How to learn faster: waste less of the time you already spend
Most advice on learning faster is about doing more. The research points somewhere else: the methods most people use are slow, and a few uncomfortable ones do far more with the same hours.
To learn faster, stop spending time on methods that only feel productive (rereading, highlighting, cramming) and put it into the ones that work: test yourself instead of reviewing, spread your sessions over days, mix different kinds of problems, and check every answer. These feel harder and slower while you do them, but in study after study they leave you knowing more for the same hours.
Day 14, the test: the self-tester remembers far more.
An illustration, not data from one study.
Both people in that animation put in the same four sessions. One of them ends the week feeling ready, because the material looks familiar. The other ends it feeling shakier, because they spent the week finding out what they couldn't remember. A week later, the order flips. That is most of what "learning faster" means in practice: getting more out of each hour, not cramming more hours in.
Why the methods that feel fast are slow
When you reread a page, it gets easier to read. The words look familiar, nothing surprises you, and that smoothness feels like knowing. Psychologists call it fluency, and it is a poor guide to what you will remember next week.
Most people still go by that feeling. In a 2009 survey of 177 college students, 84% said they reread their notes or textbook when studying, and 55% said rereading was their number one strategy. Only 11% said they practiced recalling the material, and 1% ranked it first.
The feeling is wrong in a consistent direction. In Roediger and Karpicke's experiment, students who read a passage four times did better than students who read it once and recalled it three times, if the test came five minutes later (83% against 71%). A week later the self-testers were far ahead, 61% against 40%, even though the rereaders had read the passage about 14 times and the self-testers about 3.
So the first rule of learning faster is to stop trusting how easy studying feels. Easy usually means you are reviewing something you already know. A little struggle means you are working on the part you don't.
The ranked list: twelve methods and their evidence
The main reference here is a 2013 review led by John Dunlosky, in which five learning scientists rated ten popular study techniques as high, moderate or low utility, based on how well the benefits held up across learners, materials and kinds of test. Where a method wasn't in that review, the label says so and names the research I relied on.
Do these
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1
Test yourself (retrieval practice)
Close the book and pull the ideas out of your head: answer questions, write what you remember on a blank page, explain it out loud. Each successful recall makes the memory easier to find next time, and each failure shows you exactly what to look at again. More on the how in our guide to active recall.
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2
Spread your sessions out (spacing)
The gap should grow with how long you want to remember: in a study of more than 1,350 people, the best gap between two sessions was about 20 to 40% of the time until the test when the test was a week away, and about 5 to 10% when it was a year away. In plain terms: for next week, review in a day or two; for next year, review again in about a month. Our spaced repetition guide and schedule calculator give exact dates.
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3
Check every answer (feedback)
Testing yourself without checking can lock in a wrong answer. In one study, students who got feedback after a multiple-choice quiz, right away or later, remembered more correct answers and repeated fewer of the wrong options than students who got none.
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4
Mix problem types (interleaving)
Instead of ten problems of one type, then ten of the next, shuffle them. In a small study by Doug Rohrer and Kelli Taylor, students learned to find the volume of four unfamiliar shapes. Those who practiced in blocks scored 89% during practice against 60% for those who mixed. A week later, on the test, the mixers scored 63% and the blockers 20%. Mixing forces you to work out which method fits each problem, which is the skill the test (and real life) asks for.
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5
Explain it in your own words (self-explanation)
As you learn, say how the new idea connects to what you already know, or explain each step of a worked solution to yourself. Where you start waving your hands is where you don't understand it yet. The Feynman technique is a structured version of this.
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6
Ask "why is this true?" (elaborative interrogation)
For each fact, generate an explanation of why it holds. "Interest rates went up, so mortgages slowed" becomes "why would higher rates slow mortgages?" The answer ties the fact to things you know, which gives you more ways to find it later.
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7
Try before you're told (generation)
Guess the answer, attempt the problem or predict what a chapter will say before you read the explanation. Even wrong guesses help: in experiments, people who tried and failed to answer a question before seeing the answer learned it better than people who simply studied it.
Popular, but weak
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8
Rereading
One careful read is necessary. The second and third mostly make the page feel familiar.
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9
Highlighting and underlining
Highlighting is easy, which is the problem: picking a sentence takes little thought, and later you reread the colored parts.
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10
Cramming
Massed study can get you through a test in the morning, and that is why it survives. What you crammed fades quickly, so you pay again to relearn it.
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11
Speed reading
A large review of the reading research found a trade-off between speed and accuracy: doubling or tripling your speed, from around 250 to 500 or 750 words a minute, without losing understanding is unlikely.
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12
Studying to your "learning style"
The idea that visual learners should get pictures and auditory learners should get audio sounds sensible. A 2008 review looked for experiments that could actually show it and found virtually none, and several that contradicted it. Pick the format that suits the material instead.
Stop doing, start doing
You don't need to add study time. Swap the habit on the left for the one on the right and keep the hours you already spend.
| Stop doing | Start doing |
|---|---|
| Rereading your notes or the chapter | Closing it and writing what you remember, then checking |
| Highlighting as your main notes | Writing a question in the margin for each idea |
| One long session before you need it | Short sessions on three or four different days |
| Ten problems of one type, then the next type | Mixed sets, including older material |
| Practicing without checking | Checking every answer against the source |
| Reading the solution, then nodding along | Trying first, even if you get it wrong |
Not sure which swaps matter most for you? Answer six questions about how you study now and you'll get the two that would help most. Nothing you choose leaves your browser.
A 7-day plan for learning a new topic faster
This assumes 30 to 60 minutes a day and works for a book, a course, a new tool at work or a subject you want to understand. Scale it up or down; the order is what matters.
- Day 1Map it, then guess
Skim the contents or syllabus. Write ten questions you expect to be able to answer by the end, and try to answer them now. Then learn the first chunk. After each section, close it and write three lines from memory.
- Day 2Blank page first
Before anything new, spend five minutes writing everything you remember from day 1. Check it, and mark the gaps. Then learn the next chunk the same way.
- Day 3Use it, mixed
Do problems, examples or small tasks that mix days 1 and 2. Try each one before looking anything up, and check every answer.
- Day 4Explain it
Explain the topic so far to someone, or write it as if you were. Ask "why?" at each step. Every place you get vague goes on a list, and you go back to the source for those only.
- Day 5New chunk, old questions
Learn the next part. End with your day 1 questions, answered from memory. Notice how many you can now answer.
- Day 6Mixed test
Everything so far, shuffled, no notes. Check it. The misses are your review list, and nothing else is.
- Day 7Do something real
Apply it: a short write-up, a small project, a real conversation. Then put reviews in your calendar for a few days, a week and about three weeks from now.
For a skill, such as a language, an instrument or a piece of software, the same plan works: try before the tutorial, get feedback as fast as you can, and rotate between sub-skills within a session.
What won't make you faster
- Time on task still counts. Better methods waste less of your time; they don't remove the need for it. Hard topics take weeks, not hours.
- What you already know matters. New ideas attach to old ones. If a topic feels impossible, learning a simpler version first is often the fastest route.
- Most of the research is on students. The big effects come from lab and classroom studies with texts, word lists and math problems. They have held up widely, but your mileage on, say, piano will depend on good feedback too.
If your problem is less "learn faster" and more "it's all gone a month later", read why you forget what you read and the forgetting curve. For memorizing specific facts, see the best way to memorize.
Where Prismo fits
I make Prismo, so take this with that in mind. Look at the 7-day plan again: the two steps people drop first are writing the questions on day 1 and putting the reviews in a calendar on day 7.
Prismo does those two steps. Say you just read this page and dictate one line: "A week later, the students who tested themselves remembered 61% and the rereaders 40%." Prismo pulls out the idea, files it under a topic, and writes questions from it in five formats, like this one:
A week after studying, which students remembered more of the passage?
- The ones who read it four times
- The ones who read it once and recalled it three times
- Both remembered about the same
Comes back in 3 days, then a week later.
Each question comes back on a schedule set by your answers: right answers wait longer, misses come back sooner. You check every answer as you go, so the feedback from method 3 is built in. It works the same for books, audiobooks, podcasts and courses. It won't do the practice part of a skill for you, and you don't need it for anything on this page: a notebook, a calendar and the plan above will get you most of the way.
Sources
- Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58.
- Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255.
- Karpicke, J. D., Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2009). Metacognitive strategies in student learning: Do students practise retrieval when they study on their own? Memory, 17(4), 471–479.
- Cepeda, N. J., Vul, E., Rohrer, D., Wixted, J. T., & Pashler, H. (2008). Spacing effects in learning: A temporal ridgeline of optimal retention. Psychological Science, 19(11), 1095–1102.
- Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). Feedback enhances the positive effects and reduces the negative effects of multiple-choice testing. Memory & Cognition, 36(3), 604–616.
- Rohrer, D., & Taylor, K. (2007). The shuffling of mathematics problems improves learning. Instructional Science, 35, 481–498.
- Kornell, N., Hays, M. J., & Bjork, R. A. (2009). Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35(4), 989–998.
- Richland, L. E., Kornell, N., & Kao, L. S. (2009). The pretesting effect: Do unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 15(3), 243–257.
- Rayner, K., Schotter, E. R., Masson, M. E. J., Potter, M. C., & Treiman, R. (2016). So much to read, so little time: How do we read, and can speed reading help? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(1), 4–34.
- Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105–119.
