Make Sure You Really Understand

1. Instructions can be in the form of lessons, books, or tutoring. They are useful to avoid wasting time with trial-and-error.
2. Retrieval involves deliberately remembering the knowledge, not just passively reviewing it.
3. Spacing is repeated reviews, spread out over time. It forms part of a regular routine where you cover old knowledge along with new.
4. Understanding. The goal of learning is for ideas to make sense. Explain the concept to yourself. When you get stuck, find a textbook or teacher to help you.
5. Feedback. You don't have to get feedback from other people. When you can get accurate feedback that doesn't need another person, go there first.

To perfect your studying routine, look at your current routine, and see what's missing. For example:

• An amateur painter will grow faster if they add instruction to their existing knowledge.
• Learning history by reading a lot: Why not write an essay or converse with other history buffs?
• You work correctly through a course, but don't space your learning: A ten-minute pop-quiz on previous topics can help you remember and save hours later.

If you try to force yourself to just memorize random facts, you’re likely to forget them. 

We will most likely remember only the information that was meaningful to us, that we’ve been able to connect to our lives and our experiences.

We learn best when we perform the tasks we’re trying to learn. 

No matter how good your grades were at college, most of your learning takes place once you enter the workplace and start applying what you've learned.

This approach is really similar to the Link Method. While you create a bunch of different images between each two items using the Link Method, you combine everything into one big picture with the Story Method. This technique helps you memorize the sequence of the images and hence the order of the items.