How to Study & Learn Using Active Recall | Dr. Cal Newport & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | - Tell me what you think of this,

00:00:04.860 | what I always call protocol.

00:00:06.980 | If I want to learn something from a manuscript I read

00:00:09.980 | or a book chapter, I used to highlight things.

00:00:13.000 | And I had a very elaborate,

00:00:14.700 | extracted from my university days,

00:00:16.500 | system of stars and exclamation marks and underline

00:00:19.000 | that mean a lot to me, that can, yes,

00:00:20.980 | bring me back to a given segment within the chapter.

00:00:23.860 | But a few years ago, I was teaching a course

00:00:26.020 | in the biology department at Stanford.

00:00:28.020 | And for some reason we had them read a study

00:00:31.180 | about information retention.

00:00:34.100 | And I learned from that study that one of the best things

00:00:37.980 | we can do is read information in whatever form,

00:00:41.940 | a magazine, research article, et cetera, a book.

00:00:44.820 | And then to take some time away from that material,

00:00:47.980 | maybe walk, maybe close one's eyes,

00:00:50.460 | maybe leave them open, doesn't matter.

00:00:51.860 | And just try and remember specific elements.

00:00:54.040 | How much does one remember?

00:00:55.380 | Then go back to the material and look at it.

00:00:57.140 | And I've just been positively astonished

00:01:00.500 | at how much more information I can learn

00:01:03.420 | when I'm not simply going through motor commands

00:01:05.460 | of just underlining things and highlighting them,

00:01:07.080 | but stepping away and thinking, okay,

00:01:08.980 | yeah, I don't remember how many subjects there were.

00:01:11.500 | I'll go back and check that, maybe make a note.

00:01:13.240 | And okay, they did this, then they did that.

00:01:15.540 | And then it's crystallized.

00:01:16.740 | And when, as I say this, I realize,

00:01:18.580 | of course, this should work.

00:01:20.260 | This is the way that the brain learns.

00:01:23.260 | But somehow that's not the way we are taught to learn.

00:01:27.300 | - Yeah, well, I'm smiling because when I was 22,

00:01:30.740 | I wrote this book called "How to Become a Straight A Student."

00:01:34.700 | And the whole premise of the book was,

00:01:36.540 | I'm gonna talk to actual college students

00:01:39.020 | who have straight A's and who don't seem

00:01:41.940 | completely ground out, like not burnt out.

00:01:44.660 | And I'm just gonna interview them.

00:01:46.060 | And the protocol was, how did you study

00:01:48.180 | for the last test did you study for?

00:01:49.380 | How did you take notes for the last?

00:01:50.460 | So I was just asking them to walk through their methodology.

00:01:54.020 | The core idea of that book was active recall.

00:01:58.140 | That was the core idea, that replicating ideas,

00:02:01.580 | ways to say is replicating the information from scratch

00:02:03.740 | as if teaching a class without looking at your notes.

00:02:06.260 | That is the only way to learn.

00:02:08.180 | And the thing about it was, it's a trade-off.

00:02:10.680 | It doesn't take, it's efficient, it doesn't take much time,

00:02:12.900 | but it's incredibly mentally taxing, right?

00:02:14.980 | This is why students often avoid it.

00:02:16.260 | It is difficult to sit there and try to replicate

00:02:19.740 | and pull forth, okay, what did I read here?

00:02:22.180 | How did that work?

00:02:23.020 | It's mentally very taxing, but it's very time efficient.

00:02:26.420 | If you're willing to essentially put up with that pain,

00:02:29.820 | you learn very quickly.

00:02:30.740 | And not only do you learn very quickly, you don't forget.

00:02:32.960 | It's almost like you have a pseudo-photographic memory

00:02:35.220 | when you study this way.

00:02:36.060 | You sit down to do a test and you're replicating

00:02:38.860 | like whole lines from like what you studied.

00:02:42.220 | The ideas sort of come out fully formed

00:02:44.780 | because it's such a fantastic way to actually learn.

00:02:47.980 | It was my key, like the whole premise

00:02:49.820 | that got me writing that book is I went through this period

00:02:54.460 | as a college student, where I came in freshman year,

00:02:57.580 | was like a fine student.

00:02:59.140 | Not a great student, but a fine student.

00:03:00.820 | And I was rowing crew and I was sort of like excited

00:03:03.660 | to do that.

00:03:04.560 | And then I developed a heart condition

00:03:06.700 | and had to stop congenital wiring in the heart,

00:03:10.060 | atrial flutter thing.

00:03:11.140 | It meant I couldn't row crew anymore.

00:03:12.340 | So prolapse of some sort?

00:03:13.780 | It was a circuitry issue that would lead

00:03:18.140 | to an extremely rapid heartbeat.

00:03:19.980 | It's like a really rapid, like tachardia, right?

00:03:22.500 | You get 250 beats a minute just,

00:03:24.540 | and it could be exercise induced, right?

00:03:26.460 | Which is not optimal.

00:03:27.820 | You could take beta blockers,

00:03:29.680 | which would moderate the electrical timing,

00:03:32.460 | but beta blockers reduce your max heart rate.

00:03:34.260 | And if you're a athlete where the entire thing

00:03:37.140 | that matters is your max heart rate,

00:03:38.660 | so you're doing something like 2,000 meter rows,

00:03:41.280 | your performance on beta blockers just goes down.

00:03:43.880 | And it makes no sense.

00:03:44.720 | It's like being a basketball player

00:03:45.560 | that wears weighted shoes.

00:03:46.620 | It's too frustrating.

00:03:47.460 | - Right, it also makes you super mellow.

00:03:49.320 | - I was pretty mellow guy.

00:03:50.540 | (both laughing)

00:03:51.820 | But I was a worse rower, so.

00:03:53.600 | So I stopped that.

00:03:54.440 | I was like, okay, I want to get serious about my studies.

00:03:56.380 | I was like, I can get serious about my studies

00:03:57.880 | and writing, right?

00:03:58.720 | That's when I actually made the decisions

00:04:01.320 | that I'd been stuck with for the next 25 years after that.

00:04:04.900 | But one of the things I did to get serious about my studies

00:04:07.320 | is I said, I'm going to systematically experiment

00:04:10.600 | with how to study for tests and how to write papers.

00:04:14.320 | And I would try this.

00:04:15.840 | How did it go?

00:04:16.680 | Deconstruct experiment.

00:04:17.600 | Try this.

00:04:18.440 | How did it go?

00:04:19.260 | Deconstruct experiment.

00:04:20.100 | And active recall was the thing to turn me all around.

00:04:22.880 | And so I went from a pretty good student

00:04:25.440 | to 4.0 every single quarter.

00:04:27.840 | Sophomore year, junior year, senior year.

00:04:29.160 | I got one A minus between my sophomore year

00:04:31.880 | through my senior year.

00:04:32.840 | It was like this miraculous transformation.

00:04:34.520 | It was active recall.

00:04:35.720 | I rebuilt all of my studying.

00:04:37.160 | So if it was for a humanities class,

00:04:39.160 | I had a whole way of taking notes.

00:04:40.480 | It was all built around doing active recall.

00:04:43.240 | For math classes, my main study tool

00:04:45.600 | was a stack of white paper.

00:04:47.520 | All right, do this proof, white piece of paper.

00:04:49.960 | And just, can I do it from scratch?

00:04:51.920 | If I could, I know that technique.

00:04:53.420 | If I don't, all right, I'm going to come back

00:04:54.960 | and try it again later.

00:04:55.800 | Completely transformed.

00:04:57.320 | I did so well academically,

00:04:58.440 | that's why I ended up writing that book

00:05:00.320 | that basically spread that message to other people.

00:05:02.140 | So I'm a huge advocate for active recall.

00:05:04.640 | It's really hard, but it is the way to learn new things.

00:05:08.160 | - And as you pointed out, it is very time efficient.

00:05:11.160 | - Oh yeah.

00:05:12.280 | I mean, it was a problem.

00:05:13.700 | It was a social problem for me

00:05:15.760 | that I would have to pretend during finals period

00:05:18.780 | that I was going to the library to study

00:05:20.880 | because I would be done studying.

00:05:22.400 | This active recall, it's brutal,

00:05:23.960 | but it's incredibly efficient.

00:05:25.100 | You sit down there, I would have my cards.

00:05:27.040 | I would mark it.

00:05:27.880 | Okay, I struggled with this.

00:05:29.320 | I'd put it in this pile.

00:05:30.700 | I got it done, I'd put it in this pile.

00:05:32.680 | And so then you would just go back

00:05:34.120 | to the I struggled with it pile and work on that

00:05:36.920 | and then make a new I struggle with a pile.

00:05:38.380 | And these would exponentially decay.

00:05:40.480 | And so in like a few hours, you could really master,

00:05:43.320 | you know, with a few other tricks that worked,

00:05:44.880 | you could really master the material pretty quickly.

00:05:46.680 | And then what am I supposed to do?

00:05:47.640 | I didn't do all nighters.

00:05:49.080 | You don't want to make any sense.

00:05:49.920 | Like active recall is how you prepare.

00:05:51.480 | It's going to take four hours and it's going to be tough.

00:05:53.600 | So do it in the morning when you have energy

00:05:55.080 | and then you're done.

00:05:56.720 | - I love it.

00:05:57.560 | I learned essentially all of neuroanatomy

00:06:00.480 | looking down the microscope at tissue samples.

00:06:04.280 | And then I would try and take photographs with my eyes.

00:06:07.040 | I do not have a photographic memory,

00:06:08.480 | but then I would get home in the evening,

00:06:10.320 | look through the neuroanatomy textbook,

00:06:12.500 | lie down and try and fly through

00:06:14.600 | the different circuits in my mind.

00:06:16.280 | And then if I arrived at a structure in the brain

00:06:18.460 | that I couldn't identify,

00:06:20.160 | I would then go check my notes and go back.

00:06:21.680 | So basically I learned neuroanatomy, which I, you know,

00:06:24.720 | I'm poor at a great many things in life,

00:06:27.200 | but neuroanatomy I'm solid at.

00:06:29.620 | And then some, if I may say so.

00:06:32.720 | And it's because there's a mental map.

00:06:34.680 | You can kind of move through it,

00:06:35.840 | you know, fly through it dynamically.

00:06:37.720 | Thank you for tuning into the Huberman Lab Clips channel.

00:06:40.400 | If you enjoyed the clip that you just viewed,

00:06:42.520 | please check out the full length episode by clicking here.

00:06:45.560 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

How to Study & Learn Using Active Recall | Dr. Cal Newport & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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