Let Metacognition and Narrative Pave Your Journey to Academic Excellence

Do you struggle when you try to learn? Do you often read something, understand it, and then find that you can’t remember it when you need it most?

That used to be my life. 

I was just an average student in school from the earliest grades through my freshman year of college. My struggle with learning ultimately led me to discover (not invent!) how to learn and uncover the secrets to remembering what I learned. 

As you read the articles in this blog, I will reveal the foundational strategies that transformed the way I learn -- allowing me to remember complex concepts after just reading or hearing them once.

I want to teach you the methods that I uncovered, which improved my learning outcomes and changed my life for the better. If you apply them to your learning journey, I know that they can do the same for you.

How do we learn?

Humans have been transmitting knowledge through stories since the earliest evolution of language. Our brains are wired for storytelling. Most of our acquired knowledge and life memories are a collection of stories or narratives. Like the many web pages that form the internet, everything in your memory has some connections to another. If a “page” in your knowledge and memory “web” lacks a URL, there won’t be a path to retrieve this orphaned tidbit into consciousness. It will stop functioning as knowledge.

Your inner voice creates these stories. Your conceptual knowledge and autobiographical memory are part of this narrative. As you come across new opportunities to learn, you juggle these new facts and concepts and discuss them with yourself using that inner voice. Subconsciously, you link them to the things that you already know, the stories your inner voice is already telling.

I want to turn you into a powerful learning machine by training you to use narrative to intentionally link new learnings to your existing knowledge. The key is to learn how to actively control and utilize your inner voice. When applied with conscious awareness, this skill is called metacognition. Metacognition is thinking about your thinking. It goes beyond that simple definition, though; you must exercise self-control and make choices in how you regulate your learning and cognition. 

How metacognition changed my life

When it comes to connecting names and faces, I’m not exceptionally gifted. Sometimes I’ll walk into a room and forget why I headed there. I’ve often trampled through large parking lots, trying desperately to recall where I parked. I certainly can’t complete superhuman feats like some of these memory athletes.

I am intelligent, but I’m no genius. I’m definitely in the top quartile when it comes to intelligence, probably even the top decile. But I’ve met many people who I’m sure are far more intelligent than me.

Throughout grade school, I was a so-so student. I graduated near the 50th percentile of my high school class. I struggled in college, too, at least at first. I dropped out after my freshman year. Eventually, I went back to college. By then, I had redesigned my whole approach to learning based on principles backed by decades of cognitive science research. Truth be told, I wasn’t aware of the research. I was just fortunate enough to stumble upon these best practices.

I earned straight A’s the remainder of my college career, matriculating into medical school and subsequently graduating No. 1 in my school class. In fact, in my class of about 200 students, I had the top score on every single medical school exam.

I want to teach you that learning is a skill, one that anyone can improve. I want to show you how to achieve the same academic success that I accomplished.  

I want you to read your learning materials and watch educational videos with a dedicated mission to consume academic content once and remember it forever. There is nothing more wasteful of your precious time than repeatedly re-reading, re-watching and re-listening to content.

Before I dive in deeper, a bit of housekeeping. I will frequently use the word consume here as a shorthand to indicate reading, watching, or listening, depending on the modality of the learning content you are working with at the moment, whether it’s written material, images, video, audio, or some other medium. I will often refer to these media collectively as learning materials, academic content, or a similar variation.

In this blog, I will teach you a set of skills that will allow you to consume all academic content once and remember it forever. By following these steps, you’ll be capable of harvesting the full knowledge and insight from your class notes, handouts, academic papers, and textbooks by reading them just once. After that, you will learn how to install that knowledge into your thinking and effortlessly have it available to you whenever you need it. If you want, you’ll remember all your learned concepts and facts forever.

This article serves to introduce a series that will break down the fundamental steps you need to follow to achieve cognitive mastery. If you want to start learning efficiently, effectively, and permanently, click here to read the next installment introducing knowledge acquisition, maintenance, and extraction.