Make it stick : The science of successful learning

Here is my short summary of "Make it stick" which I finished last week. Authors firstly point out that what is generally believed is not a right way of learning and tell us how to learn efficiently based on experimental and statistical facts which many researchers have investigated so far. The way of learning presented in the book can be applied to any people from school children to elderly persons because learning is never ending process of our brain.

According to authors, mass practice makes sense in short term memory but not in long term memory. For example, many people might experience this in school test, and the established memory by mass practice is gone soon no matter how hard your work before tests. The book says that proper learning basically consists of retrieving, reflection, elaboration, and spaced learning in order to put what we learn into long term memory. Retrieving practice needs recalling idea, concepts or events from your memory regularly. Reflection and elaboration practice are processes that let you relate what you retrieve and what you have learned so far, and attach the new memory to the old memory. These additionally allow you to think what you should do next time better than it is now. For example, if you think that you fail to do presentation well, you need to reflect on what is wrong and consider improvement based on what you did and reflect it on next presentation. This is a point whether you are a good learner or not. Elaboration practice needs struggling process. For example, when you try to solve difficult math questions, you would struggle to solve them by retrieving what you know and relate what you retrieve to questions. The more you struggle, the more ways of solving remain longer in your memory finally, whether you can solve them by yourself or you look answers finally. The process of struggling is very important and it strengthens connections of neurons by synapse in your brain. Explaining what you learn in your words is also elaboration process. Spaced training is basically a repeated learning over many times. Repeating a few days would be better. Repeating a few hours does not make sense and is almost same with mass practice.

That's just small summary, but authors present a lot of experimental and statistical facts in the book to strengthen their claims. There are a lot of intriguing experimental facts, but here is one which is very interesting for me.

Intellectual ability is not fixed when you are born, but it depends on you to a large degree in your hand. There is a experiment that some students are praised for being able to solve problems (performance goal), but some students are praised for working hard for trying to solve problems (learning goal). What happened was that people with the performance goal unconsciously limit their goals by choosing solvable problems from next time because they are unconsciously afraid of failing to solve problems. On the other hand, people with the learning goal challenge even difficult problems because they are trained to be praised for working harder. With proper learning processes mentioned above, the latter group is likely to grow more than the former people.

Authours mention deliberate practice of 10,000 hours rule a little bit, but the right way of learning presented here is obviously related to it.
From my experience about my job, the right way of learning perfectly makes sense and it does in terms of 10,000 hours rule which is equivalent to 10 hours a day for three years. My MS degree is of theoretical physics, so the current job, circuit design, was pretty new for me when I joined the current company. Physics, of course, is fundamental to all science and it helps me a lot to understand new things soon. When I look back the past, the way of learning about the job fits the way of learning mentioned in the book. Every morning, I used to present and explain what I learned from a circuit design book to senior designers and get my misunderstanding corrected and get feedback. In the daytime, I apply what I learn to real circuit design and explain it to seniors and get feedback. I used to repeat this for a few years. In addition to these, I personally do study and reflect on what I did and consider how to improve it. This process obviously follows the processes mentioned in the book. Three years later, I could say that I could become an expert of this job because I did not need any help to proceed the my job and I could even teach something to others. This was also close to 10,000 hours. 

The point in the book is that there is the right way of learning and what is generally believed is not efficient. Additionally, it is pointed out that we can learn forever as long as we want to do that.