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Ali Abdaal - Effective Study Techniques
Ali Abdaal - Effective Study Techniques
In a rapidly evolving world with abundant information, those who can learn
rapidly will have a huge advantage over those who cannot. And yet, none
of us are ever taught how to do it. Most of us rely on ‘intuitive’ techniques
such as re-reading, note taking, highlighting, summarising and highlighting
to scrape through our exams. But, as the growing body academic research
shows, these techniques are, for the most part, ineffectual. Thankfully,
there is an emerging class of ‘study youtubers’ who disseminate
high-quality, evidence-based study techniques that they have used to excel
in school. Chief among these is Ali Abdaal, a junior doctor and prolific
content creator, whose youtube channel has grown from zero to almost
600k subscribers over the last three years. I recently completed his
Skillshare course on how to study effectively and couldn’t recommend it
highly enough. This article is a selection of my key takeaways from the
course but is by no means exhaustive so if you find this content interesting,
you can take the course here.
Ali breaks learning process down into three areas to be mastered: (1) how
to understand content using techniques like the Feynman Method, Active
Recall and various note-taking strategies, (2) how to remember material
with Spaced Repetition, Interleaving and various memory techniques, and
(3) how to maintain focus while studying, from developing the motivation
and discipline to do the work, to taking appropriate breaks and maintaining
a healthy work-life balance.
Understanding is the first and most important step in learning new material.
Without a solid mental model of how the chunks you are learning fit
together, it will be harder to retain them. To this end, there are a number of
techniques Ali prescribes to aid understanding.
Ali uses this technique when reading through new material- pausing
periodically to ask himself: “Does this Make sense? Could I explain it to a
five year old or a friend that doesn’t study medicine?”
This technique forces you to drill down to the essence of he material and
express it in its simplest form- revealing any gaps in your understanding.
Note Taking
"The very feature that makes laptop note-taking so appealing -- the ability
to take notes more quickly - was what undermined learning," - educational
psychologist Kenneth Kiewra.
Handwritten notes are, of course, harder to store and search through than
their digital counterparts. To get around this, Ali advises scanning your
notes onto One Note or, if you have an iPad Pro, using Notability to write
notes by hand with the Apple Pen.
Note Taking MethodsAs to methods there may be a million and then some,
but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully
select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles is
sure to have trouble”- Harrington Emerson
This method was created by Scott H. Young, most famous for his
completion of the MIT Challenge in which he got through the entire MIT
Computer Science
Undergraduate Degree in just one year. The point of this system is to learn
as much as possible while you are sitting in class. As you take your notes,
your goal is to create an original document that represents your mental
image of the subject, not to record verbatim what your professor or online
instructor said.
Flow-Based Note-Taking
If your professor, as most professors do, allows you to download the slides
before class it can be useful to print them off or download them to Notability
and write extra notes on the slides as they go through the material.
5. The Zettelkasten Method
Fleeting notes are quick, informal notes on any thought or idea that pops
into your mind. They don’t need to be highly organised, and in fact
shouldn’t be. They are not meant to capture an idea in full detail, but serve
more as reminders of what is in your head.
Take notes on anything you don’t want to forget or think you’ll use later in
your writing or thinking. Ahrens offers four guidelines in creating literature
notes:
Permanent notes are the third type of note, and make up the long-term
knowledge that give this method its value. This step starts with looking
through the first two kinds of notes that you’ve created: fleeting notes and
literature notes. Ahrens recommends doing this about once a day, before
you completely forget what they contain. As you go through them, think
about how they relate to your research, current thinking, or interests. In
Ahrens’ words:
This approach is most helpful for crafting essays rather than learning new
material but is so powerful that I felt compelled to include it here.
Thankfully, in the years since Luhmann’s death, new tools have been
invented that are much better suited to this system than his old slip box.
Roam Research, with its focus on bi-directional links, is best suited to the
zettelkasten system.
Remembering
Understanding alone is, of course, not sufficient. Just because you see it or
even understand it, doesn't mean that you've actually internalised it. You
can’t just consume content and expect to master it, much like you can’t eat
your way to winning a Michelin Star. Only by testing your self on and finding
practical applications for the knowledge you’re learning will you create the
neural patterns that underlie true mastery. Ali provides the following
techniques that we can use to go from understanding something to
uploading it into our long term memory:
1. Spaced Repetition
This will be old news to those well versed in the science of learning. More
interesting is the power of using spaced repetition within the same study
session. A 2011 study involving four groups of students who were tasked
with trying to learn words in Swahili found that recalling information even
within the same session had dramatic benefits. In the study, one group only
studied the words once and unsurprisingly didn’t produce impressive
results. The second group, who saw each word once and then had to recall
a word once before being tested, outperformed the first. The third group,
who recalled the same words multiple times, produced similar results to
Group 2.
However, most interestingly, the final group, who saw each word, recalled
it, then had a gap of a few more words before recalling the first word again
(in other words, they spaced their recall), remembered almost 80% of the
words they’d been given.
The students in the last two groups were doing exactly the same work – the
only difference being that the fourth group’s recall was spaced out
compared to groups 2 and 3. This study not only emphasises the power of
active recall but also provides firm evidence of the power of spaced
repetition and how we only need to restructure our revision slightly to obtain
a substantial improvement in our ability to remember and recall information.
This can easily be adopted into our studying. For instance, let’s say you
studied Topic 1 and Topic 2 one morning and planned to move to Topic 3
and Topic 4 in the afternoon. The results from this study demonstrate that
you should go back to Topic 1 and write down – through active recall –
what you can remember before moving onto Topic 3. You would then
repeat this for Topic 2 after having studied Topic 3 and so forth.
In essence, spaced repetition over days and weeks as well as reviewing
content on the same day, can both be extremely helpful for improving our
learning.
Again, there are many methods for applying this principle for effective
studying. What follows are some of the most effective:
Anki Flashcards
Anki has a spaced repetition algorithm built into it. This algorithm is so
effective that, if you use it consistently for a long period of time, anything
that’s uploaded to Anki should gradually be uploaded to your brain.
Unfortunately, Anki has a rather steep learning curve, which means that
simply recommending it is not enough – some introduction is necessary.
So, to get started with Anki:
6. Explore Anki app as needed! It has a ton of features and you’re going to
be overwhelmed by it all the time at first. Don’t despair, learn slowly, and
remember to look at Anki’s manual when needed.
- Only make a flashcard for something if you absolutely have to. ie. for
something that’s proving difficult to memorise.
- Anki works best if you use it consistently throughout the year and is not
suited to short-term cramming. If your exams are fast approaching, the
Google Sheet Flashcard Method may be more effective.
2. Active Recall
We should avoid, at all costs, any illusions of competence. There are many
ways in which we can make ourselves feel like we have “learned” a
concept. For example, looking at a solution and thinking that you know how
to arrive at that solution. Highlighting or underlining are other techniques
that often lead to this illusion of learning.
“Rereading and massed practice give rise to feelings of fluency that are
taken to be signs of mastery, but for true mastery or durability these
strategies are largely a waste of time.” - Peter Brown, Henry Roediger,
Mark McDaniel, authors of Make it Stick
Indeed, the most effective techniques feel the least productive. They create
a sense of dis-fluency.
In order to avoid or break through illusions of competence, you should test
yourself as you’re encountering new material. Recall is a simple example of
this mini-testing. It’s not important that you pass these tests without making
any mistakes but mistakes (and correcting those mistakes) are an
important step towards solidifying your learning.
3. Interleaving
4. Memory Hacks
Humans are not very good at remembering abstract things and ideas, but
are much better at remembering images. It can, therefore, be useful to link
abstract information with more tangible things and vivid images that we can
remember more easily. The following are some of Ali’s favourite techniques
for doing this:
Mnemonics
The peg system gets its power from the phonetic alphabet. This is an
organisation of the consonants in the English language such that they are
paired with the 10 digits in the Arabic numeral system.
1 = T, D
2=N
3=M
4=R
5=L
9 = P, B
Why double up the letters? The reason for this is that these consonants are
grouped by how they are made with the mouth. T is similar to D, except it is
produced with more force. The “ch” sound in chug, isn't too different from
the J sound in jug. P and B are made with almost the same mouth position
as well. Having multiple consonants (especially ones that are produced
similarly) paired to the digits makes it easier to use the peg method, as it
gives you more options when forming words.
To remember which letter goes with which number, Lorayne provides the
following suggestions:
The next step is to convert all of your consonants to words. You'll notice
that there are no vowels in the system (nor the consonants Y, W, H or Th)
this is because these sounds have no value in the phonetic alphabet and
can be ignored. Therefore you can use them to create different words
CAME – CaMe = 73
KIM – KiM = 73
COME – CoMe = 73
Once you have words, you can then form these in memory by using the
chain method which works by forming bizarre mental images between two
different concepts
Focus
”Motivation is a Myth”
When you have a gun to your head, there’s pretty much nothing you won’t
do. If you were offered a million euros to do your homework, you would do
it gladly. In the first case, the punishment for not doing the thing is so great
that you’re forced to comply. In the second, the outcome is so pleasurable
that you’ll happily do the work. These are the psychological levers we can
pull to hack our motivation.
To make studying more pleasant, Ali uses classical music, fancy coffees
and pretty looking highlighters. Anything that makes the experience more
enjoyable for you is worth doing as it will increase the likelihood of you
sitting down to do the work.
On the other side of the equation, we can turn human loss aversion to our
advantage to increase the consequences for failing to make good on our
commitments. Ali gives his housemate £1,000 and tells her she can keep it
if he skips the gym without good reason. This can also be done via
websites like Beeminder where you agree to pay them if you flake out on
your habits.
Procrastination
It’s important to remember that even high-achieving students like Ali feel
the urge to procrastinate. We all do. The difference between students like
Ali and the rest of us is that he gives in to it less.
We should also note that the pain of doing a task is in the anticipation of it
and not in the the task itself. In other words, once you actually summon the
activation energy to get stated and do the work it becomes enjoyable. In
the words of Barbara Oakley:
There are a number of things we can do to summon this energy. The most
famous being the Pomodoro technique which involves working in 25 minute
intervals with 5 minute breaks. This may not be long enough for some, but
it’s a good way to get started studying for the day as 25 minutes is not so
daunting that it will prevent you from getting started. Once you have a few
of these under your belt, you’ll be in the flow and will be able to do longer
sessions of uninterrupted study. To quote Isaac Newton: “An object at rest
stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion.”
Once you’re doing the work, your primary challenge will be to avoid
distractions. There is a lot of low hanging fruit here that, if eliminated, can
profoundly impact your productivity. It’s easier to change your environment
than to rely on willpower. Try to create friction for bad habits and reduce
friction for good ones. For example, while studying you should leave your
phone outside the room and put it on airplane mode. On your phone, you
should bury apps that you’re prone to procrastinate on deep in a folder of
apps that you rarely use. To reduce the friction around exercise, get a
standing desk.
These techniques are based on a study done by Eric Johnson and Daniel
Goldstein of Columbia University and London Business school on the
impact of your environment on your behaviour. The researchers collected
data from 11 countries in Europe showing the percentage of people in each
country who had selected to be an organ donor. The following chart shows
the differences in organ donors by country.
What could account for such a drastic difference? Are the people in
Denmark just more selfish than the people in Sweden? As it turns out, the
people in Denmark aren’t more selfish than the people in Sweden. The
difference in donation rates was due to the type of form that each country
sent out. The countries with low rates of organ donors sent out a form that
said, “If you want to be an organ donor, check here.” In other words, the
form required people to opt–in. Those with high rates sent out a form
saying, “If you don’t want to be an organ donor, check here.” so action was
required to opt-out. The researchers summarised the impact of the
environment design by saying, “In most cases, the majority of people
choose the default option to which they were assigned.” In other
words, most of us respond the same way to the cues that surround us. If
you are sent a form that asks you to make a tough decision, you will
probably go with the default option. If you keep your phone on your desk,
you will probably pick it up. If you keep social media browser tabs open,
you will probably click on them. Design your environment to eliminate this
study kryptonite.
Work-Life Balance
As important as exams may seem, most of them won’t matter in the grand
scheme of things and performing well in them should never come at the
expense of our physical and mental health. To guard against this, Ali has a
dedicated workspace in his home and work free zones where he can go to
switch off. This is an effective exercise in work-life separation. Another
option is that of work-life integration which involves things like doing
flashcards with friends or listening to podcasts about the exam material as
you go for walks. This is an easy way of “getting in the reps” without
pushing yourself too hard.
Conclusion
To recap, to study effectively you need to first understand the material and
then upload it to your long term memory by testing yourself at increasing
intervals. Memory techniques such as mnemonics, the peg system and the
mind palace can be used to make your study even more effective. Finally,
to do all of this you will need to work deeply and avoid distractions which
you can achieve by remembering that discipline is superior to motivation,
hacking your motivation if needs be and optimising your environment.
I hope you enjoyed this summary and wish you all the best on your learning
journey.
Thanks for reading,
Will