Learn Like a Pro: Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything

If you use the Pomodoro method to study new material, it’s also wise to spend at least some minutes of the Pomodoro looking away from what you’re studying and trying to recall what you have just learned

procedural system learns by developing a feel for patterns.

Try to recall the key points from a book, article, or paper. Look away and see if you can recall the key idea or ideas.

If you’re studying at a university level and are overwhelmed with text, you can do the same. Ask your instructor, or students who took the course last year, for advice on which readings to consider mandatory, highly recommended, or supplementary. In college, for example, books often cover far more than your course does, so identifying the key chapt

the end of a timed test, there won’t be time for your diffuse mode to do any background processing.

players interleaved the different skills during their practice, randomly practicing forehand, backhand, and volley skills, players ultimately did better in competition.

In other words, you want to see if you can pull information from your own memory, or work with it in your own mind, rather than simply looking at the material. The more you retrieve the material, and the broader the set of contexts you retrieve the materials in, the stronger and more broadly connected the neural links become.3

Make your own practice test.

Formulate your own questions about the material.

Find ways to re-explain key ideas from your notes or textbook in simpler terms, as if you’re explaining them to a child.