Common Traps

A trap is a behaviour whose harm is far larger than the behaviour itself. In every trap, energy is spent for little return: hours of covering, copying, or repeating that leave the next week’s work no cheaper. Adding a good method on top of a trap does not cancel the trap. The set of methods in use still produces only what the trap allows. Screening a method before it becomes the week’s work is cheaper than removing it afterwards.

There are three traps to screen for before adopting the next method: a deathly spiral, a bandwagon pick, and a misfit. Catching any one of them does more for the learner than adding another method.

Core takeaways

• A trap is a behaviour whose harm is far larger than the behaviour itself. Hours go into covering, copying, or repeating, and the next week’s work gets no cheaper.
• A deathly spiral is a method that helps this week and makes next month harder. It uses up the time that a change of method would need. The question to ask before depending on a method is whether getting better at it saves time or adds time.
• The bandwagon fallacy is using a technique because others use it. A common method is not the same as a good method. Judging a method needs a count of who used it and succeeded and a count of who used it and failed.
• A misfit is a technique used incorrectly or used on a problem it cannot solve. The signal is effort that produces only coverage and none of the thinking the method was chosen for. Check the execution first, and switch the tool only when execution is right and results still do not come.
• All three traps can meet on flashcards. The cards are useful for spaced retrieval schedules and for short sessions. Relying on them too much is the trap.
• A new method does not cancel a trap that is already running. Screening happens before each new method, and it repeats.

Deathly spirals

A deathly spiral is a method that helps this week and makes next month harder. A learner enters one because the method answers the immediate next problem: the chapter that has to be covered, or the pile that has to shrink. In answering that problem, the method removes the chance to develop. The usual way it does this is by consuming the time a change of method would need.

A method that feels effective now often produces worse retention later. Rereading, massed practice, and highlighting all feel productive during the session and create extra work in the weeks after it. That extra work has a name. Learning debt is the extra work the learner has to do later, at a busier time, because today’s method covered content without building the skill or the structure that would have made the later work cheaper.

The longer a spiral runs, the more later work costs, and the less time remains to leave the spiral. A mood is not what holds the learner in place. The schedule, the notes, and the day’s plan all come to assume the method, so leaving the method costs more than the method itself costs.

The typical spiral is having no time to build learning skill, because covering content with a method that does not build skill takes all the time. The method stays in place because it answers the demand to cover content. In the long run it forces a choice between failing and giving up, and both of those are losses.

A method worth adopting gets cheaper as skill in it rises. The screening question, asked before depending on a method, is whether getting better at it saves time or adds time. The safest course is never to start a spiral. The form of that course that works in practice is replacement: cover less content, using a method that does not make later work more expensive. An intention to stop covering content until skills exist fails. An intention to replace one method with another works.

Choosing a method because others use it

A spiral often starts with how the method was chosen. Using a technique because others use it is the bandwagon fallacy. A common method is not the same as a good method. The common methods are often the ones that visibly successful people use, and that is what makes the influence hard to notice.

Suppose nine people use a method and one of them succeeds. Every visible success used the method, so the visible record shows a hundred per cent success rate, while the actual rate is nearer one in nine. The people who failed with the same method say nothing about it.

Doing a thing well and knowing what made it work are separate skills. For that reason, a successful practitioner’s account of their own method is weak evidence. People have poor access to the causes of their own behaviour.

Judging a method honestly needs two counts: who used it and succeeded, and who used it and failed.

An unfamiliar method feels uncomfortable the first time it is used. That feeling is not evidence against the method.

Using a technique wrongly or on the wrong problem

A method chosen without knowing how it works can also be a misfit. A misfit is a technique used incorrectly, or used on a problem it cannot solve. Enough force makes a mismatched technique produce something, but what it produces is damaged, and the problem is left in a worse state than before.

The right technique usually solves the problem quickly. Heavy effort with no result suggests the wrong tool or the wrong moment. The effort that signals a misfit is effort that produces only coverage. Effort that produces retrieval, comparison, or reconstruction is not that signal, because a method can be hard and right. The test for this is on The Technique Is Only as Good as the Thinking It Produces: a method that looks right and is not producing the thinking it was chosen for.

The check has two steps in a fixed order. First, ask whether the method is being run as designed. If the execution is wrong, fix the execution and test the method again. Only when the execution is right and results still do not come is the tool a poor fit for the job. At that point, switch the tool instead of pushing it harder.

A better method reaches the same result with far less effort, and it keeps returning more as more effort goes in. A method that needs heavy effort reaches a limit, and effort past that limit produces nothing further.

Flashcards, where the three traps meet

All three traps can meet on one ordinary tool. Flashcards are useful for spaced retrieval schedules and for micro-learning, which is study in sessions of a few minutes. Relying on them too much is the trap. The tool itself is not the trap. The cards get chosen because they are everywhere, which is the bandwagon pick. They get run as the whole learning system instead of as one scheduling device, which is the misfit. And they build up into a stack too large to leave, which is the spiral.

The steps follow one another. Depending on more cards creates learning debt, which is paid in future repetition. Thin knowledge networks keep understanding shallow, so more repetition is used to fill the gaps in depth. Less time remains for any other method. The stack grows every day, and the cost of leaving rises with it. Once the stack is the system, the day’s learning is defined as getting through the stack. The stack is too big to get through, so the learning does not happen, and the time that would have paid for a different method is gone as well.

A card costs about a minute to make and about thirty seconds to review, and it holds after three to five reviews, so each card costs roughly three minutes in total. A hundred cards is about five hours committed before anything is learned. Every card added raises the total. A reader can re-run the estimate with their own numbers.

The limit that stops a method needing heavy effort also appears away from cards. Hours go into large amounts of notes that are never re-read, and the writer could not say afterwards what the notes contained. That is a misfit that has nothing to do with cards.

What the three traps leave out

The three traps that meet on the card stack are not a full list of the ways learning fails. They are the most expensive of the failures a single learner runs into. The research literature already names two of them: short-term ease bought at long-term cost, and copying the visible winners. No prevalence data supports a claim that these three account for most stalled progress. A method that feels hard is not a trap because it feels hard. The misfit signal is effort without the thinking the method was supposed to produce.

The screening questions are a habit of judgment. They are not a decision procedure that has been tested in a trial. Catching a trap is an act of monitoring. Monitoring is a skill that can be trained, and it does not depend on staying alert. Monitoring is the subject of metacognition.

From inside a trap, the signs are these. The method is the reason there is no time to change the method. The cost of leaving is higher this month than it was last month. The screening question takes about a minute before adopting a method. Checking the methods already in use takes one honest session, and it costs least when done early.

Screening happens before the next method is adopted, and it repeats each time, because a new method does not cancel a trap already running. The three checks answer three different questions. Does skill in the method save time or add time? Who used the method and succeeded, and who used it and failed? Is the execution right, before the tool is blamed? Marginal Gains describes the other part of the same work: small improvements added together. Gains add up only where nothing is cancelling them.

How to practice this

1. Before depending on a new method, ask whether getting better at it saves time or adds time. A method worth adopting gets cheaper as skill in it rises. If getting better at it adds time, do not start.
2. Count who used the method and succeeded, and count who used it and failed. Notice whether the failures are missing from what you have heard. A record made only of successes is weak evidence.
3. When a method takes heavy effort and gives no result, first check that you are running it as designed. Fix the execution and test the method again. Switch the tool only when the execution is right and results still do not come.
4. Look at what the effort produces. Effort that produces only coverage is the misfit signal. Effort that produces retrieval, comparison, or reconstruction can be hard and right.
5. Spend one honest session listing the methods already running. Notice whether a method is the reason there is no time to change the method. Notice whether the cost of leaving is higher this month than last month.
6. To leave a spiral, cover less content with a method that does not make later work more expensive. Notice whether your plan is to stop covering until skills exist or to replace the method. The stopping plan fails and the replacement plan works.

Sources

• Bjork 1994; Bjork, Dunlosky & Kornell 2013, Psychology of Learning and Motivation, on desirable difficulties: methods that feel effective now often produce worse retention later, and the bound on reading heavy effort as a misfit.
• Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan & Willingham 2013, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, utility ratings: rereading and highlighting high in felt effectiveness and low in actual; practice testing and distributed practice high.
• Wald 1943, on survivorship: the visible successes used the method, and the failures stay quiet.
• Nisbett & Wilson 1977, Psychological Review: people have poor access to the causes of their own behaviour.
• Cronbach & Snow 1977: aptitude–treatment interaction, the field’s name for a method used on a problem it cannot solve.
• Adriaanse, Gollwitzer, De Ridder, de Wit & Kroese 2011: replacement intentions beat negation intentions.
• Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted & Rohrer 2006, Psychological Bulletin: spacing, the legitimate use of a retrieval schedule.