Coaching practices for Make it Stick the Science of Learning on a Budget

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 on a Budget, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

  • I cram it all into one marathon session and ace it that night, then a week later it’s basically gone
  • 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
  • When I’m trying to teach or mentor someone, I rush them on to the next thing before the last one has landed, and they end up with a head full of disconnected scraps
  • 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
  • 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. Spaced practice
    Spread study over time instead of cramming it into one session.
    Make It Stick: The Science of Learning
  3. Retrieval practice (testing to learn)
    Quiz yourself to learn, not just to check what you already know.
    Make It Stick: The Science of Learning
  4. 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
  5. Elaboration
    Explain new material in your own words and connect it to 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. 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
  8. Audit your study methods by retention outcome, not by how good they feel
    Track what you actually retain a week later, not what felt productive in the moment.
    The Learning Styles Myth: What the Research Actually Says
  9. Deliberate strategy selection
    Choose the study method that matches the type of knowledge you are building, not the one that feels most comfortable.
    Self-Regulated Learning: Taking Control of How You Learn
  10. Space retrieval attempts across increasing intervals
    Test yourself on a topic after a delay, then again after a longer delay — the effort of retrieval at the edge of forgetting makes the memory strongest.
    The Testing Effect: Why Retrieval Practice Beats Restudying

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