How do you actually take things in?
Twelve questions about how you actually go about learning something, not how you were taught to, and not how you think you should. At the end you get a breakdown across three familiar categories: visual, auditory and kinaesthetic, along with study tactics for each.
Read the fine print at the end before you take the result too seriously. It matters.
Twelve questions
Question 1 of 12
Your breakdown
The fine print, which is genuinely worth reading
These three categories are the most widely used way of talking about learning, and people recognize themselves in them easily. What has not held up is the next step, the idea that being taught in your preferred style makes you learn better. When researchers have tested that directly, matching the teaching to the preference has not improved results (Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer & Bjork, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2008; Rogowsky et al., Journal of Educational Psychology, 2015).
So treat your breakdown as a description of what you enjoy and reach for, which is real and worth knowing, not as an instruction about what will work. The strongest predictor of what will work is usually the material: a map wants to be seen, an argument wants to be spoken, a technique wants to be done. Most people get the best results by using all three on the same material rather than picking one.
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Written for Thought Club as general guidance, not medical advice. Free to read, print, and share.
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