Thinking books · Learning how to learn · Brown, Roediger & McDaniel, 2014

Make It Stick — the big ideas

What the research says actually produces durable learning, and why it feels worse than what does not.

Free — no account needed to read

The big ideas

Retrieval — getting information out of your head — builds memory far better than putting it in again by rereading. Rereading feels productive because it feels fluent, and fluency is not knowledge.

Spacing and mixing topics both make practice feel harder and results worse in the short term, while producing better retention later. The discomfort is the mechanism, not a side effect.

Difficulties that are desirable feel identical to difficulties that mean you are failing, which is why almost everyone abandons the effective methods.

Trying to answer before you have been taught improves how well the teaching lands, even when the attempt is wrong.

Practise it — no need to have read it

Take something you learned this week. Close everything and write what you remember from nothing. Then check, and mark specifically what you missed.

A hint: Do it again tomorrow before rereading anything. Notice how much less you had than it felt like.

Where it shows up in real life

• Any course you are taking
• Studying for an exam or certification
• Remembering what you read

Described in our own words with the source named — never quoted, and not a substitute for reading the book.