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I was looking through my old LSAT prep
notebook the other day and I saw this

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scribble about arctic seals.

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And immediately, my brain went, oh, yeah,
arctic seals and volcanic ash,

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the answer to that one is definitely B.

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And I, I just felt this immediate wave of
frustration because I remembered the exact

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same thing happening when I was studying.

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Ah, the classic arctic seals.

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You see the seals and you think, I have
mastered this question,

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next.

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But what did you actually master, Nora?

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The logic, or just the story?

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Exactly!

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It is a total illusion.

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I didn't actually analyze the premise or
find the gap in the argument.

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I just, um, I recognized the characters.

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It is like seeing an old friend in the
grocery store.

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You recognize their face, but that doesn't
mean you know how their brain works.

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And on the LSAT, that cosmetic recall is a
massive trap.

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It really is.

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And there is a real scientific reason why
we fall into this.

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If we look back to eighteen eighty-five,
this German psychologist,

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Hermann Ebbinghaus, did these famous
studies on his own recall.

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He is the one who mapped out the
forgetting curve, which is the whole foundation for

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modern spaced repetition.

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But here is the catch.

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Ebbinghaus was memorizing nonsense
syllables.

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Things like, uh, "da-ta" or "bi-to."

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Completely rote, zero-context data points.

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Right, so he was testing how long the
brain holds onto pure,

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meaningless information.

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Precisely.

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And if you are learning medical
terminology or Spanish verbs,

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Ebbinghaus's system is a superpower.

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You flash the card, you see the word, you
memorize it.

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But the LSAT is not a test of what you
know.

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It is a test of how you think.

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If you use standard spaced repetition on
an LSAT question, your brain takes a

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massive cognitive shortcut.

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It remembers the volcanic ash and the
seals, and it completely bypasses the logical

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processing you actually need to practice.

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So, basically, standard spaced repetition
teaches you to recognize the prompt,

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not solve the argument.

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Exactly.

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It actively backfires.

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So how do we fix this?

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Because we still need to review our
mistakes.

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We can't just do a question once, miss it,
and never look at it again.

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No, you have to let it cool down first.

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We use what I call the forgetting window
rule.

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When you miss a question, you do not
review it the next day.

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You do not even look at it the day after
that.

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You have to wait exactly three to five
days.

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Three to five days?

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Why that specific window?

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Because you need the cosmetic details to
fade.

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You want to wait just long enough so that
when you open that page again,

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you don't instantly go, "Oh, B, seals."

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You want the story to feel a little fuzzy.

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That way, when you read it, your brain is
actually forced to re-evaluate the

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premises, find the conclusion, and map the
gap from scratch.

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You want to rebuild the path, not just
remember the destination.

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Okay, so we wait three to five days so we
actually have to do the mental heavy

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lifting again.

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But how do we track this without turning
our study space into a giant,

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messy pile of loose paper?

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I mean, I love a good system, but some of
these digital planners are just,

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uh, they are too much.

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I agree.

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We need to keep it simple.

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Have you ever heard of the Leitner system?

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It was originally designed for physical
flashcards in five boxes,

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but we can adapt it beautifully for the
LSAT using a three-speed triage system.

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Three boxes instead of five.

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How do we sort them?

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We sort them by confidence, not by
question type.

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Box one is for what I call the Terrible
questions.

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The ones where you were completely lost,
or you fell for a classic trap.

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You review these every three days.

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Box two is for Shaky questions.

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You got it right, maybe, but it took too
long, or you weren't completely sure.

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Those get reviewed every six days.

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And Box three is for the Nailed It
questions.

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You saw the flaw, you predicted the
answer, you got it right.

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You review those every twelve days, and
then, if you get them right again,

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you retire them.

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I love that because it stops people from
doing what I did, which was organizing by

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"necessary assumption" or "flaw" and then
just getting bored.

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But wait, Adrian, if we are reviewing
those Box one, those "Terrible" questions

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every three days, aren't we still going to
run into that cosmetic memory trap?

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Even after three days, I might still
remember that the seals question was B.

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You are one step ahead of me.

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Yes, you absolutely will.

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And that is why we pair Box one questions
with what I call a sister question.

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A sister question?

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Like, a twin?

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Exactly.

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For every missed question you put in Box
one, you have to find an uncompleted,

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fresh question that shares the exact same
logical mechanism.

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So, if you missed a correlation-causation
flaw about exercise and health,

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you find a new, untouched
correlation-causation flaw, maybe about crop yields and

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fertilizer.

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You pair them together in your box.

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Oh, that is brilliant.

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Because then, when you go to review, you
do the old exercise one to see if you can

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find the logical structure, and then you
immediately try the crop yield one to prove

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you can actually apply that structure to a
totally fresh topic.

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Exactly.

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It is the ultimate test of transferrable
skill.

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If you can only do it with the seals, you
haven't learned the logic.

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If you can do it with the crop yields, you
have.

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And honestly, you don't need a fancy,
over-engineered spreadsheet to run this.

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I know people love their colorful tracking
sheets, but a simple analog index card

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box, or even just a basic two-column
digital document, is more than enough.

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One column for your active review date,
one for your sister question links.

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Perfect.

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Keep the tool low-tech so your brain can
do the high-tech work.

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The LSAT is a mental gym, Nora.

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You don't go to the gym just to look at
the weights you already lifted.

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You go to build the strength to lift new
ones.

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Right.

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Don't memorize the seals, learn how to
hunt the flaw.

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Alright, let's get back to the books.