Person
Every book Ali Abdaal recommended on podcasts
Ali Abdaal appeared on Modern Wisdom to discuss evidence-based learning strategies, memory retention, and productivity techniques. During the episode, Abdaal strongly recommended Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel's Make It Stick, highlighting its focus on the science of successful learning and noting that self-testing is a foundational technique for academic and skill-based success. He also discussed David Epstein's Range, using the book to introduce listeners to key learning principles such as testing, spacing, and interleaving for acquiring new knowledge and complex skills. In addition to recommending these titles, Abdaal referenced Sönke Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes to demonstrate his personal note-taking workflow, explaining the mechanics of information retention and the power of active recall and spacing when processing written material. Throughout the podcast, Abdaal grounded his productivity advice in cognitive science and educational literature, providing listeners with actionable, research-backed frameworks to optimize how they study, retain information, and master new disciplines. His recommendations emphasized moving away from passive review methods and toward active, cognitively demanding engagement with educational content to ensure long-term mastery.
Books recommended by Ali Abdaal
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Make It Stick
Make It Stick by Peter C.
Recommended“and there's a really good book called make it stick which is all about the science of successful learning and the authors basically say right up front in in the introduction that look if you're a student or any kind of learner and you're not happy with the way your results are going chances are you're just not testing yourself”
Where to get it
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Range
Range by David Epstein is an insightful book that examines how generalists often triumph over specialists in complex environments.
Recommended“there's another book called uh range by david epstein where he talks about this basically in those exact terms he says testing spacing and interleaving are like the three sort of primary things for learning any skill whether whether it's like knowledge for a university subject or whether it's like tennis or golf or anything like that”
Where to get it
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How to Take Smart Notes
Discussed“uh oh i was actually taking notes from this book how to take smart notes uh which was actually about all of this like recall stuff uh and the power of testing and spacing when when it came to the con the context of understanding information from from notes”
Where to get it
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Range
Range by David J.
Discussed“There's another book called uh range by david epstein where he talks about this basically in those exact terms he says testing spacing and interleaving are like the three sort of primary things for learning any skill whether whether it's like knowledge for a university subject or whether it's like tennis or golf or anything like that”
Where to get it
Appearances
| Episode | Podcast | Date | Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| How To Learn & Remember Anything, Fast - Ali Abdaal - #231 | Modern Wisdom | 2020-10-12 | 5 |
Other mentions (1: passing, ad reads, own books)
“and at the time my specialist subject would have been the harry potter books and i still think it”