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Key points
- A lifetime of learning is good for our health and well-being.
- Learning can be uncomfortable as our brains change to remember, process, and apply new information.
- Retrieval practice can help us source key information when we need it.
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Last year, I started working on a new project in a writing workshop.
Each week, I’d sit in the session, actively listening, taking notes, and studying the lessons long after we finished for the night.
But when I sat down at the keyboard to install the lessons I’d learned in my own work, it was awful. The work I mean. The sentences were mechanical. The character’s actions, contrived. The voice, stilted. The story, predictable, slow, and drab.
The distance between what I was learning and what I was actually doing was Grand Canyon–wide. Not only was the writing bad, but it also felt bad.
I was doing my best. My best was utter crap. And that was so, er, icky. Frustrating. Painful.
Until one day. About nine months into it, I sat down at the computer to work, and it was all there—the strong voice, interesting characters, compelling tension, and rhythmic pacing. The story began to show up with just the kind of impact and flow I'd been working to create. The writing began to work.
Not because I’d memorized the lessons from those long workshop nights, but because I’d learned them through teaching, study, and practice. The months that felt so hard and icky changed the neurons in my brain until I could use what I was learning.
Learning literally changes the way we think.
Learning and Remembering
Memory allows us to index and retrieve information. Learning allows us to apply it. And that’s good for us, I tell my daughter who is a couple of days away from starting her senior year in high school and her first class in human anatomy.
Learning at every stage of our lives boosts our confidence, enhances well-being, and sparks creativity. Studies, led by Miya Narushima and others, show that continuous learning can also aid cognition and improve life satisfaction.
But, it also poses challenges and causes discomfort as our brains grapple with new material, knowledge, and habits to form new neuropathways aiding in our growth. Anything new also exposes us to failure and self-doubt as we figure out how to apply and integrate the new ideas into our lives.
Trying a new recipe or cooking style puts us at risk for a bitter meal. Learning to throw pots may mean the collapse of the bowl. Studying a new language, attending a writer’s workshop, or taking a job outside of the sector we’ve worked in for years can be daunting, opening us to a world we don't know yet, outside of our comfort zone. It can also be exhilarating and expansive.
When I finally was able to apply what I'd learned in my fiction writing workshop to the piece I was working on, I felt energized and capable. It's exciting when we finally get it.
Information Retrieval
But, it doesn’t matter what information we memorize, or even what we know if we can’t access it—retrieve it—and apply it to our experience. All the Spanish learned in high school, for example, doesn't matter a bit if we can't use it to find a bathroom in Argentina or a hospital in Spain.
This is where retrieval practice helps. I’ve read about this process before, but experienced the benefits in a big way while in the writer’s workshop. And, I’ve seen my daughter learning this way in school.
Here’s how it works:
You read something, hear a lecture, take in some information you want to learn and apply.
Later, after some time has passed, you retrieve the info from your memory. Not while looking at your notes, or rewatching the video, but by reflecting on what you learned and then retrieving it from your memory. When you can recall the pieces you already know, without reliance on the source material, you embed it in your brain for easier recall later.
Of course, this retrieval approach takes practice. But, for me, it has proven so much more effective for recalling and applying the information I read in books, or hear in workshops.
Not only do I remember what I learned, but I also absorbed the material in a way that allowed me to apply it in all kinds of ways. It helped the knowledge become practical, and that is satisfying and exciting.
For school-age students, learning experts suggest using practice tests, short quizzes, and even flashcards to first prompt students to recall the information they learned earlier in the lesson without looking at notes.
It’s the pulling out of the information—the unaided retrieval step—that seems to support learning.
Once you’ve retrieved the information, go ahead and check your notes, rewatch the lecture, read over the book passage again, and look at the materials to clarify anything you didn't understand or recall. In the end, this approach helps ideas stick.
So, next time a question comes to mind, take a minute to reflect on what you know and recall what you can about a topic before you fire up Google or turn to the book. Practice retrieving the information you may already have and you’re more likely to fire up learning and collect information that you can put to use.
