You might think that learning and mastering one concept at a time is the best way to practice and remember it, but there is actually a better method. It’s time to stop learning bit by bit and instead work on learning concepts in a way that helps you relate them to other ideas, the way they work together in the real world. You should study multiple subjects at once to help yourself retain more information by making connections between subjects. It’s called “interleaving,” and it’s a great study strategy.

Interleaving is the process of mixing up multiple subjects while studying so that you learn more, see how everything works together, and ultimately remember it better. It’s the opposite of blocked practice, which is when you study one subject at a time. Interleaving is generally better for training your brain because it helps you categorize information and work on problem solving as you make connections between ideas.

Research published in the Educational Psychology Review in 2012 says that interleaving helps students distinguish among similar concepts. (The title of the article is literally "Interleaving Helps Students Distinguish Among Similar Concepts.") The researcher found that students who learned by cramming were more likely to confuse similar concepts from each cramming session. Interleaving, or having students encounter a different concept after studying one, helped them score higher on final tests.

A 2015 article in Scientific American summarized the practice of interleaving this way: instead of first teaching skill A, then skill B, and combining them into the pattern AAABBBCCC, students should work on related skills simultaneously, so that they can form the pattern ABCABCABC.