The Learning Styles Myth: Why Matching Your Style Doesn’t Work
Preferences are real, but matching teaching to your learning style doesn’t help you learn more. What studies show, why it feels true, and what to do instead.
Interleaving: Why Mixing Up Practice Often Beats Repetition
Mixing related problem types often beats practising one type at a time, especially for telling similar things apart. What the research shows, and its limits.
The Memory Palace: How the Method of Loci Actually Works
Placing images along a familiar route beats rehearsal for remembering lists in order. How the memory palace works, the evidence, and its limits.
Active Recall: Why Testing Yourself Beats Rereading (And How to Do It)
Testing yourself beats rereading by a medium effect across hundreds of studies. What active recall is, the evidence, its limits, and how to do it.
The Forgetting Curve: Why Memories Fade and How to Slow It
Forgetting is fastest soon after learning, then slows. What the forgetting curve shows, why rereading barely helps, and how to slow it down.
How to Improve Memory Naturally: What the Evidence Supports
The best ways to improve memory are free: test yourself, space your reviews and protect sleep. Here is what the evidence supports, and what it doesn’t.
Nootropics for Memory: Which Supplements Have Evidence?
Seven memory supplements ranked by what their human trials show. Bacopa leads with a small effect; several popular choices are not established.
Sleep and Memory Consolidation: Why Sleep Is Non-Negotiable for Learning
Sleep is not recovery after learning — it is the completion of learning. N3 slow-wave sleep consolidates declarative facts via hippocampal sharp-wave ripple replay. REM sleep integrates new memories with existing knowledge and generates insight. The final two hours of sleep are peak REM. A 6-hour night removes these hours disproportionately. Stickgold documented 40 percent recall improvement from adequate versus poor sleep on identical learning protocols. The most important study decision is not what you learn — it is what follows the learning session.
Working Memory: How It Works and How to Improve It
Working memory holds about four things at once. Here is what overloads it, which habits help, and what the evidence says on apps and supplements.
Spaced Repetition: The Science, and How to Actually Use It
Spacing reviews out beats cramming across hundreds of experiments. How spaced repetition works, choosing gaps, making good cards and picking an app.
