Have
you ever noticed that some people effortlessly learn new concepts and materials
while others struggle? Napoleon Bonaparte learned the names of thousands of his
loyal soldiers. World champion chess players can replay games in their mind
from years ago. I have often wondered how these intellectual marvels have
accomplished such great feats.
Some
were born with extraordinarily high IQ’s, but certainly not all.
Fortunately,
there are a number of techniques that will help you to learn faster, study
better, and begin absorbing information like a sponge.
Here are 7 tips to
get you started.
1. Teach Someone
Else.
If there’s
something you want to learn, try teaching it to someone else.
Traditional
studying helps you to memorize ideas but teaching it to someone else forces you
to truly ‘get’ all of the concepts and apply them to a number of solutions. To
teach others you must anticipate any potential questions and explore the topic
from all angles. Teaching others will dramatically increase your own
understanding.
2. Write an Article
It’s easy to learn
about something in a book. However, it’s a completely different story to write
an article or even a book about a particular topic. If you want to become an
expert in the topic of your choice, write a book about it. This will allow you
to explore every aspect of what you are learning. By writing about it you will
soon begin connecting new ideas with things you already know, creating an
interlinking web of knowledge.
3. Start a Blog
Start a blog that
talks about your experiences with a subject in order to increase your learning.
I have found that starting my own blog has been the greatest learning
experience of my entire life.
Writing
a blog requires you to learn information backwards and forwards and then
explain it in plain English to others. If you are looking to take your brain
power to the next level, then I would highly suggest that you start your own
blog.
It
is sure to be one of the most intellectually stimulating activities you ever
do.
4. Treat Your Body
Well
When you’re trying
to increase your learning speed, you need to make sure you are feeding your
brain – quite literally. The brain is a part of your body that requires plenty
of fuel and oxygen in order to work efficiently. In the task of learning, you
need to be feeding and treating your body well to maximize this process. This
means that you should:
- Eat every few hours to keep your blood sugar levels up.
- Exercise on a daily basis.
- Try to relax a few minutes each day.
- Sleep at least seven hours each night.
- Stay hydrated with water.
- Eat a light lunch. Heavy lunches tend to make people drowsy. Instead, recharge with a light lunch and a power walk.
5. Learn with All Five Senses.
While everyone
learns in different ways, we all began the learning process by seeing pictures
and then translating them into ideas. From the earliest picture books, we were
learning how to learn through our visual senses.
When
you’re trying to learn something quickly, it can help to create a visual
picture of the topic in your mind.
Draw
it out on paper as well. It can be a picture, a graph, a chart, or just a
timeline.
Keep
adding to your mental picture as you learn more and recreate the picture in
your head whenever you think of it.
However,
don’t limit yourself to just visual pictures. Learn with all five senses.
For
example, if you want to learn about Buenos Aires, the best thing for you to do
is to book a trip, explore the city, take some tango lessons, enjoy the local
cuisine, and talk with the locals. You haven’t learned anything until you have
put it into practice in your own life. Engage in learning through touch, sight,
sound, hearing, and smell.
6. Increase Your
Motivation
Motivation is the
greatest memory enhancer. Think about all of the college students who pull an
all-nighter to cram for a test. They have incredible motivation because they
have done little studying before hand and now must absorb all of the
information in one night. They can master the material because they want to.
Actually, they have to. And this motivation kicks their learning into high
gear. Unfortunately, cramming produces poor long-term retention.
If
you’re not a procrastinating college student but still want to motivate
yourself, then nothing beats a good reward. If you create a reward system that
you actually look forward to, you will be able to learn faster in anticipation
of that reward.
7. Learn While You Sleep
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to spend your
sleep hours learning your studies simply by pressing play on the CD player?
Yes, it does sound nice. Unfortunately, university studies have shown that you
cannot during deep sleep or dream sleep, which makes up most of your sleeping time.
Keep in mind that this material must be limited to facts, dates, vocabulary and other objective material. You can not learn complex material during the first stages of sleep.
More recently, German researchers have found that by using electrical stimulation during a particular phase of the sleep cycle, they can improve a person’s ability to remember facts.
So, who knows what kind of new learning technologies we will see in the future.
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