Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens

So, to recap: The more you learn, practice, and sleep, the more you grow new dendritic spines and synaptic links. Stronger links plus more links. Wow! What a powerful learning structure!

By focusing on information. Ever forgotten a name right after you heard it? You weren’t focusing. If the octopus is asleep, it can’t grab the information.*

Maybe grab your Pomodoro timer. Tell yourself: This is important— I need to focus!

Nelson Dellis’s five memory tips are: Focus on what you’re trying to remember. Practice remembering. Turn what you are trying to remember into a picture. Store the picture by connecting it to things you already know. Use active recall to make the idea stick.

recall the details well. There’s also less time to connect your new idea to other ideas.

Interleave. Don’t just keep practicing with slight changes in the same basic technique. Switch back and forth between different techniques. This will allow you to see when to use a technique. Books usually don’t help you interleave. You will have to practice skipping back and forth between the ideas in different chapters yourself.

Exercise helps new neurons grow.

People often think that the best way to take notes is to type them out. After all, it can be faster to type than to write by hand. And the notes are neater.

Get feedback from teachers wherever you can to correct yourself. The key is to actively practice or bring to life whatever you are learning yourself.

Next, see if you can work the problem again, without looking at the solution. And again. Do this over several days.