How does one learn to learn?
How does one learn to learn?
I reckon the first step in learning how to learn is to learn how memory works during the process of learning.
This answer is a condensed version of a working session we have run for thousands of managers and students (ahem ;)). I think you'll enjoy it like they did.
You’ve heard about about short term memory and long term memory. I think about memory in a different kind of way, which may help you learn how to learn.
“Memory during” means what happens when you form your memories. Memory during is memory during learning, during workshops, during an hour of study, during a movie, during your life, during anything.
Its the process of forming the memory.
Now take a look at this graph coming from countless memory studies. This is the graph of recall against time during the process of learning. Its called a serial position curve.
Memory During Learning

This is the graph of recall against time during learning. What you remember along the timeline. It’s high in the beginning and high at the end. Not much else gets remembered except for a couple of things which we will come to in a moment.
Graphs like this come from many memory studies originally by Prussian philosopher/psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885 and more recently by others such as Ben Murdock at the University of Toronto in 1962.
Primacy Effect
Notice that recall is high for the first few words. It’s just common sense that we remember firsts or beginnings. Psychology calls this the Primacy Effect.
So we remember beginnings. You can probably remember your first ride in a bicycle, your first day of school. I certainly can.
Recency Effect
Now look at the other end of the graph. This zone is given a very sensible, practical name. Because we remember the most recent things. It’s common knowledge. It’s easy to remember what you had for supper last night. Can you remember supper last night? What about the night before that? And the night before that? So obviously it’s easier to remember things that are closer to you. We remember things that are recent. So this is called the Recency Effect.
Association
What about the kinks on the graph?
We remember by association. So we remember things that are linked by being personally relevant, interesting, that happen to connect with us. And repetition is a subset of this.
Emphasis
If one of the words read by the experimenter was completely out of context, the memory graph also takes a jump.
Say we were to read out a list of nonsense words, in amongst which was the word Muhammad Ali. Everybody remembers Muhammad Ali. Why do you remember Muhammad Ali? It’s a longer word, it’s double barrelled. Its completely out of context, a colourful character. It’s emphasised by virtue of being different from the background. So its called outstandingness, or emphasis.
So now we have 4 key memory principles: we have primacy and recency, association and emphasis.
In summary: Experiments show that when participants are presented with a list of words, they tend to remember the first few and last few words and are more likely to forget those in the middle of the list. This is known as the serial position effect, a term coined by Herman Ebbinghaus. The tendency to recall earlier words is called the primacy effect; the tendency to recall the later words is called the recency effect.
And the whole graph is elevated by having items that are associated or emphasised in there.
SO HERE ARE 7 PRACTICAL USES OF THE GRAPH OF MEMORY DURING LEARNING
1. PRESENTATIONS: your audience will remember the first few minutes, the last few minutes and anything you emphasise or that is personally relevant to them. So start with a very brief summary and end with a review.
2. SPEECHES: there is an old formula for giving a successful speech. It goes something like this: ‘Tell em what you’re going to tell em; tell em; and finally tell em what you told em.’ That way you have capitalised on primacy and recency. Plus you have used repetition – a subset of association.
3. TRAININGS: Use interaction. Recall we remember what is personally relevant. But you don’t know what is relevant for your audience unless you ask them questions. Then you hook your wonderful content onto their answers.
4. KEEP IT SHORT – TAKE BREAKS: the longer the time between the beginning and ending of your learning or delivery session, the lower the recall. Therefore, keep it short. Putting short breaks into your session that would otherwise run longer than an hour makes a profound difference to the amount recalled. This way you introduce more than one primacy and recency.
5. LET GO ON CLOSURE: Carrying on the idea above, keep working sessions short. End on time rather than at a natural break point. This is counter-intuitive but it triggers a thing called the Ziegarnik Effect, after Bluma Ziegarnik, a Soviet psychologist. In 1927 she showed waiters remembered incomplete orders better than completed ones.
David Straker on his brilliant site suggests that to remember things for examinations, take breaks when a module is not necessarily complete, i.e. on time. Then the ongoing thinking about the incomplete task helps keep important facts in mind.
6. REPORTS, BLOGS, ASSIGNMENTS: Start with an enticing preview, and end with a thorough summary.
7. DEMONSTRATIONS: Capitalise on association and emphasis with relevant jokes, stories, anecdotes, audience participation, question and answer sessions, repetition, chanting, visuals, pauses, and alliteration.
SOME MEMORY RESEARCH REFERENCES FOR THOSE THAT WANT TO DIG IN
Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Chapter: Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. In Spence, K. W., & Spence, J. T. The psychology of learning and motivation (Volume 2). New York: Academic Press. pp. 89–195.
Glanzer, M., & Cunitz, A. R. (1966). Two storage mechanisms in free recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 5(4), 351-360.
Murdock, B. B. (1962). The serial position effect of free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(5), 482–488.
Zeigarnik, B.V. (1927). Über das Behalten von erledigten und unerledigten Handlungen (The Retention of Completed and Uncompleted Activities), Psychologische Forschung, 9, 1-85
Zeigarnik, B.V. (1967). On finished and unfinished tasks. In W. D. Ellis (Ed.), A sourcebook of Gestalt psychology, New York: Humanities Press
This answer is a condensed version of a working session we have run for thousands of managers and students (ahem ;)). I think you'll enjoy it like they did.
You’ve heard about about short term memory and long term memory. I think about memory in a different kind of way, which may help you learn how to learn.
“Memory during” means what happens when you form your memories. Memory during is memory during learning, during workshops, during an hour of study, during a movie, during your life, during anything.
Its the process of forming the memory.
Now take a look at this graph coming from countless memory studies. This is the graph of recall against time during the process of learning. Its called a serial position curve.
Memory During Learning

This is the graph of recall against time during learning. What you remember along the timeline. It’s high in the beginning and high at the end. Not much else gets remembered except for a couple of things which we will come to in a moment.
Graphs like this come from many memory studies originally by Prussian philosopher/psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885 and more recently by others such as Ben Murdock at the University of Toronto in 1962.
Primacy Effect
Notice that recall is high for the first few words. It’s just common sense that we remember firsts or beginnings. Psychology calls this the Primacy Effect.
So we remember beginnings. You can probably remember your first ride in a bicycle, your first day of school. I certainly can.
Recency Effect
Now look at the other end of the graph. This zone is given a very sensible, practical name. Because we remember the most recent things. It’s common knowledge. It’s easy to remember what you had for supper last night. Can you remember supper last night? What about the night before that? And the night before that? So obviously it’s easier to remember things that are closer to you. We remember things that are recent. So this is called the Recency Effect.
Association
What about the kinks on the graph?
We remember by association. So we remember things that are linked by being personally relevant, interesting, that happen to connect with us. And repetition is a subset of this.
Emphasis
If one of the words read by the experimenter was completely out of context, the memory graph also takes a jump.
Say we were to read out a list of nonsense words, in amongst which was the word Muhammad Ali. Everybody remembers Muhammad Ali. Why do you remember Muhammad Ali? It’s a longer word, it’s double barrelled. Its completely out of context, a colourful character. It’s emphasised by virtue of being different from the background. So its called outstandingness, or emphasis.
So now we have 4 key memory principles: we have primacy and recency, association and emphasis.
In summary: Experiments show that when participants are presented with a list of words, they tend to remember the first few and last few words and are more likely to forget those in the middle of the list. This is known as the serial position effect, a term coined by Herman Ebbinghaus. The tendency to recall earlier words is called the primacy effect; the tendency to recall the later words is called the recency effect.
And the whole graph is elevated by having items that are associated or emphasised in there.
SO HERE ARE 7 PRACTICAL USES OF THE GRAPH OF MEMORY DURING LEARNING
1. PRESENTATIONS: your audience will remember the first few minutes, the last few minutes and anything you emphasise or that is personally relevant to them. So start with a very brief summary and end with a review.
2. SPEECHES: there is an old formula for giving a successful speech. It goes something like this: ‘Tell em what you’re going to tell em; tell em; and finally tell em what you told em.’ That way you have capitalised on primacy and recency. Plus you have used repetition – a subset of association.
3. TRAININGS: Use interaction. Recall we remember what is personally relevant. But you don’t know what is relevant for your audience unless you ask them questions. Then you hook your wonderful content onto their answers.
4. KEEP IT SHORT – TAKE BREAKS: the longer the time between the beginning and ending of your learning or delivery session, the lower the recall. Therefore, keep it short. Putting short breaks into your session that would otherwise run longer than an hour makes a profound difference to the amount recalled. This way you introduce more than one primacy and recency.
5. LET GO ON CLOSURE: Carrying on the idea above, keep working sessions short. End on time rather than at a natural break point. This is counter-intuitive but it triggers a thing called the Ziegarnik Effect, after Bluma Ziegarnik, a Soviet psychologist. In 1927 she showed waiters remembered incomplete orders better than completed ones.
David Straker on his brilliant site suggests that to remember things for examinations, take breaks when a module is not necessarily complete, i.e. on time. Then the ongoing thinking about the incomplete task helps keep important facts in mind.
6. REPORTS, BLOGS, ASSIGNMENTS: Start with an enticing preview, and end with a thorough summary.
7. DEMONSTRATIONS: Capitalise on association and emphasis with relevant jokes, stories, anecdotes, audience participation, question and answer sessions, repetition, chanting, visuals, pauses, and alliteration.
SOME MEMORY RESEARCH REFERENCES FOR THOSE THAT WANT TO DIG IN
Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Chapter: Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. In Spence, K. W., & Spence, J. T. The psychology of learning and motivation (Volume 2). New York: Academic Press. pp. 89–195.
Glanzer, M., & Cunitz, A. R. (1966). Two storage mechanisms in free recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 5(4), 351-360.
Murdock, B. B. (1962). The serial position effect of free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(5), 482–488.
Zeigarnik, B.V. (1927). Über das Behalten von erledigten und unerledigten Handlungen (The Retention of Completed and Uncompleted Activities), Psychologische Forschung, 9, 1-85
Zeigarnik, B.V. (1967). On finished and unfinished tasks. In W. D. Ellis (Ed.), A sourcebook of Gestalt psychology, New York: Humanities Press
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