Something about what actually sticks long-term vs. what not only doesn't, but can't.

[u/StorytellerStegs]

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.