> Many things. I think HN is a bit of a bubble here, but you'll find a lot of people prefer something enjoyable but slower to something efficient and faster, even if they won't admit it.

This is so well known that it was covered extensively in the book Make It Stick[1], that you might as well call it the "student fallacy." (And they might have; ironically, I've forgotten if they do or not!)

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learnin...

The "Make it Stick" book https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learnin... cites many many studies in this arena if you're interested.

I read Make It Stick [0] recently, and it seems to agree on almost everything on the science side that the top answer here brings up, if anyone is interested. It discusses many of the mentioned themes (spaced repetition vs. "blocking", mixed practice, testing effect, desirable difficulty) in more detail.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learnin...

> Should I be re-reading/re-listening to certain chapters? Keep notes and refer back to them often?

No - simply re-reading your notes or the original text is not optimal and can give you a false sense of progress.

It's important that your repetition involves active recall - that is, you must close the textbook/notebook and try to recall the key definitions and ideas. Only then should you open your notebook and compare your current knowledge with the original information. If there are large gaps in your knowledge, schedule the next review soon otherwise leave it longer.

I've found it's quite painful to sit and force my mind to grasp onto ideas which are just out of reach, especially when the information is just a click away, but it leads to much better retention of important knowledge.

A great book on this subject is Making It Stick: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learnin...

This article is untethered from the mammoth amounts of research that's been done specifically on how people learn. The answer to this question doesn't lie in anecdotes about various professors' "philosophy", in fact that kind of approach is a huge barrier to actually improving the learning that occurs on college campuses. This is an opinion article, so I understand it's not thorough reporting, but the author should familiarize herself with the literature.

A book like https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learnin... is accessible and provides a good survey of what we know about how the brain learns and remembers things, and how it relates to existing practices.

Any books or other resources you recommend to learn these things? On learning to learn I have enjoyed A Mind for Numbers[1] by Barbra Oakley with Coursera course[2], Make it Stick[3] by Peter C. Brown, and How We Learn[4] by Benedict Carey.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Numbers-Science-Flunked-Algebra/...

2. https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/

3. https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learnin...

4. https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Learn-Surprising-Happens-ebook...

There's a great book called 'Making It Stick' which details effective, proven methods to improve memorisation and learning. Spaced repition (or more generally active recall) is one of those major methods.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learnin...

The science underpinning the idea of learning, memory, recall and is based/described in neuroscience at at cellular level. So you can read papers. The coursework is really at a more abstracted level describing the processes as a model based on cited research. This is a high level course to improve learning, not STEM as such. Still very useful.

Chunking is described in more detail at Week2 https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/home/we... and books:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1101982853/ref=as_li_qf_sp...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544456238/ref=as_li_qf_sp...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743277465/ref=as_li_qf_sp...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674729013/ref=as_li_qf_sp...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1579220541/ref=as_li_qf_sp...

If somebody prefer a book instead, one of the recommended books for this course is book [1] Make it stick: The science of successful learning. The book is written by several cognitive scientist and it contains many useful tricks about learning. Here you can find a short summary containing main ideas of the book [2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learnin...

[2] http://dmacjam.github.io/books/2016/10/01/make-it-stick/

I just read the audiobook version of this: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learnin...

It's pretty good.

The main idea is that learning is supposed to feel hard. That sense of frustration and confusion is what building new neural connections feels like.

I think this is called varied practice and that the idea has been around for awhile. The book Make It Stick[1] discusses a study that had 8 year olds toss beanbags at a target. For one group, the distance to the target was varied. For another, the distance to the target was fixed. At a later time, both groups were tested and the group that practiced with a variable distance performed better than the fixed distance group.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674729013

Don't be depressed. This is normal. All memories are subject to gradual decay. The best way to prevent this decay is by reviewing and testing yourself on the material you want to remember. Unless one reviews or uses specific knowledge regularly, corresponding memories will fade on courses taken, books read, bugs fixed, technologies or languages learned, code that's been understood (read) or written, etc.

If you only spent a few weeks working on that new project, then you probably didn't spend near the amount of time Bill Gates spent writing, thinking about, and reviewing his Altair BASIC code. Even though he whipped up his code in less than a month or two prior to the first MITS demo, he likely spent weeks or months after that demo modifying and polishing the BASIC interpreter for subsequent releases. You didn't mention your experience level, but Gates' years of prior programming experience likely benefited him as well, providing him with a nice cognitive framework to which lots of these facts could "stick."

One additional thing: when Gates says he still knows the source code for Altair BASIC by heart, it probably doesn't mean "completely, line-by-line" by heart. I'm guessing it means he still remembers some snippets by heart, or that he believes he could re-write it from scratch from memory (which would still be exceedingly impressive).

Some useful resources on memory and learning:

Memory and Learning: Myths and Facts (http://www.supermemo.com/articles/myths.htm)

Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm (http://archive.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wo...)

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (http://www.amazon.com/Make-It-Stick-Successful-Learning/dp/0...)

A more up-to-date and complete treatment of these exact topics can be found in the recently-published book, _Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning_ (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0674729013/). For those that have already immersed themselves in spaced repetition techniques via Anki, SuperMemo, Mnemosyne, etc., some of the material in the book will be review. But there is a wealth of useful information for both students and lifelong learners. In addition to that, the intertwined, real-life case studies and anecdotes drive home the points. And lest my comments come off like a back-cover endorsement, I will say that I was a bit disappointed that the authors seemed to have little awareness of SRS' momentum on the Internet with the aforementioned programs. For example, even though the book spends quite a bit of time discussing spaced repetition and flashcards, it never once mentions Anki, SuperMemo, or other popular SRS software. Aside from that, it's still an excellent book.