How to Study & Learn Using Active Recall | Dr. Cal Newport & Dr. Andrew Huberman

Tell me what you think of this, what I always call protocol. If I want to learn something from a manuscript I read or a book chapter, I used to highlight things. I had a very elaborate system extracted from my university days, consisting of stars, exclamation marks, and underlining that meant a lot to me.

Yes, it brought me back to a given segment within the chapter. But a few years ago, I was teaching a course in the biology department at Stanford, and for some reason, we had them read a study about information retention. I learned from that study that one of the best things we can do is read information, in whatever form—a magazine, research article, et cetera, a book—and then take some time away from that material.

Maybe walk, maybe close one's eyes, maybe leave them open; it doesn't matter. Just try to remember specific elements. How much does one remember?

Then go back to the material and look at it. I've been positively astonished at how much more information I can learn when I'm not simply going through the motor commands of underlining things and highlighting them, but instead stepping away and thinking, "Okay, yeah, oh, I don't remember how many subjects there were. I'll go back and check that, maybe make a note.

And okay, they did this, then they did that, and then—" and then it's crystallized. As I say this, I realize, of course this should work [laughing]. This is the way that the brain learns.

But somehow, that's not the way we are taught to learn. Yeah, well, I'm smiling because when I was 22, I wrote this book called "How to Become a Straight-A Student," right? The whole premise of the book was, "I'm going to talk to actual college students who have straight A's and who don't seem completely ground out, right?

Like, not burnt out. And I'm just going to interview 'em, right? " The protocol was, "How did you study for the last test that you studied for?

How did you take notes for the last? " So I was just asking them to walk through their methodology. The core idea of that book was active recall.

That was the core idea: replicating ideas. What I used to say is, "Replicating the information from scratch as if teaching a class without looking at your notes. " That is the only way to learn.

The thing about it was, it's a trade-off. It's efficient, it doesn't take much time, but it's incredibly mentally taxing, right? This is why students often avoid it.

It is difficult to sit there and try to replicate and pull forth, "Okay, what did I read here? How did that work? " It's mentally very taxing, but it's very time efficient, right?

If you're willing to essentially put up with that pain, you learn very quickly. And not only do you learn very quickly, you don't forget. It's almost like you have a pseudo-photographic memory when you study this way.

You sit down to do a test, and you're replicating whole lines [laughing] from what you studied; the ideas sort of come out fully formed because it's such a fantastic way to actually learn. It was my key; the whole premise that got me writing that book is I went through this period as a college student where I came in as a freshman, was a fine student—not a great student, but a fine student. I was rowing crew and I was sort of excited to do that.

Then I developed a heart condition and had to stop. I had a congenital wiring issue in the heart, an atrial flutter thing. It meant I couldn't row crew anymore.

So, a prolapse of some sort? It was a circuitry issue that would lead to an extremely rapid heartbeat. It was really rapid—like tachycardia, right?

You get 200-250 beats a minute, and it could be exercise-induced, right? Which is not optimal. You could take beta blockers, which would moderate the electrical timing, but beta blockers reduce your max heart rate.

If you're an athlete where the entire thing that matters is your max heart rate, like when you're doing something like 2,000-meter rows, your performance on beta blockers just goes down. It makes no sense; it's like being a basketball player who wears weighted shoes—it's too frustrating. Right, and it also makes you super mellow.

I was a pretty mellow guy [both laughing], but I was the worst rower. So I stopped that and I was like, "Okay, I want to get serious about my studies. " I said, "I can get serious about my studies and writing," right?

That's when I actually made the decisions that I then stuck with for the next 25 years after that. But one of the things I did to get serious about my studies was to say, "I'm going to systematically experiment with how to study for tests and how to write papers. " I would try this—"How did it go?

"—deconstruct, experiment. Try this—"How'd it go? "—deconstruct, experiment.

Active recall was the thing that turned me all around. I went from being a pretty good student to a 4. 0 every single quarter—sophomore year, junior year, senior year.

I got one A minus [laughing] between my sophomore year and my senior year. It was like this miraculous transformation. It was active recall.

I rebuilt all of my studying, so if it was for a humanities class, I had a whole way of taking notes that was all built around doing active recall. For math classes, my main study tool was a stack of white paper. "All right, do this proof.

" White piece of paper, and just, "Can I do it from scratch? " If I could, I knew that technique. If I couldn't, I said, "All right, I'm going to come back and try it again later.

" It completely transformed my academic performance; that’s why I ended up writing that book that basically spread that message to other people. So I'm a huge advocate for active recall. It's really hard, but it is the way to learn new things.

And as you pointed out, it is very time efficient. Oh yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it was a problem; it was a social problem for me that I would have to pretend [laughing] during finals period that I was going to the library to study because I would be done studying. This active recall—it’s brutal, but it’s incredibly efficient. You sit down there, I would have my cards and I would mark it: "Okay, I struggled with this," I'd put it in this pile; "I got it done," I’d put it in this pile.

And so then you would just go back to the "I struggled with it" pile and work on that. And then make a new "I struggled with it" pile. And these would exponentially decay.

So in a few hours, you could really master, with a few other tricks that worked, you could really master the material pretty quickly. And then, what am I supposed to do? I didn’t do all-nighters; it wouldn’t make any sense.

Active recall is how you prepare, and it's going to take four hours; it’s going to be tough, so do it in the morning when you have energy, and then you’re done. I love it. I learned essentially all of neuroanatomy looking down the microscope at tissue samples.

Then I would try and take photographs with my eyes—I do not have a photographic memory. But then I would get home in the evening, look through the neuroanatomy textbook, lie down, and try and fly through the different circuits in my mind. And then if I arrived at a structure in the brain that I couldn't identify, I would then go check my notes and go back.

Ah, that’s perfect. So basically, I learned neuroanatomy, which I’m poor at a great many things in life, but neuroanatomy, I’m solid at, and then some, if I may say so. And it’s because there’s a mental map, and you can kind of move through it, fly through it dynamically.

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