Study Mistake 3: You’re Not Priming Your Brain

Priming helps you understand material faster and remember ideas longer

This is part 3 of the series: “The 6-Step Approach to Perfect Grades and Effective Learning.” Here’s part 2.

Photo by Theme Photos on Unsplash

When we’re presented with a lot of new information, our understanding is usually limited by two main obstacles:

1. the way the ideas are presented to us
2. our existing knowledge of related ideas

The way ideas are presented to us matters because we understand knowledge in layers, and these layers build on top of each other. So if we try to learn a new and strange idea before first understanding the intermediate ideas, we’ll quickly become lost.

Our existing knowledge matters because it provides an organizing structure that we can use to build on our understanding. Think of your knowledge like building a house. Without a solid foundation, you cannot build any walls. And without walls, you cannot add windows. Similarly, you cannot deeply understand an idea before first understanding the building blocks of that idea.

If your previous knowledge lacks a unifying structure, you’ll find it difficult to relate ideas to each other. Instead of building a dense network of connected ideas, you’ll learn concepts in isolation. This makes it difficult to apply your knowledge and reason about ideas in new contexts. It also virtually guarantees you won’t remember the ideas in the long term.

So how do we avoid these problems while studying new information?

This is where priming your brain comes in.

Priming Your Brain

Priming is all about preparing. For example:

• In painting, a primer is the first coating applied to a surface before it is actually painted. The primer helps the surface hold the paint better.
• In child education, a primer is a book with simple words and sentences that’s used to help children learn to read.

Similarly, when studying, priming prepares you to understand the material easier, and also helps you remember the ideas better.

So how does priming work?

Priming is most useful when you’re encountering new ideas for the first time. When you sit down to study, prime your brain to learn the material by completing these 2 steps:

1. Quickly summarize your existing knowledge.
2. Skim the material to create a knowledge structure.

Let’s dig into each step in detail.

Summarize your existing knowledge

This first step is easy. Before you look at the material (textbook, lecture video, notes, presentation slides, etc), do the following:

1. write down what you already know about the specific topic.
2. write down other ideas you’re reminded of in other subjects.

Note that step (1) is focused on ideas in the same subject, while step (2) focuses on ideas in other disciplines. For example, a Physics concept might remind you of an idea you learned in Economics class.

To save time while summarizing, use quick and brief bullet points.

If you’re unsure whether an idea is related to the material you’re about to study, write it down anyways.

These two steps are important because they bring to mind existing knowledge that’s related to the material you’re about to study. Why do we do this? Because it’s vital for the next step: creating a knowledge structure.

Skim the material to create a knowledge structure

This step involves skimming the material to find the main ideas you’ll need to learn, and get a sense of how they’re connected. Note this doesn’t mean reading the full study text word for word. You can find the important ideas by skimming only 10% of the material.

As you go through the material, keep these questions in mind:

1. What are the main ideas in the material? Quickly note down the key ideas you come across. Don’t worry if you don’t understand the concept fully, for now all you need to do is make a quick note. In case you need to come back to the idea later, you can add a page number or video timestamp.
2. How is this information organized at a high level? For example: is the material a series of math proofs where proof A is used to prove B, then proof B is used to prove C, and so on? Is this a history topic with a series of cause-and-effect relationships e.g. causes and effects of World War 2?
3. Does the material provide multiple perspectives? If the material includes author’s opinions rather than accepted facts, does the material also include opposing views? If not, can you find opposing views elsewhere? Why do opposing perspectives contradict each other? Is it because people interpreted the same research data differently? Do different authors have opposing ethical or political viewpoints? Do the disagreeing authors make different unproven predictions?
4. Do any ideas surprise you? If yes, think about the existing knowledge that caused you to be surprised by the new ideas. Specifically:
   – do you think either the old or new idea is wrong?
   – is your belief in either idea stronger?
   – are both ideas true in different contexts?
5. What do you need to know to understand the main ideas? Now that you have a general sense of the material, are any ideas difficult to understand? These ideas are far from your existing knowledge and will take a bit more work to understand.
   – what do you need to know for the “difficult” ideas to make sense?
   – are there prior ideas you first need to understand?
   – are the “difficult” ideas similar to other ideas you already know?

These questions help you create a solid knowledge structure that improves your understanding. You’ll be able to comprehensively explain how the main ideas connect to each other. You’ll be aware of the prior knowledge needed to understand ideas in this subject. You’ll combine pre-existing and new ideas into one coherent logical structure. You’ll also get a sense for the types of evidence people in this field use when presenting new ideas or challenging old ones.

An unexpected benefit to priming

Note that even after building this knowledge structure, you’ll still have a lot of questions related to the material. Why? Because you only reviewed the main ideas, and still need to study the material in 100% detail. So it’s perfectly expected for you to have some knowledge gaps after you’re done priming. These gaps will be addressed when you do your in-depth study.

Here’s the best part: being aware of these gaps before you go to lecture, or start studying your textbook will prime your brain to look for information that fills those gaps! You’ll find yourself saying: “Ah, that’s the detail I was missing! This all makes sense now.”

In summary:

1. Priming your brain should be your first step when you’re learning new material.
2. Start priming by briefly outlining what you already know, both in the relevant topic, and in other subjects.
3. Next, skim through the material and note down the key ideas, even if you don’t fully understand them. Do your best to organize these ideas into a unified structure that makes logical sense to you. Include your existing knowledge into this structure to consolidate your learning.

That’s all there is to priming. It’s a simple step that will have a huge impact on your learning speed and retention. And what’s more, the more you prime your brain before studying, the faster you get at it!

Here’s the next post in the series: Study Mistake 4: Not Testing Your Understanding.