Dr. Cal Newport

was active recall.

That was the core idea, that replicating ideas, ways to say is replicating the information from scratch as if teaching a class without looking at your notes.

That is the only way to learn.

And the thing about it was it's a trade-off.

It doesn't take, it's efficient, doesn't take much time, but it's incredibly mentally taxing, right?

This is why students often avoid it.

It is difficult.

to sit there and try to replicate and pull forth, okay, what did I read here?

How did that work?

It's mentally very taxing, but it's very time efficient, right?

If you're willing to essentially put up with that pain, you learn very quickly.

And not only do you learn very quickly, you don't forget.

It's almost like you have a pseudo-photographic memory when you study this way.

You sit down to do a test and you're replicating like whole lines from like what you studied.

The ideas sort of come out fully formed because it's such a fantastic way to actually learn.

It was my key.

Like the whole premise that got me –

writing that book is i went through this this period as a college student where i came in freshman year was like a fine student not a great student but a fine student and i was rowing crew and i was sort of like excited to do that and then i developed a heart condition and had to stop a congenital wiring in the heart atrial flutter thing it meant i couldn't row crew anymore it's a prolapse of some sort

It was a circuitry issue that would lead to an extremely rapid heartbeat.

It's like really rapid, like tachycardia, right?