The PROBLEM with Active Recall and Spaced Repetition (Truth Behind Studying Smarter)

so this video is going to be a little

bit controversial not because i want to

be controversial but

it just is if you're

really into active recall and space

repetition and if those are the

techniques that you think work the best

then

you're probably

wrong

let me explain why for those of you that

don't know i'm dr justin sung i'm a

medical doctor but i'm also more

importantly a learning coach it's what i

do full-time i work with students

teaching them evidence-based studying

and time management skills

before i tell you why active recoil and

space repetition doesn't really work let

me tell you a really quick story about

how i came to discover this

okay so rewind like 10 years ago and i'm

trying to enter into medical school i'm

still in high school right now and i'm

doing relatively okay i'm getting a high

grade band i'm getting some scholarships

i'm doing reasonably well you know

people used to look at me as a smart kid

i go into university during this year i

just studied and studied and studied

like non-stop that's all i did and in

this first year of uni this is where i

really started getting into active

recoil and space repetition it was all

the hype monsters or the hype i had

thousands of flash cards and i would

study literally

every day

all day when i say all day i was only

getting like two or three hours of sleep

every night um it was very very bad and

i did that every single day every single

weekend uh for about nine to ten

consecutive months it was pretty brutal

um i was incredibly sleep deprived

obviously i was hallucinating even i

remember one time where i had been awake

for like i think i was awake for like 77

hours and i was probably studying like

70 of those hours i would study when i

was eating i would study while i was

brushing my teeth i would study in the

shower

my entire day was just filled with

studying uh obviously i was a little bit

obsessed

and i did end up getting very very good

grades um and i ended up getting into

medical school so what happened when i

entered into medical school well the

thing is the thing is that when you

enter into medical school right so

before getting in i was studying about

this much okay that year i essentially

memorized this whole textbook i'm

probably a little bit more for the other

subjects as well

but when i got into medical school i

realized that there was a a lot more

that i needed to learn and in fact the

content was about double i needed to

study about double so for those of you

that are pretty good at maths you'll

know that um you can't study more than

like if you're studying 20 hours a day

you can't study 40 hours a day no matter

how lingling you are and that was

obviously a problem because i just

entered into medical school and i didn't

want to

fail so i had to figure out a better way

to study so that's when i started

looking into effective study techniques

and what really got me was that i was

spending a lot of time doing my flash

cards and space repetition and active

recon all of that sort of stuff and it

wasn't really getting the type of

results that i wanted there were guys in

my class who

i

like never saw studying and they would

consistently outperform me in the in my

tests and exams it was pretty

frustrating so i looked into the

research and i started experimenting

with different ways that i could study

and i did this like a crazy person like

my life depended on it because my

livelihood did i didn't want to spend my

whole life just sitting in a library

wasting away and everything i learned i

taught to other students by the time i

finished my third year of uni i'd

already gotten a teaching certificate so

i'd learn a lot more about the theory

behind learning and how that works and

that allowed me to learn even more

deeply okay fast forward a few years i'd

actually built an entire business around

teaching students and one of the things

that i learned while i was teaching

other students was that there are some

techniques that will work as long as

you're already pretty good at studying

if you're not someone that is like very

uh good at what's called deep processing

um you know essentially someone that can

just pick up a new concept and learn it

really really quickly to begin with then

a lot of the techniques don't actually

work or it's not enough and so for for

me as essentially a learning

professional teaching others and getting

paid to help them learn to learn i had

to figure out a way to help students to

do well even if they weren't already you

know like a genius

and this is kind of where the story

begins because it's been 10 years and

i've learned a lot so

hear me out on this so the first thing

that i want to say is that i know that

what i'm going to say today goes in the

face of maybe everything that you've

heard from your friends or your teachers

or your parents or other people on

youtube i know and i get it when i teach

you

uh what i've learned it's gonna make

sense to you as well okay but there is a

lot to cover there's a lot of stuff i'm

gonna go through that you've probably

never heard before so uh

before we understand why active recoil

and space repetition doesn't work as

well as people hype it up to

we first need to understand a little bit

about

how learning actually works in the first

place because without knowing that we're

not going to understand where it works

and then where it fails and that's going

to be really important for you to look

at your own studying system and actually

start tweaking it if you don't know why

it works in the first place every time

you have an issue you are not going to

know how to problem solve and i think

that's very important to know so the

first thing i want to point out is that

studying

is not the same thing as learning and

this may be something that is really

obvious to you

but i found that a lot of students have

not ever thought about this is the fact

that studying is actually this process

that we are doing physically

right it could be the writing of notes

when we're um you know in class or

revising material it could be us

watching a video about something

right now you might be studying this

video as you're listening this is the

stuff we do out in the physical world uh

and the purpose of doing this

is so that we can get

learning occurring so the purpose of

studying is to produce

learning and learning is actually the

cognitive

process that occurs

and this is essentially when information

is connected into our brain and we can

say that we have learned successfully if

that knowledge is retained

and preferably we are actually able to

use it and apply this knowledge so

learning and studying are two separate

things so if you were to take a textbook

and then you would smash your face into

the textbook

you would not say that that is either

studying or learning but if you were to

smash your face into the textbook enough

times you will at the very least have

learned the name of the title of the

textbook as it comes into your face

repeatedly

that's not the best wording that i could

have used for that as it impacts your

face repeatedly

and so in this example we have actually

learned something so if your friend were

to say hey how are you going to study

for that test and you say oh you know

just the usual slamming the textbook

into my face then that would be your

studying technique i guess now that's an

extreme example well what about if you

were to open up the textbook and then

you were to touch the pages what if you

would have flicked the pages what if you

were to look at the pages while you were

flicking them what if you would have

read the words on the pages what if you

were to read slowly

what if you were to then read it and

then write something so you see how

changing different things about the

activity changes the amount of learning

that it engages so it shows that the

learning process is something that is

activated by the studying process and

not all studying processes activate the

same amount of learning so that means

that you can potentially spend 10 hours

studying using one technique and then

get only one hour of learning if your

technique is only let's say 10 efficient

now in reality it's really hard to put

these exact percentage numbers on it

because it's just really hard to measure

but you get the gist some techniques are

really efficient you can get a lot of

learning in your brain done using them

some techniques are less efficient and

broadly speaking we call the techniques

that are more effective at

learning active learning techniques and

there is a huge

range of active learning techniques that

we can use while we're studying so what

is it that is actually happening in our

brain when we say that this learning

thing is encoding okay so let me give

you a very quick dive into how our

memory actually works

there's this one model for our memory

that is called the multi-store

model of memory

and this can get pretty complicated but

long story short it says that there are

different places in our memory where the

information goes number one when we take

an information it comes in a sensory

information so this is the type of stuff

that we might be seeing with our eyes or

listening with our ears right now you're

receiving sensory information and this

goes into a part of our brain which is

called the sensory memory so that's

relatively straightforward now

information from your sensory memory is

forgotten very very quickly

because if you imagine holding on to

every piece of information that you are

bombarded with on a daily basis and

remembering all of that your brain would

just explode

imagine remembering every single

sensation that is on your skin every

license plate you see as you're walking

that would be incredibly overwhelming

but more importantly it's very energy

inefficient if we don't need that

information it's not going to keep it in

fact it's a life or death situation from

your body's point of view your brain

consumes already at rest around 20 of

your resting energy caloric intake per

day so what that means is that if it's

unnecessarily being super active holding

on to irrelevant information you will

literally die

so the point is that your brain is

really really efficient at forgetting

anything that is not relevant and not

necessary what happens after this is

that if you intend to keep this

information if you want to remember it

for longer then it shuts this

information into something that is

called the working memory now this is

also sometimes called the short term

memory but i like calling it the working

memory because it also talks about one

of its other functions which is that

when you have information that's in your

long-term memory and you want to use it

again it has to go through the work

working memory first so here's how this

works some of this information that

initially came in through sensory

pathways goes into our working memory

and then from our working memory goes

into our long term

memory here and this is a process that

we call encoding

now when we want to use this information

we have to retrieve it from our

long-term memory and this is a process

that's called retrieval so that means

that every time you are answering a test

question or an exam paper or someone

asks you a question about anything

what we're trying to do is we're trying

to collect it from our long-term memory

call it forth into our working memory

and that's where we can actually answer

or manipulate the information or do

something with it so i like thinking

about the working memory almost like a

hotel lobby

you can stay there for a short period of

time but you're going to get kicked out

if you don't have a room in the hotel

but to get in and out of this building

you need to pass through the lobby no

matter what so the working memory is

where you're going to be spending a lot

of your time when you're manipulating

the information but it's not a good

place to hold on to it because the

working memory will also forget

information relatively quickly in the

span of sort of seconds to minutes

now your long-term memory is a little

bit different your long-term memory will

forget things as well

but it will forget things much more

slowly it will forget things in the span

of hours to even months

and it depends on how strongly it was

encoded in this process here and that is

very very complicated i'm not going to

be able to get into it and we also don't

fully know exactly all the things that

that involves but we do know a few

things due to extensive research in this

field and one of those things is that

encoding and retrieval are both very

very important you can't just encode

because then your brain doesn't know how

to retrieve it properly to actually

answer the questions but also you can't

retrieve

what you don't encode you can't pour

from an empty bucket if you don't fill

it in the first place or if your bucket

has holes then when you need to pour

stuff out of it nothing's going to come

out so there are two sides of the same

coin and students often don't think much

about the encoding process and that's

because of another thing that we know

about encoding which is the fact that

encoding uses

a lot of what we call

cognitive

load and cognitive load is in short the

brain power

necessary to do the encoding process

encoding does not happen without

sufficient cognitive load now cognitive

load is also something that is actually

pretty complicated and a lot of places

teach it wrong i've even advised at

schools where their own school

curriculum taught cognitive load

incorrectly but again the long story

short here is that your brain has a

certain amount of load that it can kind

of tolerate and this is something that

can actually be trained so if you aren't

able to tolerate a lot of this brain

power and a lot of this load then you

can actually train that which i will

talk about in other videos but

essentially what happens is that when

the load increases

your learning actually

increases as well

up to a certain point so what happens is

if this red line is talking about the

amount of cognitive load that you've got

on your brain and this green line is

talking about the amount of learning

that's occurring aka the amount of

encoding that is incurring then what we

see is that the amount of learning is

really low at low levels of cognitive

load and it goes up as the load goes up

to a certain extent once it reaches that

threshold

it actually starts to plateau and go

down so if we've got too much load then

we're overwhelmed and we're not learning

effectively but if we don't have enough

we're actually just fundamentally not

encoding it at all and all of the

techniques that result in very low

cognitive load and therefore very low

encoding and therefore very low learning

and therefore making you forget the same

thing that you studied 20 times very

very quickly

these are all called passive learning

and the thing is that this is something

that happens in your brain you can use

the same technique such as reading a

book but if you're thinking about it

differently you could get a lot of

learning out of it or you might be

completely passive so it's hard to tell

based on just looking at someone

studying or seeing what technique

they're using how much cognitive load is

actually going on inside their brain and

research is strongly supportive that the

relationship between cognitive load and

encoding and how good your memory and

retention is is very strongly associated

with the amount of load so the more load

the better to a certain point so what

does this cognitive load actually feel

like when you're studying cognitive load

feels

confusing it feels like you're already

trying to figure this out you might have

a little bit of cognitive load right now

thinking what is he talking about where

is this going how does that fit in how

do i apply that to my life how does that

how is it similar or different to what

else i know these questions this

confusion this is cognitive load and

this is a sign that your brain is

engaging high efficiency learning

pathways which means that if you're

studying and this isn't happening in

your brain

you're not getting that cognitive load

and another thing that we know is that

when this is happening in your brain

it's directly opposed to feeling

bored or or drowsy so if you've ever

been studying and you just find it so

boring and tedious and you're getting

sleepy and every time you start studying

you fall asleep that's what used to

happen to me all the time in fact i

probably got more sleep while i just

took naps while i was studying than i

did in my bed well if that's happening

then that is a sign that your studying

technique is actually not very efficient

because it means that you're not using

the right types of pathways in your

brain because if you were you actually

wouldn't feel that and there is studies

that's done on the electrical activity

of the brain that shows the different

waves and so right here this is one of

the main reasons why

techniques about encoding and this stuff

is not really talked about and you may

have never heard of this before

is because of the fact that learning

correct and coding is difficult it's not

just difficult in that there are a lot

of steps and there's a very specific

pathway to allow you to do correct

encoding in my course where i work with

students intimately

it takes

months to build up someone's encoding to

a very very significant degree but it is

in essence

forcing yourself to become

smarter when your encoding goes up you

are

faster at studying you can just

understand concepts faster you can just

hold on to the information for longer

you don't need to revise it all the time

your confidence goes up and you just

start enjoying the studying process a

lot more but that takes a lot of effort

and you have to be very willing and

ready to accept the discomfort that

comes with this encoding process and in

fact

this whole idea that it's difficult and

it's uncomfortable

this is actually called

desirable difficulty and not many

students are willing to go through that

discomfort in order to learn the skills

much like how if you were to go to the

gym you're only getting an effective

workout if your muscles are feeling

pretty tired same thing here is that

your brain is only really being used

effectively if it has that level of

discomfort and cognitive load so on the

flip side that actually means that

retrieval techniques are easier to learn

and this is where active recall and

space repetition come in they're very

easy techniques to learn pretty much

anyone can pick it up it doesn't have

any real learning curve you can hear

about it and then 10 15 minutes later

pretty much just do it straight away and

there is going to be a benefit so

we're getting there we're gonna

understand now why it doesn't really

work beyond a certain point because the

reason active recall and space

repetition works in the first place is

by adjusting and working on this

forgetting curve

now the forgetting curve is a very

popular well-known

concept and it basically says that the

first time that you learn something if

this is time on the x-axis here and this

is the amount of knowledge that you have

in your head stored able to be recalled

on the y-axis the first time you learn

something you actually forget this

information

relatively quickly

now if you were to then revise this

information again let's say a few hours

later then you would then forget it a

little bit more slowly and so every time

you repeat this information you're going

to forget it slower and slower and

slower until this

curve starts plateauing so you can see

that the slope of this here is you know

pretty steep whereas over here it's not

so steep which indicates that we are

forgetting information a lot slower over

here than over here where we're

forgetting a lot of information very

quickly now research will say that after

one week of learning a fact

with your without doing any other type

of retrieval in between you can actually

forget around 60 percent of this

information 50 to 60 of it so that

effectively means that half of all the

studying that you did completely just

went to waste after just one week and to

be honest a lot of students are not

revising stuff at the end of every week

to begin with either so it's actually in

reality going to be a lot more of an

issue than this because you essentially

just study everything throughout the

year and then before your exams it's

like you're just studying it from fresh

you've forgotten everything and i'm sure

some of you can relate to that so what

active recoil and space repetition is

doing is it's actually moving you along

this forgetting curve so instead of

being on this line where the rate of

decay and that is the technical word for

this the rate of decay is

very very quick we're getting to this

slope here so we are moving and

progressing along each slope so that our

rate of knowledge decay is a lot slower

which is obviously a good thing and this

is why it works this is why space

repetition

will work for you

if you're not

doing it at all if you're already not

doing any type of retrieval if you're

not doing any type of repetition

and revision then it will help you it

will work but the thing is

it has

diminishing

returns in fact very rapidly

diminishing returns so for those of you

that aren't familiar the idea of

diminishing returns is that something

can be really good at the beginning but

then it's not so good later on so let's

say for example you need to organize

your room because it's a mess and you

can't find anything anywhere and every

time you're trying to find a sock it

takes you 30 minutes then it might take

you an hour to clean up and organize

your room a little bit and after an hour

sure it's not completely organized and

it's not the best it could possibly be

but now you can find your sock in just

30 seconds or less so there's been a

huge improvement

but now if you were to go and try to

organize it even more if you were to try

to get it perfect maybe right now it's

80 90 there but to go that extra 10

maybe now what you're gonna have to do

is organize all your books in

alphabetical order and then organize all

your socks by different colors and

fabrics and that might take you another

three or four hours and at the end of

the day it might only help you find your

sock faster by like five more seconds so

that's what diminishing returns would be

in that first hour of organizing we get

huge and rapid gains but then it's

slower and the gains that we're getting

for the amount of effort that we're

putting in is just not quite there so

the reason that active recall and space

repetition are so evidence-based is that

the research strongly shows that

students that don't use active recall

and space repetition do worse than the

students that do use it and that is

completely true you're going from a

situation that is bad

to

better but

from better there's a very big

difference between better and really

good or best so if you're a student

that's not aiming to go from failing to

just passing or doing relatively well

but you're actually a student that's

already doing relatively good but you

want to be excellent then you're going

to find that using active recoil and

space repetition if you're not using it

already will help you

but it's going to be very difficult to

get to those very top marks and so again

when you look at the research there

isn't really strong evidence to say that

for people that are already achieving

pretty well that doing more active

recall in space repetition helps them in

fact some research says it's the

opposite it actually makes it worse and

that's because of the fact that active

wrinkle in space repetition is

inherently

very repetitive in fact that's kind of

the whole reason it works is that it's

repetitive and you're always fighting

the forgetting curve

your brain is constantly trying to

forget this information and you are

forcibly putting it back in there saying

don't forget it don't forget it don't

forget it but you have to do that for

everything that you're learning and that

will stack up when you look at all the

different subjects that you're taking

all the different facts and all the

different concepts

you're gonna have to

repeat the same thing three four or five

times to keep it in your brain which

means that you have to do three four

five times the amount of studying and

revision to keep it in your brain

if you imagine that the first time you

learned something you could encode it

100

highest quality and you just don't

forget it for like six months then you

would probably find that it's really

easy to study for your exams because you

don't ever need to revise the

information now that

isn't possible but we can get a lot

closer to that than most students

realize in fact more than even most

teachers will realize and so this

experience of just repeating information

and maybe doing your flashcards over and

over again and constantly trying to use

space repetition and study things but

then still not getting the results that

you want this is probably a very

familiar experience to people and

actually a lot of the students that are

using space repetition active recall

based systems will find that it's not

actually working as well as it seems

like it should be working it's not

giving them the results that they've

kind of been promised that they expect

it to get it can be extremely monotonous

and incredibly tedious very very time

consuming and in fact actually pretty

demoralizing if you're not getting the

results so in fact what some of the

research will show is that if you were

to look at all the different people that

are using a technique that involves

space repetition or active recall like

active recall based space repetition

algorithm anki flash card you actually

find the majority of the people that use

that technique don't do well so what

that means is that it's actually a

really common technique that a lot of

people are using and only some people

are going to do well and those people

that will do well using that technique

probably already have a pretty good

inherent ability to encode now if you

want not one of those people that

already came into things with a high

level of encoding then you're going to

find that active record space repetition

might actually make your life harder

because you're having to spend so much

of your time just repeating and

relearning the same stuff that you

forgot and that's not necessary like i

said before you can actually train this

process you can train your brain to

become smarter you can train your brain

to encode information

more efficiently the first time you

learn it and this is because of

something called neuroplasticity

which essentially says that your brain

is the ability to remode and adapt and

become better and learn new things so if

you're not someone that is previously

really like book smart and academic and

you're not someone that's usually really

good at picking up concepts really

quickly you can actually train that and

you can not just train it a little bit

but you can completely just like

absolutely

massively shift to the point where some

of my students in the past have actually

had interviews with their teachers

because the teachers didn't understand

how they were suddenly doing so well

just think about that for a second i do

this day in day out for thousands of

students all across the world so it's

very very consistent i haven't really

ever encountered a single student that

couldn't be trained to do this literally

ever over the last

almost 10 years of me teaching this okay

but the purpose of this video is not to

pitch my course so if you're interested

and you want to just have like that

proof that hey this actually works it's

not just like some random theory that

this dude on youtube is talking out of

like just random thin air this is stuff

that's like real

life cemented an actual practice i've

got real students real data that shows

the stuff in fact i'm gearing up to

publish it in journals

then you can learn more about that but

anyway to summarize what we have said

right now is that your brain tends to

forget stuff very efficiently if it's

not encoded into your long-term memory

encoding takes cognitive load that's

confusing that's

uncomfortable but if you learn the

techniques to navigate that then what

happens is that your forgetting curve

actually just starts becoming a lot

flatter to begin with which means that

you just don't need to revise it so

often you can

cancel out some of those revisions and

that means that because you're just

fundamentally forgetting stuff a lot

slower you just don't need to revise as

much and it's just a huge time save

so at this point you may be thinking two

things number one well justin then how

do you do all this amazing encoding

magical super silver bullet technique

well

i will have other videos talking about

that because this video is already

getting pretty long and it's necessary

to explain why the whole active recoil

space repetition

like cult

is not as hyped up as

it really is in real life but because

again the encoding techniques are not

easy it's not something i can just smash

out through like a one minute tick tock

there's

really a lot of explanation that goes

into it so i will be having a lot of

other videos talking about encoding

techniques and going through

demonstrations and examples and work

throughs and all of that sort of stuff

to just prove

to you that it does actually work it's

not just you know me making stuff up but

the other thing that you may be thinking

or doubting is well justin if this is as

good as you say it is and this is like

the third eye of studying waking up

then

why have i not heard of this before why

does everyone else on youtube say that

active recall and space repetition are

god level tech i've actually i literally

saw a study guru say active recoil and

space repetition was a god level

technique i was vomited in my mouth why

is everyone else saying that there's a

few reasons and there's actually even

some studies done around why people

believe studying related myths and one

of those things is because of something

called the dunning-kruger effect and it

looks a little bit like this this is the

dunning-kruger graph and what you can

see here is that there is knowledge on

the x-axis and confidence on the y-axis

so when you don't know anything your

confidence is really low well zero

because you know you know nothing but

when you learn a little bit about

something compared to nothing that's a

lot more so your confidence

grows much much higher you become much

more confident in this thing and then

when you learn more and more and more

you realize actually man there's more to

this than i thought uh and then as you

just commit your life towards learning

this 10 20 years later you truly become

an expert and your confidence grows

again because you legitimately know a

lot so there's only two points in which

the confidence is really high and that

is after you've spent decades learning

about this or you've only learned a

little bit and you just don't know what

you don't know and this is the case just

objectively like it's just the fact i

don't want this to be insulting

really don't like i don't want this

video to have as much backlash as i

suspect it will have

but a lot of the study youtubers out

there

don't know a lot about how learning

actually

works or what goes on in the brain

it's a lot of that is just they've

watched other youtube videos and they

have tried a few things and they i don't

know got into medical school or law

school or something and they sort of

said hey it works let me make a youtube

video about it and so

learning is actually really really

complicated because i did all of that i

did well and then i used techniques and

then i got good grades and i got into

medical school and i graduated i became

a doctor i even did this whole business

thing on the side while i was doing that

all that stuff and

i realized the more i learned the less i

knew

really i had overestimated how much i

knew 10 years ago learning is

legitimately

really

really complicated to the point where

just one of those concepts that i've

talked about today i've actually done

whole like five hour workshops on just

one of those concepts and that it's it's

still just barely scratching the surface

for a lot of students active recoil and

space repetition of some of the first

techniques that they learn about

studying before that it's like turn your

phone off don't

listen to your favorite song while

you're studying don't study inside your

bed covers you know stuff like that just

simple tips and tricks of just straight

up don't do that that's a terrible idea

type of advice an active record space

repetition are often some of the first

actual techniques that someone will

learn and it's a good first technique to

learn because it's easy to use and it

does again produce benefit if you're not

doing it already but again statistically

speaking there's more people that use

that technique and don't do well than

people that use that technique and do

well and this leads me to the second

reason why you don't hear about it so

much which is success bias now the story

behind success bias says that there were

these planes in world war ii or

something that came back after their

raids and they found that the wings had

the most amount of bullet holes in them

so the military said okay well we should

put less armor around the cockpit area

because obviously that place is not

getting shot as much and then a military

statistician said no that would be a

terrible idea

the only reason that our planes that

we're seeing have more bullet holes on

the wings is because

all the planes that got shot in the

middle

never returned they all died

so when's the last time you saw a

youtube video

from someone talking about how they

failed and that's the thing is that when

you don't do well you're not super keen

on telling the world about it you're a

lot less likely to make a big youtube

video or grow a channel about

failing to use a technique so you don't

hear a lot of the stories of people

using these techniques and not doing

well

i on the other hand as someone that is

actually employed as a coach to help

students that tried to use techniques

and didn't work i get to see how many

times people are following this advice

and it's not producing those results the

number of times that students will use

techniques like active recoil and space

repetition and not do well is

overwhelmingly

more common than the students that will

use it and then do well and even for the

students that do well they usually come

back one or two years later when they're

later in uni or the content is more

difficult or there's just more to know

and they're saying it's no longer

sustainable because they're just

spending way too much time

or there's just too much content and

they're just not able to keep on top of

it they're falling behind and they're

not able to finish all of their flash

cards or however else they're using it

so because we're only seeing the success

stories we're led to believe that it's

more useful and more effective than it

actually is which leads me to the third

bias which is something called

availability bias and what this says is

that we will judge how legit something

is based on how commonly we encounter it

so if we encounter a bunch of different

people saying hey vaccines are dangerous

we will believe that vaccines are

dangerous the same can be said of

climate change the same can be said

about

flat earthers and the same can be said

about active recall and space repetition

because so many videos and so many

people are talking about it because of

the fact that it's easy because of the

fact it's popular because of the fact of

success bias

because of the fact that this encoding

related stuff is just not as easy to

explain in a very short youtube video as

you can see from this unnecessarily long

youtube video probably you are led to

believe that it's more legit and it's

not your fault it's just the way that

our brain is wired it's just the

biological tendency of the human brain

is that when something is more available

we think it is more legitimate and this

has been studied across all different

fields including you know politics and

science belief and all of this stuff if

we see it more we think it's more legit

and it creates this spiral we get people

that are learning this from these common

and popular videos they think it's legit

they try it the ones that are successful

feel really confident they make a

youtube video about it and that becomes

even more common so it produces this

sort of spiral of really confident

people learning something from

common knowledge then just kind of

making it more and more and more and

more common and now it just it seems

like that's kind of the only way to do

things but that's actually very

demoralizing because if that truly is

the best study technique there is and

you've tried it and you're not getting

the result that you want then does that

mean you're not able to achieve your

academic goals does that mean you're too

dumb does it mean that you're just not

going to be able to do it but that's not

the case that's not the case so again

i'm not saying the active record space

repetition are bad it's a good part of

your studying system

but

if that is the only thing that you're

relying on and you're not actually

building good encoding techniques then

you're essentially just trying to refill

a bucket with a hole in it obviously the

best step is to patch that hole to begin

with now most students really

underestimate their potential if you're

already good at encoding

the chances are that you can actually

improve that even more

usually significantly some of the

students that are coming into my course

are already getting let's say 90 or in a

test or an exam or more

they are increasing their study

efficiency by two to three times they're

studying only 50 30 or 50

of how much they used to study

beforehand and getting the same grades

i've got students that are going from

getting like failing their papers c's

and d's to getting the top marks in

their entire cohort and yes it's not

easy

no it's not just hey plug in this

technique and you can just solve all

your problems it evaporates and you know

you become you know like a yoda of

studying it's not like that they are

working hard and they're developing

these skills just like you'd have to

work hard and develop the skills to play

a musical instrument or to play a sport

really well same thing is that when you

really train yourself to use certain

studying techniques you can actually

kind of unlock your brain's potential

which is a super

cliche thing to say and it makes me

cringe a little bit to say it but it's

kind of true so i would say for those of

you that are feeling super confident

about

your study skills right now because you

feel like you already know all the

techniques and you know how to use them

approach things with an open mind um

you never know maybe if you were to

study this field for another 20 years

you might realize that there's more to

it than you realize it's possible it's

just it's possible i'm not saying that's

the case you could be an absolute just

genius but

it's possible right it's just it's

possible like it's worth having an open

mind about right that's all i'm saying

or if you're someone that is in the

situation where you've tried a lot of

study techniques and hasn't worked for

you and you're feeling demorally deep

the more

demotive no demoralized

and you're feeling like it's hopeless

and you don't know whether you can do it

or you don't think a career is right for

you because you think you're too dumb or

it's not within your capacity and other

study techniques you've tried it and

tried it and tried it and none of it has

worked before then this video is really

for you and i'm here to say that you can

do it you can train yourself to be

better and

you will have to work hard but you're

probably willing to work hard if you

know what's going to get you the results

so

for you i'd say actually have some hope

it may be that you've just tried really

hard at the wrong thing if you want to

learn more about this then consider

subscribing anyway if you learned

something new from this video if you

found it insightful i'd appreciate if

you leave a like helps with the

algorithm all of that sort of stuff i'd

really be interested for you to leave a

comment about the things that you want

me to clarify if there's something that

you disagree with let's have a

conversation about this like to mature

people not saying you suck this is just

bs

uh but actually saying hey can you

clarify on this point because there's a

lot of explanation and it is pretty deep

and complex and i wasn't able to cover

everything so if you've got questions

check them down below and let's have a

respectful discussion about it and

again if you're having this like if

you're one of the people that's really

really into active recall and space

repetition and all the other youtubers

that you know preach that sort of stuff

look that's

up to you it's all good you can

do whatever you want that's cool you

know that's fine we don't have to

we don't have to fight about it right we

can just be

open-minded and uh if anyone is

interested in the real sort of hardcore

research and theoretical basis for this

sort of stuff then again leave a comment

i'm in the middle of currently writing

up a full report of the research but

based on the comments from my previous

videos i've learned that most people

don't care about the research at all so

i'm not putting too much of it in this

video you can check the link for that as

well and as i said before if you're

interested in learning sort of

step-by-step of exactly how to do this

encoding process how to match that with

retrieval techniques how to blend it all

together into a seamless study system

how to remove your procrastination all

of that sort of stuff got a full course

you can check the link in the

description to just learn a little bit

more about it see if it's right for you

anyway thanks for giving me your

attention for this very long video i

hope you learned something new and i'll

catch in the next one