Spread the same time over several days; do not finish it in one sitting
UpdatedGrade ABig benefitTimeFreeLittle timeSome willpower
The same time, spread over several days, sticks better than finishing in one sitting. There is also a practical rule: the longer you need to remember something, the longer the review gap should be. The farther the exam, the longer the gap, but research gives no universal number of days.
- Cost
- No money, and total time stays the same. What changes is only the schedule: the same 3 hours, split into 1 hour on each of three days. The hard part is starting several days ahead and not leaving it to the last night.
- Benefit
- A meta-analysis that pooled 184 papers, 317 experiments, and 839 evaluations of spaced practice. It compared two things: studying straight through versus studying in several sessions (the spacing effect), and short gaps versus long gaps (the lag effect). The conclusion is that review gap and "how long you need to remember" jointly set retention on the final test: the longer you need to hold the material, the longer the review gap that gives the best retention. Another review that rated ten common learning methods one by one put spaced practice in the highest band (high utility).
- Notes
- Best used stacked with item 14 (close the book and self-test): spread the self-tests themselves over several days. Much of the material in Cepeda's meta-analysis is word-list memory and the like; no universal best gap in days is given for complex content. "The farther the exam, the longer the gap" is the rule in the original; there is no concrete calendar. The problem with cramming the night before is not that it is useless on the spot, but that you forget fast.
Sources · 2
- Cepeda NJ, Pashler H, Vul E, Wixted JT, Rohrer D (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
- Dunlosky J, Rawson KA, Marsh EJ, Nathan MJ, Willingham DT (2013). Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266