Myth: Review your material on the first day several times

Myth

Review your material on the first day several times. Many authors suggest repeated drills on the day of the first contact with the new learning material. Others propose micro-spacing (i.e. using spaced repetition for intervals lasting minutes and hours). These are supposed to consolidate the newly learned knowledge.

Fact

A single effective review on the first day of learning is all you need. Naturally, it may happen you cannot recall a piece of information upon a single exposure. In such cases, you may need to repeat the drill. It may also happen that you cannot effectively put together related pieces of information and you need some review to build the big picture. However, in the ideal case, on the day #1 you should (1) understand and (2) execute a single successful active recall (such as answering the question "When did Pangea start breaking up?"). One exposure should then suffice to begin the process of consolidating the memory trace. The idea of repeated drills must have been born from cramming at school. When knowledge is important, well-formulated and the learning occurs with pleasure, one exposure is enough. The rest is up to SuperMemo to schedule optimum review in the future

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