See-Do-Feedback: The Right Way To Practice - Scott H Young

Watching alone is not effective. Knowledge needs to become an automatic skill to be useful.

Practice is not just for physical skills. A study by Jeffrey Karpicke and Janelle Blunt showed that students that recalled a passage they've read did much better on a test than those who re-read the passage several times.

The best approach to learning is to see a few examples of the pattern to be learned, then practice without examples so you can perform from memory.

You need to get feedback on your practice. If the problem is straightforward, seeing the correct solution is enough. But skills with gradations of performance or more subjective measures of success need a teacher, tutor or coach for feedback.

• Feedback correct errors.
• Feedback can train your unconscious learning system. The brain works through rewards. It reinforces past actions that led to success and weakens those that led to failure.
• Feedback guides your attention and motivation for future learning.

• Languages: Notice vocabulary, phrases and grammar; test it out in a conversation, then check if you are properly understood.
• History: Read a book, write a summary explaining the main points, then check back to see what you’ve missed.
• Business: Learn a new management technique, implement it in your company, then see how it performs.