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Free Recall As A Tool For Learning

With information more available at our fingertips than ever, it might sound old-fashioned to talk about recalling, pulling from one's memory a piece of information.

For one, I'm all for not remembering things: memory aides, such as calendars, TODO lists, meeting notes, are the only way can allow ourselves to effectively address any number of “things” in our lives without being constrained by how much can we remember at a given time.

But some things are worth committing to memory: immutable facts and fundamental mental tools.

Even so, it's worth emphasising how illusions about one's self ability can be a obstacle to learning. If one already believes they've already mastered some subject, most likely they won't learn anything additional by reviewing it.

The most effective way to shatter an illusion is to put it to the test, and the test is recall: Can you recover from memory alone the information you supposedly have learned?

Often times you will be right, you can. But the times you can't are the much more important signal. And don't get me wrong, this is hard!.

It's way more effort to recall than it is to read or listen, and it feels hard to not be able to recall something after you thought you just learned it.

But it's also a very crucial piece of information: you haven't actually committed it to memory as you thought you did.

Free recall is yet another application of recall, where one is tasked with, on a blank piece of paper, just writing down everything they can remember about a subject.

After you're done recalling, you then look back at the reference material to see what you've missed or misremembered. These are the most important pieces of the subject that you should tackle next. The so-called “gaps” in your knowledge.

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Note 1: Now, this is so effortful that it only pays off for immutable and fundamental knowledge that doesn't really change with time, such as mathematical or academical concepts and facts.

Note 2: Here's the step-by-step process according to Athropic's Claude:

1. Study the material initially.

2. Put away all notes and materials.

3. Write down everything you can remember.

4. Check your recall against the original material.

5. Focus on filling knowledge gaps you identified.