--- title: Learning How to Learn description: Learning science shows how to acquire skills and knowledge efficiently. You will learn spaced repetition, retrieval practice, deliberate practice and self-directed curricula, and how to design your own learning path. category: personal-development subcategory: study-skills-and-learning difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/learning-how-to-learn --- # Learning How to Learn Learning science shows how to acquire skills and knowledge efficiently. You will learn spaced repetition, retrieval practice, deliberate practice and self-directed curricula, and how to design your own learning path. ## Available Resources 3 Books • 2 Websites • 1 Papers ## Books ### 1. Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career **Author:** Scott H. Young Nine principles for running self-designed intensive learning projects - metalearning research, directness, drill, feedback, retention, intuition - drawn from documented case studies including the author's compressed MIT computer-science curriculum. Readers finish able to scope, sequence and schedule their own project. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/006285268X?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** self-directed-learning, metalearning, deliberate-practice, retrieval-practice, skill-acquisition ### 2. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning **Author:** Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel Three researchers summarise the experimental evidence on how durable learning happens: retrieval practice beats rereading, spaced and interleaved sessions beat massed ones, and effortful study predicts later recall. Directly applicable to practising and memorising music. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674729013?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** learning, practice, cognitive-science ### 3. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise **Author:** Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool Establishes the framework of deliberate practice — targeted problem-solving on specific weaknesses at the edge of current ability. Applies directly to piano learning and any long-term skill acquisition. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0544456238?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** practice, learning, expertise ## Websites ### 1. How to Write Good Prompts: Using Spaced Repetition to Create Understanding **Author:** Andy Matuschak Book-length guide to writing spaced-repetition prompts that produce understanding rather than rote recall, covering factual, procedural and conceptual knowledge through a sustained worked example. Readers finish able to diagnose and rewrite their own weak cards. The one piece that closes the gap between knowing retrieval practice works and actually being able to do it - everyone who adopts a spaced-repetition system writes bad prompts first, and this is the only rigorous treatment of the craft. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/ **Tags:** spaced-repetition, flashcards, prompt-writing, retrieval-practice, conceptual-understanding ### 2. Augmenting Long-term Memory **Author:** Michael Nielsen Essay on using Anki to internalize entire research papers and technical fields rather than isolated trivia, with concrete card-design patterns and the cognitive-science case that memory underpins understanding. It argues from de Groot and Simon's chess-expertise work that internalized chunks are a precondition for expert reasoning, which is the missing conceptual bridge between the research literature and daily practice. Readers finish able to run a serious spaced-repetition practice. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html **Tags:** spaced-repetition, anki, long-term-memory, chunking, expertise ## Papers ### 1. Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology **Author:** John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, Daniel T. Willingham A 55-page peer-reviewed review rating ten study techniques - practice testing, distributed practice, elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, highlighting, rereading and others - against the generalizability evidence. Readers finish able to justify which strategies to adopt and which to abandon. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/journals/pspi/learning-techniques.html **Tags:** study-techniques, practice-testing, distributed-practice, educational-psychology, cognitive-science --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/learning-how-to-learn