Sleeps and breaks make you smarter... did you know that, Reader?

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Anyway, I hope you had a great Trivia day yesterday.

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The winner are Derek, Yusuf, Andrew, Stephen, Eliceo and Kay - congratulations all!

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As for the others:

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You can still get this book at launch price here..

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But in case you’re wondering what exactly you’re getting, I’ve included a little excerpt in here.

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It answers the questions:
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• How are long-term, short-term and working memory distinct from each other?
• Why should you retrieve information in many different contexts?
• How do retrieval cues and habits connect? And…
• Why do breaks and sleep make you smarter?

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Enjoy an excerpt below:

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The Learning Process in your Brain

At a high level, these are the 5 steps your brain goes through when you learn⁵⁾:

1. Ingest information

You read a textbook or research paper, watch a YouTube video, or attend a lecture. This information then goes into short-term or working memory (STM). 99% of information is immediately discarded and forgotten, which is a good thing (you don’t want to remember the color of your professor’s socks on May 13th last year). In fact, our STM can only hold 7 items at the same time.⁶⁾

2. Encoding

The items that we do want to remember, need to be encoded. Encoding means creating a mental representation of the information, which can be stored into long-term memory (LTM). Humans are both curious and sense-making creatures: only mental representations that follow a certain logic and are deemed interesting can be successfully stored into LTM.⁷⁾

3. Consolidation

Consolidation is the step of actually moving the mental representations into long-term memory. Your brain replays the lesson and straightens out gaps. It then finds a suitable place to store it in LTM by connecting it to your prior knowledge and experiences. This process takes hours or days, and takes place during breaks and sleep.⁷⁾

4. Retrieval

The goal of learning is to apply what you’ve learned - whether in an exam or in your job. This requires creating cues to retrieve the information, possibly refining how it is connected to your prior knowledge, so that the right cue is triggered at the right time (similar to habit-forming cues!). The more and better cues you have, the better you’re able to recall the information and use it in different situations when it’s needed.⁸⁾

5. Reconsolidation

Every time you retrieve information, it is reconsolidated. The experience of retrieval is attached to that information and strengthens connections. If you retrieve the information in many different contexts, you will make a lot of connections, whereas if you always retrieve it the same way, any other possible connections are dulled. This ultimately determines your ability to process information in different contexts.⁹⁾
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You’ll find lots of other cool insights in the rest of the guide.

As I'm sending this now, you've got three days left to get it (after that it won't be available for a while!):

-- Dom