Of the many subjects I studied during college, the one at which I excelled most was test-taking. In a Freshman year psych class, I learned that a key to recalling knowledge on an exam is to simulate testing conditions while studying. From then on, I made it a practice to carry the same Orbitz Wintermint gum to my exams that I chewed while reading the textbook. When selecting what material to study I would attempt to outsmart my professors and TAs by predicting what questions they might ask. By the time I was a senior I had amassed dozens of tricks for making it seem like I had mastered the material. Today, however, if asked to recall what I’d learned studying for any of those exams I doubt all the gum in the world would give me a passing grade.

Outside of school, there are few occasions where you’ll be given an exam with an exact date and set of material. This doesn’t mean, though, that life won’t surprise you with tests. Some will be open-book, like when your boss emails you asking you to figure out your company’s customer acquisition cost or your investor sends you a term sheet to review. In these situations, consulting the right resource will get you far.

On other occasions though, such as when you receive a curveball question in a job interview or need to impress your prospect in a meeting, it will be critical that you are able to perform live, without the aid of the external sources. For this type of test, you’ll need to not only predict what subject matter you’ll be tested on but to ensure that the right information surfaces from your memory when the opportunity arises. In order to make sure that the knowledge that you deem important is accessible when you need it, you’ll want to rethink how you approach learning.

Benedict Carey’s How We Learn is a fantastic book filled with methods to increase retention and improve real-time recall capability. Here are five strategies adapted from the book’s findings to ensure that when life’s tests emerge you’ll be ready to ace them (if you’re interested in the research behind these findings I highly recommend you read the book):

Get Tested

On family vacations, when I was a kid, my mom and I would often pass the time by quizzing each other on state capitals. I don’t have an especially impressive memory and I can’t remember ever spending much time looking at a map of the US, but to this day, I can score 100% on any state capital quiz. During school, on the other hand, I spent most of my exam prep time cramming and re-formatting information into exhaustive study guides. Testing myself was always an afterthought. Testing, however, has been demonstrated to be the most important part of the learning process– with an optimal study time breakdown of 30% reading and reviewing to 70% testing.