Learn How To Learn
How To Study Smarter To Unleash The Greatness In You
Let’s face it, we have entered an age where we have so much information that we don’t even know how to remember it. Yes, you may think you’re productive by watching lots of informative seminars and reading lots of good books, but do you remember any of that content?
I’ve tried everything in the past to download all this information into my brain but I failed every time miserably. I’ve literally wasted months, if not years, rewriting the text I’ve read or the seminars I’ve watched in my notebooks.
The sad part is that this way of learning hasn’t brought me any good. I later found that it wasn’t an efficient way of learning new skills.
For sure, I felt very productive every time I was rewriting the exact same words from those textbooks, but I wasn’t aware of the fact that this way of learning allowed me to soak just 10% of that information. What a waste.
So I went on and researched how the human brain worked. How could I retrieve a big amount of information in a short amount of time to learn new skills? After all, being good at learning new things is a skill that every one of us can acquire.
Ironically, the search results around this very subject were huge. Once again I had to deal with an enormous amount of information. So obviously, I had to separate the good from the bad and I end up with the following.
Active Learning
I’m sure you’ve heard this a lot of times, but it’s an act that definitely works when it comes to learning new knowledge. Active learning is the opposite of passive learning. The short explanation of active learning is that your brains are reproducing the information without any external help.
It means that every time you’re exposed to an entirely new subject you have the option to reread that information from a textbook. Or you can put that textbook away and ask yourself questions about the content you’ve just read. When you do the latter you actively recall that information, which seems very hard and time-consuming but
But don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to memorize the exact same words the author used in his book. What you need to do is to explain to yourself what the subject is all about and what the author is trying to describe in that particular chapter. Then answer yourself by mentioning the common thread in that chapter/paragraph.
And you may feel like you’re not making much progress. Because when you try to retrieve that information back, you won’t remember much. But I can guarantee you that you’ve learned a lot more than just rereading that information.
Space Your Repetition
By letting time elapse between your learning sessions, you allow your brain to embed that obtained content in the long memory section. This is the part of your brain where you store the information you care about. Once any information is stored in the long memory section, you’ll be able to retrieve it at any given time.
The fact that our brain loves spaced repetition can be considered as good and as bad news. The good news is that you don’t have to study the same subject for 8 to 10 hours straight. Allow yourself to study in 45-minute blocks. Take intermissions of 15 minutes in between. And space the study of any subject into several days/weeks/months.
The bad news is that you can’t study the night before your math exam. Yes, it is possible, but chances are you’ll not remember much the next day.
Examine Yourself
Next to dividing your study into multiple instants, testing yourself about that very subject is the third point I want you to understand. Yes, you can use practice tests to check your understanding, but asking yourself questions while reading the textbook is an even better method.
It’s very simple. You read a paragraph/chapter and you start questioning yourself about that subject. This way you force your brain to think about the content more deeply. You basically retrieve the information back from memory without the help of the author, and that will help you recall it back in crucial moments. Like when you have the actual exam for example.
Write your notes by hand and not by laptop
I still remember the time I used to attend lectures with my laptop and record any word the lecturer uttered. When reading my notes the next day it was like I was reading gibberish. Also, I couldn’t think clearly about what the lecturer explained since I was busy retyping his speech.
Write your notes by hand. It may feel very slow for you and you may not catch up with every sentence your teacher says, but believe me, you’ll get much more out of it than retyping that lecture with your laptop.
When you write stuff down you force yourself to think hard about the information before you decide whether it’s something important to write or not. This thought process lets your brain digest any information thoroughly and that eventually will help you remember that content much quicker.
Give it a try
All this information may seem controversial since it will feel very slow and not effective once you give it a try, but it’s the way our brains work.
You will have to put in some effort at first to get used to this practice. But once you truly understand the effectiveness of this process you’ll be able to unleash any power you have to become whatever you want.
