Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

Your brain is always changing. As you’re reading right now, your brain is rearranging itself to process the information you’re taking in so you can understand and retain it. In The Brain That Changes Itself, psychoanalyst and best-selling author Norman Doidge uses case studies and centuries of research to provide a thorough but understandable explanation of the concept of neuroplasticity—the phenomenon of the changing brain.

In our guide, we’ll examine the development of the concept of neuroplasticity, how the brain changes itself in response to stimuli, how this impacts our functioning, and how we can use it to our advantage—as well as how it can sometimes work against us. We’ll also examine more recent research into the topic, plus how new technologies and treatments are using neuroplasticity to improve outcomes for people with neurological diseases and brain damage.

Although people spend their entire lives learning, most of them are doing it wrong. Strategies like rereading and drilling a skill over and over to commit it to memory take a lot of time and ultimately don’t work.

Make It Stick teaches you the strategies that help you achieve the two primary goals of learning: To understand and remember what you learn so you can use your knowledge in future situations. In this summary, learn how a little forgetting helps you remember, and why you’re not a good judge of how much you know.

In Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett sheds light on the inner workings of the brain and how they impact feelings, behaviors, and relationships. While providing an entertaining peek behind the curtain, she argues that by understanding the basics of how your brain works, you can take a more active role in deciding how to think and behave.

Barrett’s book is a collection of eight informal essays—one for each lesson. Our guide explores those lessons through four themes: how the brain is organized, how the brain operates, how the brain develops, and how brains collaborate. Along the way, we compare Barrett’s explanations of the brain to those of other experts in neurology and offer practical applications for the insights she shares.

Although people spend their entire lives learning, most of them are doing it wrong. Strategies like rereading and drilling a skill over and over to commit it to memory take a lot of time and ultimately don’t work.

Make It Stick teaches you the strategies that help you achieve the two primary goals of learning: To understand and remember what you learn so you can use your knowledge in future situations. In this summary, learn how a little forgetting helps you remember, and why you’re not a good judge of how much you know.

Whether you’re in school, starting a job, exploring a new hobby, or keeping up with an ever-changing workplace, the need to keep learning is a basic fact of life. However, you may have self-defeating attitudes that stop you from achieving everything you can. Thankfully, research shows that you can learn anything you want at any point in life. More than that, it’s now widely established that learning itself is a skill that can be learned.

In Shortform's Master Guide, we’ll draw from the work of 13 educational experts to lay out how to master the skill of learning. This begins by adopting a healthy mindset, adapting your schedule to facilitate mental focus, and making the best use of educational tools such as memorization, comprehension, learning from mistakes, and self-testing. We’ll also use illustrative examples to show how the principles of learning can be put into practice.

Our brains are uniquely complex information processors, yet most people know little about how they work. In Brain Rules, John Medina writes that when we understand how our brains have evolved, we can use their natural impulses and tendencies to our advantage, improving our thinking and learning in all aspects of our lives.

John Medina is a molecular biologist who focuses on psychiatric disorders. Medina wrote this book in order to help the general public understand in a simple, accessible way how brains work and how the functions of the brain affect how we interact with the world. In this guide, we discuss the 12 rules he’s identified that summarize the brain’s core functions, abilities, and limitations. We also offer ways to apply Medina’s principles in your daily life and discuss scientific and cultural ideas related to his brain rules.

Although people spend their entire lives learning, most of them are doing it wrong. Strategies like rereading and drilling a skill over and over to commit it to memory take a lot of time and ultimately don’t work.

Make It Stick teaches you the strategies that help you achieve the two primary goals of learning: To understand and remember what you learn so you can use your knowledge in future situations. In this summary, learn how a little forgetting helps you remember, and why you’re not a good judge of how much you know.

Our brains are uniquely complex information processors, yet most people know little about how they work. In Brain Rules, John Medina writes that when we understand how our brains have evolved, we can use their natural impulses and tendencies to our advantage, improving our thinking and learning in all aspects of our lives.

John Medina is a molecular biologist who focuses on psychiatric disorders. Medina wrote this book in order to help the general public understand in a simple, accessible way how brains work and how the functions of the brain affect how we interact with the world. In this guide, we discuss the 12 rules he’s identified that summarize the brain’s core functions, abilities, and limitations. We also offer ways to apply Medina’s principles in your daily life and discuss scientific and cultural ideas related to his brain rules.

According to Barbara Oakley, anyone can master any subject by applying good study techniques. You don’t have to be gifted or have natural abilities in a particular subject to excel at it. And Oakley should know: She failed math in high school, but later overcame her fear of numbers and eventually earned a doctorate degree in engineering.

In this book, Oakley and co-author Terrence Sejnowski explain study tactics that you can use to excel in whatever you’re learning. To make them immediately applicable, we’ve organized this guide as a list of actionable study tips, and we’ve cross-referenced the authors’ advice with other sources, such as Why We Sleep, which discusses the importance of sleep to learning, and the work of psychologist Edward de Bono, who advises on how to alternate between modes of thinking to get the most out of your learning.