Test yourself instead of rereading

Rereading notes and highlighting feel productive, but research on learning consistently finds that testing yourself works much better. This is called retrieval practice: closing the book and trying to recall, explain or solve, then checking.

Studies by Henry Roediger, Jeffrey Karpicke and others found that students who practised recalling material remembered far more a week later than students who reread it, even though the rereaders felt more confident. Use past papers, practice questions, flashcards or simply a blank page: write everything you remember about a topic, then fill the gaps. It feels harder, and that difficulty is part of why it works.