Coaching practices for Make it Stick the Science of Learning in a New Job

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Make it Stick the Science of Learning in a New Job, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

  • I’ve got a pile of memorized facts floating around with nothing holding them together, and the second I try to explain any of it in my own words or use it somewhere new, it falls apart
  • I jump straight to the worked answer to save time, and it always looks obvious in hindsight
  • Whenever I hit something new I reach straight for the tutorial before I’ve even tried it myself, and I’m starting to wonder if grabbing the answer that fast is exactly why none of it ever sticks
  • I read it over and over until it feels familiar, then the moment someone asks me to actually say it back I draw a total blank
  • It all feels so smooth and familiar that I walk in sure I’ve got it, and then I bomb the test and can’t understand the gap

Practices that may help

  1. Make It Stick: The Science of Learning
    "Make It Stick", by Peter Brown with psychologists Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, distills decades of cognitive science into a few high-leverage practices: retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving, and elaboration. Its central counterintuitive claim — that the most effective learning feels harder and slower than rereading — is backed by strong experimental evidence.
  2. Elaboration
    Explain new material in your own words and connect it to what you already know.
    Make It Stick: The Science of Learning
  3. Generation: attempt before you are taught
    Try to solve or answer first, even if you get it wrong, before seeing the solution.
    Make It Stick: The Science of Learning
  4. Attempt before instruction
    Try to solve a new type of problem with your current knowledge before any formal teaching.
    Productive Failure: How Struggling First Makes Instruction More Effective
  5. Retrieval practice (testing to learn)
    Quiz yourself to learn, not just to check what you already know.
    Make It Stick: The Science of Learning
  6. Beware illusions of knowing
    Don’t trust the feeling of fluency — it routinely overstates what you actually know.
    Make It Stick: The Science of Learning
  7. Spaced practice
    Spread study over time instead of cramming it into one session.
    Make It Stick: The Science of Learning
  8. Use spaced repetition of core ideas in teaching and coaching
    Revisiting key concepts across sessions builds fluent understanding — mere exposure amplifies spaced practice.
    The Mere Exposure Effect, Made Practical
  9. Retention: build in spacing so it lasts
    Schedule what you learn to come back over time, not just at the start.
    Ultralearning: Aggressive, Self-Directed Learning
  10. Schedule retrieval and re-challenge with spaced repetition
    Return to a skill just as it starts to fade — the spacing effect makes consolidation stick.
    Growth-Edge Training: Practicing at the Edge of Your Ability

Related concerns

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.

Practice this with IX Coach

Try this practice