Self-learning can be broken down into two major steps: planning and studying. Just a few years ago, planning—which is basically putting together a schedule and curating a list of resources—was an extremely time-consuming task, and many self-learners would pay just for that part.
In fact, the perceived value of a self-paced course can be thought of roughly as
the following equation: value = plan + content. I’m not gonna risk estimating the
relative contribution of each of those components, but if I had to guess, I’d say
the planning part alone probably accounts for 20–50% of a course’s value.
After building many study plans with the latest AI models, I gotta say they’re pretty darn good—not perfect yet, but already surprisingly capable of creating decent study plans. One thing is for sure: for the majority of subjects, AI has taken a good chunk, if not all, of the value that used to come from having a human put together the plan. And with that, the cost of ubiquitous access to knowledge has virtually gone to zero.
You may take this for granted now, but just a few years ago, having a plan—even if not executed—would put you ahead of many people who would first need to go through the process of figuring out what to learn, where to find the right resources, and how to structure their studies.
The studying part, however—which I shall define as the act of battling with information and transforming it into actionable knowledge—is still very much intact. And AI will do little, if anything, to help you with that. I wrote about this back in 2025: AI can't change what truly matters in education
If knowledge is now available everywhere, right at the tip of your fingers, what’s left?
Knowledge in your head. Or, in other words, knowledge retention.
In this article, I’ll share six tips I personally use to optimize my studies for knowledge retention:
Study when your brain is sharpest
For most people, that's somewhere between 4:30 and 11:00 a.m. Learning takes real energy and effort—sometimes it even hurts—so you want to come at it with a fresh brain, not a tired one. Your retention will thank you. Learning when you're tired is a huge waste of time.
Go slow
Slow learning is what actually sticks. Don't mistake learning for the appearance of learning: understanding something in the moment, only to forget it by the next day, is wasted time. Take it slow enough to reflect, annotate, and revisit—even the most basic topics have something left to teach you.
Creating a learning habit and studying for 1–2 hours every day is a nice way to start. Consistency will beat intensity every single time.
Map the landscape while hooking each topic onto something familiar
I picture this as forcing my neurons to wire the new thing onto some pre-established knowledge. This is basically a process of asking questions out loud and querying the information already in my brain. When I hit a term or a topic I don't know, I cover a good deal of the landscape first before going deep into any sub-branch—the exception being a branch that helps me connect the new material to something I already know. That one is low-hanging fruit: the connection forms sooner, and the whole subject gets clearer because of it.
I do all of this by hand on purpose—pen and paper first, Obsidian afterwards. More on that below. Pen and paper might sound boring, but nothing else I've tried comes close for retention. And retention—knowledge in your head—is the only thing worth optimizing for.
Too much information is your enemy
The whole point here is that less is more. Keep it simple. Pick one good book or course as your backbone, and reach for AI to unpack underlying concepts, connect them to something you already learned, or reframe them in a context that's familiar to you.
Don't overuse AI: your brain needs time to battle the content on its own. When your reference doesn't cover something, sit with the question in silence first before you go asking. Rushing to AI only buries you in information you were never going to retain anyway.
This is the 2026 version of flipping to the answers at the back of your math textbook instead of struggling through the problem on your own first.
Use pen and paper
This one is key. There's plenty of research showing that writing by hand helps knowledge stick—if you haven't tried it, you should. Also, screens will wear you out.
I keep notebooks full of annotations, with links running between them. After each study session, I take pictures of those pages, turn them into Markdown files and flashcards, and link them together inside my Obsidian vault. My second brain ends up being a mirror of my physical notes.
I stumbled upon this the other day, and it's so genius → AI by Hand!
Keep it to a few hours a day
Consistency is key. Start with one hour a day and work toward two; that's plenty, as long as they're your prime hours. Consistency beats intensity every time. You go to the gym daily to stay fit. You study daily to stay sharp.