Overview
Make it stick is really a two sided book. Pulling apart the conventional wisdom of how to learn effectively on the one hand, and on the other providing techniques backed by cognitive science for becoming a more productive learner.
I found this book personally useful as a new university student because like most students I fell straight into the go-to study habits of highlighting, rereading, cramming and so on. Basically the same techniques most students use, but are frankly very low efficacy activities.
If you’re studying anything or plan to study anything – at school, university or for professional purposes this book is a handy guide to forming a strategy for doing it effectively.
Read More on Amazon: Make It Stick
Summary Notes
Popular Notions About Learning
Rereading
Rereading of textbooks and notes is largely a waste of time. The majority of collage and university students use this as a primary revision method, but it really doesn’t add much unless a significant amount of time has elapsed since the previous reading. The author cites three key weaknesses of rereading:
“It is time consuming. It doesn’t result in durable memory. And it often involves a kind of unwitting self-deception, as growing familiarity with the text comes to feel like mastery of the content.”
Brown, Peter C.. Make It Stick (p. 10). Harvard University Press.
The reason why rereading isn’t very effective is that simply being familiar with the text or memorising lecture notes is not the same as understanding. Understanding a topic requires abstracting the key ideas and linking them to existing knowledge. This is part of the value of essays for example, because it forces us to get to grips with a topic in our own words and thoughts.
Familiarity breeds the illusion of knowledge:
“Fluency illusions result from our tendency to mistake fluency with a text for mastery of its content.”
Brown, Peter C.. Make It Stick (p. 116). Harvard University Press
Rote Memorisation
Memorising facts without understanding might work in the short term, but it’s a recipe for failure in the long term, as the difficulty of a subject progresses and familiarity with the facts is no longer enough to get by.
“Memorizing facts is like stocking a construction site with the supplies to put up a house. Building the house requires not only knowledge of countless different fittings and materials but conceptual understanding, Mastery requires both the possession of ready knowledge and the conceptual understanding of how to use it.”
Brown, Peter C.. Make It Stick (pp. 18-19). Harvard University Press.
From personal experience and observation of peers – making do with memorisation early on stores up problems for the future, because the conceptual level understanding required for more advanced study is missing.
In addition memory is subject to the forgetting curve which I briefly covered in my post on learning more effectively.
Cramming
Cramming! We’ve all been there, but much like rote memorisation it is a short term strategy that leads to long term issues.
“In 1978, researchers found that massed studying (cramming) leads to higher scores on an immediate test but results in faster forgetting compared to practicing retrieval. In a second test two days after an initial test, the crammers had forgotten 50 percent of what they had been able to recall on the initial test, while those who had spent the same period practicing retrieval instead of studying had forgotten only 13 percent of the information recalled initially.”
Brown, Peter C.. Make It Stick (p. 31). Harvard University Press.
The Testing Effect
Testing is often thought of as just a practice we all go through to measure learning at school or university or in a professional development capacity, but self-testing and repeated active recall of information is key to interrupting the forgetting curve.
“To be most effective, retrieval must be repeated again and again, in spaced out sessions so that the recall, rather than becoming a mindless recitation, requires some cognitive effort. Repeated recall appears to help memory consolidate into a cohesive representation in the brain and to strengthen and multiply the neural routes by which the knowledge can later be retrieved.”
Brown, Peter C.. Make It Stick (pp. 28-29). Harvard University Press.
The idea behind testing is that learning a topic well requires that material is consolidated from short term memory into long term memory, and associated with existing knowledge to anchor it in place. The more pathways to recalling the new knowledge, the more robust the learning effect.
Spacing
Self-testing is effective, but this effectiveness appears to be enhanced further by spacing recall and repeatedly interrupting the forgetting curve.
“When retrieval practice is spaced, allowing some forgetting to occur between tests, it leads to stronger long-term retention than when it is massed.”
Brown, Peter C.. Make It Stick (p. 32). Harvard University Press.
It’s important to note that the spacing and self-testing feels inefficient and frustrating in the short term, but the greater cognitive effort pays off in the long-term.
A significant part of making this work in my experience is being organised and getting started long before deadlines or exams. The primary reason is that when deadlines are looming we tend to default to short-term behaviour and immediate wins.
Feedback
One of the strengths of testing is that it provides a feedback loop which quickly hones in on areas of weakness making study more efficient. Rereading notes or a text we’re already familiar with can begin to feel like the illusion of mastery of the subject. Testing provides the corrective feedback to calibrate our true level of mastery and focus efforts where they’re needed most.
“Students whose study strategies emphasize rereading but not self-testing show overconfidence in their mastery. Students who have been quizzed have a double advantage over those who have not: a more accurate sense of what they know and don’t know, and the strengthening of learning that accrues from retrieval practice.”
Brown, Peter C.. Make It Stick (p. 42). Harvard University Press.
Th author suggests that feedback itself strengthens retention, and particularly if it is delayed rather than immediate.
Feedback is also good for one other very good reason: Dunning Krugar effect: people over estimate their abilities. This boils down to a miscalibration between the perception and reality of competence in a particular area. Feedback, including negative feedback about mistakes is essential for accurate calibration. Which in turn is essential for doing well and correctly attributing the cause of failure to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
Interleaving
Massed practice or ‘cramming’ gives an immediate payoff. It is no surprise most students use this method before exams. (I am guilty of this myself) What is overlooked is that the forgetting part of the process is also massed in a sense. Rapid gains without maintenance leads to rapid losses.
“Why is spaced practice more effective than massed practice? It appears that embedding new learning in long-term memory requires a process of consolidation, in which memory traces (the brain’s representations of the new learning) are strengthened, given meaning, and connected to prior knowledge”
Brown, Peter C.. Make It Stick (p. 49). Harvard University Press.
The essence of interleaving is spacing practice in the form of self-testing and active recall and interleaving it with other topics or types of problems. Th author cites an example of practicing the same kind of math problem in class 20 times and then moving on to the next subject and repeating the process.
The problem is the knowledge is unlikely to be consolidated with just one practice session. Additionally, exams are usually not split up into neat sections. Instead, many problems are interleaved, or individual problems may have multiple elements of different topics covered during semester. In the real world problems are rarely neatly categorised. We’ve all had that experience of opening an exam paper and seeing a question that doesn’t neatly resemble the types of discrete problems we studied. This sense of blind panic (I know you’ve felt it) is in part the result of not having made conceptual connections between the things we’ve been studying.
The key is variation in practice.
The Leitner Box
The Leitner box is a systemic way of incorporating active recall and spacing in a way that dynamically reinforces areas of weakness over time.
“Think of it as a series of four file-card boxes. In the first are the study materials that must be practiced frequently because you often make mistakes in them. In the second box are the cards you’re pretty good at, and that box gets practiced less often than the first, perhaps by a half. The cards in the third box are practiced less often than those in the second, and so on. If you miss a question or make mistakes you move it up a box so you will practice it more often. The underlying idea is simply that the better your mastery, the less frequent the practice, but it will never disappear completely from your set of practice boxes.”
Brown, Peter C.. Make It Stick (p. 64). Harvard University Press.
Dynamic Testing
The only way to improve is to know where we are going wrong. Self-testing helps uncover weaknesses, and a process of dynamically finding weaknesses, focusing in on learning those areas, and then testing again improves performance where it matters most.
Steps of dynamic testing:
“Step 1: a test of some kind—perhaps an experience or a paper exam—shows me where I come up short in knowledge or a skill.
Step 2: I dedicate myself to becoming more competent, using reflection, practice, spacing, and the other techniques of effective learning.
Step 3: I test myself again, paying attention to what works better now but also, and especially, to where I still need more work.”
Brown, Peter C.. Make It Stick (p. 152). Harvard University Press
With this method of testing nothing is wasted on practicing those things which we’re already good at doing. This is very efficient way to go about learning. At least compared to rereading and testing indiscriminately.
Structure Building
Learning any new topic requires a certain degree of structure on which to ‘hang’ new information. This is more about what goes where and helps clarify a subject and the interconnections between different blocks of Knowledge.
“High structure-builders develop the skill to identify foundational concepts and their key building blocks and to sort new information based on whether it adds to the larger structure and one’s knowledge or is extraneous and can be put aside.”
Brown, Peter C.. Make It Stick (p. 154). Harvard University Press.
Another way to think about this is the idea of ‘scoping’ a subject. This is something I tend to do before starting a new topic or academic module. Create a hierarchical structure in a note taking app or personal workspace such as Notion. The few hours spent on this activity are more than worth it, creating a bare bones structure on which to start ‘hanging’ new knowledge.
Growth Mindset
The idea of ‘growth mindset’ originated with psychologist Carol Dweck. The idea is that for a long time many people had the idea of intelligence as being a fixed quantity that cannot be changed. You’re simply born with whatever endowment you have and that is that. Newer findings in the cognitive sciences challenge that idea. Neuroplasticity, the ability of the brains neural networks to grow and change over time was once thought to manifest only during childhood, but more recent research has demonstrated this is also true to an extent throughout adulthood.
Carol Dweck defined what we call a growth mindset, which is really a set of beliefs that it is possible to get better or smarter through effort, and learning from failure.
“In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck
Why is this important?
Dweck argues that a fixed mindset leads to behaviours of trying hard to look smart and avoid failures which leads students away from challenges (where failure is possible or even likely), and towards just doing what we’re already good at. The fixed mindset imposes limiting beliefs. The growth mindset on the other hand embraces failure as part of the learning process, and this leads to taking on more challenges and developing further as a result.
Beliefs effect goals and motivations:
“Dweck came to see that some students aim at performance goals, while others strive toward learning goals. In the first case, you’re working to validate your ability. In the second, you’re working to acquire new knowledge or skills. People with performance goals unconsciously limit their potential.
You want to look smart, so you do the same stunt over and over again. But if your goal is to increase your ability, you pick ever-increasing challenges”
Brown, Peter C.. Make It Stick (p. 180). Harvard University Press
Key Takeaways
- Scope out the structure of subjects before digging In.
- Practice retrieving new learning thorough self testing and quizzing.
- Use self-testing to identify areas of weakness and dynamically work on practicing and testing those areas of weakness.
- Space out retrieval practice. Revisit the same material repeatedly to interrupt the forgetting curve and consolidate new knowledge into long-term memory. The first time might be 24 hours later, then a week, then a month and so on.
- Interleave study with different types of problems and mix up quizzes to simulate real test condition and real world problems.
- Reflect and elaborate to provide more pathways for recalling the new knowledge later.
- Get feedback through self testing and the support of others to calibrate level of mastery.
- Accept failure as the prerequisite for growth.
Conclusion
Overall I would rate this book 10/10. The amount packed into this modest sized book is enormous and it has much more to offer than what is covered here. If you’re a studying anything and want to improve the way you learn, the evidence based recommendations are sure to be helpful. If these snippets sounded interesting do go check it out on Amazon: Make it Stick.
If you’ve already read it please let me know your thoughts in the comments.
