Study Guides
How we remember has been studied for more than 100 years. From the forgetting curve and spaced repetition to reading your retention rate, we cover only what is backed by evidence, with sources.
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What Is the Forgetting Curve? — Why we forget almost as soon as we learn
What Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve really shows, including the most common misconceptions about it. Forgetting is not a failure of memory but a signal that tells you when to review.
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Why Review After 1 Day, 1 Week, and 1 Month? — The science of spaced repetition
The same number of reviews can produce very different retention depending on when you do them. Here is the evidence, built up over 100 years of research, behind spacing out your reviews and recalling from memory.
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How to Read Your Retention Rate — Using a number for how much you remember
How to read the retention rate correctly as a metric. What matters is not the exact number but the trend and how you use it.
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Memorization Techniques Backed by Research — Plus the ones that don't work as well
The study techniques rated most effective in a review of hundreds of studies, and the popular ones that turned out to be less effective.
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Planning Reviews Backward from Exam Day — How to design a plan that gets you there in time
The most rational way to set review intervals is by the time left until your exam. This guide explains how to build a backward plan of the kind the research supports.
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Managing Reviews When You Have a Huge Number of Items to Memorize
Medicine, law, languages: when there are hundreds of things to memorize, reviews can collapse. This guide explains why that happens and how to keep it from happening.
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How to Build a Review Schedule for a Certification Exam — What to do 3 months, 1 month, and 1 week out
Exam prep starts working once you separate "learning new material" from "locking it in with review." Using a 3-month example, this article shows how to set review intervals and how to cycle through a problem book.
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Review Intervals for Vocabulary — Working through a word list on the forgetting curve
With vocabulary, retention is decided by when you review, not how many passes you make. Daily new-word limits, review timing, and how to recall, all with the research behind them.
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How to Choose a Spaced Repetition App — Flashcard type or schedule type, which fits you
Apps built on the forgetting curve and spaced repetition come in two kinds, flashcard type and schedule type. Here is how to pick the one you can actually keep using, based on what you are learning and how you study.
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If Anki Didn't Stick — Spaced repetition without making cards
Anki is excellent spaced repetition software, but many people give up under the weight of card-making and settings. Here is why Anki may not have fit, and another way to run spaced repetition by material rather than by card.