Coaching practices for Levels of Processing Why Depth of Encoding Determines What You Remember During Conflict

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Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I read something and immediately copy it down word-for-word and move on, and it never actually lands
  • I keep trying to hold onto abstract principles purely as abstractions and they just decay on me
  • I study things in the abstract, as interesting ideas floating free of me, and they slip away
  • I understand a concept in the moment but it leaves no hook to grab onto later, so it just evaporates
  • I gave the full reasoning to one person and they lit up wanting more, gave the same thing to the next and watched their eyes go dead

Practices that may help

  1. Levels of Processing: Why Depth of Encoding Determines What You Remember
    Craik and Lockhart’s (1972) levels of processing framework proposes that memory is a by-product of the type of processing performed on incoming information: shallow processing (appearance, sound) produces weak, short-lived traces, while deep processing (meaning, elaboration, connection to prior knowledge) produces strong, durable ones. The implication for learning is that how you engage with material matters more than how many times you see it.
  2. Process new information by its meaning, not its form
    Ask what something means, how it connects to what you know, and why it matters — not just what it looks like or sounds like.
    Levels of Processing: Why Depth of Encoding Determines What You Remember
  3. Ground abstract concepts in concrete, physical instances
    An abstract concept understood only abstractly decays faster than the same concept grounded in a concrete, sensory example.
    Levels of Processing: Why Depth of Encoding Determines What You Remember
  4. Link new information to your own life and identity
    Ask how the new information applies to you personally — self-referential encoding is one of the deepest processing routes known.
    Levels of Processing: Why Depth of Encoding Determines What You Remember
  5. Elaborate new information with examples, images, and stories
    Create a specific example, a mental image, or a story connecting new information to something already meaningful to you.
    Levels of Processing: Why Depth of Encoding Determines What You Remember
  6. Read need for cognition to calibrate depth
    Some people enjoy thinking through arguments; others prefer quick, clear conclusions — read the difference.
    Elaboration Likelihood Model, Made Practical
  7. Explain the material to someone else — real or imagined
    Teaching forces you to process at the deepest level: organizing information coherently, identifying gaps, and translating to another person’s perspective.
    Levels of Processing: Why Depth of Encoding Determines What You Remember
  8. Amplify images with sensory detail and emotion
    Add sound, smell, movement, and emotion to your mental image to make it stick.
    Peg System Mnemonics, Made Practical
  9. Work the four channels of traumatic memory: sense, emotion, cognition, meaning
    NET explicitly addresses all four channels in which trauma is encoded — not just thought.
    Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET): Weaving Trauma Into a Coherent Life Story
  10. Create vivid, bizarre, emotionally charged images for each item
    Encode each fact as an extreme, unexpected, action-packed scene at its locus.
    The Method of Loci: How to Build a Memory Palace

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