Skip to content

Putting It Together

The whole wiki, distilled into things you can actually do.

The 10 principles, as actions

  1. Retrieve, don't review. Replace re-reading with self-testing. Predict before you reveal. → Retrieval Practice
  2. Space it out. Many short sessions over time beat one cram. Use expanding intervals (e.g. Anki). → Spaced Practice
  3. Mix it up. Once a topic is acquired, interleave it with related ones instead of blocking. → Interleaving
  4. Trust the difficulty. If it feels smooth and easy, be suspicious. Effortful = learning. → Learning ≠ Performance
  5. Match difficulty to your level. New & complex → study worked examples first. Already competent → generate and test. → Cognitive Load
  6. Practice deliberately. Target a specific weakness at the edge of your ability, with feedback. Quality over hours. → Deliberate Practice
  7. Reason out the why. Don't accept spoon-fed answers; explain the principle to yourself. → Feedback
  8. Test after a delay to check what stuck. Never judge your learning while looking at the answer. → Self-Awareness
  9. Protect attention. One task, finished, at a time. Strain for learning, flow for performing. → Attention & Flow
  10. Engineer transfer & protect sleep. Abstract principles + varied practice; sleep to consolidate. → Transfer & Sleep

A simple weekly loop you can copy

The loop

  1. Pick one weakness to work on (specific, at your edge).
  2. Learn it — if new/complex, study a worked example first; understand the why.
  3. Drill it by retrieval — closed-book, predict-before-reveal.
  4. Capture the principle as a spaced-repetition card (Anki).
  5. Test it cold after a delay (next session / next week) — the honest check.
  6. Apply it in varied, realistic situations; get feedback.
  7. Space and interleave it with older topics over the following weeks.
  8. Sleep on it.

What to stop doing

  • ❌ Re-reading / re-watching / highlighting as your main method
  • ❌ Cramming one topic in a marathon
  • ❌ Memorizing answers without the why
  • ❌ Judging "I know this" while looking at the solution
  • ❌ Multitasking through study
  • ❌ Trading sleep for a few more fatigued hours

The one-sentence summary

Test yourself, space it out, mix it up, reason the why, check cold after a delay, focus on one thing, and sleep on it — and trust the difficulty, because the comfortable methods are the ones that don't work.

This guide is a distillation of peer-reviewed cognitive-science research. Each topic page links to its primary sources.