during my a levels in high school i always performed really well in exams
and then i went to university to study dentistry and it all went downhill
i went from getting over 90 in all my exams to just scraping a 50 pass it was only around
4th year when i read this book that i realized what the problem was stick around to find out
so what's up guys i'm Zoh, i'm a foundation dentist working here
in london and this is the second video of our three-part series on how to study smart
in the first video ali talked about why you should be revising in three hour blocks using deep work
check out that video if you haven't but in this video i'm going to cover the principles
laid out in the book make it stick which will explain how you can actually be making those
three hours of revision as effective as possible the three principles i'm going
to talk about are active recall spacing and interleaving and then i will show you how
you can easily implement these three principles into your revision with a free app called anki
so in a 2009 study that asked college students what kind of strategies do you use when you're
studying and the most common answer was rereading notes or textbooks and that's exactly what i was
doing at the beginning of university i would be reading my lecture handouts making notes and
repeatedly reading the notes before my exams and it wasn't working for me at all and it
really showed in my grades but how did i do so well before in high school and sixth form well
the answer is i was doing past exam papers that was my main type of revision which is a form of
active recall i didn't have any past exam papers at university and that's why i struggled so much
the authors in make it stick say that rereading is a learning illusion it's too easy the more you
repeat it in a single session the more familiar it becomes and in the moment the less you struggle to
remember it and you get this illusion of fluency they say learning that's easy like this is like
writing in sand here today gone tomorrow active recall or self-quizzing like doing past paper
exams or flashcards is hard but this effort you have to put in to answer these questions and
actively retrieve the knowledge strengthens its staying power the author says a child stringing
cranberries on a thread goes to hang them on a tree only to find they've slipped off the other
end without the knot there's no making a string without the knot there's no necklace there's no
beaded purse no magnificent tapestry retrieval ties the knot for a memory repeated retrieval
snugs it up and adds a loop to make it fast this concept has been shown in multiple studies a 2006
study found that students who read a passage of text and then took a test asking them to recall
what they had read obtained an astonishing 50 percent more of the information a week later
than students who had not been tested at all so repeatedly testing yourself helps your memories
consolidate into a cohesive representation in your brain and actually strengthens and multiplies the
neural roots through which you can use to retrieve the knowledge at a later date at the same time
it highlights what you know and don't know so you can target your revision to areas of weakness and
spend less time revising what you already know so what are the different ways of practicing
active recall well any method where you're testing yourself is active recall so it could be answering
past exam questions making paper flash cards or even group revision where you sit with your
friends pick a topic and take turns quizzing each other i did this loads with my friends at
university towards the end of our revision sessions when we were all getting tired out
the second principle is about spacing out the active recall
studies show that spaced repetition is more effective than mass repetition like cramming
the night before an exam and the reason might actually surprise you the reason you want to
space out the repetition is so that you actually forget forgetting something makes it harder to
retrieve since we last learnt it and if you remember from before the harder it is for us
to retrieve the knowledge the stronger its staying power in 1885 ebbinghaus used the forgetting curve
to show us how information is lost over time as we are always in a constant state of forgetting
what he also found was that information is easier to recall when you reinforce and review
the knowledge when you do this you reset the forgetting curve further strengthen the memory
allowing the rate at which you forget the information to decrease so if you want to apply
the principles of spacing to yourself quizzing you should leave enough space for you to forget
the knowledge just enough so it is difficult to recall and when you answer the question correctly
increase the gap in reviewing those questions from a few days to weeks and then to maps
the third principle tells us that instead of just revising one subject for a whole day or week we
must interleave and study two or more subjects in a day or study session the book describes a
2007 study where two groups of college students were taught how to find volumes of four obscure
geometric solids one group worked at a set of practice problems that were categorized
by problem type the other group worked the same practice problems but the order was randomized
or interleaved at the end of the practice the students who worked the problem in categories
averaged 89 correct compared to only 60 for those who worked the problems in a random order
but in the final test a week later the students who have practiced solving problems
categorized by type averaged only 20 correct while the students whose practice was
interleaved average 63 the mixing of problem types initially impeded their learning but
actually boosted their final test performance this type of learning is again more difficult as
you're doing it it feels slower you might find it confusing going from one topic to another
and just as you're about to get a handle on one topic you're forced to switch but the
research consistently shows this type of revision provides unmatched master and long-term retention
so what is the best way to revise using these three principles well the simple
answer is using some sort of quizzing system like flashcards the idea is that as you revise a topic
for the first time you should be making flashcards and testing yourself regularly
in a second i will go into detail on how you can do this using electronic flashcards in an
automated system but there is a way to use the principles with paper flashcards
it's called the lightness system you create a set of boxes which hold your flashcards
and each box represents a different time interval for example box 1 flash cards should be done every
day box 2 every other day box 3 once per week box 4 once every 2 weeks and box 5 once a month
all flash cards start in box 1 and when you start testing yourself and you get a card right the
card graduates to the next box but if you get the card wrong it will return back to box number one
no matter which box it was in previously this kind of system can be quite time consuming to
set up and difficult to maintain if you end up making lots of flashcards that's why i suggest
using an app called anki it's available for free on all devices except on iphones it oddly costs 25
but you can use anki on iphone by just using the web version on safari so anki is an app
which allows you to create custom flashcards with text images fill in the blanks and so
much more and the great thing about it is that it automatically uses a spaced repetition algorithm
to calculate the timing for you so when you answer a flashcard you can tell anki how difficult it was
for you and depending on the answer it will decide when you should be doing the flashcard next
it's a perfect solution for utilizing the three principles we talked about now for anki to work
you need to make flashcards as you revise and you need to make sure you do the flashcards that do
every single day if you stick to it it is insanely powerful and you will be amazed with how much you
can remember it's also important to mention that you need to try and make good flashcards
i'm going to put some links in the description or videos that explain this very well you might
also be thinking well there's no point in me doing this now because it's too late and i didn't start
making flashcards from the beginning of the year but it's actually not too late i started making
flashcards toward the end of fourth year of dental school just one month before my exams i would say
you should carry on revising as you were before but now as you revise by reading your notes or
lectures have your laptop or phone on the side and make flashcards once you've made flashcards
for a lecture you know you won't have to reread it because you will do the flashcards and that will
take care of the memorization for you as students we often feel overwhelmed and never know how much
revision is enough the beauty of anki is that once you trust it you get a massive relief at
the end of your revision day knowing that you've done all your flashcards for that day and that
there's nothing else left to do when i finished making my flashcards for one subject i rarely
ever had to do any revision other than just doing my anki flashcards sometimes my friends
and i would do group revision sessions together where we go through my anki flashcards together
i would read the question in my head answer it first i would click for the answer
and then i would ask the group this was useful for me as it gave me a chance to finish my do
flashcards for the day and i was able to make my flashcards better because sometimes my friends
would have better answers than me now anki isn't the only flashcard app that you can use there
are others like quizlet brainscape super memo and many more but as far as i know anki is the
only free one that integrates spaced repetition well i hope you guys will give anki a go stay
tuned for part 3 of the series where ali will talk about how to stay productive during deep
work revision blocks if you have the time i would highly suggest you read the bookmaker stick the
author goes into a lot more depth and this short video just really doesn't do the book justice
if you found this video useful i would really appreciate it if you liked and subscribe and make
sure to share it with your friends who might also be struggling with revision thank you for watching