Make It Stick

We read a text twice, highlight the key passages and then think: “I’ve understood that.”

But could we explain the idea two days later without notes? Could we apply it in a new situation? Or do we only recognise it when it is in front of us?

Precisely this gap between the feeling of learning and lasting learning is at the heart of Make It Stick. Peter C. Brown wrote the book with cognitive psychologists Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel. It emerged from extensive research on learning and memory, translating this into concrete principles for schools, universities, work and lifelong learning.

Perhaps its most uncomfortable message: What feels especially easy and productive while learning is not automatically what works best in the long term.

1. Familiarity can create an illusion of mastery

Rereading, highlighting or doing many similar exercises consecutively has an obvious advantage: with each repetition, the material becomes more familiar. We get faster, make fewer mistakes in the short term and experience progress.

The problem lies in how we interpret this feeling. Fluency during practice is not the same as later recall.

In a well-known study by Roediger and Karpicke, learners who reread material initially performed better on a very immediate test. After two days or a week, however, the pattern reversed: those who had tested themselves and actively retrieved what they had learnt remembered more—even though rereading had felt more reassuring during learning.

For learning, this means we should not only ask, “Does this seem familiar?”, but “Can I explain, distinguish or apply it without help?”

2. Remembering is not just a test of learning—it can itself be learning

One of the book’s strongest ideas is therefore Retrieval Practice: actively retrieving knowledge from memory.

This can be very simple. Close the book after a chapter and write down the three key ideas. Answer a question before looking at the solution. Explain a concept to someone from memory. Or solve a problem without having the example beside you.

The crucial point: retrieval does not merely show what we already know. The attempt to remember can itself strengthen the future availability of knowledge.

This principle often becomes even more effective when repetitions are spaced over time . Instead of working through a topic five times in one evening, we return to it after an interval—ideally when retrieval already requires some effort. A large research review of distributed learning analysed 317 experiments and found robust benefits of spaced practice for longer-term retention.

That sounds slower than intensive cramming. For lasting learning, however, this spacing can be the better route.

3. The right difficulty can make learning more robust

Make It Stick goes a step further. Good practice should not always be maximally comfortable and predictable.

With Interleaving , for example, different problem types or topics are mixed instead of completing one type entirely. Learners therefore have to do more than repeat a familiar method: they must repeatedly decide, Which strategy actually fits here?

A similar principle applies to Generation: first searching for a solution or explanation yourself before being shown it. Elaboration, reflection and connecting new knowledge with existing knowledge also contribute.

These approaches may initially feel worse. Error rates may rise and progress seem less smooth. This highlights an important distinction between good practice performance in the moment and robust proficiency later.

But not every difficulty is automatically helpful. If a task simply overwhelms learners or has nothing to do with the ability needed later, no magical learning effect follows. Interleaving also works differently with different material. What matters is a productive difficultythat requires active thinking and retrieval without making learning impossible.

What we take from this

For the Future Skills Institut, Make It Stick matters for a simple reason: Understanding a Future Skill is not yet the same as having it available when needed.

Reading about conflict skills does not automatically make someone more constructive in a difficult conversation. Knowing a model for critical thinking does not necessarily mean applying it under time pressure. And someone who has completed an AI course must still be able to transfer what they learnt to a new situation several months later.

The research in Make It Stick comes largely from studies of learning and memory. Its findings therefore cannot be transferred directly to every complex social or personal ability. However, it offers an important design principle: Development requires repeated retrieval and application, intervals, variation, feedback and reflection.

This fits our seven-step method. A development prompt should not be a one-off training event, but a small experiment that is tried in everyday life, observed, adjusted and revisited later.

In the age of AI, this idea gains an additional dimension. AI can provide an explanation or solution almost any time. For learning, it may therefore make sense not always to ask for the answer immediately, but first to remember, formulate or solve something ourselves—and then use AI for feedback, probing questions or new practice variations.

The most convenient support is not always the most effective for learning.

Which ability or knowledge do I want to be able to retrieve and apply without help in six months, rather than merely recognise—and how would I need to practise differently today?

Context: This 3-Minute Insight summarises selected ideas from Make It Stick and the underlying learning research in our own words, interpreting them through the Future Skills Institut’s research questions. Retrieval practice and distributed learning are among the particularly well-supported approaches. However, the effectiveness of individual methods depends on learning goals, material, prior knowledge and context. Findings from memory and learning research cannot automatically be transferred to every complex Future Skill. The section on using AI is the Future Skills Institut’s interpretation, not a claim made by the book, which was published in 2014.

Source: Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III & Mark A. McDaniel (2014): Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Further information and research: Official book website ↗ · Roediger & Karpicke: Retrieval Practice ↗ · Cepeda et al.: Spacing Review ↗ · Dunlosky et al.: Comparing Learning Techniques ↗