Interleaving,so simple, yet so complicated, but totally worth it

You might have read the headline to this article and done a double take the same way I did when I first came across this amazing learning strategy. My brain, like perhaps some of yours, wanted to change the "l" to a "w" to read the word as interweaving, which somehow sounds more familiar. So it's no wonder that as I continued to learn about this and read the research, a common theme arose. This is a technique that creates a steeper learning curve, but the longer term benefits are totally worth it. No pain, no gain I suppose.

So what is it? Well whereas blocked practice focuses on practicing one skill at a time before moving onto the next (AAABBBCCC), interleaving is a way of arranging practice problems so that the brain is challenged to choose a strategy on the basis of the problem itself. So when you're designing learning or practicing yourself, the idea is to ensure that no two consecutive problems require the same strategy(ABCABCACB).

How is this beneficial? Well think about it this way, your average work day is less than linear. In the scope of a few hours, you may complete multiple unrelated tasks, or have issues that arise. During those times, being able to flip through the strategy and solution library in your brain to choose the best course of action is a benefit. That being said, if you went into your brain library and only had one solution for each problem, things probably wouldn't move as smoothly or quickly as you would like it to.

The moral of this story, is that sometimes you need to slow things down to speed things up. Your brain loves solving different puzzles, so why not maximize its ability to do so? After all, "variety is the spice to life."

YARR for now!