Chapter One

Using the Spacing Effect to Study Less and Learn More

[The spacing effect is] one of the most remarkable phenomena to emerge from laboratory research on learning.

            —Frank N. Dempster

Many students struggle because they work against the way their brains want to learn. They believe learning is a simple equation: time spent studying = knowledge acquired. It's certainly true that no studying will equal no learning, but the best path to retaining knowledge involves more than following a simple formula.

To understand exactly how we learn, we need to know how our brains record information. When we learn something for the first time, our brains record that information in neurons. At the same time, the brain files the new information with related information by building connections between neurons.

The problem is that our brains can't imprint new information firmly enough in our neurons during the first exposure for perfect retention. The brain stores the information and establishes connections with related neurons, but the first impression is weak. Apparently our brains don't take kindly to strangers.

We know this instinctively, so we study harder, spending hours at a time reading information or doing example problems over and over in hopes that the information will sink into our maddeningly inhospitable neural structures. Immediate repetition does help, but our brains can only strengthen connections so much in one sitting, even if we go over the information repeatedly.

No matter how much time you spend cramming the day before a test, or even two or three days before a test, the connections you’ve made won’t have had enough time to strengthen, and you may do badly.  

Stop fighting your brain. If your brain doesn't want to remember stuff it has been exposed to for only a short amount of time, stop pressuring it. You'll waste your time and energy on the impossible.

As with anything that we don't like about reality, we can either whine and do nothing to help ourselves or we can figure out how to use the situation to our advantage. And it's easy to take advantage of reality once we understand something called the spacing effect.

Psychologist Frank N. Dempster calls the spacing effect, "[O]ne of the most remarkable phenomena to emerge from laboratory research on learning."1 He has good reason to say this. Those who used the spacing effect in laboratory experiments on learning did significantly better than anyone else when trying to recall what they had learned.

Hermann Ebbinghaus, who conducted many of the early experiments on the spacing effect, first described it in 1885. Ebbinghaus noticed that retention increased when a person spaced the time spent studying information instead of shoving it into one time slot (a.k.a. cramming). Those who reviewed the information at spaced intervals remembered it better and for a much longer period of time.

Researchers have since discovered that the number of spaced exposures to information, not the amount of time spent with said information, is what really counts. Reading through your notes once per day for a week, for a total study time of one hour, leads to better results than going over your notes fourteen times in one day for a total study time of two hours. Multiple exposures are important, but even more so is the time in between exposures, which allows your brain to develop strong connections.

You can study fewer hours per week while learning more if you work with your brain rather than against it. This technique alone—once I learned how to apply it—completely transformed my college life. It's the most important technique I describe in this book.

If you adopt the spacing effect alone for your own study plan, your college life will become a lot easier. But when you use the other success principles in conjunction with the spacing effect, you'll notice dramatic leaps in your learning.

How to Jump-start the Spacing Effect

Applying the spacing effect is easy. It just takes practice to figure out what works best for you.

The theory says that the more spaced exposures you get, the better. How many is ideal? I recommend at least eight to ten spaced exposures, leaving several hours to several days between each of them. To achieve this goal, start racking up repetitions immediately. The easiest way to do this is to read the assigned readings before class, go to the lecture, and then review your lecture notes before going to bed. You'll get three spaced exposures while most of your classmates get one: the lecture (unless they're sleeping, texting, or committing other academic sins).

Before using spaced exposures to reinforce information, you must get that information in your head. This is why it's vital to read assigned chapters and other readings at least one day before a lecture. Reading will give you an overview of the concepts you need to learn and a first exposure to all the important details.

Listening to the lecture and taking good notes reinforces what you read and develops more neural connections. At night, when you review your lecture notes, you get a third spaced exposure. Some top students need only these three steps in order to succeed: they never have to study the information again. I always needed more steps, but if this works for you, rejoice. For those of us who lack genius, it's a little harder—but not much.

When the Test Looms

As the test approaches, the spacing effect becomes a lifesaver.

Let's say that a midterm is seven days away. How can you use the spacing effect to conquer that exam? First, it's crucial that you start reviewing for that exam today. You've already had three spaced exposures by reading, attending lecture, and reviewing your notes, but you'll need at least five to seven new spaced exposures to everything that could show up on the exam in order to master the material. Doing five spaced repetitions was always adequate for me, but seven was the ideal number. You won't know how many are ideal for you until you experiment. Just be sure to leave several hours or a full day between each exposure so your brain can cement those neural connections before you add another repetition.

Getting five exposures in one week might sound impossible. Don't worry; it's really not. In the next section of this book, I'll describe how to effectively review an entire textbook chapter in less than ten minutes. Using surveying, you can review all chapters, notes, and readings in about twenty to thirty minutes per day (of course, this depends on the reading load. But the higher the reading load, the more time you will save using surveying over traditional review). If you get five to seven spaced exposures at twenty to thirty minutes each, you have reviewed for only an hour and forty minutes to three hours and thirty minutes for an exam. Not bad.

After a week of spaced exposures, you make it to test day. You have followed all my recommendations. Each week, you read the assigned chapter(s) the day before the lecture. You went to lectures and took Pulitzer Prize-worthy notes (just kidding—please don't work that hard). On the evening following each lecture, you reviewed the notes you took that day. Then, a week before the test, you started reviewing all assigned readings and your lecture notes once per day. Perhaps something happened and you missed a day or two, but that's okay because you were shooting for a minimum of five spaced exposures.

By following these steps, you exposed yourself to everything that could appear on the test a total of eight to ten times. Most of your classmates came nowhere near this number of spaced exposures, which are vital for strong retention. Best of all, because you used surveying, you have studied less than most of your classmates, yet you are very likely to get a solid A.

Top Students in Their Own Words: Lisa, PhD, Psychology: University of California, Riverside

Jonathan: Thanks again for telling me about the spacing effect. Nothing has had a more profound effect on my college life. You're to blame for all my success and I couldn't be more grateful.

            Lisa: Thank you very much. I'm just so happy when I hear that my teaching makes a difference.

            Jonathan: How did you learn about the spacing effect, and how did you apply it to your studies?

            Lisa: I learned about it in a cognitive psychology class that I took as an undergraduate. I began studying for each of my classes once a day, rather than the night before a test, and it changed everything for me. I studied for less time but got way more out of it. This also allowed me to identify what was confusing so that I could get clarification before tests.

            Jonathan: Did you use any other study techniques?

            Lisa: The only other technique I used is that I would re-write all of my notes from class right before a test. That really helped to jog my memory for what was important. I used the same techniques in all classes.

            Jonathan: As a professor, what are some things that make you impressed with a student? What student behaviors irritate you?

            Lisa: I'm impressed when a student shows up to class on time and prepared (meaning they have read the chapter before it is discussed in class), comes to office hours with questions prepared (written down), and relates class material to real life.

I'm not sure what is most irritating, but I'm surprised when a student rarely attends class, does not complete homework assignments, and does poorly on tests, and then emails me two weeks before the semester is over asking for extra credit because he or she needs an A. Those types of situations are difficult to respond to.

            Jonathan: Anything else that you feel helped you be a good student?

            Lisa: Probably the critical ingredient to being a good student is the desire to be one!

* * *

Crib Notes

You'll be getting a lot of information in this book, so multiple reviews will be important when you're working to incorporate the techniques into your daily study system. After you're finished reading, and you're doing spaced repetitions, you can hit the Crib Notes sections for a refresher. You can find a complete list of all Crib Notes sections in the back of the book.

1.     Space study time to allow the brain to create and develop effective connections. Allow several hours to several days between repetitions, though one day is usually optimal.

2.     To get the maximum number of exposures, read assigned chapters before class, attend lectures, and read your lecture notes before going to bed. These three steps will start the spacing effect process.

3.     Prepare for exams by reviewing all test materials, such as textbook chapters and lecture notes, once a day for a minimum of five days. Don't "study"—simply read through everything once. Five to seven exposures got me an A on difficult tests. Experiment to find your ideal number.

Chapter Two

Use Surveying to Review Textbook Chapters in Ten Minutes or Less

I sat in an upstairs classroom lit with buzzy fluorescent lights. Posters of obscure books and English grammar charts were tacked to the walls. Across from me sat a short, pallid, overweight married man with two young children at home. He bragged about cheating on his wife and how he'd bought a house and two cars and maxed out his credit cards with the intention of declaring bankruptcy. He was loud, rude, and disrespectful.

At the next table sat a tall, thin black man who worked the night shift at a grocery store. He was humorous and positive—the life of the class despite his constant lack of sleep. Beside me sat a young Latina woman with braces. She was always happy to discuss her boyfriend problems with me, and they were numerous and fascinating. Bankruptcy guy would eye her hungrily when she wasn't looking.

A twenty-one-year-old Hispanic man sat on my other side. He kept me rapt with stories of the race wars that raged in his high school. He had scars from participating in the brawls. He wanted to be an airplane mechanic, but he wasn't doing well in his classes and would probably never see the inside of a hangar.

Our professor, a middle-aged woman with short, conservative hair, had pleasant features yanked down by a permanent frown, no doubt the result of years spent dealing with the reluctant students who filled the community college in which I sat.

This was a college reading course, the easiest class I had ever taken. But about half the students were failing. They complained about work and time constraints and then bragged about parties attended, movies watched, and beach sessions enjoyed.

Here in the midst of my discomfort and boredom, I learned one of the best study techniques in existence—one that, in a heavily modified version, has saved me countless hours of study time. It was called the SQ3R textbook reading method.

Surveying: A Better Way to Review Chapters

SQ3R had a certain academic sex appeal for me. It consisted of logical steps, and it used all kinds of complex techniques devised by lofty researchers. How could something so complex and well thought-out not work?

Despite sounding good, the technique was so yucky and time-consuming that no one in the class used it. Basically, it's safe to ignore any technique that's too complicated. With tweaking and combining it with the spacing effect, however, SQ3R goes from complex and unpleasant to simple and effective. I call the tweaked version surveying.

The first step in surveying is to read an assigned chapter in its entirety—preferably the day before the class in which it will be discussed. Reading a chapter in its entirety will make a thorough first impression on your inhospitable neurons. Don't worry about highlighting or writing any notes: Read quickly and take it all in. (If time is short, you can even skip the actual reading. More on this later.)

When you’re ready to review the chapter, it’s time to survey. By "survey," I mean a quick pass through the chapter that doesn't involve reading every word. When you survey, you concentrate only on the crucial stuff. Surveying after reading might sound counterintuitive; many students are naturally inclined to survey before reading a chapter. But if you first read the chapter in its entirety, afterward you can review all the most important ideas in that chapter in about five to ten minutes. This will let you review all the chapters covered on a test in just a few minutes a day, allowing you to rack up many spaced exposures while spending little time studying. The combination of the spacing effect and surveying is the real secret behind getting fantastic grades with little effort.

For a survey to really hit all a chapter has to offer, you must know exactly what to pay attention to. When surveying a chapter, read all titles, boxed items, photo captions, vocabulary definitions, graphs, bulleted points, any bolded or italicized text, any other text that is emphasized and, most importantly, the first sentence in every paragraph, finishing with the chapter summary.

Reading the first sentence in each paragraph is essential, because the first sentence is usually the topic sentence (notice how the topic sentence of this paragraph contains the vital idea, while what follows elaborates on that main idea). If the first sentence is not the topic sentence, keep reading until you find the topic sentence, but know that it almost always comes first or second. If the first sentence isn't the topic sentence, make a mark at the beginning of the sentence, such as an X, so you'll know to skip it when doing your spaced reviews. When you do find the topic sentence, underline the first word or otherwise mark it so you'll know that's the one to read when surveying. If you come across another sentence that you can't help but mark, underline the first word or make some other small mark to remind yourself to review it. But don't get carried away and mark everything as vital for review.

The topic sentence gives you the gist of the entire paragraph. The following sentences are there to support and expand on that topic. By reading all emphasized text and the first sentence in each paragraph, you'll get the main points, which are likely to make up the test, and you'll be reminded of the details in those paragraphs. To see how this works, pick up any textbook and read the topic sentence in every paragraph. You will find that 90% of paragraphs start with the topic sentence and that, by reading these and all other emphasized text, you can get a basic idea of what those pages are trying to teach you.

To finish the survey, read the chapter summary. The summary neatly ties up all the main ideas in the chapter.

And there you have it. That's surveying—simple, but oh so deliciously powerful.

It can be tempting to never read an entire chapter again. Why not just survey and get all the main ideas that way? Sadly, those windy supporting sentences often give great context for remembering information, and you should read them. You can do well if you use only surveys, but you'll find that the best results come from reading the whole chapter first and then using surveys for review. If you don't have time to read a whole chapter, however, using surveys alone will teach you most of what you need to know in a fraction of the usual time.

Another exception I always granted myself when I was in school was this: If I had a textbook that was really awful—one that I physically couldn't read for more than three minutes or my brain would go zombie apocalypse—then I just used surveys. Life is too precious and too short to waste on unnecessarily difficult reading. If the reading is extremely tedious, there's a good chance that no one else will absorb the whole chapter anyway. You'll be way ahead of everyone by simply memorizing the main points.

How to Combine Surveying and The Spacing Effect

After much trial and error, this is the method that I devised for integrating surveying and the spacing effect into my study system.

First, I read an assigned chapter in its entirety the day before class. I read quickly, almost never taking time to highlight or take notes, since almost all the important stuff in textbooks is bolded, italicized, charted, found in the topic sentence, or otherwise marked. If I wrote anything down, it was questions for the professor.

On class day I would go to the lecture, take good notes, and review those notes before going to bed, giving myself three spaced exposures to the information. Afterward, I wouldn't worry about reviewing the material until a quiz or test approached. At this point, surveying became invaluable.

I would start reviewing five to seven days before a test. I used surveys to review chapters, hitting all the most important ideas in the chapter in minutes. Reading the first sentence of each paragraph reminded me of its main idea and supporting material, and the chapter summary neatly tied up the overarching ideas. If I didn't remember what came after a topic sentence, I dipped into the paragraph until I recalled exactly what the author was talking about. I ended my review sessions by quickly reading my lecture notes. Thus, I would review everything that would appear on a test in a few minutes a day, giving the spacing effect enough repetitions so it could work its magic. It's all about reinforcing the initially learned information at spaced intervals.

This combination of surveying and the spacing effect can save you hours of study time while still allowing you to memorize everything you'll need to know for exams.

Stop Using Selective Reading

One common study technique is selective reading. Students innately understand that it's impossible to read everything multiple times before a test. Thus, they try to guess what the professor finds most important and then read only those sections of the textbook.

This is bad.

Selective reading, while it can save you time, almost guarantees that you will lose at least half a letter grade on exams. Professors will choose questions from all sections of the textbook, whether you read them or not. This isn't the end of the world if those questions are multiple choice or true and false. But what if you find yourself facing an essay question from the unknown? It happens. Now you're terrified about your grade and you're back to stressing. Stressing is not okay for a great student, and that's what you are now.

Stop using selective reading. Read everything once, if you can, and then use surveys to memorize all the key ideas.

Crib Notes

1.     Read a textbook chapter in its entirety.

2.     Do spaced chapter reviews, or surveys, by reading only titles, boxes, graphs, and photo captions; bulleted, italicized, or underlined text; and the topic sentence in each paragraph (usually the first sentence: if not, mark the topic sentence on your initial reading so you can find it later). Finish by reading the chapter summary. Finally, read your lecture notes.

3.     Enjoy the hours this technique can save you.