Six
Brain Hacks To Learn Anything Faster
Research
proves there are ways to learn new skills and concepts with speed and ease.
Whether it’s a new technology, a foreign
language, or an advanced skill, staying competitive often means learning new
things. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. workers have taken a course or sought
additional training to advance their careers, according to a March 2016 study by Pew Research Center. They report that results have included an
expanded professional network, new job or different career path.
Being a quick learner can give you an even
greater edge. Science proves there are six ways you can learn and retain
something faster.
If you imagine that you’ll need to teach
someone else the material or task you are trying to grasp, you can speed up
your learning and remember more, according to a study done at Washington University in St. Louis. The expectation
changes your mind-set so that you engage in more effective approaches to
learning than those who simply learn to pass a test, according to John
Nestojko, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology and coauthor of the study.
Sleeping between two learning sessions
greatly improves retention.
“When teachers prepare to teach, they tend to
seek out key points and organize information into a coherent structure,”
Nestojko writes. “Our results suggest that students also turn to these types of
effective learning strategies when they expect to teach.”
Experts at the Louisiana State University’s
Center for Academic Success suggest dedicating 30-50 minutes to learning new
material. “Anything less than 30 is just not enough, but anything more than 50
is too much information for your brain to take in at one time,” writes learning strategies graduate assistant Ellen Dunn. Once you’re
done, take a five to 10 minute break before you start another session.
Brief, frequent learning sessions are much
better than longer, infrequent ones, agrees Neil Starr, a course mentor
at Western Governors University, an online nonprofit university where the average student earns a
bachelor’s degree in two and a half years.
Changing the way you practice a new motor
skill can help you master it faster.
He recommends preparing for micro learning
sessions. “Make note cards by hand for the more difficult concepts you are
trying to master,” he says. “You never know when you’ll have some in-between
time to take advantage of.”
While it’s faster to take notes on a laptop,
using a pen and paper will help you learn and comprehend better. Researchers at
Princeton University and UCLA found that when students took notes by hand, they listened more actively
and were able to identify important concepts. Taking notes on a laptop,
however, leads to mindless transcription, as well as an opportunity for
distraction, such as email.
“In three studies, we found that students who
took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who
took notes longhand,” writes coauthor and Princeton University psychology
professor Pam Mueller. “We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial,
laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than
processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to
learning.”
While it sounds counterintuitive, you can
learn faster when you practice distributed learning, or “spacing.” In an
interview with The New York Times, Benedict Carey, author of How
We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens, says learning is like watering a lawn. “You can water a lawn once a
week for 90 minutes or three times a week for 30 minutes,” he said. “Spacing
out the watering during the week will keep the lawn greener over time.”
To retain material, Carey said it’s best to
review the information one to two days after first studying it. “One theory is
that the brain actually pays less attention during short learning intervals,”
he said in the interview. “So repeating the information over a longer
interval–say a few days or a week later, rather than in rapid succession–sends
a stronger signal to the brain that it needs to retain the information.”
Downtime is important when it comes to
retaining what you learn, and getting sleep in between study sessions can boost
your recall up to six months later, according to new research published
in Psychological
Science.
In an experiment held in France, participants
were taught the Swahili translation for 16 French words in two sessions.
Participants in the “wake” group completed the first learning session in the
morning and the second session in the evening of the same day, while participants
in the “sleep” group completed the first session in the evening, slept, and
then completed the second session the following morning. Participants who had
slept between sessions recalled about 10 of the 16 words, on average, while
those who hadn’t slept recalled only about 7.5 words.
“Our results suggest that interweaving sleep
between practice sessions leads to a twofold advantage, reducing the time spent
relearning and ensuring a much better long-term retention than practice alone,”
writes psychological scientist Stephanie Mazza of the University of Lyon.
“Previous research suggested that sleeping after learning is definitely a good
strategy, but now we show that sleeping between two learning sessions greatly
improves such a strategy.”
When learning a new motor skill, changing the
way you practice it can help you master it faster, according to a new study at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In an experiment,
participants were asked to learn a computer-based task. Those who used a
modified learning technique during their second session performed better than
those who repeated the same method.
The findings suggest that reconsolidation–a
process in which existing memories are recalled and modified with new
knowledge–plays a key role in strengthening motor skills, writes Pablo A.
Celnik, senior study author and professor of physical medicine and
rehabilitation.
“What we found is if you practice a slightly
modified version of a task you want to master,” he writes, “you actually learn
more and faster than if you just keep practicing the exact same thing multiple
times in a row.”
BY STEPHANIE VOZZA
https://www.fastcompany.com/3063173/six-brain-hacks-to-learn-anything-faster?utm_source=postup&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Fast%20Company%20Daily&position=9&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=07162018
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