No Limits: The Art and Science of High Performance

by Mukesh Bansal

McDaniel, Roediger and Brown, authors of Make it Stick, a highly influential book on the science of learning, offer an interesting three-stage theory of learning: ‘Encoding’, the first stage, is the conversion of perceptions into meaningful patterns in the brain. This is the equivalent of drawing rough sketches in the brain, giving you an initial hazy silhouette of what you are trying to learn. For example, the first time you learn about Newton’s Laws of Motion at school or from a book, your brain converts the words and facts that you’re listening to or reading into a basic mental framework of understanding. At this stage, the learning is still in your short-term memory and unless you follow up with the next two stages, it won’t last. The second stage, ‘Consolidation’, can be likened to the process of tidying up the notes you scribbled during class—typing them up neatly in a document, adding examples and charts for clarity. At this stage, the brain strengthens the rough mental representations by building connections with prior knowledge or rearranging the patterns to make sense of them. This process requires active concentration and effort, much like the process of deliberate practice. The patterns get deeply assimilated in the brain while we sleep, and hence, there is a high correlation between learning efficiency and quality of sleep. The third and final stage is ‘Retrieval’, in which we access the learnt information using cues that help us recall it. This means not just...