Understanding the Psychology of Learning
Announcer: Welcome to episode 552 of the Brainy Business.
Announcer: Understanding the psychology of why people buy. In today’s episode, I’m excited to introduce you to Dr. Dan Willingham, author of Outsmart your Brain.
Announcer: Ready? Let’s get started.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast, where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly.
Announcer: Now, here’s your host, Melina Palmer.
✨ The Timeless Value of Outsmart Your Brain
Melina Palmer: Hello.
Melina Palmer: Hello, everyone. My name is Melina Palmer, and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business podcast.
Melina Palmer: Have you ever wished you could hack or outsmart your own brain?
Melina Palmer: As new technology reshapes how we work and AI changes what it means to know something, many of us are being asked to learn faster and adapt more often with so much information and so many options.
Melina Palmer: And it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and unsure of where to focus.
Melina Palmer: That’s why I wanted to revisit this discussion with Dr. Dan Willingham, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of Outsmart your Brain, why learning is Hard and how you can make it easy.
Melina Palmer: This episode originally aired in January 2023 and is just as useful now, if not more so, than it was then.
Melina Palmer: His work explores what it really takes to learn and remember.
Melina Palmer: Whether you’re studying, training a team, or simply trying to keep up with everything coming at you as you listen, consider this.
Melina Palmer: What does learning look like for you today? How are you adapting your habits to keep growing in a world that never stops changing really quickly?
Melina Palmer: Before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch, and more.
Melina Palmer: It’s all within the app you’re listening to and at the brainybusiness.com 552.
🧠 Introducing Dr. Dan Willingham: Cognitive Psychology and Applied Memory
Melina Palmer: Now let’s jump right in. Dr. Dan Willingham, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Thank you so much.
Melina Palmer: I talk to a lot of people.
Melina Palmer: I read a lot of books, I read a lot of academic research.
Melina Palmer: And I can concretely say I have never read a book with more tips and practical insights, ever.
Melina Palmer: I. I don’t think it’s. I. It’s just like tip, tip, tip, tip, thing, thing, thing.
Melina Palmer: And there’s so much, but it’s easily digestible at the same time. And I love the way that it’s organized.
Melina Palmer: We will get into all of that.
Melina Palmer: And before we do, for everyone who doesn’t know you yet, can you share about who you are and the work that you do.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Sure.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I was trained as a cognitive psychologist and especially interested in the intersection of neuroscience and cognition as it pertains to learning and memory.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I did that work for about the first 10 or 12 years of my career post PhD and at that point got interested in applied aspects of memory.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 15 years or so, mostly writing for teachers and administrators, about what we know about how the mind works and how that can be useful in educational settings.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And, this is my first book that is directed not at the educator, but at the learner.
Melina Palmer: Yeah. And it. And you talk about it, you know, very early on in the book, saying that you had this presentation that you were asked to give.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Oh, my God.
Melina Palmer: Could you.
Melina Palmer: Can you share a little bit about that story? I think it’s valuable for people in business to hear, too.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Sure. This was right. This was the story of my transition from basic researcher to applied researcher.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I got a call from someone who lives in my town who also heads an educational nonprofit I met once or twice, but really didn’t know.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And he said, so we’re having our big national conference. There are going to be about 500 teachers there.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Would you come and talk to them about human learning?
Dr. Dan Willingham: And I said, well, you know, I study learning, but, like, I can’t really help you learn anything, unfortunately.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Like, I’ve. The work I do is very technical and not really.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And he says, no, no, yeah, we get all that. We. We just think it would be interesting.
Dr. Dan Willingham: We think they would find it interesting. So, you know, I was kind of flattered.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I got an ego just like anybody else. So I said, sure, I’ll come. I’ll come talk to your conscience.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So, like, six months later, I realized, oh, my gosh, this thing’s in two weeks.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I have to figure out what I’m going to say.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And then I panicked, because the question I was asking myself is, what in the world do I know about how people learn that teachers don’t already know?
Dr. Dan Willingham: This seemed like it was going to be an absolute disaster to me.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So I went and I basically picked a bunch of slides out of the course that I had by that time already been teaching for 15 years or something, which is basically the first course you would take in human memory when you go to college.
Dr. Dan Willingham: and I go to Nashville with this tray of slides, and I invited my fiance with me, because she was a teacher.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I was like, isn’t this fun? Like, you know, you can come. And why I’m giving This talk to teachers.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And then half an hour before the talk, I was like, don’t come.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I would not let her come because I was so sure it was just going to be a catastrophe.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But then, much to my surprise, it was not a catastrophe. teachers found it interesting.
Dr. Dan Willingham: There was stuff in there that they didn’t know and they thought it was really applicable to their classroom.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And that my career changed course, that afternoon because I realized my field has done a terrible job of communicating what we know about how people learn.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, you talk about the curse of knowledge a little bit in the book, and I have an episode about that.
Melina Palmer: When you were just talking. I was thinking about the Dunning Kruger effect, which was one of the most popular, most downloaded episodes of 2020 that I did on the show.
Melina Palmer: And just a fun concept anyway, but that when somebody.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Especially when you’re on social media.
Melina Palmer: Right. For sure. And so when you get knowledge in the area, like you were saying, where you think you’re on this, like, different area of the Dunning Kruger effect than what we typically talk about.
Melina Palmer: Right. We talk about that peak of Mount Stupid where you think you know everything, which is, you know, potentially a lot of who this book was written for at that beginning of college, you think, I know how to study.
Melina Palmer: I did well in high school. And then you get there and go, go, yikes. I don’t. Right.
Melina Palmer: You have that, that point, but here, where that confidence never doesn’t come quite up to match that, you know, the competence level that you have, and you assume everybody knows the thing that you know, and so they’re not going to get value out of this.
Melina Palmer: Right. This is something you, you kind of forget where you learned something.
Melina Palmer: And I think at work, you know, we have that issue too, that we think nobody’s going to want to hear me talk about this.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I think that’s right. And another aspect of this, and I think this can apply in a lot of work situations.
Dr. Dan Willingham: more particularly, what I was thinking is these folks have training in this, and, you know, teachers do get training in how students learn, but that doesn’t mean it’s always great training, and it doesn’t mean they always remember it.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So when you’re giving a presentation somewhere, it’s like, yes, they may have some background, but if this is not the primary thing that they do, they may have had a little bit of professional development on this five years ago or once every six months they get something.
Dr. Dan Willingham: but they may still very much feel like this is something I wish I knew more about.
Melina Palmer: Right. And of course, the talk you gave there couldn’t possibly have had all of what’s in the book that is out as we’re talking today, but will be out when, everybody’s listening to this.
Melina Palmer: and I really do love how, and you say that, you know, over time of then meeting with students and giving them tips and finding this other problem of people not implementing the tips that they’re given.
🚧 The Illusion of Easy Learning: Challenging Inefficient Habits
Melina Palmer: So can you talk a little bit about why we don’t do the things we know that we should do?
Melina Palmer: People hear about that on the show all the time too, but sure, sure.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So, I mean, this, this is maybe a slightly different angle than your listeners have heard before.
Dr. Dan Willingham: there are things that we know we should do that we find difficult to implement.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And we, you know, my sort of better self tells me I should do this, but then in the moment I don’t do it.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And that’s, that’s certainly a factor, in some of what I talk about in the book.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But sometimes we really don’t know what is optimal to do.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And that’s a repeating theme in memory that I, that I take up in the book.
Dr. Dan Willingham: We tend to do things that feel in the moment like they’re working and also don’t feel very difficult.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So it’s not that they’re completely ineffective. so, you know, someone who is in high school or in college will feel like, you know, I’m doing okay, like, you know, I do sort of know how to study.
Dr. Dan Willingham: and that’s true to a point. But the methods, and we know this from surveys of high school students and college students, the methods they use tend to be very inefficient.
Dr. Dan Willingham: They’re not completely hopeless. So the analogy I offer in the book is that suppose you have a friend who wants to be able to do lots and lots of push ups.
Dr. Dan Willingham: They’re going to enter a push up contest or something.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So you go to watch them train one day and you find them, they’re doing push ups on their knees and you say, why are you doing push ups?
Dr. Dan Willingham: That’s crazy. If you want to be able to do a lot of push ups, you should be doing regular push ups.
Dr. Dan Willingham: In fact, you should be doing really hard push ups, like the ones where you launch yourself off the floor and clap.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And your friend says, yeah, a couple people have told me that and I tried it.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But look, the point is to be able to do a lot of push ups.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And when I do those clappy push ups, I can barely do any.
Dr. Dan Willingham: This is like, you must not understand the point. And that’s sort of what students do when they’re studying.
Dr. Dan Willingham: They do the mental equivalent of push ups on their knees. Right.
Dr. Dan Willingham: When you do push ups on your knees, it feels like everything’s going great.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You can do them really fast and you can do a lot of them.
Dr. Dan Willingham: but you obviously need challenge for long term benefit. And the same thing turns out to be true when you’re trying to learn something new.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, I love that analogy of being.
Melina Palmer: Because we, you know, I’ve done plenty of push ups on my knees and I think that ties in. It comes up much later in the book.
⏱️ Cramming vs. Distributed Practice: Long-Term Memory
Melina Palmer: But where you talk about cramming for a test, or something and the difference over time and of course you know, with talking about procrastination.
Melina Palmer: can you share a little bit about that?
Dr. Dan Willingham: About cramming in particular?
Melina Palmer: Right?
Dr. Dan Willingham: Yeah. So cramming is, I mean and cramming is actually a difficult subject as an educator because the truth is cramming kind of works depending on what your goals are.
Dr. Dan Willingham: If, if all, if all you, if you do not care about remembering something in the long term, then crowding all of your learning practice into the time right before you need to perform.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Right before. In the case of a student, you need to take a test, that’s actually fine and you’re going to do okay on the test.
Dr. Dan Willingham: The problem is you will very rapidly forget. And so this is an instance where students sort of self perception is exactly right.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You know, we’ve all been in class and we’ve heard kids sort of bragging like oh man, like I studied the night before and I did great on the test.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Now I don’t remember any of it. And I’ll tell you, when I first became a professor, I used to tell students, well, I’m a memory researcher.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You probably remember a little more, more than you thought. Well, it turns out I was wrong.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Like data came out more recently. It’s just like when students say like I totally forgot everything, they’re not far wrong.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But what I always point. And so I’m like trying to be honest with my students.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I say, look, if you’re, you know, an engineer and you’re taking an art history course because you’ve got a free spot in your schedule and you do not care whether you remember this six months from now, I get it, why this would be your last priority and you might cramp.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But if you’re an engineer and you take Mechanics 101, knowing you have to take Mechanics 102 the next semester and you cram, you are a fool because that next course, it’s going to be assumed that you remember all that content.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And the only way to assure that you remember things in the long term is if your learning happens sort of distributed over time rather than all crammed together.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So this is an instance where yeah, they’re sort of doing push ups on their knees but because of the way the test is structured, it won’t in the short run end up being that bad for them.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But in the long run they’re going to have a problem.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, and I’m definitely going to link to the episode on time, discounting because it’s clearly a big piece of the issue here and I think because I was just refreshing on this, but I don’t have the page open.
Melina Palmer: So, you know, to the listener the numbers I say here might be off.
Melina Palmer: But I believe it was something like if you have the person who I think it was, you know, if you study for an hour a night, for five nights leading up to the test versus five hours the night before, the person that crammed got, I think it was 72% that they remembered or whatever on the test.
Melina Palmer: And the other person who’d studied over time was like 84%. So still better.
Melina Palmer: But like you said, not the end of the world if you have to cram.
Melina Palmer: But then it was the three days later and 24 days later that you go back and see what they remember.
Melina Palmer: And the people that crammed, like you say, basically nothing.
Melina Palmer: It was like 20% or something that they remembered even after three days.
Melina Palmer: But the people who had studied continually, it was still in the 80, you know, percent that they remembered quite a bit.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Yeah, forgetting is really, really slowed down when you do that distributed practice. And yet.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And it’s startlingly fast when you don’t.
Melina Palmer: As you were talking, I’m a person that loves to learn and I’m a thorough reader and and whatnot.
Melina Palmer: And I do remember I had a test for a class in my undergrad that was for something that was a silly thing that didn’t really feel like it needed to be a test anyway.
Melina Palmer: And we had been given a list of a hundred questions.
Melina Palmer: And they had said, he said, the instructor, you know, the professor had said some version of all of these questions will be on the test, guaranteed it will be a mix of these hundred questions just as they are.
Melina Palmer: you know, they’ll be here. And so I was studying and was able to say like A, B, C. Like I knew the.
Melina Palmer: But If I, if he had mixed up anything at all, I absolutely would fail that test. And, I didn’t.
Melina Palmer: I actually got praised for having the best grade in the class, but I don’t remember a darn thing.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But you remember the praise?
Melina Palmer: Yes, for sure. Of course.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And let me, let me just spell out for your audience, if I can.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Some people may be thinking, well, that’s nice for students. This really isn’t relevant to me, but it really is.
Dr. Dan Willingham: If you’re trying to master a new skill, or even just like there’s just kind of a topic that you want to know about, one of the things that may slow you down is you may feel like, well, I have no time for this.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And like, I have little, I can’t do this in a sustained way.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I have little crumbs of time here and there. And what these data show is like, that is more than okay.
Dr. Dan Willingham: That, that actually in some ways is optimal because what it means.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And again, this is where, when you do distribute a practice, this can feel like, this is, this is not working at all.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But it’s actually working really well. The reason it feels like it’s not working well is because, there may be long periods of time between sessions where you’re revisiting this content.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Forgetting is happening. And so in time 18 that you go and pick up this book, it’s been a long time since time 17 and there’s been a lot of forgetting.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So you pick it up and you’re like, oh my gosh, I barely remember any of this.
Dr. Dan Willingham: If you stick with it, that is really going to help.
Dr. Dan Willingham: This is actually a, you know, a technique that a memory researcher would tell you to adopt if you’re trying to learn and remember something for the long term.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So don’t be discouraged if you don’t have a lot of time and that it’s separated by so much time that forgetting is occurring in between.
Dr. Dan Willingham: That’s actually absolutely fine.
Melina Palmer: Right. And from what I remember from the book being that then you go when you’re revisiting, you know, it’s helping to connect some things.
Melina Palmer: And then, you know, of course you’re talking about, you had a lot of interesting stuff about sleep, which we’ll, we’ll talk about too.
🗓️ Prioritizing Learning: Planning by Time, Not Task
Melina Palmer: Okay, I had two things I wanted to say and now I’ve gotten excited about them both.
Melina Palmer: So we’ll go to the first thing first and then potentially come back to the sleep one.
Melina Palmer: But you have this mention about if somebody decided they wanted to advance their career and they want to learn something new.
Melina Palmer: Right. So people listening to a podcast like this one probably can relate to that and are investing that time.
Melina Palmer: I think you gave the example of if you wanted to learn coding, but it was just kind of, on the side to help you advance.
Melina Palmer: Eventually you think it would be important, but you say a lifetime of being prompted to study only when a test looms means that you’re unlikely to make time for learning when there’s no urgency.
Melina Palmer: And so that piece of, you know, creating that study habit, work habit, that consistency in planning, by time and not by task, I think is incredibly relevant to people at work that are looking to advance their careers.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I, think it is. And I think planning by.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Let me just highlight something you said they’re planning by time and not by task.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So you’re not thinking of your workflow in terms of, okay, what do I need to do next?
Dr. Dan Willingham: But instead you’re more mindful about what the optimal allocation ought to be of your effort to the various tasks in front of you.
Dr. Dan Willingham: everyone knows, like, you don’t just want to do things because they’re urgent.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Some things are urgent and they’re really not very important. And the important things that aren’t urgent get crowded out.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So I think a good way of dealing with that is instead of having to continually make the decision, how am I going to allocate my time today?
Dr. Dan Willingham: Try and be more planful about it and think about it once with long term goals in mind.
Dr. Dan Willingham: the other, back to this idea of sort of long term learning.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So that if you get this habit of planning by task as a student and you only ever learn, when there’s a test looming.
Dr. Dan Willingham: The other aspect that this I think is important is, self image really contributes as well.
Dr. Dan Willingham: so that if you have the attitude of, I’m the kind of person who is always learning something new.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So in a, you know, during a week, I’m always going to find two hours, doesn’t matter which job I’m in at this moment, doesn’t matter, you know, how busy I am because it’s wedding season and lots of my friends are getting married or whatever, like two hours.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I’m always going to be just the same way they’re, you know, the people who exercise always find some way to exercise.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And that’s really a self image thing. You just see yourself as a learner and therefore, or it’s prioritized.
Dr. Dan Willingham: that is the kind of thing some people get in school and it carries over and then for other people, you know, they develop it later, whatever.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But I think it’s, I think you want to be that person, right?
Melina Palmer: And it doesn’t have to be like you’re saying this huge, you know, my entire life, every moment of every day is dedicated to learning new things. Right?
Melina Palmer: But you can give what you can give, when you can give it, and then see what’s next.
🏃♀️ Overcoming Procrastination: The “Just Get Started” Rule
Melina Palmer: I also really loved the piece about Just go get started.
Melina Palmer: You talk a lot. I love the chapter on procrastination.
Melina Palmer: I think it’s so valuable for everyone, because as it says there, we all procrastinate. It’s a natural tendency.
Melina Palmer: We’re all going to do it. So it doesn’t mean anybody’s bad or wrong.
Melina Palmer: but the little habit of even the I just have to jog to the end of the driveway and that’s enough.
Melina Palmer: Yeah.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And it counts. I did it today, right?
Dr. Dan Willingham: You have to put on your, you have to put on your running clothes too.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And then to the end of the driveway, and then that counts, right?
Melina Palmer: And if you decide to go back after you jogged your, you know, three steps, or it might have been a little bit of a longer driveway than the one that I have, but you, get there and then you say, you know, today I really am done.
Melina Palmer: You can turn back and you don’t have to feel bad about it. Right? And you shouldn’t have that guilt.
Melina Palmer: And the same, you, know, you have the example of just putting the things on the to do list.
Melina Palmer: You know, if you just put right out the to do list and then if you’re going to be done, you’re going to be done and you don’t feel bad about it right now.
Melina Palmer: But more often than not, hugely more often than not, you’ll run past the driveway because you’re already there.
Melina Palmer: Right, Exactly.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And there. It’s worth mentioning, there is research on this that one of the things that contributes to procrastination is that people overestimate how unpleasant tasks are.
Dr. Dan Willingham: There’s lots of work on this. In particular an exercise. I think it’s. I think it’s pretty universal.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You know, people don’t want exercise. Oh my God, you’re in pain and you’re sweating.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You’re all and then once they start, they’re like, you know, what it’s really, you know, I’m not, I wouldn’t say I’m having fun, but this isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So the idea is like, just get yourself going and then you’ll realize it’s not that bad.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But the key thing is you do have to actually give yourself permission that I can stop if I want to.
Dr. Dan Willingham: If you kind of know, like, I know if I go to the end of the driveway and say I’m going to stop, then I’m going to punish myself and there’s going to be all this guilt, then obviously that that’s not going to work.
Melina Palmer: Right. Just really being okay with whatever it is and that it doesn’t have to be more than whatever that is.
Melina Palmer: And, and if you have day after day after day after day that you keep turning back around, you know, then maybe there’s a new goal.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Is not for you.
Melina Palmer: Right. Yeah, for sure.
😴 Sleep and Memory Consolidation
Melina Palmer: well, to just mention the thing on sleep.
Melina Palmer: because I had, had said this a little bit and I had another quote here.
Melina Palmer: I am hopeful that it truly is a dry sense of humor.
Melina Palmer: Throughout the book, I found myself laughing continually at little, sort of funny turns of phrase that I enjoyed very much.
Melina Palmer: Just so you know. And like I said, I hope it’s intended, that they were intended to be funny.
Melina Palmer: Like, well, this is saying, you know, it’s common for people to experiment with sleep in ways they would not experiment with other basic needs like food or breathing.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Right. It’s.
Melina Palmer: They’re funny, they’re worded in a way that it’s so obvious and it kind of makes you laugh to say, yeah, why would I do that?
Melina Palmer: That’s silly. Right. But so anyway, that, I thought was kind of funny.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But sleep, yeah, sleep people appreciate that sleep messes you up the next day.
Dr. Dan Willingham: That if I don’t sleep, and it’s, it’s severe enough, I’m not going to be able to think very well.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And that’s certainly true. What they don’t realize it, it actually messes up you.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Messes you up from the previous day as well. Because the night of sleep is important in consolidating the memories that were formed during the day.
Dr. Dan Willingham: If you don’t get much sleep or you get low quality sleep, you are tampering with the learning that you put so much time into the previous day.
💡 The Intricacies of Memory: Intention vs. Processing
Melina Palmer: Yeah, I would love to take a little step back from the book itself and talk a little bit about memory because it’s such an important and interesting thing that I know we haven’t talked about enough on the show.
Melina Palmer: I have a. An episode when I was going through all the biases and I have, you know, something talking about memory, but it’s definitely nowhere near all of what I know you could talk about.
Melina Palmer: can you share a little bit of insight into memory for everybody who doesn’t really have much background there?
Dr. Dan Willingham: Sure. I mean, it’s, it’s. Naturally, it’s a huge topic. But I’ll.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I’ll tell you about a couple of my favorite findings that I think are especially applicable.
Dr. Dan Willingham: One of them is actually the, finding that when I heard about this in my first year of graduate school, this is what made me commit to memory as a topic of research, because there were a few other things that were going on in the lab I was thinking about, and that is that, your intention or your desire to learn contributes to pretty much nothing to whether or not you actually will learn something.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I found this absolutely amazing. As someone who was a student and had spent 16 years, like my primary job was trying to cram things in my head, and the idea that really wanting to remember something just didn’t mean anything at all, was really surprising to me.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Now, in a way, this should not have been surprising at all, because we all know there are lots of things you want to remember that you don’t.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I mean, every person you’ve ever met, you’re like, oh, be really good if I remember this person’s name.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And of course, frequently you don’t. and then likewise, there are lots of things you remember that you remember without trying.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You know, if you went to a movie last night, you said, tell me.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Oh, I saw Avatar 2. And I said, oh, I’ve heard about that. What was it about?
Dr. Dan Willingham: You’re like, I don’t know. I didn’t study it. I just went to it. It. Right.
Dr. Dan Willingham: That would be weird, right? Like, you just remember the movie.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Like, of course you didn’t try to remember it. Just the memory comes for free. So that’s. That’s one finding.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And that sort of points towards the second finding, which is you, the.
Dr. Dan Willingham: The whether or not you remember something is fully a product of the cognitive processes that you engage when you encounter whatever it is you’re wanting to remember or don’t care if you remember.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You remember Avatar, not because you wanted to remember it, but because you were processing.
Dr. Dan Willingham: The typical term would be deeply, and deeply means you’re thinking about what it means you’re connecting it to other experiences that you’ve had.
Dr. Dan Willingham: that’s the way things become memorable. Memory loves meaning. That’s the main way that we remember. There are other things.
Dr. Dan Willingham: There are other attributes that we remember. We sometimes remember what things look like.
Dr. Dan Willingham: We sometimes remember what they sound like. Mostly we’re interested in meaning.
Dr. Dan Willingham: and so processing meaning, thinking about what things mean is going to be the most helpful for memory.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And that, in turn, tells you that things that are inherently meaningless are extremely hard to commit to memory.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So when you’re, you know, especially in a, when you’re trying to learn something new, if there’s, you know, about the worst thing, passwords are terrible in that way.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Right. Because passwords, everyone wants you to, commit a meaningless password to memory.
Dr. Dan Willingham: and things that are meaningless are very, very hard to commit to memory.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, that’s.
Melina Palmer: Thank you for that. And memory loves meaning is my new favorite line. So thank you.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Okay.
Melina Palmer: for that.
🧭 Context and Memory Cues: The Neighbor Coffee Example
Melina Palmer: I really liked the example you gave, too, about the context and the different associations that happen within a particular item.
Melina Palmer: So where you were talking about the coffee for the. The neighbor.
Melina Palmer: Can you share a little bit about that example? where you have a new neighbor that moves in and you want to get them the gift in the gift basket.
Melina Palmer: Do you remember this example from the book? Okay. It was super relevant.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I remember talking about it, but I don’t remember what the point of that example was.
Melina Palmer: Oh, no.
Dr. Dan Willingham: About memory cues. Oh, this was.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Yeah, this was really about that sort of memory. You draw memory out the same way that it went in.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, right.
Melina Palmer: And you talk about the chair and the different aspects of a chair and what you.
Melina Palmer: What you learn about it.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. Right. So the, the coffee example.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Now, if I can. If I can remember, the example is sort of that you think to yourself, oh, I want to put together a gift basket for my neighbor.
Dr. Dan Willingham: but I don’t have any coffee to put into it, so I’m going to get some coffee when I come home.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So you’re thinking about buying coffee in a way that you don’t normally think about buying coffee, which is.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I’m thinking about it in the context of a gift rather than the way I normally think about it, which is a staple that I just need to have around my house.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And so then we go further in the example. So you have that in your head in the morning, you’re driving home.
Dr. Dan Willingham: In the evening, you drive by the grocery store and you think, oh, is there anything I need from the Grocery store?
Dr. Dan Willingham: No, I don’t think so. And then you drive home and you see your neighbor and you think, oh, I wanted to get coffee at the grocery store.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Right. So the question I pose is, why is it that when you drove by the grocery store, you didn’t remember, I need coffee?
Dr. Dan Willingham: And I’ve sort of given you the answer already. You thought about coffee not in the context of, oh, I’m out of coffee and I’m also out of sugar and whatever else.
Dr. Dan Willingham: and that would be sort of a grocery store way of thinking about coffee.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Instead, you thought about it in this kind of odd context, in the context of gift for my neighbor.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So seeing your neighbor was a good cue for that memory. Oh, right.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I wanted to give that person a gift. Coffee was one of the things, darn it, I forgot the coffee.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So the overarching, lesson we draw from this is that memories are going to be cued by thoughts or by things in the environment later.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And the way you’re going to be able to draw memories out most successfully is when the cue is a good match for the way that you thought about the memory at the time you, you know, you were trying to remember it.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Encoding is the technical term that’s usually used. So in the thinking about it in the afternoon, in the same way you thought about it in the morning.
Melina Palmer: Right. I, I thought that was such an interesting and applicable, just really useful example where we have a hard, where we do forget something.
Melina Palmer: And so if you, like, you say at the beginning of the day, you think, oh, I need to remember this.
Melina Palmer: And then maybe it’s at the end of the day, maybe it’s 30 seconds after I said I needed to remember the thing and I forgot it when I was walking out the door.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So I’ll tell you a way I use this principle in my everyday workflow when I have, I save a lot of things.
Dr. Dan Willingham: you know, a lot of stuff comes in my inbox that I don’t think is useful to me right now.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But I know, like, oh, if I worked on a project about this, like, I would probably want that and why not save it?
Dr. Dan Willingham: Because, you know, yes, I could recover it, but, like, maybe it would be hard to find or whatever.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Like, it’s here, so why not take two seconds to save it?
Dr. Dan Willingham: So I keep a lot of stuff on my hard drive like that.
Dr. Dan Willingham: and I’m trying to be thoughtful in file naming and I try and name files in the way I think I’m later likely to remember what this was about.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So, for example, If I got something from you, Melina would definitely be in the form file name. Right.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Because you’ve sent me very few things. And so, one of the features that I’m going to remember is that it came from you.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So even if that doesn’t bear on the content at all, that will be in the file name. So, thinking.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And just try this on sometimes. This is for all the listeners. Try this on sometime when you’re doing.
Dr. Dan Willingham: When you’re storing something away, think to yourself, how am I likely to later try to remember this?
Dr. Dan Willingham: and then make that part of the way that it becomes retrieval.
Melina Palmer: When you were just talking, it reminded me of the finger puppet example, which I feel like is maybe one you would more remember from.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Right. You have very good coding for all these experiments and examples that I talk about.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Yeah. So this was an instance where I gave myself a terrible memory cue.
Dr. Dan Willingham: this was, I think it was my. My senior thesis in college.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And I had this great idea that that was, I thought was applicable to my senior thesis.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So I had like a little. A piece of paper that I wrote on.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And I just wrote something like, don’t forget about the finger puppet.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Completely confident that I would later remember what that meant.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And then, you know, later, of course, I had absolutely no idea what, what, what the importance of the finger puppet was.
Melina Palmer: Right. And from what you say there, it has never been recovered.
Melina Palmer: No.
Dr. Dan Willingham: That memory is still in waiting somewhere. Yes.
Melina Palmer: We’ve all, you know, we’ve all had that.
Melina Palmer: So I think it was very, very relatable and, you know, kind of asking myself if this.
Melina Palmer: Is this a finger puppet note I’m making for myself here?
Dr. Dan Willingham: Exactly.
Melina Palmer: Exactly.
📝 Structuring Learning: Tips for Notes and Presentations
Melina Palmer: well, and in the book itself, I love the, that the tips you give, they ebb and flow from big picture stuff, you know, of taking the time to think about planning and understanding how you’re going to approach your studying and what you need to be paying attention to in, a lecture and thinking about why this matters and big associations.
Melina Palmer: And then, you know, the next tip is giving very specific abbreviations you can use for your notes.
Melina Palmer: Or it’s saying to put your notes go. You know, make sure you leave a wide margin.
Melina Palmer: And you’re going to want to put, like, use a notebook for the one thing.
Melina Palmer: And you put the notes during class on the left hand side so that the right hand side’s open and that the flow of thoughtfulness makes sense.
Melina Palmer: Wonderful tip. Really easy to implement right away and feel like I’m getting a, little win for that kind of snowball Effect and helps everything else come into play.
Melina Palmer: How did you go about sorting?
Melina Palmer: I guess all of that and, and coming to. Was there, some grand master plan of organizing your 94 tips into 14 chapters or whatever it was to have it all fit together like that?
Dr. Dan Willingham: There. Yeah, there. There was sort of a plan.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And, if you ask me how I developed, I’m gonna have to say I don’t remember which.
Dr. Dan Willingham: everyone thinks it’s hilarious when memory researchers forget things. And I usually do not disappoint on that score.
Dr. Dan Willingham: but I do know, I mean, that it’s organized by task, obviously.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And one of the things I really wanted for the book. Well, obvious to you because you’ve read the book.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So for the listeners, it’s sort of organized by things that you would do that entail learning.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So things like how do you go to a lecture or presentation and extract meaning from it, even if you.
Dr. Dan Willingham: The speaker is not very good, how do you take notes?
Dr. Dan Willingham: So a separate chapter, how do you take notes during a presentation in an effective way? And so on.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So I knew I wanted to do that because I think that people have a sense.
Dr. Dan Willingham: There are some tasks I’m really not very good at.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Like, some people are going to say, like, I’m, I don’t. I don’t procrastinate that much. Like, a little, sure.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But, like, that’s not a big deal, right? So I wanted the book to be useful to everybody without, without anyone feeling the need to read from the beginning to the end and just look at the parts that were useful to them and then thinking about each, of those tasks.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I identified what I saw as what is frequently sort of the linchpin problem.
Dr. Dan Willingham: and that was when I noticed a lot of times it’s a problem because you have this misperception about the best way to do something.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So in the case of listening to a presentation, the thing that your brain does is you tend to listen to it the same way you listen in other, less formal situations.
Dr. Dan Willingham: When you’re listening and those other situations, listening is made easier for you, either by the constraints of what you’re doing or by intention.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So in other words, when you’re in a conversation, listening is easy because no one really expects you to connect what’s being said right now with something that was said 15 minutes ago, or if so, I’m going to say, like, oh, remember when I said this?
Dr. Dan Willingham: Well, now this is still part of that story, or something like that.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You’re really only expected to keep, like, the last 30 seconds in mind and just so you can respond to the other person.
Dr. Dan Willingham: The other time you listen is when you’re in like a movie or you’re attending a play or something and There it is, 90 minutes long, but it’s in a narrative format and that’s pretty linear.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And the playwright or the screenwriter is thinking very much about their audience and how to make it easy for you to understand what’s going on.
Dr. Dan Willingham: When you’re in a presentation, you’re there to learn something, you’re not there to be entertained. Right?
Dr. Dan Willingham: So the purpose of listening is different. And also the person who’s speaking to you is not a professionally keeping you entertained.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Most of the time they know some stuff and they’re likely to organize it.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Not in a narrative, they’re going to organize it hierarchically.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Most of the time when you go to an info packed, presentation where you’re expected to know something when you walk out, that’s the organization.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And when there’s a hierarchical organization, you are expected to make connections, among the different things that you’re hearing.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And because it’s not a narrative, it’s difficult to make those connections.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So this is where again, you, you sort of go at it in a natural way, which is to listen the way you’re used to listening.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You sort of sit and you see this. I mean, all of us have been to conferences like, you know, you go to, you know, you just kind of plop down and you’re not really, you know, you’re, you don’t feel like it’s got to be game on.
Dr. Dan Willingham: This is going to be really hard. You’re like, I’m listening. Right.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But the truth is, if you’re listening with that purpose of learning something, that’s actually, that’s actually pretty serious cognitive work.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I’m excluding here. Like we’ve also all been to conferences where the keynote is, you know, like the business magician and he’s telling jokes and like, you know, pulling quarters out of people’s ears and stuff.
Dr. Dan Willingham: and that’s just entertainment and that is a narrative and easy and fun.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, I thought that was so helpful. And the imagery of the hierarchical presentation.
Melina Palmer: As someone who teaches myself and does a lot of keynotes and presentations and help people to do better presentations and you talk about pitches at work and whether that’s, you know, whether you’re doing the keynote or you’re teaching a class or you are pitching to get more budget or to get a project or something, understanding how people hear what you’re talking about and knowing how to present that information, in a way that’s going to help them retain what is most important and follow that story all the way through.
Melina Palmer: Of, like, where are we going? Why do we need to get there?
Melina Palmer: Where are the points that we should be saying, hey, this is on the same point as this thing I talked about 10 minutes ago.
Melina Palmer: And, you know, those summaries are very important. And I love that the book breaks out, you know, for the learner.
Melina Palmer: And then, hey, if you’re a teacher, you know, in every section, it has the tips for things that you should be thinking about and the way you present the information, which very much, I think, ties in, like I was saying, with presentations at work and how you.
Melina Palmer: Because we’re trying to get people to understand and we’re communicating something.
Melina Palmer: You want someone to do something, in all the cases. Right.
Melina Palmer: So I think this information is so applicable for anybody.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Good.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I’m delighted to hear, and I certainly hope so.
🎯 Reframing Procrastination and Setting Small Goals
Melina Palmer: Yeah.
Melina Palmer: Well, the last thing that I really want to talk about, that I loved, loved, loved, loved, I talk about reframing a lot and that importance in our own mind and just as we think about problems.
Melina Palmer: And I really liked. And I’ve got another point where I had, you know, typed out a quote from the book that I thought, was helpful, but it says, the next time you are tempted to procrastinate, try describing the choice to yourself in a way that highlights the opportunity cost.
Melina Palmer: Don’t ask, shall I watch a movie or shall I work on the problem set?
Melina Palmer: Say, shall I knock that problem set off and be done with it, or shall I put it off and give up my chance to feel good about having it over with?
Melina Palmer: And in that way, you know, you want to reframe to highlight what you enjoy instead of what’s making you procrastinate.
Melina Palmer: You know, to be able to look at this in a different way to help you overcome that.
Melina Palmer: And it’s such a simple shift, but one where we can see how different it feels.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Yeah. And I mean, especially if you.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And this is the you mentioned, there are a lot of tips in the book. And this.
Dr. Dan Willingham: This was my other motivation, was to give people a choice of tools. Right.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So each chapter is just one task. And you don’t have to do all of these tips.
Dr. Dan Willingham: God help us all. Like, trying to do all of it would be so much. Right.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But, you know, to give you a choice. And so this is the kind of thing, like, for me, this kind of reframing thing really helps.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Why? Because I’m the Kind of person where when I procrastinate it really does bug me that like I know this thing is hanging over my head and you know, even if I manage not to think about a little while, like there’s a part of the back of my brain that I’m like, this thing still has to be done.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And so saying like, you know, tell ask myself, well, do you want this to be, you know, this weight to be off you and like you just don’t have to think about it anymore.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Then you just have to do it and then, and then it’ll be over with.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So yeah, the reframing business is, is very effective for me.
Melina Palmer: Right.
Melina Palmer: And, and just in that way of it also helps, you know, take a step back, you know, to kind of get out of that hot state where we have, you know, our hot cold action gap.
Melina Palmer: And you’re thinking, oh man, the movie sounds really fun and it feels exciting and I wanting to procrastinate on doing work because obviously movies are more fun than doing our work.
Melina Palmer: But then, you know, you think about how am I going to feel about this tomorrow when you know or you know, am I going to sleep better tonight if I have done this or or whatnot.
Melina Palmer: So I think that those reframes in those simple moments, that thoughtful sludge is the way that I will often talk about that.
Melina Palmer: So where, you know, sludge we try to reduce in organizations we’re getting rid of the friction, make things as easy as you possibly can.
Melina Palmer: And that’s helpful a lot. But in spots where you know you’re going to mess up, putting those little blockers in the way to go really a, ah, way to think about it differently.
Melina Palmer: It’s just really valuable.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I think it’s worth mentioning that in the book I use the example of gaming versus a problem set.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And of course at work that’s not what it’s going to be. It’s going to be productive.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Procrastination is the term. I don’t know if that’s the term that you’ve used here before.
Melina Palmer: I do when I talk about bike shedding, I also call it productive procrastination. All the.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Yeah. And it’s, I mean if you’ve never heard the term before, it’s pretty obvious what it means.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Right. And so sort of saying like, oh, I can’t possibly work on that spreadsheet until I’ve got email box zero.
Dr. Dan Willingham: It’s like, oh, actually you can. Right. And I think this, I think this also dovetails nicely with the idea we were talking about before of allocating time rather than tasks.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Right. So thinking to yourself, can’t possibly work on this other task until I’ve got the email box. email zero.
Dr. Dan Willingham: It’s like. No, actually like you should say there’s so much time during the day that I’m going to devote to email and then so much time to this other task, including the not very pleasant tasks that you have to do that you typically procrastinate on for sure.
Melina Palmer: And whether for people, it’s the, eat the frog piece. Right.
Melina Palmer: That you have to do the really hard thing first.
Melina Palmer: I always encourage, and I love that in the book, you know, you talk about taking the big stuff and doing those small steps and how, how to go about thinking about breaking things into smaller steps, which if you don’t know the ultimate picture of where you’re going, it can feel a bit daunting to break it down and how small is a small step and whatnot, of which kind of in the jog to the end of the driveway, it’s as small as you can make it typically.
Melina Palmer: And then you can just get that momentum. but you know, with that, when we think about the task, the problem, and if you set it up to where.
Melina Palmer: If I don’t do anything else today, the one thing I have to do is what. Right.
Melina Palmer: And if there’s just one, it’s a lot harder to ignore the one thing than if you have 25 things on your to do list that you can be productively procrastinating on.
Melina Palmer: All of them all the time.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Right? Right. Absolutely.
🚀 Final Thoughts: Tweak Your Mental Life for Productivity
Melina Palmer: Well, as we are wrapping up, what would you say, you know, as the, like anything else that I should have asked about things that you’re so excited about with, you know, day one of new book here, that you wish people would.
Melina Palmer: Would hear and know and think about when they are considering outsmarting their own brains.
Dr. Dan Willingham: I mean, I think that’s the, you know, the, the title really says it all for me that they’re It’s not that frequently.
Dr. Dan Willingham: It’s not that what you’re doing now is ineffective. it’s that it can be tweaked to be more effective and you can get, pretty sizable productivity jumps.
Dr. Dan Willingham: But it is the case that it does not come for free.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Most of the time it’s gonna feel a little bit more difficult.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And a lot of times, as someone who’s, as a cognitive psychologist, you know, you, you hear comparisons between mental life and physical exercise frequently.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And so, you know, like the brain is like a muscle and it’s like.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Yeah, well, in some ways it is. In a lot of ways it’s not.
Dr. Dan Willingham: This is, this is one of the times the analogy is really apt.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Just as, like, you just can’t expect that you’re going to get a whole lot of benefit from exercise if it doesn’t feel kind of hard, and nothing is better.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Sorry, something is better than nothing. but when it’s hard, it’s going to be more productive.
Dr. Dan Willingham: And the same thing is true in mental life. And a lot of what’s in Outsmart your Brain is sort of, illustrating why what you’re probably doing now is okay.
Dr. Dan Willingham: but if you, reorient it, you can get more out of it.
Melina Palmer: Oh, I love that.
Melina Palmer: And like you said, it’s got points in there where, like with the cramming stuff, right?
Melina Palmer: It’s like, hey, we can’t be expected to deeply remember everything that we ever hear about forever. That. That’s silly.
Melina Palmer: It’s never going to work. So, you know, take some time, do that mental sorting to say, all right, I know that I can cram this and this thing I want to be more thoughtful about.
Melina Palmer: And, you know, you can have that awareness.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You don’t have to do everything. And I will say some of the tips are easy.
Dr. Dan Willingham: It just occurred to me, like, the easiest one by far, but the one I also admit, like the data on this are not very good is chewing gum.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So there are some data that, like chewing gum gives you, Helps you focus for like 20 minutes or something like that.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You can get this little burst of concentration, but the data are kind of squishy on that.
Dr. Dan Willingham: So I actually say in the tip like, this may or may not work. Like, try it if you like.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Especially if you like gum. Like, why not?
Melina Palmer: If you’re looking for something that’s going to help, you move forward, then easy thing to try.
Melina Palmer: Why not?
Dr. Dan Willingham: Yeah. If you want to dip your toe into the world about Outsmart your Brain, that’s a really low cost one.
Melina Palmer: I love it. Well, I love this book.
Melina Palmer: It’s so as going through, you know, I one have kiddos here that are not yet in college, and one who just started in college and being able to say, hey, like, I’m ready to send it, you know, everybody’s gonna want to buy five copies.
Melina Palmer: Like every graduating senior or like, you know, needs this book. Like, so it’s. It’s so, so valuable.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Oh, yeah, Copy for the car. Copy, you know, absolutely, yes.
Melina Palmer: Everyone go buy your five or ten, copies to go distribute with the world for sure.
Melina Palmer: and for everyone, Dan, that is excited to connect with you to learn more, you know, what’s their best next.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Step to do so people can connect with me on social media. I’m on twitter @dantwillingham.
Dr. Dan Willingham: and you know, if you, are curious about the book and you just want to email me, I’m always happy to talk with people.
Dr. Dan Willingham: You reach me at willingham@virginia.edu. If you also Google Daniel Willingham, you know, I’m not hard to find.
Melina Palmer: Perfect. And we will of course have links in the show notes to make it easy for people reducing that sludge.
Melina Palmer: This is a point where we make it real easy, for people to find, more information.
Melina Palmer: So, so thank you so much again for writing the book, for joining and sharing your knowledge.
Melina Palmer: It’s been really delightful to chat with you today.
Dr. Dan Willingham: Thank you so much.
Dr. Dan Willingham: It’s really been fun.
📝 Host’s Reflection: Designing Your Learning
Melina Palmer: Thank you again to Dr. Dan Willingham for joining me on the show today.
Melina Palmer: What got your brain buzzing in today’s conversation? For me, I keep coming back to the idea that intention alone doesn’t create, learning, structure does.
Melina Palmer: Dan talked about how memory loves meaning. And that, the way we think about something when we first encounter it determines how easily we’ll recall it later.
Melina Palmer: It’s such a powerful reminder that we can’t just hope information will stick.
Melina Palmer: We have to design our learning to make it stick.
Melina Palmer: That’s true for students, but also for all of us who are constantly learning new tools, skills, and systems.
Melina Palmer: If you’ve ever read an article, watched a webinar, or taken a course and thought, why didn’t any of that stay with me?
Melina Palmer: This episode is a good nudge to rethink your process.
Melina Palmer: Maybe it’s about spacing out what you learn, revisiting key ideas after rest, or finding ways to connect new knowledge to what you already know.
Melina Palmer: Of course, you can’t do this with everything. You only want to do it with the right things.
Melina Palmer: And so implementing my not yet strategy, like I talk about in my TEDx, there’s nothing magical about Monday is a great thing to do here.
Melina Palmer: I also love Dan’s reminder that productive struggle isn’t a bad sign.
Melina Palmer: It’s actually evidence that your brain is building stronger connections.
Melina Palmer: When learning feels a little uncomfortable, that’s often where real growth happens. So what about you?
Melina Palmer: Whether it’s one of these same points or something else that really stood out for you in the conversation.
Melina Palmer: I’d love to hear about it. Please come share it with me on social media.
Melina Palmer: You’ll find me as the Brainy Biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn.
Melina Palmer: There are links in the show notes to make it easy, along with links for my top related past episodes and books including Outsmart your Brain, Ways to Get in Touch and more.
Melina Palmer: It’s all waiting for you in the app you’re listening to and at thebrainybusiness.com 552 and thank you again to Dr. Dan Willingham for joining me on the show today.
Melina Palmer: It was a delight to chat with and learn from you.
Melina Palmer: Join me next time for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast.
Melina Palmer: It’s going to be a lot of fun. You don’t want to miss it.
Melina Palmer: Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.
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Announcer: Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly.
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