Jim Kwik explains why cramming fails: your brain remembers the start and end of study sessions but forgets the middle. Taking breaks every 30 to 45 minutes creates more beginnings and endings, so more information sticks.
Cramming doesn't work. There's a memory phenomenon called primacy and recency. Primacy is we tend to remember stuff in the beginning. Recency says you tend to remember stuff at the end. Let's say you're studying for 5 hours. Primacy says you remember stuff at the beginning, recency at the end, and then there's this like dive here and you lose all that information. So the reason why you take breaks every 30-45 minutes or every hour is because by doing that, you create more beginnings than ends, right? And so it allows you to pick up a whole chunk of information that we normally would lose.
The Library of Minds: Brain Coach: How to Stay Sharp When AI Does the Thinking | Jim Kwik
