Law of Practice

In Phaedrus, Plato (via Socrates) famously worried that writing would “produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who use it, because they will not practice their memory.” History has shown that he was wrong to fear writing itself. Yet Plato’s deeper insight has endured: memory weakens when we rely on exposure alone, and strengthens when we are forced to recall. Modern science has largely confirmed this intuition. Learning that lasts is built not by storing information safely away, but by returning to it again and again through effortful practice.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman describes memory not as a filing cabinet we open, but as a city we rebuild. Consider the morning commute. You can redraw the route almost effortlessly—the turns, the landmarks, the rhythm of the drive. But try to reconstruct a neighborhood you visited only once, years ago, and the details quickly blur. The difference is not intelligence or attention. It is repetition of reconstruction. The commute has been rebuilt so many times that its pathways are deeply worn into the brain.

Effective, spaced practice works the same way. Each act of retrieval redraws the map. This is why cramming can produce short-term recall, yet rarely yields learning that lasts. Here lies the paradox of remembering: without retrieval, memories fade; with retrieval, memories change. Learning, then, is not preservation but revision. Effective practice accepts this instability and designs for it, using spacing, feedback, and discipline to ensure that what is rebuilt sustains accuracy over time.

Memory and the Forgetting Curve

The modern science of practice begins with 19th-century psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, who showed that memory fades in a predictable pattern. His forgetting curve revealed that, without reinforcement, much of what we learn is lost. This insight helped inspire research on spaced practice, now one of the most robust findings in cognitive psychology. Forgetting, in this view, is not failure. It is the opening that makes learning possible again.

Neuroscience clarifies why. Learning is strengthened not by re-exposure, but by retrieval—the act of pulling information out of memory. In practical terms, studying is not “going over” material, but deliberately trying to recall it. Each successful retrieval reshapes neural pathways, making future access faster and more reliable. Brain imaging studies suggest that retrieval engages networks involved in long-term consolidation, particularly in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. This is why testing, when used as practice rather than judgment, is so powerful. Quizzes, reflection prompts, and low-stakes recall are not merely measures of learning; they are mechanisms of it.

Effective practice, however, is rarely smooth. It depends on friction, and attempts to make learning effortless often undermine its durability. The concept of desirable difficulties captures this tension: conditions that slow progress and invite error in the short term, yet produce stronger memory and transfer over time.

Manu Kapur’s work on productive failure sharpens the distinction. Students who first grapple with complex problems before receiving formal instruction develop more durable and transferrable knowledge and skills than peers who receive clear explanations upfront. This early struggle in the learning process doesn’t produce correct answers. Instead, it activates prior knowledge, exposes misconceptions, and creates a framework into which later instruction (and effective practice) can meaningfully fit.

For Kapur, the distinction is not between struggle and clarity, but between productive and unproductive struggle. Activity that overwhelms or humiliates learners shuts learning down. Yet practice that merely “goes over” material—polished explanations, repeated exposure, passive review—fails more quietly. It deprives the brain of the effort required to rebuild understanding. When learning feels fluent, memory and transfer often decay beneath the surface.

Rubber and Road: Discipline, Goals, and Executive Function

Of course, none of this matters if practice never happens. Effective practice depends not only on design, but on the learner’s ability to follow through—to practice instead of drifting or defaulting to distraction. Enter executive function. Recent work by Sabine Doebel reframes executive function not as a fixed capacity, but as skills deployed in service of goals. In other words, learners practice more effectively when goals are meaningful, visible, and socially supported. Durable practice therefore depends on clear goals, explicit instruction in effortful strategies, and social supports—from families, peers, schools, and institutions—that sustain those strategies. Without these supports, even motivated learners struggle to practice in ways that endure.