Studying Smart, Part 2: Repetition with Variation

You might have heard that practice makes perfect, but repetition with variation is a more effective strategy to reinforce new ideas.

This is the second post in our Studying Smart series, where we look at reliable, practical skills that any student can cultivate and every student can benefit from. In the last post , we talked about “productive failures.” This week, we’re going to look at “repetition with variation,” a more effective version of the axiom that “practice makes perfect.”

Your eyes probably glaze over when you hear “practice makes perfect.” You may even be familiar with the variant “practicing right makes perfect.” But let’s add another wrinkle you may not be familiar with – the ideal form of practice is repetition with variation. 

WHAT IS REPETITION WITH VARIATION?

Repetition with variation is both a route to understanding when you’re stuck and a way to improve long-term memory retention. There’s a tendency when we hit tough material to either give up or just keep going through the same motions, hoping something will click. The idea of “practicing right” already hints at a problem here: if you’re repeatedly practicing something “wrong”—recalling the wrong definition for a term or using the wrong formula to solve an equation—then repeating that procedure is only going to encode erroneous information. Similarly, if we don’t understand material, we often read it over and over, hoping the words will suddenly make sense. This can lead to a lot of frustration. 

So we don’t want to give up, and we don’t want to keep repeating the same errors. What should you do instead?

HOW TO INTRODUCE VARIETY

Introduce small variations in your study routine to create a denser web of cognitive associations and provide new vantage points on familiar material. This encourages better retention and serves as a check on your prior understanding. Here are some simple ways to introduce variation into your study habits:

• Work in a different room on certain days of the week.

• Read out loud instead of silently.

• Read in reverse order, paragraph by paragraph.

• Hand-write notes and assignments first instead of typing them.

• Invent your own math problems instead of solving provided ones.

• Explain something you read to a friend or family member instead of just thinking or writing about it (pro tip for parents: learn to ask good questions!).

• Create your own study guide instead of using the one provided for you.

• Illustrate a word’s definition (or formula!) instead of writing it.

I’m sure you’ve had the experience where the more you do something, the less you have to think about the process of doing it. It becomes second-nature. By varying some aspect of that repetition, you’re amplifying the effects of this process, expanding the variety of ways in which you’re capable of performing that task or retrieving that idea from your memory. 

WHY IT WORKS

That insight speaks to the ways you can vary your practice and study habits, but let’s talk more about repetition. Once you learn something new, frequency is vital for memory retention, and the sooner you practice after learning something new, the better. German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus originally produced the research for the “forgetting curve” in the 19th century, but decades of experience and more recent research confirms his theory: reviewing new information within 24 hours leads to the best outcomes for memory retention (about a 50 percent recall rate), with a steep drop-off every day thereafter (only a 20 percent recall rate by day two!). After a few days, you’ll essentially go back to square one. But our goal is to increase our efficiency and, ultimately, to study less by studying more efficiently. 

As you implement repetition with variation, those new ideas and practices become more deeply entrenched. At that point, you can gradually space out your studying, a technique called “distributed practice.” A good rule of thumb is to start with 30 minutes per day—no more marathon cram sessions, which are both less effective and ultimately less efficient. Over time, you’ll be able to stretch out the gaps between your practice. In the short term, though, strive for regular, briefer study sessions.

For the next and final post on Studying Smart, we’ll look more closely at how to make those particular study sessions effective with a strategy called “interleaving.”