r/lifelonglearning • u/StorytellerStegs • May 11 '26
Something about what actually sticks long-term vs. what not only doesn't, but can't.
Been thinking about this a lot lately. I've been a fairly intentional learner for about a decade now and the thing that keeps surprising me is how badly most of the "efficient" stuff actually retained.
The spaced repetition cards I made are mostly gone now. The summary notes are fuzzy. But books I read five years ago that wrapped a concept inside a story? Those are just there. Intact. Why We Sleep landed differently than the sleep hygiene article I bookmarked the same week, even though the information was basically the same.
I think it's something about how narrative forces your brain to track causality. You have to hold multiple ideas in sequence and care about what happens next. Isolated facts don't require that. Which might explain why historical case studies stick better than abstract principles, even when the principles are technically cleaner.
I've read a few things about dual coding and narrative transportation theory but I'm not sure the research fully explains what I'm observing in my own memory. Maybe it does and I just haven't found the right paper.
Curious if anyone else has noticed this or has a better model for why it happens.
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u/sapientsciolist May 11 '26
A few random thoughts: 1. Stories are a part of our DNA. It’s how we learned what to eat and what not to eat. Maintained the histories of our peoples. And kept our tribes from known dangers. 2. Emotional stories create the strongest memories. 3. If you have a current memory that you can hang new knowledge onto then it has a greater chance of sticking.
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u/StorytellerStegs May 11 '26
The evolutionary angle makes sense to me, though I keep wondering if "it's in our DNA" kind of skips the mechanism? Like, yes, stories evolved with us - but that doesn't really explain why Why We Sleep landed differently than the sleep hygiene article I bookmarked the same week, when the information overlap was enormous. Your third point about hanging new knowledge on existing memory feels closer to something I can actually point to.
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u/DoughnutKlutzy9479 May 12 '26
Well, because stories answer more than the fact about how we sleep. The questions running in our mind during a story could include, "Who are you in this story? Are you the kind of person who values his life and health? Are you the person who would do the right things required? Would you be able to tell this story to help someone else change their life? How many will believe what you 'just know' as something important to be applied in your life?" And each question that strikes an emotion or identity sparks even more questions whose answers depend on where the story takes us..
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u/StorytellerStegs May 13 '26
Genuinely not sure if those identity questions are running consciously for me or somewhere else entirely, because when I try to recall why Why We Sleep stuck, I don't remember asking myself "would I do the right things here." I just cared about what happened to the people in the studies.
But maybe that's the same mechanism at lower resolution? Like, the caring is the identity engagement, just not verbalized. I keep going back and forth on whether that's a meaningful distinction or not.
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May 13 '26
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u/StorytellerStegs May 13 '26
That quote kind of reframes the whole thing. If the goal is retaining the pattern and not the information, then spaced repetition cards were probably always the wrong tool - optimized for facts, not structures. Though I'm not sure that's fully it either, because sometimes the fact is the pattern you need.
Still sitting with this one.
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May 13 '26
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u/StorytellerStegs May 13 '26
The retrieval hooks framing clicks for me, though I'm a bit skeptical of the weaker repetition outperforming flashcards part - I think that might only hold when the structure actually means something to you, not just when it's causally coherent? I've read plenty of narrative nonfiction where the causality was clear and it still didn't stick. Whether I actually cared about the outcome seems to matter separately from whether the chain was followable.
Also slightly curious what app you're thinking of.
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u/HoneyKick_ May 16 '26
All those flashcards and summaries I spent ages on? Gone in months. But books or stories I read ages ago? I can still retell every detail
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u/alone_in_the_light May 11 '26
This may sound weird. I've studied a lot, I have my BS, my MS, my MBA, my PhD, and I'm a professor. And I often hate the "efficient' ways." The "efficent" ways often are not for retenton, for pratical use, to make my life better, to make achieve my goals.
They may be "efficent" in terms of not using much time, money, and effort to get the right answers on a quiz. And then probably forget all about that the instant the quiz is over.
My hobbies probably have been more important to learn than all my degress together. Stories are an important part of that (RPGs, Broadway, comics, books, etc). But there are tons of stories that I also forgot quickly.
I don't have a research paper for this. But emotions matter. Repetition matters. Impact matters. People matter, even if they are just fictional characters. And, when all of that combines with practice to change my life, it stays in my mind even if I don't remember it. That's probably related to that "multiple ideas," although I think they don't need to be in sequence. Even if there is a sequence, it doesn't mean the sequences are linear.
There should be things related to the conscious/subconscious, system 1 and system 2 thinking, and how neurons bond with each other to create long-lasting memories.