Does brain training work?
Brain training can improve performance on the tasks you practise, while evidence that those gains spread to unrelated skills or everyday thinking is limited. If you want to read more carefully, remember course material or prepare for a reasoning test, spend your main practice time on those activities.
Does the memory palace method work, and how do I build one?
The memory palace method can improve recall of lists by linking each item to a stable location along an imagined route. Build a first palace from a familiar walk, give each stop one distinctive image and test recall before choosing it for larger tasks.
How far apart should I space my reviews?
Space your reviews according to how long you need to remember, beginning with gaps of days and widening them as recall becomes dependable. For an exam four to eight weeks away, plan several returns across the remaining weeks and adjust individual questions when you struggle to answer them.
Why would a learning app ask how sure I am before I answer?
A learning app asks for confidence so you can compare how often you expect to be right with how often your answers are correct. That comparison helps you notice when to check a confident answer, trust a well-supported one or widen an estimate.
About these notes
A note might examine why a fact feels familiar until you have to recall it, or how an estimate changes when you express uncertainty as a range. The aim is to show how an explanation earns its place: what a study examined, which conclusions its design permits and where an everyday example is our own interpretation rather than a finding, so you can follow the distinction before consulting the sources. Those sources remain available for closer reading.
For a more settled account of transfer, feedback or systems thinking, turn to the ideas pages when you need definitions or a connected explanation that brings several findings together. Notes allow a closer inspection of one claim, an awkward exception or a small experiment, such as recalling a passage before checking which details disappeared. Your own experiment has a limited reach. It can reveal something about that attempt, although it cannot establish how people generally learn.
Read with a particular difficulty in mind, and keep track of what would count as a useful change. If an approach helps you remember one lesson or notice one mistaken assumption, describe that result at the scale you observed. The next attempt can test whether it survives a different question or a longer interval.