these different great books and then I record those PDFs as an MP3 so you can listen to that MP3 while you're on a walk or working out or doing some errands or whatever that is. Philosopher's Notes. A lot going on there. And then in addition to Philosopher's Notes, you get access to optimal living classes. Optimal Living 101 idea here is that.

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