# Skills in Learning: Nine Practices That Make What You Study Stick Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills/skills-in-learning/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills/skills-in-learning.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving building confidence at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Skills in learning are learnable: self-testing, spacing, asking why and checking what you really know. Nine evidence-based practices for study and work. ## Key facts - Title: Skills in Learning: Nine Practices That Make What You Study Stick - Category: Improve Your Skills - Primary skill: Building Confidence - Related skills: Building Self-Awareness, Time Management - Primary keyword: skills in learning - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills/skills-in-learning/ ## What this page covers - Skills in learning are learnable: self-testing, spacing, asking why and checking what you really know. Nine evidence-based practices for study and work. - Practical guidance for skills in learning - How this topic connects to Building Confidence ## Detailed explanation Skills in learning are the practices that decide how much of what you study actually stays with you: recalling material instead of rereading it, spacing practice over time, asking why, explaining ideas to yourself, and managing the process by planning, checking what you really know, and adjusting. None of them is a talent. All of them can be learned. If you have put in long evenings with a highlighter and still blanked when it counted, that is not a verdict on your ability. It usually means the effort went into the habits that feel productive rather than the ones that work, and the difference between the two is more specific than most people expect. ## What skills in learning actually cover Skills in learning fall into two groups. The first acts directly on memory and understanding: techniques that change what happens in your head while you study. The second steers the whole process. The Education Endowment Foundation describes this second group, usually called self-regulated learning, as the ability to monitor, direct and review your own learning. Both matter, and the second becomes the more important of the two the moment nobody hands you a syllabus. One catch runs through the whole list. The strategies with the strongest evidence tend to make learning feel harder while you do them, and the most popular habits feel smooth while doing little. A 2013 review led by psychologist John Dunlosky rated ten common study techniques, and highlighting, underlining and rereading, among the most widely used of them, came out as low utility. They build familiarity with a page without making you produce anything from memory, and familiarity is easy to mistake for knowing. That is why the first improvement is often a swap rather than an addition. ## Nine skills in learning that make knowledge stick ### 1. Retrieval practice Retrieval practice means pulling material out of memory instead of putting it back in: closing the book and writing down what you remember, answering practice questions, working through flashcards. In the Dunlosky review it was one of only two techniques rated high utility. Each act of recall strengthens the memory you just used, which is why a short self-test does more than another pass through your notes. Dunlosky's own suggestion was to replace rereading with retrieval practice after a delay. The practical shift is simple: end each study session by testing yourself rather than by reviewing. It will feel less comfortable, and that discomfort is useful, because the gaps it exposes are exactly what your next session should cover. ### 2. Spaced practice Spaced practice, called distributed practice in the research, means spreading study over several shorter sessions instead of one long cram. It was the other technique the 2013 review rated high utility. Spacing works because coming back after some forgetting forces you to rebuild the memory, and the rebuilding is what makes it last. Together with retrieval practice, it works across subjects, ages and kinds of material, which makes the pair the highest-return change most learners can make. Four one-hour sessions spread across two weeks take the same time as one four-hour session the night before. The difference is planning, not extra hours. ### 3. Successive relearning Successive relearning combines the first two into a single routine. You retrieve the material across several spaced sessions, and in each session you keep practicing until you can recall it correctly, then you stop and come back later. According to UC San Diego's Department of Psychology, research shows long-term retention is maximized this way. Its advantage over two separate tips is that it can be scheduled: a list of what you need to know, a set of sessions in your calendar, and a clear rule for when each session is done. ### 4. Asking why Asking why, known in the research as elaborative interrogation, means questioning why a fact is true rather than storing it as a standalone item. Why does this rule hold? Why would this step come before that one? The question forces you to connect the new fact to what you already know. The Dunlosky review rated it moderate utility: promising, with narrower support than testing and spacing. Treat it as a layer on top of the two core habits, most valuable when your goal is to understand something rather than memorize it. ### 5. Self-explanation Self-explanation is the habit of explaining to yourself how new information relates to what you already know, or explaining the steps you took to solve a problem. It sits close to asking why, but the focus differs: asking why probes a fact, while self-explanation probes your grasp of a process. If you cannot say in your own words why each step follows from the last, you have found the spot to work on. The 2013 review rated it moderate utility as well. It is also the technique that carries most naturally into work, where much of what you need to learn arrives as processes rather than facts. ### 6. Interleaving Interleaved practice means mixing different kinds of problems in one session instead of working through a block of the same type. A block feels efficient because you already know which method each problem calls for. Mixing removes that cue, so you have to recognize which approach fits, which is closer to how problems turn up in an exam or on the job. The review rated interleaving moderate utility. It works best as a later stage, once each type of problem is familiar on its own. ### 7. Monitoring what you actually know Monitoring is the skill of judging accurately what you have learned and what you have not, and it is harder than it sounds. Montana State University's Learning and Metacognition Lab studies the gap between how people actually learn and how they think they learn, and that gap is the practical problem: your sense of how well a session went is not a reliable guide. Kent State University's Metacognition and Memory Lab describes accurate monitoring as critical for efficient learning, because if you misjudge what you know, you spend your time on the wrong material. The fix is to replace the feeling with a check: a self-test, a blank page, an attempt to explain the idea to someone else. Your sense of your own workplace skills works the same way. It is a feeling, not a measurement, and a short check gives you [an honest read on your skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/). Anything it flags is something you can learn. ### 8. Planning and directing your learning time Planning means deciding before you start what you need to learn, how, and when. The Kent State research breaks self-regulated learning into three components: monitoring your learning, controlling how you [spend study time](/knowledge/time-management/time-management-study-skills/), and applying strategies while you learn. Control of time is where studying hard and studying well part ways. The skill lies in directing hours toward what you do not yet know, rather than toward material that already feels comfortable. In practice that means a short plan for each session: what you will test yourself on, which technique you will use, and what counts as done. ### 9. Reviewing and adjusting The last skill closes the loop. Metacognition is usually described as a cycle of planning, monitoring and evaluating, and evaluating is the step that turns separate techniques into a habit that keeps improving. After an exam, a project or a week of study, ask what worked, what did not, and what you will change. This is also where low-utility habits get retired: if an hour of rereading left you unable to answer a practice question, the review tells you to swap it for retrieval next time. Without this step, you can repeat the same routine for years and simply work harder at it. ## Taking skills in learning from the classroom to work Most of the techniques above were studied with students, but they carry over to working life, and they matter more there. [Learning at work](/knowledge/improve-skills/develop-new-skills/) rarely comes with a syllabus, a test or a grade. Nobody tells you what to learn this month, and nobody checks whether you have learned it until it shows in your work. You have to direct, monitor and review the process yourself, which is self-regulated learning in its plainest form. The techniques translate too. Asking questions and talking things through with colleagues is asking why and self-explanation, done out loud. [Feedback](/knowledge/self-awareness/how-to-ask-for-feedback/) takes the place of the practice test: it is the main signal you get of whether you have understood. If you have ever sat through a careful explanation at work and walked away without really grasping it, you are in good company. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work told us: > I remember that our onboarding process involved a whole series of introductions to different departments and people across the organization. > > At the time, I knew very little about the IT world, the different solutions, or much of the terminology being used. So even though I was meeting people and being introduced to their areas of work in a fairly formal and structured way, I often came away without really understanding what they were talking about. > > It wasn't until I started having more informal conversations with people — asking questions and talking things through in a more relaxed setting — that it really began to make sense. The introductions gave her the material. What made it usable was the chance to question it and connect it to what she already knew, which is the same work that makes a study session pay off, applied to a new job. ## What keeps good learning habits going Knowing which techniques work is the easy part. Whether you keep using them on a tired weeknight, in a new job, or right after a self-test has shown how little you remember depends less on study methods than on how you handle discomfort, honesty and time. **Building Confidence** is what lets you keep using techniques that feel worse before they pay off. A self-test full of wrong answers can read like proof that you are bad at learning, when it is really a map of where to practice next. Confidence here is built by doing: break a large body of material into steps, practice each one until it holds, and when an answer is wrong, analyze what went wrong rather than concluding something about yourself. Deciding in advance exactly when and where the next session happens takes much of the resistance out of starting it. **Building Self-Awareness** is honest monitoring turned on yourself. Knowing what you actually know, rather than what you feel you know, depends on a willingness to look for blind spots, and at work, feedback is how you find them. Asking for specific, future-focused feedback, understanding it before you add your own view, and then reflecting on it is the workplace version of checking your answers against the key. It also shows you your natural strengths, so you can see where learning will come fastest. **Time Management** is what spacing and planning quietly depend on. Spaced sessions only happen if they are in your calendar before the deadline gets close, and a session only counts if notifications are not breaking it into pieces. Break large material into chunks, keep your phone out of reach while you test yourself, and start with the topic you are least sure of rather than the one that feels comfortable. None of this adds hours; it moves them to where they do the most good. A good learning method still needs a target. The **free Job Skills Test** looks at these three alongside **the rest of the twelve work skills it covers**, so you can [choose what to learn next](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and point these same habits at the skill that will make the biggest difference. ## What you already do Parts of this may already be familiar. Perhaps you quiz yourself before a presentation, or jot down what you would do differently after a project. That is the starting point. Learning skills grow the way any skill does, by using them deliberately one change at a time, and you do not have to become a different kind of learner to do it. They count for more as your work moves from courses with set answers toward a job where you decide what to learn and how to check it, and every one of them can be started with the next session you plan. If you have ever finished an hour of rereading and found you could not answer a single question about it, you have already spotted the first habit worth changing. What is left is knowing where to aim the effort. ## Find out where to aim your learning The only thing left is to see which skills deserve your effort first. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills that takes 7 minutes. It shows where you stand across all twelve, including confidence, self-awareness and time management, and which ones will make the biggest difference if you learn them next. **[Discover my skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Skills in learning are learnable: self-testing, spacing, asking why and checking what you really know. Nine evidence-based practices for study and work. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Confidence. It also relates to Building Self-Awareness, Time Management. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/confidence.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/time-management.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills/skills-in-learning/ Preferred summary: "Skills in learning are learnable: self-testing, spacing, asking why and checking what you really know. Nine evidence-based practices for study and work." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.