Make It Stick Quotes

“Two Systems of Knowing In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman describes our two analytic systems. What he calls System 1 (or the automatic system) is unconscious, intuitive, and immediate. It draws on our senses and memories to size up a situation in the blink of an eye. It’s the running back dodging tackles in his dash for the end zone. It’s the Minneapolis cop, walking up to a driver he’s pulled over on a chilly day, taking evasive action even before he’s fully aware that his eye has seen a bead of sweat run down the driver’s temple.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“When practice conditions are varied or retrieval is interleaved with the practice of other material, we increase our abilities of discrimination and induction and the versatility with which we can apply the learning in new settings at a later date. Interleaving and variation build new connections, expanding and more firmly entrenching knowledge in memory and increasing the number of cues for retrieval. Trying to come up with an answer rather than having it presented to you, or trying to solve a problem before being shown the solution, leads to better learning and longer retention of the correct answer or solution, even when your attempted response is wrong, so long as corrective feedback is provided.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“The stories we create to understand ourselves become the narratives of our lives, explaining the accidents and choices that have brought us where we are: what I'm good at, what I care about most, and where I'm headed.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“One of the most striking research findings is the power of active retrieval—testing—to strengthen memory, and that the more effortful the retrieval, the stronger the benefit. Think flight simulator versus PowerPoint lecture. Think quiz versus rereading. The act of retrieving learning from memory has two profound benefits. One, it tells you what you know and don’t know, and therefore where to focus further study to improve the areas where you’re weak. Two, recalling what you have learned causes your brain to reconsolidate the memory, which strengthens its connections to what you already know and makes it easier for you to recall in the future.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“Mastery in any field, from cooking to chess to brain surgery, is a gradual accretion of knowledge, conceptual understanding, judgment, and skill. These are the fruits of variety in the practice of new skills, and of striving, reflection, and mental rehearsal.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“The truth is that we’re all hardwired to make errors in judgment. Good judgment is a skill one must acquire, becoming an astute observer of one’s own thinking and performance. We start at a disadvantage for several reasons. One is that when we’re incompetent, we tend to overestimate our competence and see little reason to change. Another is that, as humans, we are readily misled by illusions, cognitive biases, and the stories we construct to explain the world around us and our place within it. To become more competent, or even expert, we must learn to recognize competence when we see it in others, become more accurate judges of what we ourselves know and don’t know, adopt learning strategies that get results, and find objective ways to track our progress.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“Pay attention to the cues you’re using to judge what you have learned. Whether something feels familiar or fluent is not always a reliable indicator of learning. Neither is your level of ease in retrieving a fact or a phrase on a quiz shortly after encountering it in a lecture or text. (Ease of retrieval after a delay, however, is a good indicator of learning.) Far better is to create a mental model of the material that integrates the various ideas across a text, connects them to
what you already know, and enables you to draw inferences.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“Rereading text and massed practice of a skill or new knowledge are by far the preferred study strategies of learners of all stripes, but they’re also among the least productive.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“At a minimum, Larsen would like to see something done to interrupt the forgetting: give a quiz at the end of a conference and follow it with spaced retrieval practice. “Make quizzing a standard part of the culture and the curriculum. You just know every week you’re going to get in your email your ten questions that you need to work through.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“Making mistakes and correcting them builds the bridges to advanced learning.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“Putting new knowledge into a larger context helps learning. For example, the more of the unfolding story of history you know, the more of it you can learn. And the more ways you give that story meaning, say by connecting it to your understanding of human ambition and the untidiness of fate, the better the story stays with you.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“you practice elaboration, there’s no known limit to how much you can learn. Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know. The more you can explain about the way your new learning relates to your prior knowledge, the stronger your grasp of the new learning will be, and the more connections you create that will help you remember it later.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“In virtually all areas of learning, you build better mastery when you use testing as a tool to identify and bring up your areas of weakness.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“Periodic practice arrests forgetting, strengthens retrieval routes, and is essential for hanging onto the knowledge you want to gain.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“Knowledge, skills, and experiences that are vivid and hold significance, and those that are periodically practiced, stay with us.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“two of the primary learning principles in the book: spaced repetition of key ideas, and the interleaving of different but related topics.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“To become more competent, or even expert, we must learn to recognize competence when we see it in others, become more accurate judges of what we ourselves know and don’t know, adopt learning strategies that get results, and find objective ways to track our progress.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“Dynamic testing has three steps. Step 1: a test of some kind—perhaps an experience or a paper exam—shows me where I come up short in knowledge or a skill. Step 2: I dedicate myself to becoming more competent, using reflection, practice, spacing, and the other techniques of effective learning. Step 3: I test myself again, paying attention to what works better now but also, and especially, to where I still need more work.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“In the school of life experience, setbacks show us where we need to do better. We can steer clear of similar challenges in the future, or we can redouble our efforts to master them, broadening our capacities and expertise.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“But scientists call this heightened performance during the acquisition phase of a skill “momentary strength” and distinguish it from “underlying habit strength.” The very techniques that build habit strength, like spacing, interleaving, and variation, slow visible acquisition and fail to deliver the improvement during practice that helps to motivate and reinforce our efforts.12”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“Effortful retrieval makes for stronger learning and retention.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“Those who were frequently tested reached the end of the semester on top of the material and did not need to cram for exams. How”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“We make the effort because the effort itself extends the boundaries of our abilities.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“By massed practice we mean the single-minded, rapid-fire repetition of something you’re trying to burn into memory, the “practice-practice-practice” of conventional wisdom. Cramming for exams is an example. Rereading and massed practice give rise to feelings of fluency that are taken to be signs of mastery, but for true mastery or durability these strategies are largely a waste of time.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“For success everything must go right, but by contrast, failure can be attributed to any number of external causes”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“An apt analogy for how the brain consolidates new learning may be the experience of composing an essay. The first draft is rangy, imprecise. You discover what you want to say by trying to write it. After a couple of revisions you have sharpened the piece and cut away some of the extraneous points. You put it aside to let it ferment. When you pick it up again a day or two later, what you want to say has become clearer in your mind. Perhaps you now perceive that there are three main points you are making. You connect them to examples and supporting information familiar to your audience. You rearrange and draw together the elements of your argument to make it more effective and elegant.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“It’s one thing to feel confident of your knowledge; it’s something else to demonstrate mastery. Testing is not only a powerful learning strategy, it is a potent reality check on the accuracy of your own judgment of what you know how to do. When confidence is based on repeated performance, demonstrated through testing that simulates real-world conditions, you can lean into it.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“This presumption by the professor that her students will readily follow something complex that appears fundamental in her own mind is a metacognitive error, a misjudgment of the matchup between what she knows and what her students know.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning