Fortunately,
learning and learning to learn well, will always be one of the most valuable
skills in your personal and professional life. My point is to start building
these skills as soon as possible, preferably when you are still a student.
Fast and
effective learning is a skill for life and we could talk about it for days.
However, to get you started here are 5 powerful tips on how to learn more, how
to learn well and how to learn effectively.
1. The foundation: a productivity system
Let’s face
it, without a solid foundation there is no way you can expect to build new
skills and form new habits. My first tip therefore is to adopt a productivity
system (like GTD). You need to develop the habit of consistent and effective
note-taking, you need to have a clean, uncluttered desk to study at, you need a
system for storing reference material and tracking your (learning) projects. I
strongly suggest following this important tip, because it will make everything
else (including learning) more efficient and effective. Speaking from my own
experience: GTD by David Allen has provided this much needed foundation in my
life.
2. Speed reading
You probably
need or want to read a lot of offline and online material as well. But you only
have so much time to do it. This is where my second tip comes in. Practice
speedreading to read smarter and faster, while improving your comprehension! I
have written about speedreading extensively but it boils down to: get to “know”
the material you’re about to read, decide which parts of it you are going to
read, and when you are actually reading: keep your eyes moving at a steady,
perhaps increasing, pace without stopping at every word and definitely without
ever rereading a single phrase. These tricks alone should double your reading
speed very soon.
3. Think and work on paper
There is no
question that pen and paper are the most underrated productivity and learning
tools around. It will get things off your mind and make room for more creative
thinking. Use your own shorthand and notational system to highlight important
facts and actions in the material you’re learning. Condense, memorize and
review the material you’ve learned by creating mindmaps. Forget about trusting
your mind or your computer, think and work on paper to learn better and
effectively.
4. Use multisensory techniques
This tip is
all about discovering your preferred learning style and leveraging it to make
learning more fun and more effective. You have to figure out for yourself if
you are more of a visual learner, an auditory learner or a kinesthetic/tactile
learner. Information will be absorbed by your brain much quicker and much more effective
if you use your preferred learning style. To enhance your learning experience
even further, combine your preferred learning style with the other ones. For
instance, writing things down combines the visual and tactile learning styles.
Reading things aloud to yourself combines the visual and auditory learning
styles.
5. Allow your brain to absorb new stuff
Everybody
has a certain learning rhythm. Some learn best in the early hours of the
morning, others learn best late at night. Figure out which rhythm and time
frame suits you best and use this to maximize your learning ability. However,
you must frequently give your brain time to absorb the new stuff that you are
learning. The best way is to “sleep on it” and the second best way is to take
frequent breaks and do something completely different.
GearFire
Student Productivity
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