Jan. 27, 2025

136: Are You Studying Wrong? 3 Counter-Intuitive Science-Backed Study Methods For Veterinary Professionals. With Dr Matt Hollindale

136: Are You Studying Wrong? 3 Counter-Intuitive Science-Backed Study Methods For Veterinary Professionals. With Dr Matt Hollindale

Cracking the code on effective studying isn’t just about working harder—it’s about working smarter. In this episode, Dr. Matt shares how he ditched ineffective study habits like highlighting and endless rereading and replaced them with evidence-based techniques that skyrocketed his success in his ECC membership exams.
We break down the science behind active recall, spaced repetition, and practice testing—proven methods that help veterinary professionals retain complex information longer and perform better on exams. You’ll learn how to craft personalised study questions, hear which tech tools can expedite you learning, and strike the perfect balance between intense preparation and self-care.
Whether you’re just starting vet school or wrestling with your specialist exams, this episode delivers practical, research-backed strategies to boost your learning efficiency and avoid burnout.

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Season 1

Try our AI Blood Gas Assistant here

Are you wasting hours on outdated study methods like cramming and re-reading—only to forget everything by exam day? You might be studying wrong—and Dr. Matt Hollindale is here to help you fix that so you can learn smarter, not harder.

When preparing for his ECC Membership exams, Dr. Matt became obsessed with the science of study. The result? He achieved the top marks of the 2023 cohort. Now, he’s applying the same methods to his residency training and sharing them with you.

In this episode, we dive into science-backed strategies that transform how you study. Say goodbye to endless highlighting, reading and re-reading, and hello to techniques that actually makes things stick. 

Whether you’re a veterinary student building good habits early or preparing for specialist exams, this episode will save you many hours. (And possibly even some tears!)

Here’s what we cover:

  • The biggest study mistakes you didn’t know you’re making.
  • How active recall and spaced repetition turbocharge your memory.
  • The best AI and tech tools to revolutionise your study game.
  • Why prioritising your well-being is as critical as your study hours.

 

Links & Resources
Lift your clinical game with our RACE-approved clinical podcasts at ⁠⁠https://hi.switchy.io/podpage-vvn for more clinical confidence and better patient outcomes, or check out our Advanced Surgery Podcast at ⁠⁠cutabove.supercast.com⁠⁠.

Get case support from our team of specialists in our ⁠⁠Specialist Support Space⁠⁠.

⁠⁠Subscribe to our weekly newsletter⁠⁠ for Hubert's favourite clinical and non-clinical learnings from the week.

 

Topics and Time Stamps

04:33 Common Study Mistakes
08:58 Study Techniques That Actually Work
18:11 Making It Practical
20:56 Using Spaced Repetition for Better Long-Term Memory
29:08 Tech and AI Study Tools
31:39 Google Notebook LMS
34:38 Advanced Strategies
38:54 The Importance of Self-Care in Studying

We’d love to hear from you! Email us at ⁠⁠⁠info@thevetvault.com⁠⁠⁠ or reach out via our ⁠⁠⁠contact form⁠⁠⁠.

If you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone who you think could benefit from these game-changing study strategies!

 

"Why Highlighting and Rereading are Low-Utility Study Methods"
Highlighting and rereading are considered low-utility study methods because they do not significantly improve learning and retention, and may even hinder performance.
  • Highlighting is a technique where you mark text with a coloured pen, often yellow, to draw attention to what you are reading. While this may help focus on individual concepts, it can negatively impact your ability to make connections between those concepts. Studies have shown that students who highlight or underline text perform no better on multiple-choice tests than those who simply read the text. In fact, they may perform worse on questions requiring them to make connections.
  • Rereading, although sometimes showing a small benefit, is generally considered a low-utility study method due to the time it consumes compared to more effective techniques. Research suggests that the benefit gained from rereading is limited beyond what you get from the initial reading. Instead of rereading, actively trying to retrieve information has a more powerful effect on learning and long-term retention.
These low-utility methods are often used because they create a false sense of familiarity with the material. Instead of these methods, active recall and spaced repetition are more effective for learning. Active recall involves answering questions without any supporting information, like using flashcards. Spaced repetition means reviewing material at increasing intervals to help solidify the information in long-term memory.
"How to Use Active Recall and Practice Testing for Efficient Learning"
Active recall and practice testing are effective study techniques that can significantly enhance learning and long-term retention.
Active Recall:
  • Active recall involves answering questions without any supporting information. This is similar to using flashcards, where a question is presented and you must try to answer it from memory, before checking the answer.
  • The process of active recall helps to strengthen memory and make it easier to recall information later.
  • Creating your own questions while reading through a chapter can help you focus on the material and think about how it might be applied.
  • Using pre-made questions can also be helpful.
Practice Testing:
  • Practice testing is similar to active recall and involves testing yourself with questions or practice exams.
  • It is beneficial to do practice tests before studying a topic in depth, as this helps to identify what you already know and what areas require more focus. You may be surprised by what you already know.
  • Practice tests can highlight your weaknesses, guiding you to the areas that need the most attention.
  • After taking a practice test and identifying weak areas, you should actively read the material, focusing on these areas.
  • During this active reading, write down questions as you go and use them for further active recall practice.
  • Practice testing can be enhanced by using spaced repetition, which involves spacing out the times when you review the material.
Combining Active Recall and Practice Testing with Spaced Repetition:
  • Spaced repetition is a technique that involves reviewing material at increasing intervals to help solidify information in long-term memory.
  • Tools such as Anki and Quizlet use algorithms to schedule reviews based on how well you know the material, showing you cards more often if you struggle with them.
  • If you are using flashcards, rate them after each review to indicate whether you did not know the answer, whether it was hard, good or easy.
  • This approach can help with long term retention.
  • The forgetting curve demonstrates how quickly information can be forgotten, which is why spaced repetition is so effective.
Practical Steps for Active Recall and Practice Testing:
  • Begin by skimming through the chapter or material, looking at titles, bolded words, and images.
  • Think about what questions could be asked about the material.
  • Try to answer these questions before you study.
  • If you are feeling motivated, write your own questions or answer them in your head.
  • Alternatively, use AI tools such as ChatGPT to generate practice questions.
  • Actively read the textbook or chapter and write questions as you go.
  • The next day, try to answer these questions.
  • If you get a question wrong, reread the relevant chapter or search online for the answer.
  • Use spaced repetition to review the material and your questions over time.
By using active recall, practice testing, and spaced repetition, you can move away from low-utility techniques like highlighting and rereading and instead focus on efficient, evidence-based study methods that lead to better learning and long-term retention.
"Recommended Study Tools and Resources"
Several tools and resources can enhance your study process, particularly when combined with active recall and spaced repetition techniques.
Flashcard Programs
  • Anki is a powerful, free, open-source flashcard program.
    • Anki uses an algorithm to determine when to show you flashcards based on your performance, using spaced repetition to optimise learning.
    • You can rate cards after each review to indicate whether you did not know the answer, whether it was hard, good, or easy. Based on your rating the card will be shown again in 10 minutes, the next day, or in several days.
    • Anki is content-agnostic and supports images, audio, videos.
    • You can create your own flashcards or import pre-made decks. There are many pre-made decks available.
    • You can create multiple different flashcards from just one input.
    • You can put pictures and block out labels.
    • Flashcards can be shared with others using an export function.
    • Anki is free to use on desktop, but the iOS app is paid. .
  • Quizlet is another web-based flashcard tool.
    • It is not as powerful as Anki, but it is easier to use.
    • Quizlet allows you to create your own flashcards or find sets made by other teachers, students and experts.
    • It offers study modes and in-class games.
    • Quizlet is a free app.
AI Tools
  • ChatGPT can generate practice questions on various topics. You can prompt it to act as a professor in your subject and ask it to generate practice questions to establish your level of knowledge. You can also ask for the answers.
  • Google Notebook LMS is a free AI tool that allows you to create notebooks with up to 50 sources, including PDFs, Google Docs, YouTube links, and pasted text.
    • The AI will search the files and answer questions and create study resources.
    • It can generate study guides, essay questions, short questions and answers, summaries, indexes, and study plans.
    • Notebooks can be shared with up to 50 other Google users.
Other Resources
  • Past papers are useful for studying as they give you insight into the specific exam.
  • There are many online resources for veterinary students.
  • A book by Patsy and Kel Jermaine is recommended for a good approach to studying that includes self-care.
Additional Tips
  • When starting a new topic, skim through the material, looking at headings, bolded words and pictures. Think about what questions you might be asked.
  • Create a framework or hierarchy of how to learn the information, linking new information to what you already know.
  • Use a traffic light system (red, yellow, green) to rate how well you know each topic, focusing more on the red topics.
  • Don't neglect self-care. Make sure you are sleeping well, eating well and exercising.
  • If you are sleep deprived, you can review questions, but save learning the answers for when you are refreshed.
By using these tools and resources effectively, you can enhance your learning process and improve your ability to recall information.
It's the start of the year and all around the world veterinary students are getting themselves set up from the beginning of yet another academic year.And then there are the next level students, the residents, the guy studying for specialist exams or the membership exams in the middle of the year.I remember my student days as a vet student really well.
And if I say remember it well, I mean, I still occasionally have the odd nightmare about it.I think back of those exam periods where I was sitting there for sometimes 16 hours per day, reading, rereading, summarizing notes, highlighting, highlighting.I love my yellow highlighters because somewhere in the past somebody told me that if you highlight stuff in yellow, you'll remember it better.
And then taking the same notes and then rereading them and trying to reread them again the day before the exam.And now after this conversation that you can listen to, today I've realized that all of that was futile.I'm Hubert Hemstrap and you are listening to The Vet Vault, where we love to find the science that makes the hard things easier.
And today we are looking into the science of learning.Now I have some information that might shock.You.All of that highlighting.As you'll hear today, science says that you may as well use those highlighters to decorate your nails, which I know that you're doing anyway.In those procrastination hours rereading, it's been proven to be one of the least effective study techniques.
Does that make you panic?Because that is exactly what your current study strategy is.That's OK, because today we are diving into the truth about how to actually study effectively, backed by science.I'm joined by Doctor Matt Hallandale, a colleague of mine who went on a serious deep time into the science of study when he decided to sit for his ECC membership exams a couple of years ago.
And this deep dive turned him into a bit of a postgraduate studying superstar, leading to him achieving the highest marks among.All of the candidates.Around the world, who sat for that exam?Now he's using those same study techniques to ace his residency in emergency and critical care, and he's here to share those techniques with you so you can study smarter, not harder.
So whether you are a pre grad veterinary student or you are at the top of your game and you are aiming for that specialist degree or even beyond that, this episode is for you.So pack away your highlighters, put on your headphones and go for a 40 minute walk with me and Matt.You'll thank us at the end of the year when Matt has saved you hours and hours of pointless summarizing and rereading, and you nail those exams.
Please welcome doctor Matt Hollandale.With the science of study.So what we're going to talk about?Today is this study for specifically for exams studying with the mindset of OK, I'm going to be tested on this or I'll do they apply just for when I'm reading a new article or you know something else that I want to internalize because it's something that I need to know for for my patients.
Yeah, I think he could apply to that situation, but it's probably more specifically for someone who has to retain something for an exam or the longer term.I guess we'll have to learn something from the didactic kind of course or like a textbook driven course or something like that.I guess where I came from is I did make used to see memberships a while ago and it's an expensive process and it's a very time intensive process.
So I wanted to make it as efficient as possible and not have to fail, so I only have to do it once.And so I was trying to find out what is the best way to do it.And now going into residency, I've kind of refined that a little bit more as well, because I did make some mistakes with membership and now I'm trying to make it even more efficient, I guess, OK.
Let me establish some credentials here to explain why I'm talking to Matt about this.Matt's not just some random person who did a bit of Googling about study.You got the results with it, right?Matt did his membership exams a couple of years ago, and you were the highest scoring student in the cohort for the ECC memberships.Are you very clever?
Are you naturally very clever?Or is it, do you think?How much of that is technique and how much is just Matt's brain?I think there's a fair amount that is just labor and slogging through it.I'm definitely not as smart as like some of the people we work with.You don't have a.Photographic memory of one of those cheats.
No, unfortunately not.It would be much easier if I did.And pre memberships when you did before you did your learning about learning, when you studied 4 VED, did you do well enough?You obviously passed.Yeah, actually, yeah.I did get very high grades in vet school that I just crammed in, What do you call it, swap back before the exams.
So I'm very good at rote learning and passing exams that I kind of happened on to some of the techniques that we'll talk about anyway.It just turns out that I was doing it correct that.Time that you had a feel for a natural, lucked out and did the right things.Should we talk about the wrong things first?
So let's say Matt at vet school versus Matt studying with his new knowledge on learning techniques.Were there things that you did?Wrong.And then people around you and people you see studying now, what are common mistakes that are not based in the the science of learning?
Yeah, So I'm not an expert in this at all, like I'm not a psychologist or anything, but there's actually a very nice paper from Dunlovsky that was published in 2013.And they basically done a massive meta analysis or literature review on kind of all the different study techniques out there.
And then they rank them as being high utilities.And you should definitely do these moderate or low utility.And I think what a lot of us do and what I certainly did in the earlier part of that school was a lot of the low utility techniques.So I think a lot of us would go through like highlighting and rereading, summarizing all that kind of stuff.
And basically they say that that's not a effective way at all to study.And so we can go through each of those if you want, what they say about them and evidence.But we should be definitely going more towards thing called active recall, space, repetition, practice testing, that kind of stuff.
OK, so sitting with your notes.Or your textbook, the yellow highlighter.I remember as a kid at school learning that if for highlighting you should choose yellow.You remember yellow bed.I still have a.Thing with yellow highlighters, so just highlighting stuff and then coming back, because the technique that I certainly used is you read it and then the highlighters almost to draw my attention to what I'm reading.
So OK, that's important.That's important.And then the theory is I'm going to come back to it later and I can just skim the highlights and not read all the all the stuff around it.That's a.Sort of a core.Tenets of learning for a lot of people.And you're saying that's low utility, not not a great way of doing.
It yeah.So their summary was that they rate highlighting and underlining something low utility most of the time they find that it does little to boost performance and actually may hurt performance on high level tasks.So I've got an example of a study that they did.
They had three groups read a 10,000 word history text and two of those groups were underlining or highlighting and one group was just allowed to read the paper.Then a week later they reviewed the text again for 15 minutes and then they took a test.One of the highlighting groups got to read their marked up one and the other group just had another clean one.
And then two months later all three groups took another test again.And they all performed exactly the same on multiple choice questions.There was no difference between any of the groups.They actually found that the highlighter group did worse on questions where they were like made to make connections.
So possibly highlighting does help you draw attention to individual concepts, but then you lose the ability to make connections between those concepts.So essentially, don't worry about highlighting.It's not going to help you.It's going to make you worse if anything.There's a lot of people going to be very sad about this.
Or I've just saved you a lot of money on highlighters.You can use your highlighters.For other stuff.Coloring in other things that.People commonly do.It's not trying to do much good.Yeah, I guess rereading, rereading is a bit controversial.Some studies do show some benefit for it, but the hours that you spent rereading a textbook or a slideshow could probably be spent more effectively doing something else.
I guess the relative disadvantage of rereading to other techniques is that amount of time that it takes, and that is essentially why these researchers rated it as having a low utility.They cited this one paper that studied 177 college students.
They said that basic research on human learning and memory has shown that practicing retrieval of information has powerful effects on learning and long term retention and repeated testing enhancers learning more than repeated reading, which confers limited benefit beyond that is gained from the initial reading of the material.
So essentially, if you read it once, you're not going to get much more from rereading it again.Wow OK, I'm definitely doing stuff wrong because it get to be that small.I've got to and I don't go and revise the concepts that I underlined previously.Exactly.
I think we, yeah, fall into that trap of reading at once, and then maybe we leave it too long and then we forget about it and then we got to read it again.But apparently there's yeah, no benefit to even doing that.OK, So what should we do?Have you ever heard of active recall or space repetition or anything like that?
Not in this context, no.Yeah.So active recall is where you have to answer a question with no supporting information.So it's like a flash card essentially, where you'll get given a question, you don't have an answer, you then have to try and answer it, and then you compare it with the answer after that.
It's very similar to practice testing.I kind of put these two into the same category, so like flash carding and then doing practice exams.And they have a lot higher benefit or a lot higher utility than anything else does out there.And then you can enhance it by doing something called space repetition as well, which is like spacing out when you go over these or over time.
OK, hang on, you say doing this without support, as in you're going to do these cards before learning the stuff or before reading it the first time or?Talk me through it practically.Let's say I'm sitting with the chapter on blood gas.I've got to learn about blood gas analysis.
How do you approach this?There's a bit of both.There's I guess if we take a step back even further into how memory works, if you think like you need to get something into your short term memory or like your sensory memory, then it goes into your short term memory and then you want to try and get it into your long term memory.
Across those 3 processes, sensory short term and long term, you've got a couple of different opportunities to kind of encode it as deeply as possible or strengthen your memory of it and make it easier for you to recall over time.So did you say first level is sensory and then short?
Yeah.So if you imagine like your brain pays attention to so much, if you're driving down the highway, you're not going to remember which car you just passed or the number plates or anything.But if you notice a crash or a car has been hit by a kangaroo or something like that, you can probably recall the color of the car, maybe even the number plate where it was, something like that.
So I guess that sensory memory, like actually paying attention to it and getting that into your short term memory, There's a couple of different things you can do to try and make that as effective as possible for you.And where we go into that, doing questions before you've even done the text or read the textbook chapter or something that can actually help you.
Because particularly for a lot of us who are, if this is going out to like experience, that's we're all going to have some background knowledge on kind of everything that we're going to come across at this point in time.So if you can kind of establish what you do know, you'd be surprised probably what you already do know.
So what that might look like practically is you're going to read through the textbook just like skim it, essentially look at the titles, look at the bolded words, look at the pictures, read those little captions and kind of why you're doing that.Think about what kind of questions could someone ask you on this?Or it might be if we go in blood gas and what is the benefit of asset based analysis?
What is the Henderson hassle back question equation, whatever that word is, What's on a blood gas panel?All those kinds of like simpler things.And that will prime your brain for being able to link newer things that you're going to learn to what you already know.
So you get a lot stronger memory or a lot stronger encoding of that information if you can link it to things that you already know.And there's also that thought of trying to chunk things together and organize things together.So if you can come up with a hierarchy of how you're going to learn that information.
So if you go with blood gas, you'll look at the pH, then you look at the blood gases, and then you look at the electrolytes, kind of getting that framework in your head.We'll help you organize that information that you're going to learn and kind of have maximal retention of that.So the hierarchy is it's systematizing it saying OK, well his base level knowledge I need to definitely know this stuff, what is pH and then add to it, add detail to it at a later stage.
Correct.Yeah, Yeah, it's making that framework.And it's not necessarily going to be for you in the same order that it's presented in the textbook chapter either.It might be that it makes more sense for you to think about electrolytes first rather than something else.So don't just blindly forward the textbook chapter, I guess.
And there's also this concept called Blooms Taxonomy as well, which is like the pyramids, like the food pyramid that you have.You have like more broad concepts down the bottom in this category.It's like you need to know your basic kind of like level of knowledge.
And then as you go up, you start being able to do more complex things with it.So you start being able to analyze, start being able to draw conclusions, and you start being able to create information from that.So essentially everything at the bottom, you need to kind of get like that baseline, establish what you do know, kind of build more detail onto those broader concepts and then you can start using it.
Which is useful because.That's often now you're examined right there's.That they want to check that do know the basics and what the mistake we'll offer to make is you'll get So let's say I'll start.Let's pick something else other than blood.Gas because it's a complicated.Thing to talk about, but you'll start on.You'll start on one topic, and then you'll try and learn everything about that one topic.
All the little.Details of that step, as you say, the pyramid, and often that confuses you because you start at the top of the pyramid and you don't have a good base knowledge and then you start getting confused because there's so many of these little individual topics.So you're saying it makes more sense to go, well, let's get the level 1 of each of the topics right.
And then what happens in the exam is they will check that first.If you don't cross that bridge, it's kind of stuffed already.If you don't have that baseline knowledge, you're out that the extra stuff doesn't really help if you don't understand the prime, the main concept.Yeah, correct.Yeah.And I guess being able to demonstrate that something is being able to apply that into different situations or make connections between topics or things as well.
So, you know, you can't do that without first having that baseline down.And you should focus on that before you start trying to apply it.Like, I can't be a good example.I don't know.What are you studying at the moment?Basic immunology I guess.So before I start trying to determine what are the mechanisms behind which you can have ITP immediate thrombocytopenia, first I probably need to learn what AB cell is and AT cell is and what the different cytokines do before I start trying to apply that to the disease.
Quick interruption here to tell you about one of our tools that we have at the Vet Vault to help you through your veterinary career.So despite the best study techniques to get stuff into your head, there are just some things that you're going to learn in your vet career that are very hard to actually understand and remember.
And for me, one of the big things that I struggled with as a student and as a practicing veterinarian was blood gas analysis.You think you understand it and then you get a blood gas result that just bucks the trend and it takes you 20 or 30 minutes to read through your textbook to try and get your head around it.
For the longest time I actually didn't use blood gas in practice because I so shit scared of it because I didn't get it.Well, I have a cheat for you if you're listening to this episode.You get better at studying and remembering stuff for exams.Don't cheat in your exams.Once you qualify, I'm all for cheating.Use every trick and every hack and every shortcut you can find, and I have one of those shortcuts for you.
I have built for myself an AI tool that has as its information source a bunch of really high quality content, including some of the show notes from the Vet Vault podcast that it draws on for information.And how it works is I will just go and type in new sample.
And then it says please enter your blood gas results in the following order like PHCO 2O2, sodium, potassium chloride, lactate, blah, blah, blah blah, in that order.And then I just go in and type the numbers.So I'll say 7.24 blah blah, blah, blah, blah blah.No units necessary.And I can give it a patient history.
So I can say it is a three-year old dog that's been vomiting for four days, it's dehydrated, blah, blah, blah, blah.And then it'll spit out a full report.So it'll take analyte by analyte and say, is that in the normal range and what's the possible explanation for it?And at the end, it gives me a nice little summary of based on my findings and based on your history, these are potential diagnosis and these are your next diagnostic steps.
What I love about it is it's smart enough to go back to all those resources if there's anything I don't understand.So I can say, for example, I don't understand why the bike is so low, but the bed is also low.And it'll then go through it systematically through all the resources and give me a quick rundown.
I use it every day at work.I think it's really awesome and I am making it available for free for all of my listeners.The reason I'm doing it for free is because I'm using it as a marketing tool.I had it already.Sharing it with you cost me cents, micro cents every time you use it.So I see it as a marketing expense.How that works for me is when you go and sign up to it, it will ask you for your e-mail and I will use your e-mail address to send you exactly 4 emails about all the cool stuff that The Vet Vault can help you with in your career.
So basically trying to convince you to sign up for our podcasts, but no pressure at all at the end of the four emails.That's it to you idea from me.I want to share your e-mail.I'm not going to send you any spam and you can keep using the tool.I mean, if a million people use it and it starts costing me money, I'm going to cut you off.But for now it is out there.
I have a link for it in the show notes.Click on it, use it, enjoy it and send us some feedback.Let me know if you find it useful.OK, back to Doctor Matt and study techniques.OK, so let's make all of this practical.So you say.So to get that baseline, that's going to maybe be a first.
Initial read as you have the headings of the key concepts.So you're going to sit down with your chapter or your paper or whatever you need to study and don't get lost in the minutia minutia, but get a baseline and then you want to go to a practice paper.Is that how you?Would do that first initial test because see if you can find a practice paper somewhere.
Yeah, potentially.The way I do it is, Oh yes, then maybe 5 minutes just looking over the chapter.I am feeling very motivated.I'll write my own practice questions during that or just think about them and answer them in my head.These days you could probably go to ChatGPT and be like, please create some priming questions on blog gases or immunology and see how well you do at them.
And you'd be surprised what you know.With AI, have you experimented with this and is it pretty good?Yeah, it's really good.Do you give it the the chapter?Can you feed it the chapter and say look I need to I'm trying to study this.Can you test me to press on private questions?I don't even go that fancy with it, I just put in how you meant to prompt them properly like act as a professor in family medicine.
I am priming myself on blood gases.Please give me 10 practice questions to establish what level of knowledge I have.OK.And then yeah, it'll give you some.And then you can ask it for the answers after that.Cool, so so then you or you've got a past paper, which always helps because at least for that specific exam.
And then resist the temptation to panic because you'll do that past paper and be like, shit, I knew you had 30% of that.I'm so screwed.But it's better to find out now rather than just before your exam and.Then from there, where you go do OK, does that then guide you as to what you should go and study or how do you utilize what you've just learned from your failed practice exam?
Yep.So from there, I would actively read the textbook chapter.So by that I mean, we're not just kind of like reading from start to finish, a pick out of the areas that I really need to focus on.So there's no point in me reading the introduction if, for example, I already can see that I know everything in there.
And as I go, I write myself questions.So it might be like define this or how do you to determine whether you have a respiratory acidosis or alkalosis or something like that.So I'm just writing those questions as I go through from start to finish.
So that's making me pay attention to the material, thinking about how this might be applied in the future.And then the next day I'll come back, I'll look at those questions and I'll try to answer them.If I don't get them right, then that's where I go and read the chapter again trying to find those specific answers or even just Google it.
Next day is.Is that a specific dialogue?Is that just your plan, or is it evidence to say or data to say?This is how quickly you should review it.So there's something called the forgetting curve, which is hard to describe a graph.It's like a decay graph.
Is that what the right word is?Or exponential decay kind of thing.So they say that after an hour of learning something, you've lost 66% of what you already learned.You can only remember 44% of it.The next day, you can only remember 33% of that. 31 days later you remember maybe 20%.
So if you just review something once, then obviously when you come back to it, you can't recall that information.We really all have that.We've been to a lecture and then the next day you can't remember what they even spoke about.So if you review set intervals, you know, you review the next day and then you review a week later, then that it will be a struggle.
And that's what the good thing is.It's like you need to realize you've forgotten something, but it will take you back to that top of the curve where you're in the higher recent to that.And then that rate of decay will be a lot slower because you retain more information.So the next time it might be like the day later you remember 80% of the information, or the next time review it you remember 90% of it.
And is that repeated repetition?Because there's.Finite amount of time before you write your exam and there's a lot to learn, so you can't great if you can repeat everything 10 times.But obviously.So is there a pattern or a timing pattern?There we go, right.What's the minimum amount of time that you should ideally repeat Something like that or yeah, how do you handle that decay?
How do you make decay less and less to the point where you ideally shifted from short term to long term memory?I guess for me, well, it's two aspects of this, I guess, fitting it into a specific time period.I don't know if you did, I did this in vet school.You did a prospective provision table.
So timetable.So be like tomorrow I'm going to do cardiology, the next day I'm going to do respiratory, the next day I'm going to do neuro.And then when it comes to it, everything takes 2 times longer.So day one I've done half of cardiology, Day 2, I finished cardiology.I'm now behind on respiratory.
And then you stay up.So then you stay up until 3:00 to try and catch up.And then the next day you, yeah, stuffed because you're exhausted in your country with anything.Yeah, it's all very stressful.You don't get through what you want to.So yeah, I'll do a retrospective 1 where I'll say I'm gonna study this time period and I'll get done as much as I can during that time.
And my aim is to, over a period of time, which might be several days, get through every topic once.And at the end of that, I'll rate it like a traffic light system.Green if I was really good, yellow if I was like, yeah, OK, or red if I'm terrible at it.The next time I'll go through the red topic.
And even within that, there's probably questions that I've rated as green, yellow and red.So if I've rated as green, I already know that I don't need to go over it again.So I'll just do the yellow and the red questions.Then the next time, next topic will be one that I may read yellow and as I'm going through and then changing my rating of each of those questions as well and those topics so that I'm always focusing something that I'm bad at.
It's very uncomfortable because you feel very unprepared, but it's also very efficient as well because you are focusing on the things that you don't know.Because you're not spending time rereading shit that you're reading out.So it's a.Filtration process.So yes, there's something that you have to repeat multiple times, but because you're constantly testing yourself rather than just rereading everything again, you're going to go, OK, this is done and put that aside now focus on this.
And then it's it's like a elimination rounds.OK, no, you, I still don't know you.I'm going to do you again.That's.Genius.Yeah, It makes sure that you're not wasting time.Essentially.It's very efficient.Like I said, it feels horrible because you're always on the back foot, but then if you do a practice question after doing that, you feel like you can just fly through it because you should know everything.
We're talking about fairly high complexity topics here.If we talk about blood gas or immunology or something like that, what about just rote learning?So I think back to the very first stuff that we got challenged with at vet school was the anatomy, our first.Week at vet school in South Africa?
You're right.After the first week, you're right.The bones test.Where you have to write an exam on the skeleton and the protuberances and these things, and it's just a bunch of names and it's all these Latin names and it's all very foreign.Does the same stuff applies?It's just like.For that, you're going to have to sit down and study them. 1st, if it's brand new information, because considering there's a lot of students here, we all of this stuff is brand new to you don't know anything like you and me, we go, yeah, we've done it for a while.
So we, you know, some stuff.But if you're starting brand new, you're going to have to sit and go through the humorous and go, OK, that's the major to cancer, that's the sulcus, blah, blah, blah.As you can see, I can't remember.And then would it be the same principle?Say, OK, now I've got a baseline, tomorrow I do a practice exam or something like that.
Yeah, yeah.It doesn't, unfortunately, take away the hard work behind it.You still need to learn the material first.So it might be that you just write yourself easy questions.Like the way I studied anatomy vet school is I have a picture on a PowerPoint side, and then I would put a box over all the labels and then still have the arrow going there so you couldn't see what the label was.
And I just like, what is this?Press the next button and it would reveal it if you got it right.Good.And I'll just go through that way.So it's like flash carding but not I guess.A lot of these.Studies are done like really simply with those kinds of things.So my favorite example of kind of this based repetition thing of like spacing things out is I think it was back in the 80s or the 70s or something, they had three groups of students and they were just learning Spanish word translations.
So pretty low.What a task.So there was three groups of them that they had six additional sessions to like learn the material.Again, Group One had all those six sessions on the one day.Group 2 had a day in between and then Group 3 had 30 days in between.
By the end of their six sessions, they nearly all had perfect scores, particularly the one day part group and the one in the same day group.And the 30 day 30 day group was getting about 80% correct.And then they had a gap of 30 days after their last session and the group that was all on the single day scored about 65%.
The group that scored that had a day in between scored about 80%, and then the 30 day group scored about 95%.So it kind of shows you that rather than cramming everything all in one go, if you have a bit of time to space everything out, you will retain more and you'll get better at it as time goes on as well.
Does that make sense?Yeah, recap.So if I, let's say I've, I want to learn chapter 1 and I said today and I learn it and then an hour later I go through it again and I do it the whole day.Is that's the worst out of the options versus saying.
And so because you said, if I do it and the next time I learn this 30 days later, I'll do worse at that initial assessment.But if I but at the next 30 day mark, I'm going to do better that that I get.So give you so work on this today.And then let it percolate, right, that lie.
And then when you redo this again, the same process, that'll cement it better for the long term memory, is that right?Yeah, I guess give yourself a chance to forget it because the more you struggle, the better attention you will have, the more you feel uncomfortable, the better it will be in the long term.
There's also another example where this university was changing over its statistics course, so it was going from a six month course down to an 8 week course.So they're able to compare these two groups.So the students that had to learn all the material in that eight week period, they scored maybe like 15 out of 40 points on their test.
Whereas those groups that had it over six months would on average score about 27 out of 40.So just by spacing out your learning and material, giving yourself to a chance to get it or do it over more repeated sessions will give you a better overall score.OK.
So to clarify what that would look like for you in practice, MAD, let's say you're doing a residency now.So you've studied immunology today by testing yourself.So you did your first read and then you did a, a practice exam.You went, OK, these are my weak spots.My, my red lights.
Let me sit down and go through the red lights, which primes your brain.I actually really like that aspect of doing the test first because then when you're reading it, you're reading it.I think you might switch down to go look for that information and not just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.So you do that and that counts as I've done it once, right?
And then you go, you say up to 30 days.How long do you give yourself to?When are you going to review that chapter again?Three days later.Yeah.So I'll actually put it into a flash card program called Anki or there's one called Quizlet as well.And it has this built in algorithm in it where it will show you the card the next day.
And then based on how well you know that you can rate it as you didn't know it, it was good or it was hard or it was really easy.And so based on your scoring will then determine when you get to see that again.Or if you don't know, it'll show you it again in 10 minutes and then it'll show you again the next day and algorithm resets.
If you rate it as easy, it won't show it to you through another four days.And then if you still rate it easy, then it might be in 20 days time.Or if you rate it as good, it will show you tomorrow, it'll then show you in three days.We'll then show you it in seven days.So it's kind of like spacing out when you see things.
So are you putting the questions in in those software?So you make your own flash cards based on what you're studying.So you're reading a chapter going, OK, there's a question in there.What is the, what's the Henissel, the Hasselbeck equation and what does it mean?I said you'll create your own questions to quiz yourself basically later, but through the softwares.
OK, Yeah.For people that are still in bed school you probably don't need to reinvent the wheel.There's pre made decks out there everywhere.Particularly if there's anyone in Med school.They love unki.They have Unki is like a whole like thing and these decks will be pre made for you and you can just go through them.
If you're starting from scratch.There is a bit of a learning curve with the program.It is very powerful as well.You can set it up to have multiple inputs that will make multiple different flash cards from just one thing that you put in there.So it will test you in many different ways as well.You can put up pictures and block them out and it will ask you to just define this one term on this picture or something like that.
It's quite handy.Anki, how do you spell it?Anki, it's Japanese for memorize.Cool.I'm going to jump in here with another tool that I'd love to tell you about.Since we recorded this episode with Matt, I've been playing with a lot of AI tools and I've come across something that I think would be super useful for students.
If you haven't come across Google's AI, which is called Google Notebook LMS and you're a student, you should really check it out.Lots of other uses, but for students, basically what it is, it allows you to create folders or notebooks of your choosing or of a particular topic.And then you can add up to 50 sources to that's PDF files, Google Docs, links to YouTube videos, or just copy and paste the text as information sources.
And then what the AI does is that it will search all of the files that you select in a particular notebook to answer questions or create resources for you about the contents of those files and also references where it's getting its information from.So one of the preset outputs that you have on there is something called a study guide.
It will suck up all of those files of yours and create a bunch of questions or potential essay questions, thought questions and answers with an answer key at the bottom.You can ask it to create a summary and index, a study plan, anything like that for you.Have a play with it.It's a free tool as long as you have a Google account and you can even share your notebook with up to 50 other Google users.
I think it's amazing.Go and check it out.OK, back to Matt.All right, so.What are the words again that we've covered so far?The official terms for what we're doing active recall.Active recall.So that's where you are not rereading.You're not highlighting, you're not going over things, you're not summarizing.
The way you're studying is.You're just answering questions.You've written a question.When you've read it for the first time, the next time you say you're going to go and try and answer that question.If you get it wrong, you look up the definition or whatever it is.If you get it right, you could just wait.Spaced repetition.
This is what we discussed, where you have to give yourself.A a bit of a break.So that you forget the surface.Basically, forget the surface stuff.The stuff that's not deeper down is going to blow away when the winds of everyday life comes across your brain.Some stuff's going to disappear and you've got to best to know which ones disappear, right?
Right.Which ones are are not stuck.Otherwise, if you do it the next day, you'll think that you know it and actually you don't really know it.It's interesting.I had this conversation with my.Five year old this week, he recalled something from I just Go that I thought, man, that's.He was tiny when that happened and I said to him, wow, you've got a good memory.
And he said, yeah, it's funny, sometimes I remember stuff from long ago, but I can't remember stuff from yesterday.This is exactly what we're talking about.And I guess this process is converting the stuff from your short term memory into your long term memory.It's through rehearsing and through going over things over and over again, which will put it into your long term memory.
There'll still be decay and loss from your long term memory, but the more times you do go over it, the more solidified I guess that will be in your long term memory.Paving those neural pathways, the recall pathways, right?Yeah.Putting more connections in and strengthening it, yeah.
That's so cool.Is there anything else, any other strategies that you can utilize or that you are using?There are some more advanced things which I tend not to worry about.There's something called interleaved practice, which is probably better for like math students or something like that where you again, going back to that concept where you need to make it as hard as possible for yourself when you're like trying to answer these questions.
For example, it might be you do a math equation on sign Cos 10 and then the next question should be on something completely different so that your brain has to struggle to go from one topic to the next topic.I haven't really been able to apply that to veterinary medicine.I just tend to sit through and go down through cardiology or through respiratory or something.
But potentially you can mix up all your flash cards, have to answer one on the heart and then have to answer one on the brain or something like that.But that jumping from one topic to another it's is shown to to be more beneficial for you than just going through one topic.Oh, that's interesting.
So it is literally the and I suppose it's like physical exercise.The more you challenge your brain now, the.Better.It's going to adapt.Yeah, yeah.OK, I'm trying to use what we.Discussed now outside of its science to maybe help cement the concepts a little bit better on the strategies.
So I said before, so I'm trying to learn music, started singing in the choir and we've got all this, every season we start with a bunch of brand new music.And every time I look at it, I'm like, shit, I'm never going to remember this at all.So I'm trying to figure out how do we utilize what we've discussed today?So instead of sitting with the piece of sheet music and listening to it and going through it and trying to memorize the words and the music in one go is to maybe say, well, let's have a listen to it.
Just sort of casually walk around and listen to the to record a track of it and then maybe try and sing it with a practice track the next time around to go, well, let me try and then it'll that'll point out, OK, here's where you suck that whole line.You know nothing about a week, no tomorrow and then a week from now or at some later stage, come back and then specifically try and memorize that bit of music.
And then a week later we do it again.Try and sing along and then narrow down what do you know?What don't you know?And keep repeating it at space repetition with some amount of time in between.Does that make sense?Yeah.Yeah, definitely.Yeah.Start with an overview, go through it once, work out where you're good at.
You might be good at the chorus, because everyone's good at chorus, but you suck at first one.And so next time you do practice, maybe you just do verse one.And once you're good at verse one, maybe you go through it all again just to double check that you've still got everything down.And verse 2, you really shit out.So the next time you just do verse 2, obviously focusing on what you don't know.
And yeah, you're giving yourself time in between as well, so that you're getting that chance to, yes, let it percolate in the brain, forget some things, and then refresh yourself when it comes back again.OK.And then one more question, Matt, about the right Unki specifically, can you share stuff?
So let's say you and your residence cohort.You're all adding your own flash cards and stuff.Can you share it with other people and say, well here's my flash cards so you don't have to reinvent the wheel the whole time?Yeah, you can just export flash cards.Comes in like a package that opens up with Unki and then you just import it into your program.
It's all open source.There's lots of different add-ons you can do as well.Like I've got the Japanese add-ons so that it recognizes Fritty Ghana, which is a little text on top of the Chinese characters.The Med students use one that kind of like grades, how well they know each topic.Overall.
There's like lots of different add-ons and you just go to the website and you can find pre made decks and stuff there as well.Is it free Paid for product?Obviously.No, it's free.I think you can pay for the iOS app, but you can also just use the web app which is free, but on your desktop it's like full free, full software.
Did you mention another one?Quizlet.Same sort of thing.Yeah, it's not a program.It's just a web-based software.You just make an account.It's not as powerful.I think you're limited to like back in front.I haven't used it for years, so it might have changed now, but yeah, that's just as less of a learning curve for sure.
But just watch a few YouTube videos and be already hunky.Cool.Anything else?Have we covered it?I guess I would say don't forget about the, if you're studying for an exam or studying for a course or something, don't forget about like the self-care kind of side of things as well.
So make sure you're sleeping well, eating well, exercising, all that kind of stuff.There's a book written by two Australian psychologists.The names are Patsy Tremaine and Kel Tremaine, and they've basically taken their careers to just helping Med students and Australian doctors pass their exams to get through.
So it's a pretty good book to read if you want like a really easily digestible approach to everything I'm saying here as well.But they referenced a few studies in there that kind of proved to you the benefits of exercise and sleep as well.And then came up with this good analogy, I guess, where if you think about a Formula One car, they need a pit stop.
They're not designed to make it through the entire race on one set of tires, on one tank of fuel.So they kind of use that metaphor for that deliberate recovery that you need to take both within your study and then on your days off and those kinds of things.So making sure that you, yeah, optimize your brain performance with good sleep, good exercise, and managing stress.
Just such a critical thing and it's so easy to neglect in the face of the the panic, right, because it's, it feels endless.You feel like, OK, well I could just study forever and still not have enough time so there's no ways I can go and.Take an hour hike in the forest to reset my break because I should be studying.
But it's I know I I keep going on about this book.That why we sleep book, the Matt Walker book.Which is petrifying.It's a petrifying read for anybody who's not perfect with their sleep.But they talk about a lot of studies about insufficient sleep.Not we're not talking about all nighters or, you know, crazy lack of sleep where they do studies and do memory tests.
Over a couple of days with people who sleep, let's say 8 hours versus 5 hours a night or six hours a night.So just let's say six hours is a little bit too short for most people.And then they ask people, how do you feel?Do you feel impaired?And the answer is almost always no, especially if you you know an all night, you know you've you're under sleep.
But if you sleep six hours for 2-3 nights in a row, one of the first things that goes offline is self-awareness about how you're feeling.So people will go now feel fine.How do you think you're going to do the test?Fine.And then categorically not fine, memory, testing attention, all those things like that drops off precipitously, but they think they're doing well.
So don't fool yourself and thinking no, I'll just cram a little bit and cut back on the sleep.You're actually not helping yourself at all.That's one thing I was back as a student, one of my superpowers was I would stop.It's a. 3:00 or 4:00 PM even if I feel completely unprepared, I would actually stop studying and say, well let me go watch a movie or go for a walk or play sport or do something else like that and everybody else is cramming and staying up late and and the next morning inevitably I would remember more.
I'd feel heaps better because I try and get to sleep early which that always helped a lot as I feel like there was a winning thing for me.Yeah, for something I guess they reference one study Will.You know if you sleep deprived, you're allowed to drive the alcohol limit of over .05.
In Australia, being awake for 18 hours gives you the equivalent of .05 and then being away for 24 hours is the equivalent of .1.So if you're not allowed to drive a car, you're probably not allowed to sit a test.We probably shouldn't sit a test.Before you go do your exam right just go have 5 beers before this exam.
You go no, not.Going to do that?So.So what have you changed?Maybe because I saw you the week before your membership exams.You did not look well rested and relaxed.Jill, what are you going to?Yeah.Look, did you listen to your own advice from memberships or was there just chronic study face?
Absolutely not.I've since learned not to do that.So this is the post membership learnings.Yeah, I was very bad.It was eating tough and the tell every day put on 20 kilos making myself sick.Yeah no, definitely take time off and sleep if you you know emergency beds.
We always chronically sleep deprived.The author suggests that you review your questions when you are sleep deprived.If you have to do something, but don't worry about trying to learn the answers to them.If you do get it wrong, save that for the next day when you're refreshed.
So So what when you sleep deprived?You can did you say you can test yourself?But no point if you're exhausted to try and learn because you're actually just going to waste your time.Correct.Yeah.And I guess if you can get it right when you are sleep deprived, you probably know that really well.
You know that you're styling, you know that you're actually fine.So I am going to follow up with you in the month before your specialist exams.I'm going to see, I'm going to call you and say how's your sleep going?Well.Virtually.Well, you're not doubt it.All right, thank you so much.
I think this is hopefully going to make some geniuses and get some high marks, but I think the way on this aspect of that is huge and I'm definitely going to apply this time I study.Thanks for making the time.All right, it is time for.Our end of episode.
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Dr Matt Hollindale