An unbroken hour on one embellishment is far less productive than the same hour broken into short, spaced-out chunks. The first few minutes of any practice block are where nearly all the value lives — after that you're mostly running laps in short-term memory, not building anything durable.
Testing yourself beats reviewing every single time. One study found quizzed material scored a full letter grade higher than reviewed material — record yourself and play a tune with the sheet music turned over, and treat that little moment of 'wait, how does this go' as the most valuable part of the exercise.
The moment you finally feel comfortable with something is exactly when to stop and switch to something else. That discomfort of switching, and the disorientation of coming back to it later, is retrieval practice doing its work — and it feels unproductive precisely because it's actually effective.
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Make means Stick, learning and evidence-based what It Why🔒
retrieval, reflection interleaving, concepts: Five spacing, testing, key🔒
Finding one before being answer shown own your🔒
Spaced practice versus repetition massed🔒
a real practice Interleaving band in pipe🔒
metronome power of recording Testing: the yourself and the🔒
memorization Testing over the turning by sheet music your🔒
log success tune Reflection the and🔒
beanbag-toss Varied practice study and the🔒
practice How a chunk should be? long🔒
McCallum's regular Willie and minutes, calibration forty-five🔒
shameful Metacognition: mistakes not useful, why are🔒
About this class
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