Information Doesn’t Stay In Your Brain Unless You Practice Retrieving It From Memory

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For instance, when you’re doing a math/physics problem, if you automatically go back to your reference material to copy down a formula or solve the problem alongside the worked example, then it’s not going to stick in your head. If you want it to stick in your head, you gotta try your best to recall formulas and approaches without looking.

If you really can’t manage to retrieve the information despite trying your best, then okay, peek back at the reference material, but only as a last resort. Peek once – just a little bit, just the tiniest bit of priming, just that specific piece of info that you were trying to remember, nothing else – and then close the reference, re-pull the information from memory, and try to recall the rest and proceed forward as far as possible without peeking back at the reference again.

Your brain is lifting a weight and the reference material is your spotter – it’s there as a last resort to help you get the weight up, only when you absolutely can’t get it up yourself, and the amount of help should be kept to the bare minimum. The goal is to wean yourself off of reference material, using it as sparsely as possible, until you don’t need it at all.

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