What metacognition/metacognitive knowledge and skills can you share?

When during your life where you at peak learning rate?

Was it as school? Uni? If so, what did you do differently then? Can you still do it now?

I'll give few examples that honestly in retrospect are absolutely obvious and yet, few people seem to still do it :

• have a trusted teacher/mentor who can pinpoint your flaw
• do exercises that test your knowledge rather than read and assume you know
• repeat said exercises in with varying context and in increasing difficulty
• take notes (IMHO the biggest) that you gradually structure and index
• use said notes when exercises (which are safe spaces to challenge your understanding) gets tough
• have structured goals, namely you don't learn about a topic, move on randomly, but rather have 6 months over a topic
• learn regularly, e.g. weekly occurrence on a very specific topic, again and again for months on end
• last but not least, do it as a group, build, grow and sustain a network of helpful peers whom you are learning from but also helping

So... yeah, none of that is secret nor even complex yet most adults seems to leave THE place to learn and somehow forget EVERYTHING they actually learned. It's nuts.

Also most of that is free. Getting a notepad or a wiki or using documents in a directory on your computer is practically cheaper than a coffee in most places. There is no excuse to note take notes then organize them. Same for regularity and exercises, get a calendar then drill, again.

FWIW that works for pretty much everything, from an abstract field of knowledge, e.g. math, to a physical skill, e.g. welding or ice skating.