Hey, and welcome to the short stuff, I'm Josh, and on behalf of Chuck, who's here, say hi, Chuck around.

Dave, see the producer, Jerry, the mega, mega, uber producer you were with an, um, loud even Hi there.

That is a good Jerry.

Um, this is short stuff, the stuff you should know. Short version of stuff you should know, but shorter. That's right.

And this has to do with something that I. Have been guilty of from grades kindergarten through my undergraduate degree. Mm hmm. Which is to say, cramming for the test. I've always procrastinated when it comes to my school testing. I always crammed. I always did.

Pretty good. Yeah. Sort of a B student. Mm hmm. And I never thought it mattered much. And now I feel terrible about it.

Right until that time the cop pulled you over and asked you to explain Pythagoreans Pythagorean theorem and you were like, oh, I knew this, I knew this and I forgot it here because cramming is it sort of works if you're looking to skate by and make that grade and and like walking in there minutes after you finish studying, you might do OK, but you're not going to learn anything and you're not going to remember that stuff.

No. And that's the point. Like, yes, you can cram and do OK on a test. You could even get through college or high school like that. And that's why a lot of people who Krayem say, well, whatever it works, I'm fine with it. But the point of learning all this stuff is to actually learn it. So when you look at it like that, like you don't actually learn anything, you just are doing rote memorization.

And then it kind of makes sense to look for other ways. And luckily, they figured out that there are plenty of other ways to learn. Aside from cramming, before we get into that, let's talk about exactly why cramming is terrible. Yeah.

So, you know, obviously we're saying you're really not learning much. It's there have been studies done and there are a lot of people who study this. One of these guys from the How Stuff Works article is Dr. Robert A. Bjork from UCLA Psychology Department. And he's like, there's a dramatic forgetting rate after you take that test. And you might think, well, who cares, man, if that's the test. But that's a big deal when that test is a building block for more lessons, like if it's a language class, he points out, or math class, all of that stuff matters.

You got to learn that stuff. Yeah, you can't. I mean, I guess you can cram for a language final or a language test, but it's not going to do any good when the next test comes around and you never learn the first stuff.

Yeah. You'll never be a French major like that. You sape know what's happened.

French cepa perfect. And then the other part is when you're cramming too, usually you are, you're, you're adjusting your normal schedule to like really debilitating degree. Sure. You're not cramming from, you know, nine a.m. to 10 p.m. the day before the test. That's, that's studying.

It's 10 p.m. to eight a.m. cramming usually involves like, just like squeezing whatever time you have out of the handful of hours right before the test. Maybe you sleep for a little bit right before and then go in and take the test. But in my experience, it's always just been going in and taking the test right after you finish studying. Yeah.

Remember, I just remember this. The Family Ties when Alex P. Keaton took speed.

It's so great every to study, every family sitcom has always had somebody take speed and it's always the study. Remember Jessie Spano?

Jesse Swanson saved by the bell or she's so excited, so excited, they were doing a performance of that song and she was like freaking out about getting it wrong. So she was rehearsing and rehearsing and taking speed. I think you're too fast. I don't remember. It's it's great. It's one of the watershed moments in television history. Jesse collapsing in Zach's arms because she's so excited. But I think that show's coming back. It is in the same stars are going to be like teachers.

Amazing. Yeah. So cramming. Yeah. You cram right until the last second. No good. You're not learning long term. And there are some interesting ways to combat this though. And should we take a break now? Yeah, I think that's right.

All right. A little early, but it's the perfect place. So we'll be right back.

All right, Chuck.

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Well, now you're on the road driving in your truck. Why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Josh. It's stuff you should know. All right. All right, I jump the gun, we took an early break, but here's the deal, if you want to study effectively, they say that. You know, studying something twice is obviously the best way, and even three times and more is the best way to retain something and really learn something.

But it gets even more specific. It's called the spacing effect. They say if you study some and then you go and take a break and do something else and then come back to studying that same thing, you're going to retain even more than if you just did it twice in a row.

That's right. So this is like really, really important to remember, because if you want to learn anything, there's just a certain thing you have to do. And that is not cram. And like this could even be I didn't see anywhere like how far spaced out it needs to be, but I got the impression that there's a sweet spot too far. And it's basically like seeing the material like brand new again and you don't even remember the first time.

But to close and studies have shown that you actually don't you don't see it differently than you did the time before. Like if you read a chapter and then go back and read the chapter again, you're not doing anything to help yourself. You want to space it out some. And in doing that, you're they think you're you're encoding things differently.

Yeah. So like you said, if you do something twice in a row, it's so familiar to you. You're encoding it in the exact same way. If you take that little break, you'll encode it differently and remember it longer. And not only that, but there are different ways to encode. And they suggest like changing your like where you study, like if you sit down in your favorite chair in your office to study your thing, take a little break, go to a different room for the second take and that will just mix it up in your brain enough so you'll encode it more permanently.

That's right.

So that's pretty cool. That's that's a good, good bit of advice. And there's no there's there's other reasons why they think this works really well.

Another one is that, like, if you struggle to recall whatever the information is, for some reason you're that the exertion of brain power makes you learn it more. And there's there's a pretty good example in this article from HowStuffWorks where, like, if you meet somebody and you have to remember their name, like 30 seconds later, that's great. You'll probably remember their name because it's right there in your working memory. But the next day you're probably not going to remember it.But if you like, you meet somebody and then an hour later you have to recall their name and you really try to recall it. You're probably going to remember it the next day because they think you're struggling with that recall. You're exerting an effort with recall. And it makes sense because, you know, if you're like, what's that person's name again? And you don't even bother to try to recall, you will you're not you're not going to learn it.

Or if you even if you ask the person what their name is over and over again and you're not just getting it in there, you're never going to learn it either. So it makes sense. Struggle, struggle to recall, might help with this this learning thing.

Yeah, I'm the worst with names like that. And I've tried. I know we both are. We I've tried all the things I try to remember to think of pneumatic devices, pneumonic devices, pneumatic, and I just can't do it.

So you hear a lot of hey man out of me. And no offense, I never forget a personality or a face. So you're encoded. It's just name names. I think everyone should wear nametags, but they've done plenty of studies about this. There was one in 2009 from UCLA, from Dr. Nate Cornell with a K and found that spacing was more effective than cramming for ninety 90 percent of participants, which is I mean, there it is. There's your proof.

Well, yeah, but the thing is, they also surveyed those participants and found out that basically all of them still thought cramming was. And the reason why is because it is effective, but statistically test, it's not effective for long term learning.

So what they've figured out, in addition to spacing that spacing is well, I guess in kind of in conjunction with spacing is another technique that really helps people learn. It's called interleaving. I think it should be called interweaving, but whatever. Yeah, that's weird. It's where you take you know, let's say you have two hours to study math. You're actually better off to study math for thirty minutes, then go study, say French or something else for another thirty minutes and then leave it.

Yeah. And then. Right. And then study model airplane building for thirty minutes and then go back to the math. You're going to do better than you did if you spent two solid hours on math, even by breaking it up, which is very counterintuitive because it seems like to be distracted. But hey man, the studies don't lie.

Yeah. There was a 2015 study that tested middle school kids with algebra and geometry, two subjects at a very hard time with. And a day after their lesson was complete, the students who enter, wove or enter love scored twenty five percent. Better than students who got regular instruction, and then here's the real kicker, a month later, that interleaving group was up 76 percent and that's kind of the whole point, which is like long term learning something.

Right, rather than just recalling something for a test.

Right. Yeah, that's there's your proof right there. 76 percent after a month is that's all I needed to hear. So from now on, it's interleaving and encoding and spacing for me.

Yeah. And I try to do that because our job is sort of like taking a test and. Oh yeah, totally. And I've gotten into and I know we both have our own sort of methods worked out now, but I've gotten into a groove now where I will read stuff like on the laptop and then not look at it for a bit and then read and highlight the printed version and then leave it for a bit and then eventually underline the key parts on the highlighted printed version.

Mm hmm. And that in addition to just Generals' like, you know, videos and other, like, ways of learning, that's kind of the sweet spot for me. Yeah.

Because you're spacing it out and it works. Yeah, I know writing something down has always been a suggestion, like if you write it out then you're more likely to remember it. That's a big thing. Mm hmm.

Oh yeah, for sure.

Like if there's a very difficult concept that we have to explain, it's way easier to write it out, because on the one hand, you're like proving to yourself that you understand it, but you're also definitely like re encoding it in a different way.

And the other thing I find interesting, too, is if you actually physically move to a different room or a different location or something like that, just being surrounded by that different stuff or different sounds, different smells, different sites, even when you're learning the exact same information, your brain is encoding it in a different way. I just find that endlessly fascinating and it makes total sense to me.

Yeah. And I've always, you know, seen over the years when you sit across from me, your signature, Josh Clark, three point chicken scratch handwriting, no one else on the planet can see without a magnifying glass or read it with a magnifying glass. Yes.

Like sometimes I'm like, what is I what did I say here? But the point is, it's not even to go back and reread. Almost never is. If it is, then I make it super legible. It's just writing it out. Help me remember it, you know.

Yeah. It's good stuff.

We have rhetoric's well that's it's go forth and stop cramming everybody. You will be a more well-rounded, happier, smarter human being. OK. OK. And since I said ok twice it's the end of short stuff and short stuff away.

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