how to learn faster: 6 tactics for before, during and after you practice

Huberman's first question is not what to study, but what state you are in. he calls the gap limbic friction, and it goes both ways, on the transcript: "you can be too tired, in which case you're going to need to get yourself more alert, or you can be too alert and you're going to need to get yourself calmer." the target: "The ideal state is going to be clear, calm and focused".

the tactic: ask one question before every session. in his words: "how much limbic friction am I experiencing? Am I too alert and I want to be calmer? Or am I too calm and too sleepy and I want to be more alert?" if you are wired, he points to the physiological sigh, "inhaling twice through the nose and exhaling once through the mouth". if you are flat, the best fix is sleep or non-sleep deep rest. failing that, coffee, or breathing with longer, deeper inhales than exhales.

try this week: before each learning session, rate yourself from 1 (sleepy) to 10 (wired). above 7, do three physiological sighs. below 4, take a short walk or have your coffee first. start when you are in the middle.

Huberman takes apart two myths: the movie version where skills arrive instantly, and the 10,000 hours rule. on the transcript, his problem with the second one is that "it's not about hours, it's about repetitions." his example is the Super Mario Effect, an online experiment where one group got "That did not work. Please try again." after a mistake, and the other got "You just lost five points, please continue." he says the first group succeeded 68% of the time and the second 52%, because they simply tried many more times.

the tactic: count attempts, not minutes. "You want to perform as many repetitions as you possibly can, at least when you're first trying to learn a skill." so accept errors without stopping to fix each one. and frame them as information, not as a penalty, because the penalty is what made people quit.

try this week: pick one skill. in your next session, set a timer for 15 minutes and count attempts, not quality. no stopping to analyze each miss. try to beat the count in the next session. if you coach or teach, swap your penalty feedback for a plain try again.

this is the core of the episode, on the transcript: "errors are the basis for neuroplasticity and for learning." when you get something wrong, the brain releases the chemicals that mark the circuit for change. that is why he calls quitting at the first sign of struggle "the absolute worst thing". frustration is the signal, not the problem: "It is exceedingly frustrating, but that frustration, it liberates the chemical cues that signal that plasticity needs to happen."

the tactic: short, intense bouts that end past the frustration point. his free throw example: keep shooting "until I'm hitting the point of frustration. And at that point, continuing probably for anywhere from 10 to 100 more trials should be my limit." the error phase itself lasts "anywhere for about seven to 30 minutes". then stop. the gains show up a day or two later, after sleep.

try this week: next time you practice and want to quit, note the moment. then do 10 more attempts. stop there, even if it went badly. come back after a night of sleep and compare.

this one sounds too small to work. Huberman describes gap effects, on the transcript, as taking "periodic pauses in the learning of material as short as five to 10 seconds, but even as long as 30 seconds". during that pause, the neurons in your hippocampus replay what you just took in "at a rate 20 to 30 times faster than typical", like they do in REM sleep.

the tactic: build short gaps into the session. his advice to learners and teachers: "pause and let your hippocampus generate more repetitions of that material than it would otherwise if you just tried to barrel through." it works for lectures, music, motor skills and, yes, a long podcast. the gap is not a break to check your phone. it is a few seconds of doing nothing, so the replay can run.

try this week: in your next study session or long episode, stop every few minutes, or after each section, and sit for 10 seconds without new input. eyes off the screen. then keep going.

most people finish a class or a training session and go straight to their phone. Huberman's protocol, on the transcript, says that after a learning session "you need to do something very specific, which is nothing." right after skill practice, as long as you are not taking in a lot of new sensory input, the brain replays the moves you got right, and the ones you got wrong get dropped. he adds that the replay runs backward in time.

the tactic: a few minutes of idle time before anything else. the instruction: "sitting quietly with the eyes closed for one to five to 10 minutes allows the brain to replay the sequence". he frames this for physical skills, like a dance, a golf swing or jiu-jitsu. for studying, his tool is different: test yourself, which is entry 6.

try this week: after your next three practice sessions (gym, instrument, sport), sit down and close your eyes for five minutes before you touch your phone. set a timer so you do not have to watch the clock.

this is the big one, on the transcript. in a 1917 study, kids who recalled biographies in their heads beat kids who reread them. Huberman's summary: "reading and rereading material and re-read, re-read, rereading material is far less effective than reading material and then thinking about that material". one self-test right after you learn something, however badly you do on it, means "you halve the amount of forgetting."

the tactic: test soon, with open questions. timing: "test yourself very soon, if not the same day, certainly the next day or so". format: "The best tests are open-ended, short answer, very minimal prompt tests", not multiple choice, because recognizing an answer is not the same as recalling it. and what not to do after class: "Walking out of class and getting immediately onto your phone."

try this week: after anything you want to keep (a lecture, a chapter, a podcast), close it and write three open questions from memory, then answer them without looking. check, fix what you missed, and do the same three questions again the next day.