Have you ever walked into a test feeling confident about the material? Or a meeting thinking your presentation is pitch-perfect? You’ve put so much time and effort to hone your skills by practicing. Each time you feel ever more familiar for the upcoming task. And suddenly you find yourself prepared to take it on completely.

But perhaps you’ve walked out with a separate feeling. The feeling that there was a surprise question on the test that you had no clue what to do about. Or someone wanted a more detailed explanation of a point in your presentation that you couldn’t provide. Suddenly you might find this overwhelming sense that you didn’t prepare enough. You should have practiced more, because then you would have caught the knowledge you were missing. 

Would that really have helped though?

We get the feeling that more is better. But maybe not. Maybe the adage that practice makes perfect is an illusion our brain corresponds to us. The illusion that we can be ready for something by continually applying a technique or preparing for all possible scenarios. Instead, maybe what we need to do is practice less, and make our reviewing harder on ourselves.

Comfort != Safe

The most common tactic to study or practice for something is to keep reviewing it again and again. And each time we do so, we feel more and more comfortable with the material. Our sense of mastery rises to the point that we feel ready to take on our challenge. But in reality, this is a false sense of comfort.

Researchers Aimee A. Callender and Mark A. McDaniel found that for the most part, “rereading did not significantly increase performance on the assessments. [They] also found that reading comprehension ability did not alter this pattern. It appears that when using ecologically valid materials such as a textbook chapter, immediate rereading may have little or no benefit for improving performance on educationally relevant summative assessments” [1].

We look for the best way to make us feel like we understand what we are learning. And oftentimes this looks like reviewing notes and techniques while giving hints upon initial learning. If we don’t do this, we end up failing as we try to implement what we learned. So, we believe it’s more fruitful to full comprehend material before testing ourselves in challenging ways.

Peter Brown, in his book Make It Stick [2], regards this as the highest misnomer in learning. That is, looking for the easiest way for each of us to learn material. Which often looks like the way that makes us feel the most comfortable with the material. It’s an illusion we create for ourselves to make us feel better. 

That doesn’t mean do nothing though. It simply means we have to change how we get better.

The Easy Thing About Hard Things

Iowa State researchers conducted a study where they took three groups of students and gave them a list of words to remember. Afterward, a group either recited the words immediate, after 15 seconds of rehearsal, or after 15 seconds of doing math problems. Unsurprisingly, the average scores followed this same order when ranked highest to lowest from each group.

However, after continuing the session for a while, the researchers concluded with a pop quiz. Here, the scores of the groups reversed, with the originally worst group becoming the best.

David Epstein recounts this study in his book Range [3] as a prime example of the misintuition involved in education.  We would assume that the people who did better on their first test would do better on subsequent ones. Yet it turns out the people who didn’t do well have the advantage. The act of struggling through something actually makes us perform better. In fact, Epstein revealed research that showed slightly delaying the act of testing yourself until you forget information gave benefits in learning Spanish words 8 years later.

And that was just for memorizing a list of words. Imagine real problems in the real world. It requires you to understand the knowledge on a deeper level so that you can reorganize it how you see fit.

As Peter Brown mentions, most people feel comfortable reviewing and preparing for material since it makes them feel more secure. But he suggests we should be doing the opposite. Rigorously test yourself before and after learning. Constantly redefine problems so that you never feel comfortable with what you know.

Practice is no longer the ideal form of learning and prepping. It’s constantly finding ways to make material challenging on yourself. That way you are looking for a deeper set of the knowledge involved. And most of all, you never get comfortable enough to quit the process of pursuing more from it.

[1] The Limited Benefits of Rereading Educational Texts – Contemporary Educational Psychology https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0361476X08000477

[2] Range – David Epstein

[3] Make It Stick – Peter Brown