Every day is an opportunity to learn something new. Unquestionably, learning new skills can be challenging and time-consuming, but what if technology can help speed up the process a little? The world in which we live is fast-paced, competitive, and the need to stay updated with the trends is rising by the day. In a noticeably short timeframe, you have to remember loads of data and master as many abilities as you can.
Youngsters usually learn new knowledge quicker than adults, but we have to note that kids spend the entire day learning new things. Consider these few minds hacks that researchers have shown can enable your brain to process the new knowledge faster and speed up your learning process.
1. Sort your study sessions
You are busy or procrastinating until the last minute to learn what you need to know: a presentation, a sales demo, an investor pitch.Research demonstrates that distributed practice is a much more successful way to learn. Imagine that you’re going to nail your investor’s pitch. When you have figured out your tone, run through it once. Then take a couple of minutes to make the corrections and revisions. Step away for a couple of hours, or even a day, before you repeat the procedure.
Why is distributed practice working? The study-phase retrieval theory suggests that every time you try to recall something from memory, the retrieval is more successful. If you go through your pitch frequently, a lot of your presentation is always top of your mind, which means you do not have to get it back from your memory.
2. The contextual variability theory.
When information is encoded into memory, some of the contexts related to it is also encoded which is why listening to an old song will make you remember where you were, what you were feeling, etc., when you first heard that song. That context provides useful clues for recalling information. Irrespective of how it works, the dispersed practice certainly works. So, give yourself enough time to set aside your learning sessions for effective learning.
3. Grasp the strength of paper and pen
There is power in writing for learning better. Studies show that typing rapidly on your phone or computer makes it hard for you to understand when you take notes. Handwriting, on the other hand, is slow and helps you to internalize the material as you write it. Your brain is constantly thinking about the word you retained to put it on paper, as opposed to typing where information is moved rapidly from the brain to the keyboard.
4. Place all you learn to use
Putting what you learn to use well involves saying it over and over in your head, learning over and over and talking about it regularly until it sticks to your brain. The more you play an instrument, for example, the more natural it sounds and the quicker it learns. Notice that in this respect, not all learned skills are equivalent. Some are easier to use because you use them every day. These skills include cooking, interior design, or driving. These include negotiating skills, public speaking skills, or email marketing skills. You have got to make time for them because it is never going to come naturally.
5. Always evaluate yourself
A variety of studies have shown that self-testing is an incredibly successful way to accelerate the learning process. If you evaluate yourself and respond incorrectly, not only are you more likely to recall the correct response after you look at it, you tend to remember something you did not recollect earlier. Study yourself by naming the five key points that you want to make. Try reciting key figures, or revenue forecasts, or cash flow predictions. Not only can you build trust in how much you know, but you can also understand more easily the things you do not know already.
6. Learn the subjects in sequence
Learn or practise several topics or skills in series instead of blocking (concentrating on only one task during a learning process). The phase is known to interleave: it is helpful to analyse interconnected concepts or skills in comparison. And it turns out that interleaving is a far more useful way to train your mind. When you prevent the practice of one skill, you can drill down until the memory of the muscle is taken over, and the expertise becomes more or less involuntary.
So, if you combine a few skills, no one can become brainless, its a positive thing. You are continuously required to adjust and adapt. You feel constantly forced to see, feel, and allow discrimination between different events or concepts. It helps you learn what you’re hoping to grasp because it helps acquire knowledge at a profound level.
7. Do ample practice
When you are struggling, that is when you get smarter. The more time you spend practising, the better you learn. It is easier to spend ten minutes or quality time than to spend a half-hour. You want to practice where you are on the edge of your capacity. Reach over and over again to make mistakes, to fail, to make those mistakes and to reach them, again.
Deliberate practice means that you are operating in a learning environment, a.k.a, an unpleasant zone. Only by selecting activities in the learning zone will the progress be achieved. It is the position of the talents and abilities that are just out of control. We will never make changes in the comfort zone because that is what we can do easily; while panic zone tasks are so hard that we do not even know how to handle them.