The Science Of Successful Learning Habits | Peter C Brown

1. 0:00 – 2:35

   Why “learning how to learn” matters (and who Peter C. Brown is)

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      (wind blowing) Hello, friends. This week, I'm very happy to say that we are going to learn how to learn. Peter C. Brown is the co-author of Make It Stick. That book is about as seminal as you can get in the world of learning to learn. No matter what your area of pursuit in life, it's pretty likely that being able to expedite your capacity to intake information and then recall it at will is probably gonna be pretty useful. And that doesn't matter if it's learning a new subject or learning a new physical skill, if it's knitting or archery or (laughs) law, all of them require you to be able to remember and recall what it is that you're trying to learn. And Peter manages to lay out a really good framework for doing that today. In other news, the Modern Wisdom YouTube channel has now crossed 1,000 subscribers and has nearly hit two million watch minutes, which is pretty crazy in the first two months of it being up. So if you haven't already, please head to YouTube, search Modern Wisdom Podcast, and give it a subscribe. It would be a massive help. Also, if you haven't already, whatever platform you're on, whether it's TuneIn FM... I'm not even sure (laughs) if that's a podcast listening platform. We are everywhere, Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher. Wherever you're listening, please try and give us a five-star rating. I don't really know if it helps, but it strokes the ego a little bit, so (claps hands) do it if you can. But now we're gonna learn how to learn. Peter Brown, bring it on.

   2. NANarrator1:51

      (Upbeat music playing)

   3. CWChris Williamson2:05

      Mr. Peter Brown, welcome to Modern Wisdom.

   4. PBPeter C. Brown2:09

      Thank you, Chris. It's great to be here.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:11

      How are you today?

   6. PBPeter C. Brown2:13

      I'm doing just dandy.

   7. CWChris Williamson2:14

      (laughs)

   8. PBPeter C. Brown2:15

      It's, uh, middle of summer here in Minnesota. It's a nice time to be here.

   9. CWChris Williamson2:21

      Lovely. I've recently, uh, recently returned from the States, and the, uh, the weather was fantastic, but apparently I've missed the one warm week that we get in the UK as well while I was away.

   10. PBPeter C. Brown2:30

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson2:30

       So I should've doubled down, I should've doubled down and just stayed home.

   12. PBPeter C. Brown2:34

       I guess. (laughs)

2. 2:35 – 5:06

   Defining learning: memory you can use later

   1. CWChris Williamson2:35

      I understand. So, uh, I wanna get straight into it. Can you define to me what learning means?

   2. PBPeter C. Brown2:46

      Yes. Uh, (laughs) uh, f- for me, I define learning as, uh, picking up knowledge or skill, uh, that resides in your memory and is available to you when you need it later to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity.

   3. CWChris Williamson3:06

      Okay. That sounds like a very, a very curated definition. Was that something that you came upon easily, or is that something that you had to develop through a lot of, um, a lot of thinking, a lot of conceptual, uh, deconstruction?

   4. PBPeter C. Brown3:21

      (laughs) No, I just made it up. But it's, uh, becau- I made it up when I started working on writing the book, Make It Stick, because I felt that I owed the reader a definition of what we're talking about with learning, and I figured, "Well, I'll just try that and see if it holds up." And it held up fine.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:36

      Was there a satisfactory definition in advance of that?

   6. PBPeter C. Brown3:42

      No. I'm sorry, but I, I might have a problem with my headphones, 'cause that kinda comes on and off.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:47

      Oh, okay. I'm not too sure what's going on there. That might be, uh, that might be on my side.

   8. PBPeter C. Brown3:52

      Okay. So, uh, ask the question again.

   9. CWChris Williamson3:55

      Was there an existing definition of learning that you were happy with or was that one that you just created? Did that need to be there as far as you were concerned?

   10. PBPeter C. Brown4:06

       I felt it needed, I felt we needed, we owed the reader a definition. If we're writing a book about learning, we owed the reader a definition of what learning is, and, uh, so I sorta thought about it a little bit and I wrote that, and I thought, "We'll start with that and see if it holds up as we go through the book." And, and it held up fine. Some people in science, the sciences refer to learning as, um, three things. Uh, one being, um, in, uh, encoding, which is when you first encounter material and it's, it, it's, uh, encoded as traces in the hippocampus. Consolidation. This is the process by which it moves, mi- migrates over hours or days into other parts of the brain where long-term memories are stored. And retrieval, being able to recall it again later. So the scientists think of it as that's learning for them. Uh, for me, it's, uh, y- you, you'll, you learn it and you remember it, and you can recall it when you need it.

3. 5:06 – 11:16

   How Make It Stick came to be: a decade of research made readable

   1. CWChris Williamson5:06

      I understand. So can you give us a little bit of background to the book, Make It Stick, and why you were compelled to write that?

   2. PBPeter C. Brown5:14

      Yeah, sure. Um, uh, I've been retired for some e- eight years. Uh, I made my living as, um, a, a marketing and, uh, planning consultant to corporations here in Minnesota, and I had turned to writing books, and I was between book projects. And I was sitting down with my brother-in-law, uh, uh, Henry Roediger. Uh, Henry Roediger, who goes by Roddy, is, um, um, internationally preeminent in the field of memory and learning. He's a cognitive psychologist. And he, he was telling me that he was just coming to the end of a ten-year, uh, study of, uh, what strategies, uh, lead to better retention of the new material, and he had a team of, uh, cognitive psychologists at 11 different universities.... uh, doing this work with their, um, their doctoral students and post-docs. And over a decade of such studies, they were coming to some findings that were counterintuitive, and he said, uh, "We've been trying to figure out how to get this out to a broader general audience, and maybe we should collaborate on a book." So, that's how I got into it. I'm not a scientist, uh, but I was very taken by what they were finding. So, Roddy, Henry Roediger, and, uh, one of his colleagues, Mark McDaniel, uh, who is also a cognitive psychologist, they're both at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, uh, the two of them and I collaborated on this book.

   3. CWChris Williamson6:41

      Okay. So I guess you've got the, um ... you've got the cognitive firepower in there on those guys' sides. You know, 10 years and 11, uh, facilities that have been used for that particular study. It's not as if you're, uh, it's not as if you're short of, of research on that side.

   4. PBPeter C. Brown7:01

      (laughs) No. And the book is based on, on decades of research, uh, and it reaches far beyond the work of that team. Uh, but you're right. Uh, uh, it's, uh, it's firmly grounded in the empirical evidence, but I tried to write a book that was highly anecdotal and engaging to read so that people would stick with it and we could, um, tell stories that illustrated what the science shows about how learning works. So, that gave it a different kinda twist than the, than the typical scientific, uh, study, uh, publication.

   5. CWChris Williamson7:38

      Yeah, for sure. I think in order to get the wider population to be able to buy into books like these, you need to bring it back down to earth. There needs to be some tacit examples and some things that people can relate to everyday life. Talking about standard deviations away from the norm and, you know, (laughs) statistical modeling-

   6. PBPeter C. Brown7:55

      (laughs) Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson7:55

      ... it, it doesn't-

   8. PBPeter C. Brown7:55

      Whatever that means, right? (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson7:56

      Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't light, it doesn't light anyone's eyes. Well, it'll light some people's eyes up. Perhaps your two co-authors would be, uh, would get, (laughs) would get turned on by that. But I guess for the, for the normal reader, that's not gonna be a, that's not exactly gonna light, light the f- the fire in their belly, so to speak.

   10. PBPeter C. Brown8:13

       Oh. It wouldn't keep me up at night.

   11. CWChris Williamson8:14

       No.

   12. PBPeter C. Brown8:14

       It'd put me right to sleep, so.

   13. CWChris Williamson8:15

       Yeah. (laughs)

   14. PBPeter C. Brown8:17

       (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson8:17

       Yeah. Agreed, agreed. So, you've got the existing research there. Did you think that writing a book on the science of learning was, um, was important to, to publish to the sort of wider, wider audience?

   16. PBPeter C. Brown8:35

       Well, I thought so, and they did too. And I think the reason it, it struck home with me is because, uh, well, I have a, a, a bachelor's degree, uh, from a college. I'm not a, uh, I don't have a graduate degree or a higher, uh, training. I've always been someone who's taken an interest in things and then gone about, um, learning about them and figuring them out. And what th- their research showed is that, uh, the way a lot of people, particularly students, go about learning is by review and rereading and trying to push stuff into their brain. Um, but what is far more effective is trying to get it out of the brain. It's the tinkering, the trial and error, the experimentation, uh, the learning from the turns and setbacks that you get. And, uh, I just felt, uh, very much personally affirmed by what the research showed, and I thought I would really enjoy, uh, getting my hands on this, and, uh, because I, I felt it was very important, but I also felt, uh, was really interesting.

   17. CWChris Williamson9:40

       Well, it's superbly fundamental, isn't it, that no matter what discipline it is that you're studying in, that the science of learning to learn is foundationally ahead of all of the things, ahead of everything that you're trying to do. You need to be able to know how to learn because it's u- it's universal, right? It's ubiquitous.

   18. PBPeter C. Brown10:01

       R- it, it is. And, uh, from the moment we leave the womb, uh, children are experimenting, touching, tasting, trying things. And, uh, when we get older, uh, w- we lose some of that, and, uh, I think the traditions of our schools are such that, uh, learning involves an expert who imparts knowledge to students. And in fact, um, it doesn't really, it's not really very effective. Uh, I think athletes know this when they go out on the field, uh, and they have a coach, and the athlete knows that she or he has to figure this out, and the coach can give feedback and they could work at it. Uh, but a, a, a most students, including athletes, who walk into a classroom expect the learning to be imparted to them. And it, and learning is not imparted. Learning is something that's really acquired, unless, you know, in an extraordinary circumstances where you, you have some tremendously, uh, uh, significant, emotionally significant event happened.

   19. CWChris Williamson11:07

       Yeah.

   20. PBPeter C. Brown11:07

       Then, yeah, you'll remember that. But the kinds of things that we're trying to, uh, build in the way of mental understanding and mental models and mastery, you have to acquire.

4. 11:16 – 11:36

   Common study habits that don’t work—and the shift to retrieval

   1. CWChris Williamson11:16

      That's interesting. So, did you have a look at, um, or can you give us some of the typical approaches of an unlearned learner, as, (laughs) as I'm gonna call, call someone, someone who's unenlightened as to perhaps what is, what the research suggests? Did you have a look at what's the typical approach?

5. 11:36 – 12:36

   The book’s 3 big ideas (overview): retrieval, desirable difficulty, and misleading intuition

   1. PBPeter C. Brown11:36

      Uh, well, uh, in surveying students, college students, um, th- by far and away, the major study strategies are re-reading material, underlining and highlighting, and note-taking, that kind of thing. Um, but the science shows that, uh, what's far more effective after you've, uh, heard a lecture or read a passage is...... to turn aside and then give yourself a little quiz, "What were the big ideas, uh, in this material?" Try to recall it, and try to say to yourself, "This relates to what I already know in the following ways," or, "If I were to put this in my own words, here's how I would do it." It's engaging the mind and the material. Uh, so I- I- I summarize all of Make It Stick, uh, with three ideas. The first one is the one I've just described. Learning happens when you, uh, struggle to get the learning out and apply it, not

6. 12:36 – 14:04

   Desirable difficulties #1: spaced practice (and why cramming lies)

   1. PBPeter C. Brown12:36

      when you continue to re-expose yourself to it. It's about getting it out. Um, the second big idea, uh, for me is w- we try to make learning simple for students, but, uh, actually there are some kinds of difficulties that are desirable. Uh, an example of a couple, one would be when you practice, uh, a- a motor skill, like your golf putt, or you practice, uh, something you're learning, uh, like solving a, um, mathematical problems, uh, it's good to, uh, practice it a little and then space it out and come back to it at a later time, at a later time it takes more effort to recall what was the formula and how to successfully apply it. And it, that kind of spaced practice feels like you're not getting it, 'cause it- it- your performance is rough. But the actual effort involved in recalling that new material from your long-term memory strengthens the connections to it, helps it re-consolidate, helps bring forward the most important points, and, uh, uh, and- and makes it easier to recall again later. So spacing out your practice, uh, is better than practicing things in a massed fashion. That's a desirable difficulty. It doesn't feel good.

   2. CWChris Williamson14:02

      Okay.

   3. PBPeter C. Brown14:02

      Another desirable-

   4. CWChris Williamson14:03

      No, it definitely, it definitely doesn't (laughs) .

7. 14:04 – 18:27

   Desirable difficulties #2: interleaving and mixing problem types

   1. PBPeter C. Brown14:04

      (laughs) No. Another desirable difficulty is mixing the practice of similar problem types. So if you're... Let's take the bath- the math example. If you're practicing learning how to find the volume of c- a cube and a wedge and a- a- some other kind of, uh, series of different solids, the typical way that you would do that with a math book was you'd- you'd s- look at eight different, uh, wedges and you'd apply the formula eight times, and then you'd move on and do these other different kinds of solids. And during practice, you do very well. You would get, in- in tests, that you'd do about 90%. But if, in fact, once you've learned each of the formulas, your practice problems were in random sequence, you would only do about 50% right, and you wouldn't feel too good about that. But a week later, you will have remembered that same 50%. You would do extremely well on a test compared to the others who have gone from 90% down to 23%, because they didn't mix it up. And when you get a- a test where it's mixed up, they can't remember which formula went with which problem.

   2. CWChris Williamson15:10

      Yes, of course.

   3. PBPeter C. Brown15:10

      So this notion of mixing your practice, which does not feel good, uh, is very powerful for, uh, i- improving your ability to recognize the kind of problem you're facing and picking the kind of solution that's going to be correct.

   4. CWChris Williamson15:23

      That's interesting.

   5. PBPeter C. Brown15:25

      So there are other kinds of desirable difficulties, and- and, uh, so the notion of if it's clear as a bell, I'll- I'm sure I'll remember it, you know, is not really true. Uh, if you have to reconcile different ideas between the lecture and the book chapter or what have you, uh, that mental effort is what's gonna make it stick.

   6. CWChris Williamson15:49

      That's interesting.

   7. PBPeter C. Brown15:50

      So that's the second big idea, that some- some difficulties are desirable.

   8. CWChris Williamson15:54

      Okay. And the third?

   9. PBPeter C. Brown15:55

      Number three (laughs) , number three is that our intuition leads us astray. So our intuition is when I reread it many times, I get very fluent in it. Uh, I'm on top of it. I can do that- I can do that and take a test the next morning, I pull an all-nighter, and I can get a great grade on the test. It doesn't stick though. What happens if you're tested again a week later, you've lost about half of it. Um, our intuition says if we practice our 20-foot putt over and over again, we see improvement. And it's true, you do, but that improvement leans on short-term memory. Uh, uh, the- the skills have not been consolidated in long-term memory. That takes overnight or it takes days. So you walk off the golf course thinking you've really done a service, uh, to yourself on your 20-foot putt, but much better would be to do a few 20-foot putts than do other strokes and then come back and mix it up. And it doesn't feel, you don't see that same kind of improvement, but your brain is getting better at judging distances and the motor skills required, you know, to- to make a good stroke. So our intuition leads us astray, and it causes us to spend time in strategies that are not paying us back.

   10. CWChris Williamson17:11

       Okay. So, I mean, that's, uh, to me, conceptually makes sense, but is quite a- probably quite a big departure away from anecdotally what I would have thought good learning should be done. You know, the- the kind of, um, the force it down your throat, so to speak, approach.

   11. PBPeter C. Brown17:32

       Sure.

   12. CWChris Williamson17:32

       You know?

   13. PBPeter C. Brown17:33

       Mm-hmm. Yep.

   14. CWChris Williamson17:34

       The- the- the really, uh, drill it into you, stick to one task for a long time. I know if you, um, if you listened to the podcast that I did with, uh, Dr. Euan Lawson, we discuss in that about multitasking and the Pomodoro technique, deep work and trying to focus wholly on one task. It's not too far of a jump to think that instead of just focusing on revision, you should drill that down again to just focusing on one topic within your revision, right? And I think that- that could quite erroneous-

   15. PBPeter C. Brown18:08

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson18:08

       ... erroneously be...... one step too far in terms of the, um, how specific you're being-

   17. PBPeter C. Brown18:16

       Yes.

   18. CWChris Williamson18:17

       ... with your re- with your revision time. So let's go from the start. Can you explain how learning and memory, or learning and recall relate to each other?

8. 18:27 – 23:01

   Memory systems and cues: building retrieval paths (and mnemonic examples)

   1. PBPeter C. Brown18:27

      Yeah, sure. Well, memory has, uh, two components. Um, actually, my co-author, uh, Roddy Roediger, uh, his, uh, his field is memory. And, um, uh, he's really, uh, written the break- a lot of the breakthrough material on memory, including, uh, discovering this whole field of false memory. But in any case, um, long-term memory is, is in different parts of the brain than short-term memory. So when, when we're talking about short-term memory, or working memory, it's the list, you go to the grocery store, you maybe remember it long enough to pick up the things, and then maybe y- you might or might not remember you need to stop by the dry cleaner on the way home.

   2. CWChris Williamson19:08

      (laughs)

   3. PBPeter C. Brown19:09

      Um, but that's gone. Uh, yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson19:10

      Is there a, is there a time, is there a, uh, approximate time limit usually on that? 24 hours or?

   5. PBPeter C. Brown19:15

      Not particularly, but I- I- I don't, I don't think so. I think it's, uh, depends on whether you're trying, if you're making an effort to remember it for longer.

   6. CWChris Williamson19:23

      Yeah.

   7. PBPeter C. Brown19:23

      For example, you're- you- you rent a bike and it's got a four-digit, uh, combination lock, and you're trying to remember those four digits.

   8. CWChris Williamson19:31

      Mm-hmm.

   9. PBPeter C. Brown19:31

      Well, you can give yourself, uh, a tool to do that. I was with a friend in, in, um, Adelaide, um, Australia, uh, and she said, "I can't, I can't even remember my PIN number on my card."

   10. CWChris Williamson19:43

       Mm-hmm.

   11. PBPeter C. Brown19:43

       "How am I gonna do this with my bike?" "Well, what are the- what are the numbers?" She said, "It's 5268." And I said, "Well, break it into 52 and 68. What can you do with that?" "Oh, 52 is easy, that's the cards in a deck of cards. And 68, oh, that, um, that's the swirly girly," she said.

   12. CWChris Williamson19:59

       (laughs)

   13. PBPeter C. Brown20:00

       So, uh, she s- she still remembers this four-digit number years later.

   14. CWChris Williamson20:03

       (laughs)

   15. PBPeter C. Brown20:03

       So there are devices you can use, you know. Uh, but I do it-

   16. CWChris Williamson20:07

       What? A piece of information to keep, to keep in your mind.

   17. PBPeter C. Brown20:09

       (laughs) Yeah. So, uh, but the long-term memory is different from short-term memory. And that is, uh, it needs to migrate to another part of the brain and be connected to the other things that you know. So, uh, the two aspects of long-term memory are one, uh, that it gets, uh, thoroughly inve- embedded in the brain and connected to many different, uh, points of knowledge. If you can attach a, a visual image, like a s- medical school student I was talking to who was trying to remember stuff, uh, medical stuff, and he said, "I realized after, uh, reading the research that if I paused and made a- a mental picture of the- the organ I was reading about, and, uh, thought about its connections, that I could remember that whole thing better." Well, you get more different connections in the brain, uh, which become roots to finding it again later and, and recalling it. So it's partly about having, having it thoroughly embedded in your brain, and it's partly about having the cues you need to find it later when you want it. A lot of things that we've learned in life we can't recall because we've reassigned the cues to other things, uh, in the meantime. Uh, so...

   18. CWChris Williamson21:21

       In terms of c- what do you mean by cues?

   19. PBPeter C. Brown21:25

       Well, what I mean, Chris, is when you come to LA, uh, and you rent a car, you have to create new cues to remember to stay on the right side of the road. Um, the cues, uh, if you are gonna take your A levels, for example, in psychology, uh, as, uh, was the case of a psychology professor, uh, at Oxford that we talked to. Uh, he took his students, those students were, had mastered the content, but the pressure on the A levels, you don't know which materials you're gonna be asked to write, and then in each-

   20. CWChris Williamson21:59

       Mm-hmm.

   21. PBPeter C. Brown21:59

       ... of the ones you're asked to write, there's, m- you know, multiple paragraphs.

   22. CWChris Williamson22:02

       Mm-hmm.

   23. PBPeter C. Brown22:02

       I'm sure you know this better than I, but.

   24. CWChris Williamson22:03

       Yes.

   25. PBPeter C. Brown22:04

       And so he took his students to, um, uh, coffee shops. And he'd say, "Okay, um, and, uh, i- imagine that you've w- you're walking into the coffee shop and you're going around the perimeter of the shop." And they will attach, uh, meaning to the different parts of the furnishings or the layout that give them cues, uh, a name of something, uh, that cue that next paragraph in their write-up. So when they learn, uh, what the subject is they have to write about, they say, "Oh, okay, that was at the such and such, you know, pastry shop."

   26. CWChris Williamson22:37

       Yeah.

   27. PBPeter C. Brown22:38

       "And I was sitting there, and I can see I came in. Oh, yeah, I called that fern, you know, something or other." And they, and, uh, and on they can go. They have the cues. So under pressure, when we tend to, uh, kinda freeze up in being able to recall material, that's, uh, a sort of mnemonic device.

   28. CWChris Williamson22:54

       Yeah.

   29. PBPeter C. Brown22:54

       Those are cues by which you can bring it up.

   30. CWChris Williamson22:56

       It's the, it's the beginning of the deck of cards that starts to tumble into the rest of the knowledge, right?
9. 23:01 – 28:08

   From rote recall to conceptual understanding—and why note-taking should change

   1. CWChris Williamson23:01

      So I- I can certainly draw a parallel between that and my learning style. So to give you a little bit of, um, a little bit of context for myself, my learning style from probably my GCSEs, so 15 and 16, was to write summarized notes and to then completely verbatim record in my mind what the notes were on the page. So I would know that top left, starting at the top, it was this particular bit, then this, then... I could see when I got into the exam, I could actually feel in my mind where, let's say that I'd written a word, a word incorrectly and I'd crossed it out, I'd be like-

   2. PBPeter C. Brown23:38

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson23:38

      ... "Okay, so it's three pages in. It's that. Oh, there's that, there's the word that's not written correctly."

   4. PBPeter C. Brown23:42

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson23:42

      And those sort of cues, I'm aware that, that... You know, had I of, had I of been able to read your book before I went to university, I'd have probably had, probably had a much easier time of it. But it was kind of, for me, I guess I was, I was, um, I was using recall, but that was blunt force. Like, just complete-

   6. PBPeter C. Brown24:01

      Y- y- yes.

   7. CWChris Williamson24:01

      ... blunt force verbatim.

   8. PBPeter C. Brown24:03

      Right.

   9. CWChris Williamson24:04

      And that wasn't using the desirable difficulties, um, spacing, and that also wasn't, uh, using, uh, point number three either. So, you know, I think I'd maybe, I'd maybe focused on the recall, and I was... I'd discovered myself that using recall was a good way for me to at least... Well, it's, it's pointless learning something if you then can't, if you can't then pull it back out, as you say.... you know?

   10. PBPeter C. Brown24:28

       Right.

   11. CWChris Williamson24:28

       It's, it's almost as if you haven't learned it.

   12. PBPeter C. Brown24:29

       It won't stick, either. Yeah. Uh, it, it is pointless. And so, uh, we had an email from someone recently who'd read the book and said, "I'm t- you know, I, I've developed a new way of taking notes, uh, and I'd like to know what you think of it." He, he said, uh, "Instead of trying to capture everything that the, uh, lecturer tells me, now if I've read the material and I hear the lecture, I start have, have been writing questions in each area so that when I go back to review my notes, I'm actually, uh, requiring myself to recall from memory, uh, and look up if I can't recall it, what the material is."

   13. CWChris Williamson25:05

       Wow, that's interesting.

   14. PBPeter C. Brown25:05

       Yeah, that's pretty kind of, you know, that's a clever way of doing it, because that's what you're gonna have to do at test time.

   15. CWChris Williamson25:10

       Yeah.

   16. PBPeter C. Brown25:11

       And, uh, and then the other issue about memorizing notes or memorizing a text is, uh, ten- ta- temptation to memorize terms and, uh, s- as opposed to concepts. So it's always important, uh, when you've read something or taken the notes to be able to elaborate on them to explain why is this important, uh, what would happen if this weren't true.

   17. CWChris Williamson25:45

       Mm-hmm.

   18. PBPeter C. Brown25:45

       Um, what, how does it relate to what I already know?

   19. CWChris Williamson25:48

       I guess that's a, the, the difference between pure recall and comprehension there, right?

   20. PBPeter C. Brown25:53

       Yes. And, and which leads ultimately into conceptual learning, right.

   21. CWChris Williamson25:57

       Okay. Well, that's interesting. So I had a question that I wanted to ask, and we've led onto it pretty perfectly here. Is it possible to learn something but not remember it?

   22. PBPeter C. Brown26:08

       Well, sure. There's all kinds of things we've learned and that we don't, that we can't recall.

   23. CWChris Williamson26:12

       Uh, but functionally, does it exist if we can't recall it?

   24. PBPeter C. Brown26:15

       Um, I, I guess there's two ways to think. (laughs) Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that you've learned that you can't recall until you get some kind of a s- a clue. You see someone out of your past, or you start talking to someone about past things, and all these memories start flooding back. Or, you catch a smell that's particular to a place you were when something happened and the memories start flooding back. That's maybe a little different from what you're asking.

   25. CWChris Williamson26:40

       No, I, I think-

   26. PBPeter C. Brown26:40

       You're asking have you-

   27. CWChris Williamson26:41

       I think that's right. I think you, I think you're correct. You, what you, what we've fallen back to here is the cues, right?

   28. PBPeter C. Brown26:47

       Right. Exactly, right. I, I, I had this problem in 1998. My wife and I w- uh, spent a year in Italy, and, uh, we'd, we'd go and take lessons on the language. And, and, uh, the only non-English language I had, uh, in me, and I didn't have much of it, was four years of French. And so, uh, uh, my brain kept presenting the French whenever I was trying to say something in English.

   29. CWChris Williamson27:09

       (laughs) Which is not going to go down very well with an Italian.

   30. PBPeter C. Brown27:11

       No. It didn't go down.
10. 28:08 – 43:38

    Procedural learning and automaticity: how practice becomes ‘second nature’

    1. PBPeter C. Brown28:08

       So, well, and then here's an interesting thing that, um ... Let's take, uh, or you can take, um, h- hitting a fast ball. Uh, well, you don't play baseball over there, but take some kind of a soccer move, or take-

    2. CWChris Williamson28:25

       Mm-hmm. Yes.

    3. PBPeter C. Brown28:25

       ... uh, you know, driving a stick shift car.

    4. CWChris Williamson28:27

       Yeah.

    5. PBPeter C. Brown28:28

       You get into a car. You're a brand new driver. Um, you gotta adjust the seat and adjust the mirror. You gotta look here and look there. You gotta push in the clutch and push in the, the shifter, and put, let out the clutch while you're putting on the gas. A very complicated set of moves, and look and steer out into the roadway and move along. Um, w- while you and I do that without any thought whatsoever. Or, I mean, we're thinking about the luncheon we're about to g-

    6. CWChris Williamson28:52

       (laughs)

    7. PBPeter C. Brown28:52

       ... to arrive at.

    8. CWChris Williamson28:53

       Yeah.

    9. PBPeter C. Brown28:54

       Uh, s- so there's a lot of learning, in particular procedural learning, that, um, the recall is the, the procedural learning is kind of chunked, like the, the scientists actually call it chunked in a part of the brain. And it's available to us just like that without having to think now how, what do I do with the shift lever? What do I do with my feet? It's there. And, uh, w- when you get to people who are at a very high level in the sciences, for example, or any field, musicians, whatever, they have, uh, spent enough time with the fundamentals of physics or energy and transfer, whatever those things are, that they just invoke this law or that law subconsciously as they're looking at a situation. So w- those of us who don't have that knowledge, we have to think through every darn step. We have to think through every part of that shifting and driving sequence. But with practice, especially if it's spaced out, um, it becomes second nature to us, and then we possess it, and then that becomes a, a mental model that we can build on in other, and connect it to other abilities or other bodies of knowledge.

    10. CWChris Williamson30:07

        I understand. So time and attention there to a degree is, uh, is going to be an important factor that trying, you know, cramming and, and rushing your learning together is not giving you enough time to allow that to settle and then to come back to it, right?

    11. PBPeter C. Brown30:22

        Well, that's exactly right. So it isn't just spacing out the practice of something with intervals between so that you're a little rusty, so it's a little more difficult to do, and that difficulty actually strengthens the-

    12. CWChris Williamson30:34

        Desirable difficulties again, right?

    13. PBPeter C. Brown30:35

        Yeah.... right. But it's also true that, um, i- in a course, if you're a... let's say you're a professor in a course, it's better to, uh, introduce a lot of the material earlier in the course and come back to it and distribute it over, uh, the period of the course. Because, uh, when learning is distributed like that, uh, it sticks better and it has more opportunities to connect with the other related material, instead of doing it in blocked fashion or in a silo.

    14. CWChris Williamson31:08

        Okay.

    15. PBPeter C. Brown31:08

        You know, first we're gonna do this, then we're gonna do that.

    16. CWChris Williamson31:10

        Yeah. So you kind of look... you- you take an overview of the entire map, and then you begin to move through the map piece by piece.

    17. PBPeter C. Brown31:18

        Right. And so if you're managing your time, "I know I'm gonna have a test next Thursday on such and such," um, you don't want to say, "Wednesday is my day I'm dedicating to that." You're better-

    18. CWChris Williamson31:28

        (laughs)

    19. PBPeter C. Brown31:29

        ... off dedicating some... a little, a little bit of time each day between now and then because that, uh, distributing that out over time is gonna help your brain do what it does well. Uh, our- our brains are such that if we go to bed, uh, uh, pondering a challenge or a problem, the brain, we've discovered, is working at that, uh, through the night. And it will, um, throw out irrelevant stuff and try to connect this to other stuff. It's a remarkable thing. So you are kind of, um, e- empowering your brain t- to take some responsibility, uh, f- for learning this material if you start it early and come back to it from time to time, instead of trying to force it, force it into your brain. Uh-

    20. CWChris Williamson32:13

        Well, I'm afraid that, uh, I'm afraid that eight- 18 years of full-time education led me to do everything (laughs) last minute.

    21. PBPeter C. Brown32:20

        Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson32:20

        So I'm probably, I'm probably patient zero for how bad you can be at cramming. Um, but, you know, I- I- I can, I can certainly appreciate the times when I have spent a little bit more time over stuff and I have distributed it throughout my week or however it may be. Am I right in thinking... I read a, I read a study recently that talked about the capacity for problem-solving before and after a night's sleep, versus if you had one five-hour chunk or two two-and-a-half-hour chunks spread over two days. And the difference between the group that had the sleep in between and was... their brains were allowed to reset and look at the problem with fresh eyes, the, uh, capacity for them to complete the problem was s- so much, so much more impressive than the group that just had one-

    23. PBPeter C. Brown33:07

        I... Yeah.

    24. CWChris Williamson33:08

        ... one go at it for five hours, which s- (laughs) to a degree almost sounds counterintuitive, because you think, "Oh, well, I've got to get back into the same head space and I've got to get myself up to speed again. When I start again, I've got to recall all this stuff that I did that I might have forgotten."

    25. PBPeter C. Brown33:20

        Yeah.

    26. CWChris Williamson33:20

        But, eh, m- almost slightly counterintuitively, it doesn't seem to be that way. It seems to be that, like you say, distributing it is...

    27. PBPeter C. Brown33:28

        E- uh, there's a really interesting s- study, uh, of, um, medical residents who are learning to reattach tiny vessels with a surgical stitch. And the way in this country they do that, they go away for a day, and there's four lessons. The first... they get a video and then they're given a little bit of rubber tubing called a Penrose drain, and they're, uh, shown how to pass their stitches through and then tie surgical knots. And then they see a video and they're given some synthetic tissue and they practice that. Then they're seeing a video and they get... given a turkey thigh. So there's four videos, four sessions, one day. At the end of the day, they are supposedly on top of this, this, uh, skill.

    28. CWChris Williamson34:09

        Okay.

    29. PBPeter C. Brown34:09

        So in the s- in the study, half the group did it that way, there were 38 of them, and the other half came in and did the first video and practice, and then they went away for a week, and they came back the second week for the second video and practice. And I'm thinking those, those doctors are sitting there thinking, (laughs) "Well, let's see if I can remember. What was that last week?"

    30. CWChris Williamson34:27

        Yeah. Exactly.
11. 43:38 – 48:03

    Self-testing, metacognition, and low-stakes quizzes (Anki and classroom design)

    1. PBPeter C. Brown43:38

       Well, right. Uh, a really important thing that this, these cognitive psychologists, uh, talk about is, well, they call it metacognition, which is thinking about your thinking. And that is, we're easily duped into thinking we're, we're on top of something, that we've got it. And, um, so what's important is to test yourself from time to time. Do you really have it? Can you really do it? Can you really explain this? And so self-testing has a couple of benefits. Uh, one is you learn whether your judgment of what you know and can do actually is accurate.

    2. CWChris Williamson44:15

       Mm-hmm.

    3. PBPeter C. Brown44:16

       Uh, and it ex- and it helps you focus where you need to bring it up a little bit. But the other is, in the fact of recalling this stuff is a, a great way to strengthen your, uh, retention of it, your mastery and retention of it. So as, as a study strategy, uh, self-quizzing is a, is potent in several ways.

    4. CWChris Williamson44:37

       There's a, um...

    5. PBPeter C. Brown44:37

       And in fact...

    6. CWChris Williamson44:39

       Go on.

    7. PBPeter C. Brown44:39

       Excuse me.

    8. CWChris Williamson44:40

       Go on.

    9. PBPeter C. Brown44:41

       Well, I was just saying, when we're talking in schools with, uh, professors and teachers, um, one of the fundamental things that is highly effective is for, uh, the instructor to incorporate frequent low-stakes quizzing in the course. Low stakes so that people aren't freaked out by-

    10. CWChris Williamson45:04

        No, no pressure.

    11. PBPeter C. Brown45:05

        ... you know, uh... Yeah, right. You just really dia- really dial down the pressure and have the, the experience and ultimately the habit of recalling, from memory, what this stuff is. And the, and the, if you can do that in a course where you're reaching back to earlier material, as well as more recent stuff, that stuff gets brought forward and better connected. It's a very potent and not very difficult, uh, strategy for helping students get to the middle and the end of their course on top of the material.

    12. CWChris Williamson45:36

        That's interesting. There's a program that I know a lot of my friends who are doctors, uh, medical students use called Anki. I'm not sure if you've-

    13. PBPeter C. Brown45:44

        Yeah, Anki's perfect. Yes.

    14. CWChris Williamson45:44

        Yeah. So Anki's cue cards, right? Randomized cue cards, mostly with multiple-choice questions. And would that fit into your model of consistent low-level testing?

    15. PBPeter C. Brown45:56

        Yes. Anki is great. Yeah.

    16. CWChris Williamson45:58

        I wish, uh, I wish that I'd known about Anki while I was at, uh, while I was at university. I think it might have made my, my last-minute procrastination tactics a little bit less, uh-

    17. PBPeter C. Brown46:08

        (laughs)

    18. CWChris Williamson46:08

        ... a little bit less proliferate.

    19. PBPeter C. Brown46:09

        Well, one of the nice things about Anki and some other, uh, online stuff is that you can have it, you can set it up to, to, uh, come to your phone periodically.

    20. CWChris Williamson46:17

        Yeah.

    21. PBPeter C. Brown46:18

        And, um...

    22. CWChris Williamson46:18

        They get, they get reminders. We'll be sat at dinner and, um, I'll, I'll look over-

    23. PBPeter C. Brown46:22

        (laughs)

    24. CWChris Williamson46:22

        ... to one of the guys, and he'll have his, he'll have his Anki cue cards out 'cause his reminder's popped up.

    25. PBPeter C. Brown46:26

        (laughs) Well, if he were in our household, if he were doing anything other than practicing what he's supposed to learn, he'd get a steep scolding from my wife for having his phone at the di-

    26. CWChris Williamson46:36

        Oh, no.

    27. PBPeter C. Brown46:37

        (laughs)

    28. CWChris Williamson46:37

        Oh, no. (laughs) That's a dis-

    29. PBPeter C. Brown46:38

        No, but that's why-

    30. CWChris Williamson46:38

        ... that's a, that's an undesirable difficulty right there.
12. 48:03 – 54:37

    Focused vs diffused thinking, breaks, and the brain’s offline work

    1. CWChris Williamson48:03

       Okay. I under- I understand on that. Um, did you, in the book, did you touch on anything to do with the focused and diffused mode networks? Did you look at, did you look at that much at all?

    2. PBPeter C. Brown48:15

       I don't think I've heard of that. What is it?

    3. CWChris Williamson48:17

       Okay. Okay. So there was this two, um, so there's a, a course from Coursera, um, which is a, a massive open online course, and it's called Learning How to Learn. And, uh, I had a-

    4. PBPeter C. Brown48:29

       Okay.

    5. CWChris Williamson48:29

       ... I had a little bit of a look through that before I, uh, before I knew we were going to have our podcast today. And with that, they- they're focusing a lot on the focused and diffused mode networks. What they were talking about there was, it seems to me, the, um, longer term...... the ability to recall over time and this, as you say, this more open mode of thinking, as opposed to a more procedural mode of thinking. That when you're learning something and you go away and then you come back, you often have a very open mind to what the, what the solutions may be. We've discussed it previously. I've said, I did a, a podcast on meditation not very long ago with Corey Allen, and one of the, one of the things that I wish wouldn't happen, but I also appreciate does, is when I sit down to meditate and I, I quieten my thoughts, that's often when I have some of my best ideas of the day, which is terrible because I'm trapped in this... (laughs) I'm supposed to be trapped, focusing on clearing my mind, and I've got all of these really good, like, awesome ideas coming to me. (laughs) And I think, "Oh, God, I just... Can, can you not happen when I'm not meditating? Can the meditating just be allowed to continue on its own?"

    6. PBPeter C. Brown49:37

       All right. Yeah, I've had that experience, but of course, this is the brain, uh, offering you, uh, some ideas. And I- I- I- I- uh, uh, if I understand this difference between the focus and diffused, I think one of the... o- o- one of the astonishing things in writing is when your mind presents a metaphor, uh, for something that helps make clearer the, this other thing, you know, this notion of the similarities between things that y- your brain recognizes. And so th- I, uh... This is one of the things, I believe, from what I've read about sleep, that, uh, begins to happen when you d- uh, think about, s- struggle a little bit with, uh, a problem, or maybe a conceptual problem in the evening. And in the night, uh, th- the brain will, uh, kind of look around and see, "What do I know that's similar to this? Are there models that are like this? Are there, is it like this other thing?" And you can get some great breakthrough ideas that way.

    7. CWChris Williamson50:44

       Mm-hmm.

    8. PBPeter C. Brown50:44

       So maybe in y- in the m- in the meditation, where you're just giving your brain... You're trying to focus on the mantra, but you're also bre- focusing on your breathing and, and your relaxation, and it's a very freeing thing. And if the brain, uh, is presenting you with, uh, images and ideas, uh, you know, I- I- I think, I can only think that that's, uh, constructive. (laughs)

    9. CWChris Williamson51:10

       You know, I agree. I couldn't agree more. I think one of the examples that was used was, uh, Newton, and it was that he would sit in his chair with ball bearings in his hand and he would wait-

    10. PBPeter C. Brown51:20

        (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson51:20

        ... he would wait until he just fell asleep, and the ball bearings would drop from his hand and crack on the floor, and it would wake him up. And that was the moment at which, for him, he often had a lot of breakthroughs. And, you know, if it's-

    12. PBPeter C. Brown51:33

        Hm.

    13. CWChris Williamson51:33

        ... if it's good enough for Newton, it's probably good enough for us. (laughs)

    14. PBPeter C. Brown51:36

        (laughs) Well, that's... It happens for me when I get fr- when I get frustrated with my writing, and I get on the bike, and I head up the hill. And I just smell the smells and look at the horizon, and I bike along, and all of a sudden, you know, my brain starts giving me ideas. I get this, like, aha moment. "This is, this is what, what I could do about that problem."

    15. CWChris Williamson51:56

        Mm-hmm.

    16. PBPeter C. Brown51:56

        And then I can come back and work on it.

    17. CWChris Williamson51:58

        Do you think it's difficult to, as someone who is learning, or trying to be productive, or writing, or whatever it might be... Do you think it's difficult to learn when enough focused time is enough and it's time to move on to or it's, it's time to take a, uh, as you say, like, a planned break to give yourself that room to breathe? Because y- you know, you need to spend some time under tension exposed to the material or exposed to the particular physical practice or whatever it might be, but then also you need this time away from it as well. Do you think it can be a, a, a difficult scheduling problem for people to know when enough is enough?

    18. PBPeter C. Brown52:37

        Well, I'm sure it can be. I don't know, I don't know of, of research into that question. My own human nature, uh, tells me i- i- you need to have, you need to mix it up, you need to g- get out of your s- chair or get out and get some exercise and then come back to it. Um, but I don't, I'm not aware of research on it. One of the things that was a pleasant surprise for me when I was working on this book, I hadn't been aware of the search tool Google Scholar, where you can, uh, search for published research, uh, on a, you know, you could put in a term and see where research has been done and, um, um, thumb through the different published, uh, studies.

    19. CWChris Williamson53:18

        Yeah.

    20. PBPeter C. Brown53:18

        But, yeah, it's kind of useful. I suppose most everybody else knows about it, but I didn't, and I found it very helpful.

    21. CWChris Williamson53:23

        Mm-hmm.

    22. PBPeter C. Brown53:24

        But I, I, you know, to me, intuitively, yeah. But of course I'm saying intuition leads us astray with learning, so... (laughs)

    23. CWChris Williamson53:30

        (laughs) So you got to be careful on both sides of the fence, right?

    24. PBPeter C. Brown53:34

        Yeah. Well, there's one thing, you know, one of the things about being a non-scientist writing this book with two scientists was I was, I tried to be, I tried to take liberties in relating the science to, uh, uh, stories of real people and incidents in their lives and so forth and, and drawing parallels, uh, but stay within th- the strict limits of, uh, what the empirical research shows us and wh- and where we're drifting into speculation, to say, "This is speculation, but it might be because of such and such."

    25. CWChris Williamson54:06

        I understand, yeah. So we've gone through the, the three key concepts that you've got there, the capacity for recall, the desirable difficulties, and then ignoring the, ignoring the cognitive biases to, to one degree or another.

    26. PBPeter C. Brown54:19

        Or c- cutting yourself some slack if it feels difficult, thinking you're not getting it, eh, cut yourself some slack. You think you're not getting it, but you probably are.

    27. CWChris Williamson54:27

        Yeah. Okay. Um, so are there any other elements that you think that people need to be able to understand when it comes to learning? Is there anything that we haven't gone through yet?

13. 54:37 – 1:00:08

    Motivation and growth mindset: reframing struggle as progress

    1. PBPeter C. Brown54:37

       Well, there is this, uh, theory of a growth mindset, uh, that has been introduced, uh, by a cognitive psychologist at Stanford University in California named Carol Dweck. Uh, and she's done some work that...... uh, sh- where she s- studied with, she, she got, she w- took an interest in why do some people become helpless when faced with a difficult problem. And, um, eh, so she d- did some work with some low-performing, uh, New York, uh, middle school, junior high school students and, uh, gave them a little seminar on how the brain works. And then half the students, she took aside and talked about memory. The other half, she took aside and said, "Y- you know, a lot of people think that their abilities are set at birth by the gift of their genes, but in fact, when you work hard to learn something, you are building new connections in the brain, and over time, you're actually increasing your intellectual abilities through these, uh, challenges, these mental challenges." She sent them all back into class. She didn't tell the teachers about these two different, uh, sub-groups. And the students, uh, who had been taught that they have some influence over their intellectual abilities by picking tougher problems and persisting at them-

    2. CWChris Williamson55:54

       Mm-hmm.

    3. PBPeter C. Brown55:55

       ... began outperforming the other students. And she is, uh ... Dr. Dweck developed this, er, this sort of, um, duality of a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset, in that people with a fixed mindset tend not to pick problems they won't do well at, because it'll, en- uh, indict their sense of, uh, their native ability. Whereas those who have a growth mindset, uh, when they encounter a difficult problem, try a little harder, try a different way, you know, eh, carry on forward and do better. Now, um, so there's an issue here, I think, uh, when we're saying that some difficulties are desirable, that's not, doesn't sound like good news-

    4. CWChris Williamson56:34

       (laughs)

    5. PBPeter C. Brown56:35

       ... uh, to students. (laughs) And so, uh ...

    6. CWChris Williamson56:36

       No. I mean, especially, you know, a l- a lot of students want the easiest path possible, right? Well, I mean, we all do. We're all w-

    7. PBPeter C. Brown56:42

       We all do.

    8. CWChris Williamson56:43

       Yeah.

    9. PBPeter C. Brown56:43

       Yeah.

    10. CWChris Williamson56:43

        We all, we all want to get as much as possible for as little as possible, right? It's human nature.

    11. PBPeter C. Brown56:47

        (laughs) I think we all agree on that. (laughs)

    12. CWChris Williamson56:50

        Yeah. Yeah.

    13. PBPeter C. Brown56:52

        So I think, I think that there's more research that needs to be done about, uh, whether a, uh, a belief in and an understanding of this ability to improve your brain, uh, is actually a motivator, uh, for people. But the fact remains nonetheless, that, uh, when you learn new things, uh, especially, uh, you, you rise up the complexity of the topic you're dealing with, you are increasing your intellectual ability. And th- there's that many more things that you now have the ability to learn, 'cause you have places to attach them. You can't learn something new if you don't have something to attach it to that you already know. So, uh, I think there's ... the field of motivation is one, uh, where there's some interesting work being done, uh, and it's one that, um, I think it helps for people to keep in mind, that, uh, uh, you need to, um, you need to be a, kind of a coach to your own brain, saying, "I know this doesn't feel too good, but guess what? It's really gonna pay off." You know? (laughs)

    14. CWChris Williamson57:54

        Yeah. I totally get that. It's a, a weird, a weird, uh, analogy that I can draw between this and a recent podcast that I did with some CrossFit coaches from the UK. And in it, I was asking about mental toughness in sport, and I was talking-

    15. PBPeter C. Brown58:09

        Ah.

    16. CWChris Williamson58:09

        ... to them about how they prepare for these competitions. And during these CrossFit competitions, a lot of the athletes are very, very heavily mediated by their capacity to suffer discomfort. And again, with that, it's a lot to do with mental state. So I was asking the guys-

    17. PBPeter C. Brown58:25

        Uh-huh.

    18. CWChris Williamson58:25

        ... you know, how do they prepare in an appropriate way? And what they said was, "How many events is it over a weekend? Is it seven events over a weekend? Okay, well, during your prep for it, do 20. Do 20 events over a weekend."

    19. PBPeter C. Brown58:37

        Ah.

    20. CWChris Williamson58:37

        And then when you get there, you realize-

    21. PBPeter C. Brown58:39

        Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson58:40

        ... "I've, I've, I've prepared so much further above and beyond where I needed to-"

    23. PBPeter C. Brown58:44

        Yeah.

    24. CWChris Williamson58:44

        ... to bring it back to."

    25. PBPeter C. Brown58:45

        Yeah.

    26. CWChris Williamson58:45

        But you're right. The difference between an athlete that's doing that and typically how someone will be learning, even if they're being taught by a lecturer or a teacher, or on a formal course at university or whatever it might be-

    27. PBPeter C. Brown58:56

        Ah.

    28. CWChris Williamson58:56

        ... the coach is mediating that impression of how the training is going, right? It's very rare.

    29. PBPeter C. Brown59:03

        Mm-hmm.

    30. CWChris Williamson59:03

        I don't think I ever once spoke to a lecturer at university or spoke to my tutor and said, "My learning is going slowly." I just perceived that as a byproduct of, "Oh, well," like, "learning isn't easy and I need to just"-
14. 1:00:08 – 1:05:05

    Implications for teachers: dialogue, context, and redesigning learning environments

    1. PBPeter C. Brown1:00:08

       Yes. I don't think it, uh, it has to be real hard. Um, t- I have t- a couple thoughts. One is that we're encouraging teachers to help students construct their own understanding of the material, as opposed to lecturing, "Here's what the material is," and trying to impart, uh, the lecturer's understanding. So that means the classrooms become much more involved in exercises that engage the students in working through and figuring stuff out.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:00:40

       Mm-hmm.

    3. PBPeter C. Brown1:00:41

       Um, and, uh, so th- that's o- one thought. Um, now I've lost the other one, so ...

    4. CWChris Williamson1:00:49

       (laughs)

    5. PBPeter C. Brown1:00:49

       ... we, we might just have to go ...

    6. CWChris Williamson1:00:51

       Well, I think, you know-

    7. PBPeter C. Brown1:00:51

       Where did you end up with your comment?

    8. CWChris Williamson1:00:53

       Uh-huh.

    9. PBPeter C. Brown1:00:53

       You said, uh ...

    10. CWChris Williamson1:00:54

        It was about, it was about CrossFit, and it was about, um, having a, a higher level of difficulty than you need. So you c- you're, it's train hard-

    11. PBPeter C. Brown1:01:00

        Oh. Yeah.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:01:00

        ... train hard, perform easy.

    13. PBPeter C. Brown1:01:04

        ... right. Yeah. I think, uh, I don't know. It's gone. I'm sorry, Chris.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:01:08

        That's okay. (laughs)

    15. PBPeter C. Brown1:01:09

        It'll come back. (laughs)

    16. CWChris Williamson1:01:10

        That's totally fine. We'll get it in a bit. Um, but no, I, I think you're totally right. I can definitely say, you know, I, I enjoyed my time at Newcastle University. But the course that I was doing, quite often we'd have 200 to 250 people in a lecture theater, and that was for a lot of the, a lot of the modules that I took.

    17. PBPeter C. Brown1:01:29

        Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:01:29

        And in terms of comprehension and that two-way communication with the person who is disseminating the course information, it was nonexistent. Like you can't, you can't ask questions-

    19. PBPeter C. Brown1:01:39

        Right.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:01:39

        ... of a room of 200 people. You can ba- I mean, they could barely-

    21. PBPeter C. Brown1:01:42

        Right.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:01:42

        ... barely keep us awake because it's such a big room-

    23. PBPeter C. Brown1:01:45

        Yeah.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:01:45

        ... and it's so unengaging, so on and so forth.

    25. PBPeter C. Brown1:01:48

        Right.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:01:48

        So yeah, the, the implications for teachers here are almost as wide as the implications are for students, right?

    27. PBPeter C. Brown1:01:54

        Right. I think that's right, and I think that the revelation for the teacher is, it's really about learning, it's not about teaching. This is about learning. This is about how you can help students become the learners, not you be the teacher. And, uh, uh, the, the, um... Oh, God. I had this other thought came and now it's gone back again.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:02:19

        (laughs) Totally fine.

    29. PBPeter C. Brown1:02:19

        It's just making me... Yeah, I don't know.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:02:21

        It's all this, it's all this talk of, it's all this talk of recall, it's ruining your capacity for recall. (laughs)
15. 1:05:05 – 1:09:17

    Institutional results and practical buy-in: orientation, experiments, and ‘trust the process’

    1. PBPeter C. Brown1:05:05

       Right.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:05:05

       Which I think, I think that's really interesting, are the, the implications for, for teachers and lecturers. I mean, you know, in, in an ideal world, every university course would probably start with two weeks on learning how to learn, right? And then... (laughs)

    3. PBPeter C. Brown1:05:17

       I, I think every incoming student at a university should have, uh, a course in that, uh, how learning works and, um, how to manage your time and, you know. I, I was in, uh, at, uh, Florida International University in Miami, uh, where they, uh, red make a stick and sat down at the law school, and they've completely restructured their, their orientation and their management of students through the two-year law school. And they've, um, around these principles, they've gone from typically fourth or fifth place in the bar exam in Florida as a school to, uh, placing first place five out of the last six exams.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:05:55

       Oh my God.

    5. PBPeter C. Brown1:05:56

       But it's by this conscious effort is when the students come in, let's talk about these principles and how they work and having experience with it. Uh, what, how I just was having correspondence with someone in Ecuador who was saying, "I would like to, uh, have a simple classroom experience." And, uh, my co-author, Mark McDaniel, said, "Well, they were, they're learning vocabulary." He said, "Well, here's what you could do. You could give them, uh, half the vocabulary in a sheet to memorize and you could give them the other half of the vocabulary in flash cards to learn and then have a test and see for themselves which ones they learn better."

    6. CWChris Williamson1:06:33

       Yeah. Yeah. I think-

    7. PBPeter C. Brown1:06:34

       And then, and they'll, you know...

    8. CWChris Williamson1:06:36

       I, I think that getting students to buy into the process is, is super, super important. That you're right, the, th- there's more difficulty going to be through this particular style of learning. It's going to feel, um, less immediately gratifying, right? Because you can't straightaway recall big chunks of concepts and you need to have faith, you need to trust the process. It's what we say about when, when we talk to powerlifting coaches and stuff like that, and some of the athletes aren't happy with where their lifts are at and they don't feel right and they say, "Look, just tru- trust the process."

    9. PBPeter C. Brown1:07:09

       Yes.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:07:09

        "Have faith, have faith in the fact that you have outsourced the specific..."... task of programming what is to be done and when to someone who knows what they're talking about-

    11. PBPeter C. Brown1:07:20

        Mm-hmm.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:07:20

        ... and it is your job to do what they say (laughs) , what they tell you-

    13. PBPeter C. Brown1:07:24

        Mm-hmm.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:07:24

        ... to do. And not-

    15. PBPeter C. Brown1:07:25

        Mm-hmm.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:07:25

        ... vice versa. You shouldn't be questioning it. Obviously, there needs to be a back and forth, as you've said, when, you know, you need to, at regular points, reassess where your, um, where your learning is at and how your learning's progressing, but stick to the program, I think.

    17. PBPeter C. Brown1:07:40

        Right. Not only stick to the program, but I think, uh, h- have, have two goals. One goal is to master the content or the skill, and the other is to learn how to be a, a, a superior learner, so that when you get out of whatever this program is, and you find something else you want to do, you know, you have the habits that will make you, um, highly effective at mastering that, and that will m- make you a competitor, uh, out in this crazy world, uh, it'll give you a great advantage.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:08:08

        For sure. I mean, it's a principle that's completely, uh, as we've said at the start, it's ubiquitous, right? If you can-

    19. PBPeter C. Brown1:08:14

        Yep.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:08:14

        ... if you can learn well, then the, it's the, the first domino has fallen on every-

    21. PBPeter C. Brown1:08:19

        Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:08:19

        ... single, everything. And that goes from-

    23. PBPeter C. Brown1:08:21

        Correct.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:08:21

        ... as you've, uh, you know, you've used a, a wide range from physical pursuits to intellectual pursuits-

    25. PBPeter C. Brown1:08:28

        Yep.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:08:28

        ... specialist, you know-

    27. PBPeter C. Brown1:08:29

        Mm-hmm.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:08:30

        ... it, it, it's, it's definitely, definitely something very crucial, I think. You know, I, I wish that I'd had a better comprehension of time management when I was at university and of how learning works and of the strategies that I could've implemented. I think had I have had that, it would've made my life a lot easier. I, by luck, managed to fall on at least one of the three (laughs) key concepts that you have put in here, and I genuinely think that's probably the majority of what's carried me through (laughs) , carried me through my university degree. So, you know, it's, it's fortunate that I stumbled upon that, kind of just through, uh, trial and error. But if people can implement all of these, I think they'll, they'll have a much easier and much, uh, much more comprehensive learning experience.

    29. PBPeter C. Brown1:09:12

        Well, I hope that some of your listeners, uh, tumble to it and give it a shot.

16. 1:09:17 – 1:11:36

    Wrap-up: where to find the book and final takeaways

    1. CWChris Williamson1:09:17

       I'm sure that they will. So can you-

    2. PBPeter C. Brown1:09:18

       Make it stick.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:09:19

       Make it stick, indeed. Can you tell the listeners where they can find you online?

    4. PBPeter C. Brown1:09:24

       Uh, well, there's a website, makeitstick.com. All one word, makeitstick.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:09:31

       Yep.

    6. PBPeter C. Brown1:09:32

       Uh, the book is Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. It's published by Harvard University Press. Uh, it's available, uh, on Amazon. It's being translated into 14 different languages, so, uh, if you have listeners who prefer to read it in a language other than English, uh, some of those are already out, and others will be out soon.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:09:52

       So some of your Italian friends can, uh, can pick up on it. (laughs)

    8. PBPeter C. Brown1:09:56

       (laughs) Now I gotta make them learn English. (laughs)

    9. CWChris Williamson1:09:58

       Yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah, exactly. A full sentence-

    10. PBPeter C. Brown1:10:00

        Of course, they already have it, but... (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson1:10:02

        That's, that's fantastic. Peter, I'll make sure that links to the book and to your website will be in the show notes below. So if anyone does want to get hold of the book, can highly recommend it, and they can grab that through the show notes in the links. I'm sure that we're going to become inundated with some questions and stuff like that, so if we do have something, I'll fire them over to you, and I'll be-

    12. PBPeter C. Brown1:10:25

        Sure.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:10:25

        ... able to answer those on future episodes as well. But I really appreciate your time. Uh, I think-

    14. PBPeter C. Brown1:10:29

        I appreciate yours, Chris. It has really been fun chatting with you.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:10:32

        It's been fantastic. I, I really do think that we'll have helped some people and reframed their, uh, their approach to learning, their, it, y- y- we keep coming back to it, but I do think that you can emphasize it enough, that the capacity, your understanding of how to learn is the fundamental case of what is going to restrict your ability to learn anything. Like it's-

    16. PBPeter C. Brown1:10:52

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:10:53

        And I think it, uh, I think it's a really fundamental task. And hopefully, as well, over the coming years, as you say, universities and institutions have started to latch onto the idea that this is important, and-

    18. PBPeter C. Brown1:11:05

        Right.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:11:05

        ... you know, if you can continue singing that song, then maybe, uh, maybe university won't be quite such a, a daunting and difficult task for some people in the future as well.

    20. PBPeter C. Brown1:11:14

        I think the wind will be at your back if you do.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:11:16

        That's the plan. Well, Peter, thank you very much again, and I appreciate-

    22. PBPeter C. Brown1:11:19

        Thank you very much, Chris.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:11:20

        Cheers.

    24. PBPeter C. Brown1:11:20

        All righty. Bye-bye.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:11:21

        Thank you very much. Bye-bye. (instrumental music)

Episode duration: 1:11:36