The Most Powerful Way to Remember What You Study

Hey, what is going on, guys?

So I think we can all agree that studying takes

far, far too much time so what I wanna do in this

video is show you guys how you can remember more

of what you learn, even if you're spending fewer

actual hours studying, and the way to do that

is by spacing out that study time.

This is a technique called spaced repetition

and to do it you add progressively longer

and longer time intervals in between each

of your study sessions.

So in this video I wanna show you exactly how

you can do that, both with your paper flash cards

and with apps both for smartphones and computers.

But first I wanted to get into why this technique

is so powerful and also talk to you a little bit

about the history behind it and how it relates

to our memories in general.

Spaced repetition leverages a memory phenomenon

known as the spacing effect, which describes how

our brains make better connections and overall

remember things more effectively when we space

out our learning over time.

How's how Pierce J. Howard, the author of my

least favorite book to haul into coffee shops,

puts it: "Work involving higher mental functions,

"such as analysis and synthesis, needs to be

"spaced out in order to allow new neural

"connections to solidify.

"New learning drives out old learning when

"insufficient time intervenes."

And we've actually known about this effect

for quite a long time.

Back in the late-1800s a psychologist named

Hermann Ebbinghaus basically launched the field

of memory science itself by embarking upon

an intense study where he made himself memorize

long, long lists of nonsense syllables.

And through that research he eventually came

to develop what's called The Forgetting Curve,

which describes how memories decay over time.

But what he also learned was that by spacing out

his efforts to memorize these lists,

he could put in less actual study time to get

them memorized perfectly.

For example, for one list of 12 syllables he found

out it took him 68 repetitions on one day and then

seven repetitions the next day to memorize

it perfectly, but by spacing out his studying

over the course of three days he found he could

achieve his same level of perfection in only

38 repetitions.

Over the past 130 years since he published his

findings, lots of other studies have been able

to replicate this same positive results, which leads

us to the question, "Why does the spacing effect work?"

Well to put it in simple terms, it turns out that one

of the most important parts of learning process

is actually forgetting.

Now what forgetting truly is is a subject for another

video that I'll publish in the future, but the most

important thing to note here is that the more we've

forgotten something, that is the harder we have

to work to retrieve it since we last learned it

or studied it, the greater the increase

in learning will be.

To make this a bit more clear, here's how the author

Benedict Carey, who wrote the book "How We Learn,"

explains it: "Some amount of breakdown must occur

"for us to strengthen learning when we revisit

the material.

"Without a little forgetting, you get no benefit

"from further study.

"It is what allows learning to build,

"like an exercised muscle."

And that's the main reason why Carey calls

spaced repetition one of the most powerful methods

for remembering what you've learned in his book.

And I would add to that the fact that you can do

this with basically any other learning technique.

It's entirely complementary because it's all about

just modifying the time periods in which you study.

You can do anything within those time periods,

you're just using the time periods

as intelligently as possible.

With that being said, now I wanna get into how you

can put spaced repetition into action and implement

it into your own study systems.

And we're gonna talk about apps and computer programs

that you can use in a minute here but first I want

to talk about a system that you can use with your

paper flash cards, which is called the Leitner

System, and here's how it works.

The first step is to decide on the number

of boxes that you're gonna use to hold the cards

in your system.

Now I don't actually own little boxes so I've just

substituted rubber bands and sticky notes that say

"Box," but that actually works just as well

and actually makes the system more portable,

so that's pretty cool, and from there each

individual box is going to represent a different

study time interval.

So Box 1 might be studying every day, Box 2 might

be studied every other day, and so on.

And when you're studying the cards in the boxes,

every time you get a card right it's gonna graduate

to the next box, so you're gonna see it less

and less often.

But if you get a card wrong, it's gonna go all

the way to box number 1, no matter where it was.

And by using this system you get two main benefits.

Number one, you're maximizing your learning through

the spacing effect, but number two, you're also

studying more efficiently because you're spending

more time on the cards that need the most attention

and less time on the ones you know really well

rather than studying every single card equally.

Now this paper system works really well for both

of those goals but if you wanna take advantage

of more advanced scheduling algorithms and other

features, you're gonna need to find yourself

a space repetition app and there are a lot

of contenders in this area but I wanna focus

first on what is probably the most popular one

right now and that is called Anki.

Anki has a huge community, it's insanely customizable,

and best of all, it has apps for almost every

platform out there and almost all of them are free

with the exception of the iPhone app, which oddly

costs a whopping $25.

Now I think the price is that high because it's their

way of basically letting people support the app since

it's free everywhere else but if you're on an iPhone

and you don't wanna pay that much, fear not because

Anki also has a companion web app called AnkiWeb,

which is accessible from mobile Safari.

So you can use that free if you want.

Now with Anki, creating cards is really, really

easy and I really like the fact that you can add

basically any kind of media you want to your cards,

including pictures, which is awesome because adding

pictures to your flash cards can really help

increase retention.

However, the killer feature of Anki is the ability

to rate cards based on difficulty when you're

studying them.

So essentially, when you turn a card over, you can

tell the program how hard it was for you to dredge

the answer up from the depths of your memory

and it will use that data to decide how long it's

gonna be before you see that card again.

And that's really the main strength of space

repetition apps versus a paper system.

Each individual card can be tracked, can have

a difficulty rating, and can be adjusted

in the algorithm so you're getting the most

benefit of the spacing effect.

Anki is definitely not the only space repetition

app out there, though, so if you're looking for

alternatives, I've got a few things in mind

for you to take a look at, number one being an app

called TinyCards, which I showed off in my previous

video on how to make better flash cards.

Now TinyCards is only for the iPhone, unfortunately,

but there should be an Android version coming soon,

and honestly, when compared to Anki I think it's

a lot more simple, a lot prettier, and the process

of making cards is more fun and faster because

they have an excellent system for adding images

to your cards.

Aside from TinyCards there are also apps like

Flashcards Deluxe, Memrise, SuperMemo, Mnemosyne,

Eidetic, Quizlet, and probably a bunch of others

that I don't even know about right now but I'm

sure you will let me know about down in the Comments.

So before I wrap this video up I have a couple

more things I wanna mention, number one being

the script I wrote for this video is actually

about half the length of the blog post I wrote

so if you want a lot more detail, especially

pertaining to the memory bits and how the spacing

effect works, you can click the blog post link

in the description down below or on the card

on screen right now and read to your heart's content.

Also, and I have been really excited to announce

this for quite a long time now, there's now

an official College Info Geek t-shirt on

DFTBA.com and I'm super, super stoked about this.

I've already ordered mine and there's gonna be

a link down in the description, also a card so

if you would like to get your very own shirt,

which may or may not grant superpowers, you can

click either of those links and order one.

Now one cool thing about these shirts' design

is it was actually created by the College Info

Geek community.

My good friend Ashley did the hand-lettered design

itself but the mantra or saying on the shirt was

actually decided upon by people in the College Info

Geek community over on Reddit, which I think is

really, really cool, and I would love to continue

to play up this community aspect so if you get

a shirt I would love to see you tweeting awesome

pictures of you wearing it to send to me over

on @TomFrankly and I will probably retweet them.

You can also put them in the Reddit as well if

you like and other than that, that's all I have

for this video, guys, so thanks so much for watching.

And if you found it useful, give it a Like

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You can also get a copy of my book on earning

better grades by going to the picture of the book

right there and clicking your mouse button.

You can find the previous video right over there

which was about how to use flash cards more

effectively and if you wanna find that awesome

article which is way more detailed than this

video was, go to the Full Article thing right there.

If you'd like to connect with me you can use

the social media links down below but there's

also a non-zero probability that you can connect

with me by yelling into a conch shell,

so maybe give that a try too.