77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better

If someone granted you one wish, what do you imagine you would want out of life that you haven’t gotten yet? For many people, it would be self-improvement and knowledge. New knowledge is the backbone of society’s progress. Great thinkers such as Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and others’ quests for knowledge have led society to many of the marvels we enjoy today. Your quest for knowledge doesn’t have to be as Earth-changing as Einstein’s, but it can be an important part of your life, leading to a new job, better pay, a new hobby, or simply knowledge for knowledge’s sake — whatever is important to you as an end goal.

Life-changing knowledge does typically require advanced learning techniques. In fact, it’s been said that the average adult only uses 10% of his/her brain. Imagine what we may be capable of with more advanced learning techniques. Here are 77 tips related to knowledge and learning to help you on your quest. A few are specifically for students in traditional learning institutions; the rest for self-starters, or those learning on their own. Happy learning.

Health

1. Shake a leg. Lack of blood flow is a common reason for lack of concentration. If you’ve been sitting in one place for awhile, bounce one of your legs for a minute or two. It gets your blood flowing and sharpens both concentration and recall.
2. Food for thought: Eat breakfast. A lot of people skip breakfast, but creativity is often optimal in the early morning and it helps to have some protein in you to feed your brain. A lack of protein can actually cause headaches.
3. Food for thought, part 2: Eat a light lunch. Heavy lunches have a tendency to make people drowsy. While you could turn this to your advantage by taking a “thinking nap” (see #23), most people haven’t learned how.
4. Cognitive enhancers: Ginkgo biloba. Ginkgo biloba is a natural supplement that has been used in China and other countries for centuries and has been reputed to reverse memory loss in rats. It’s also suggested by some health practitioners as a nootrope and thus a memory enhancer.
5. Reduce stress + depresssion. Stress and depression may reduce the ability to recall information and thus inhibit learning. Sometimes, all you need to reduce depression is more white light and fewer refined foods.

Balance

1. Sleep on it. Dr. Maxwell Maltz wrote about in his book Psycho-Cybernetics about a man who was was paid good money to come up with ideas. He would lock his office door, close the blinds, turn off the lights. He’d focus on the problem at hand, then take a short nap on a couch. When he awoke, he usually had the problem solved.
2. Take a break. Change phyical or mental perspective to lighten the invisible stress that can sometimes occur when you sit in one place too long, focused on learning. Taking a 5-15 minute break every hour during study sessions is more beneficial than non-stop study. It gives your mind time to relax and absorb information. If you want to get really serious with breaks, try a 20 minute ultradian break as part of every 90 minute cycle. This includes a nap break, which is for a different purpose than #23.
3. Take a hike. Changing your perspective often relieves tension, thus freeing your creative mind. Taking a short walk around the neighborhood may help.
4. Change your focus. Sometimes there simply isn’t enough time to take a long break. If so, change subject focus. Alternate between technical and non-technical subjects.

Perspective and Focus

1. Change your focus, part 2. There are three primary ways to learn: visual, kinesthetic, and auditory. If one isn’t working for you, try another.
2. Do walking meditation. If you’re taking a hike (#25), go one step further and learn walking meditation as a way to tap into your inner resources and your strengthen your ability to focus. Just make sure you’re not walking inadvertently into traffic.
3. Focus and immerse yourself. Focus on whatever you’re studying. Don’t try to watch TV at the same time or worry yourself about other things. Anxiety does not make for absorption of information and ideas.
4. Turn out the lights. This is a way to focus, if you are not into meditating. Sit in the dark, block out extraneous influences. This is ideal for learning kinesthetically, such as guitar chord changes.
5. Take a bath or shower. Both activities loosen you up, making your mind more receptive to recognizing brilliant ideas.

Recall Techniques

1. Listen to music. Researchers have long shown that certain types of music are a great “key” for recalling memories. Information learned while listening to a particular song or collection can often be recalled simply by “playing” the songs mentally.
2. Speedread. Some people believe that speedreading causes you to miss vital information. The fact remains that efficient speedreading results in filtering out irrelevant information. If necessary, you can always read and re-read at slower speeds. Slow reading actually hinders the ability to absorb general ideas. (Although technical subjects often requirer slower reading.) If you’re reading online, you can try the free Spreeder Web-based application.
3. Use acronyms and other mnemonic devices. Mnemonics are essentially tricks for remembering information. Some tricks are so effective that proper application will let you recall loads of mundane information years later.

Visual Aids

1. Every picture tells a story. Draw or sketch whatever it is you are trying to achieve. Having a concrete goal in mind helps you progress towards that goal.
2. Brainmap it. Need to plan something? Brain maps, or mind maps, offer a compact way to get both an overview of a project as well as easily add details. With mind maps, you can see the relationships between disparate ideas and they can also act as a receptacle for a brainstorming session.
3. Learn symbolism and semiotics. Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols. Having an understanding of the symbols of a particular discipline aids in learning, and also allows you to record information more efficiently.
4. Use information design. When you record information that has an inherent structure, applying information design helps convey that information more clearly. A great resource is Information Aesthetics, which gives examples of information design and links to their sources.
5. Use visual learning techniques. Try gliffy for structured diagrams. Also see Inspiration.com for an explanation of webs, idea maps, concept maps, and plots.
6. Map your task flow. Learning often requires gaining knowledge in a specific sequence. Organizing your thoughts on what needs to be done is a powerful way to prepare yourself to complete tasks or learn new topics.

Verbal and Auditory Techniques

1. Stimulate ideas. Play rhyming games, utter nonsense words. These loosen you up, making you more receptive to learning.
2. Brainstorm. This is a time-honored technique that combines verbal activity, writing, and collaboration. (One person can brainstorm, but it’s more effective in a group.) It’s fruitful if you remember some simple rules: Firstly, don’t shut anyone’s idea out. Secondly, don’t “edit” in progress; just record all ideas first, then dissect them later. Participating in brainstorming helps assess what you already know about something, and what you didn’t know.
3. Learn by osmosis. Got an iPod? Record a few of your own podcasts, upload them to your iPod and sleep on it. Literally. Put it under your pillow and playback language lessons or whatever.
4. Cognitive enhancers: binaural beats. Binaural beats involve playing two close frequencies simultaneously to produce alpha, beta, delta, and theta waves, all of which produce either sleeping, restfulness, relaxation, meditativeness, alertness, or concentration. Binaural beats are used in conjunction with other excercises for a type of super-learning.
5. Laugh. Laughing relaxes the body. A relaxed body is more receptive to new ideas.

Kinesthetic Techniques

1. Write, don’t type. While typing your notes into the computer is great for posterity, writing by hand stimulates ideas. The simple act of holding and using a pen or pencil massages acupuncture points in the hand, which in turn stimulates ideas.
2. Carry a quality notebook at all times. Samuel Taylor Coleridge dreamed the words of the poem “In Xanadu (did Kubla Khan)…”. Upon awakening, he wrote down what he could recall, but was distracted by a visitor and promptly forgot the rest of the poem. Forever. If you’ve been doing “walking meditation” or any kind of meditation or productive napping, ideas may suddenly come to you. Record them immediately.
3. Keep a journal. This isn’t exactly the same as a notebook. Journaling has to do with tracking experiences over time. If you add in visual details, charts, brainmaps, etc., you have a much more creative way to keep tabs on what you are learning.
4. Organize. Use sticky colored tabs to divide up a notebook or journal. They are a great way to partition ideas for easy referral.
5. Use post-it notes. Post-it notes provide a helpful way to record your thoughts about passages in books without defacing them with ink or pencil marks.

Self-Motivation Techniques

1. Give yourself credit. Ideas are actually a dime a dozen. If you learn to focus your mind on what results you want to achieve, you’ll recognize the good ideas. Your mind will become a filter for them, which will motivate you to learn more.
2. Motivate yourself. Why do you want to learn something? What do want to achieve through learning? If you don’t know why you want to learn, then distractions will be far more enticing.
3. Set a goal. W. Clement Stone once said “Whatever the mind of man can conceive, it can achieve.” It’s an amazing phenomenon in goal achievement. Prepare yourself by whatever means necessary, and hurdles will seem surmountable. Anyone who has experienced this phenomenon understands its validity.
4. Think positive. There’s no point in setting learning goals for yourself if you don’t have any faith in your ability to learn.
5. Organize, part 2. Learning is only one facet of the average adult’s daily life. You need to organize your time and tasks else you might find it difficult to fit time in for learning. Try Neptune for a browser-based application for “getting things done.”
6. Every skill is learned. With the exception of bodily functions, every skill in life is learned. Generally speaking, if one person can learn something, so can you. It may take you more effort, but if you’ve set a believable goal, it’s likely an achievable goal.
7. Prepare yourself for learning. Thinking positive isn’t sufficient for successfully achieving goals. This is especially important if you are an adult, as you’ll probably have many distractions surrounding your daily life. Implement ways to reduce distractions, at least for a few hours at a time, else learning will become a frustrating experience.
8. Prepare yourself, part 2. Human nature is such that not everyone in your life will be a well-wisher in your self-improvement and learning plans. They may intentionally or subconsciously distract you from your goal. If you have classes to attend after work, make sure that work colleagues know this, that you are unable to work late. Diplomacy works best if you think your boss is intentionally giving you work on the days he/she knows you have to leave. Reschedule lectures to a later time slot if possible/ necessary.
9. Constrain yourself. Most people need structure in their lives. Freedom is sometimes a scary thing. It’s like chaos. But even chaos has order within. By constraining yourself — say giving yourself deadlines, limiting your time on an idea in some manner, or limiting the tools you are working with — you can often accomplish more in less time.

Supplemental Techniques

1. Read as much as you can. How much more obvious can it get? Use Spreeder (#33) if you have to. Get a breadth of topics as well as depth.
2. Cross-pollinate your interests. Neurons that connect to existing neurons give you new perspectives and abilities to use additional knowledge in new ways.
3. Learn another language. New perspectives give you the ability to cross-pollinate cultural concepts and come up with new ideas. As well, sometimes reading a book in its original language will provide you with insights lost in translation.
4. Learn how to learn. Management Help has a resource page, as does SIAST (Virtual Campus), which links to articles about learning methods. They are geared towards online learning, but no doubt you gain something from them for any type of learning. If you are serious about optimum learning, read Headrush’s Crash course in learning theory.
5. Learn what you know and what you don’t. Many people might say, “I’m dumb,” or “I don’t know anything about that.” The fact is, many people are wholly unaware of what they already know about a topic. If you want to learn about a topic, you need to determine what you already know, figure out what you don’t know, and then learn the latter.
6. Multi-task through background processes. Effective multi-tasking allows you to bootstrap limited time to accomplish several tasks. Learning can be bootstrapped through multi-tasking, too. By effective multitasking, I don’t mean doing two or more things at exactly the same time. It’s not possible. However, you can achieve the semblance of effective multitasking with the right approach, and by prepping your mind for it. For example, a successful freelance writer learns to manage several articles at the same time. Research the first essay, and then let the background processes of your mind takeover. Move on consciously to the second essay. While researching the second essay, the first one will often “write itself.” Be prepared to record it when it “appears” to you.
7. Think holistically. Holistic thinking might be the single most “advanced” learning technique that would help students. But it’s a mindset rather than a single technique.
8. Use the right type of repetition. Complex concepts often require revisting in order to be fully absorbed. Sometimes, for some people, it may actually take months or years. Repetition of concepts and theory with various concrete examples improves absorption and speeds up learning.
9. Apply the Quantum Learning (QL) model. The Quantum Learning model is being applied in some US schools and goes beyond typical education methods to engage students.
10. Get necessary tools. There are obviously all kinds of tools for learning. If you are learning online like a growing number of people these days, then consider your online tools. One of the best tools for online research is the Firefox web browser, which has loads of extensions (add-ons) with all manner of useful features. One is Googlepedia, which simultaneously displays Google search engine listings, when you search for a term, with related entries from Wikipedia.
11. Get necessary tools, part 2. This is a very niche tip, but if you want to learn fast-track methods for building software, read Getting Real from 37 Signals. The Web page version is free. The techniques in the book have been used to create Basecamp, Campfire, and Backpack web applications in a short time frame. Each of these applications support collaboration and organization.
12. Learn critical thinking. As Keegan-Michael Key‘s character on MadTV might say, critical thinking takes analysis to “a whole notha level”. Read Wikipedia’s discourse on critical thinking as a starting point. It involves good analytical skills to aid the ability to learn selectively.
13. Learn complex problem solving. For most people, life is a series of problems to be solved. Learning is part of the process. If you have a complex problem, you need to learn the art of complex problem solving. [The latter page has some incredible visual information.]

For Teachers, Tutors, and Parents

1. Be engaging. Lectures are one-sided and often counter-productive. Information merely heard or witnessed (from a chalkboard for instance) is often forgotten. Teaching is not simply talking. Talking isn’t enough. Ask students questions, present scenarios, engage them.
2. Use information pyramids. Learning happens in layers. Build base knowledge upon which you can add advanced concepts.
3. Use video games. Video games get a bad rap because of certain violent games. But video games in general can often be an effective aid to learning.
4. Role play. Younger people often learn better by being part of a learning experience. For example, history is easier to absorb through reenactments.
5. Apply the 80/20 rule. This rule is often interpreted in dfferent ways. In this case, the 80/20 rule means that some concepts, say about 20% of a curriculum, require more effort and time, say about 80%, than others. So be prepared to expand on complex topics.
6. Tell stories. Venus Flytrap, a character from the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, once taught a student gang member about atoms, electrons, and protons by saying that an atom was one big neighborhood, and the protons and neutrons had their own smaller neighborhoods and never mixed. Just like rival gangs. The story worked, and understanding sparked in the students eyes.
7. Go beyond the public school curriculum. The public school system is woefully lacking in teaching advanced learning and brainstorming methods. It’s not that the methods cannot be taught; they just aren’t. To learn more, you have to pay a premium in additional time and effort, and sometimes money for commercially available learning tools. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself, but what is taught in schools needs to be expanded. This article’s author has proven that a nine-year old can learn (some) university level math, if the learning is approached correctly.
8. Use applied learning. If a high school student were having trouble in math, say with fractions, one example of applied learning might be photography, lenses, f-stops, etc. Another example is cooking and measurement of ingredients. Tailor the applied learning to the interest of the student.

For Students and Self-Studiers

1. Be engaged. Surprise. Sometimes students are bored because they know more than is being taught, maybe even more than a teacher. (Hopefully teachers will assess what each student already knows.) Students should discuss with a teacher if they feel that the material being covered is not challenging. Also consider asking for additional materials.
2. Teach yourself. Teachers cannot always change their curricula. If you’re not being challenged, challenge yourself. Some countries still apply country-wide exams for all students. If your lecturer didn’t cover a topic, you should learn it on your own. Don’t wait for someone to teach you. Lectures are most effective when you’ve pre-introduced yourself to concepts.
3. Collaborate. If studying by yourself isn’t working, maybe a study group will help.
4. Do unto others: teach something. The best way to learn something better is to teach it to someone else. It forces you to learn, if you are motivated enough to share your knowledge.
5. Write about it. An effective way to “teach” something is to create an FAQ or a wiki containing everything you know about a topic. Or blog about the topic. Doing so helps you to realize what you know and more importantly what you don’t. You don’t even have to spend money if you grab a freebie account with Typepad, WordPress, or Blogger.
6. Learn by experience. Pretty obvious, right? It means put in the necessary time. An expert is often defined as someone who has put in 10,000 hours into some experience or endeavor. That’s approximately 5 years of 40 hours per week, every week. Are you an expert without realizing it? If you’re not, do you have the dedication to be an expert?
7. Quiz yourself. Testing what you’ve learned will reinforce the information. Flash cards are one of the best ways, and are not just for kids.
8. Learn the right things first. Learn the basics. Case in point: a frustrating way to learn a new language is to learn grammar and spelling and sentence constructs first. This is not the way a baby learns a language, and there’s no reason why an adult or young adult has to start differently, despite “expert” opinion. Try for yourself and see the difference.
9. Plan your learning. If you have a long-term plan to learn something, then to quote Led Zeppelin, “There are two paths you can go by.” You can take a haphazard approach to learning, or you can put in a bit of planning and find an optimum path. Plan your time and balance your learning and living.

Parting Advice

1. Persist. Don’t give up learning in the face of intimdating tasks. Anything one human being can learn, most others can as well. Wasn’t it Einstein that said, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”? Thomas Edison said it, too.
2. Defy the experts. Dyslexia, in a nutshell, is the affliction of mentally jumbling letters and digits, causing difficulties in reading, writing and thus learning. Sometimes spoken words or numbers get mixed up as well. In the past, “experts” declared dyslexic children stupid. Later, they said they were incapable of learning. This author has interacted with and taught dyslexic teens. It’s possible. Helen Keller had no experience of sight, sound, or speech, and yet she learned. Conclusion: There is more than one way to learn; never believe you cannot.
3. Challenge yourself. People are often more intelligent than they realize. In a world that compartmentalizes and categorizes everything, not everyone is sure where they fit in. And genius can be found in many walks of life. If you honestly suspect that there’s more to you than has been “allowed” to be let out, try an IQ test such as the one offered by MENSA. It’s unlike the standardized IQ tests given in many schools. You know the kind — the ones which traumatize many young students into thinking they are stupid, simply because the tests don’t really assess all student’s knowledge and learning ability. And the ability to learn is far, far more important than what you already know.
4. Party before an exam. Well, don’t go that far. The key is to relax. The worse thing to do is cram the night before an exam. If you don’t already know a subject by then, cramming isn’t going to help. If you have studied, simply review the topic, then go do something pleasant (no more studying). Doing so tells your brain that you are prepared and that you will be able to recall anything that you have already learned. On the other hand, if you didn’t spend the semester learning the ideas you need, you might as well go party anyways because cramming at the last minute isn’t going to help much at that point.
5. Don’t worry; learn happy. Have a real passion for learning and want to share that? Join a group such as the Joyful Jubilant Learning community [via LifeHack].

Sources For This Article

This is only a partial list of sources, focusing only on Web sites. Many of the ideas presented above come from long years of experience, with information gleaned from dozens of books and tapes on learning and, more recently, Web sites. The Web sites below either present original articles related to the ideas above, or summaries of ideas with links to other Web sites. In the latter case, such Web sites have likely been linked above. Book sources have either been long forgotten or mentioned above.

Dreaming is the brain’s way of learning…

Washington, April 23 (ANI): A new research has offered more evidence for some long-held notions that sleep and dreams boost learning.

According to researchers of the study, people who take a nap and dream about a task they’ve just learned perform it better upon waking than either those who don’t sleep at all or those who sleep but don’t report any associated dreams.

The learners in the study were asked to sit in front of a computer screen and learn the layout of a three-dimensional maze so that they could find their way to a landmark (a tree) when they were plopped down at a random location within the virtual space five hours later.

Those who were allowed to take a nap and also remembered dreaming of the task found the tree in less time.

“We at first thought that dreaming must reflect the memory process that’s improving performance. But when you look at the content of the dreams, it was hard to argue that,” said Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School.

In a couple of cases, the dreamers said they recalled just the music from the computer maze.

One subject said they were dreaming that there were people at particular checkpoints in the maze, even though the real maze didn’t have any people or checkpoints.

Another said they dreamt about an experience they’d had tromping through bat caves and thinking that the caves were like mazes.

“We think that the dreams are a marker that the brain is working on the same problem at many levels. The dreams might reflect the brain’s attempt to find associations for the memories that could make them more useful in the future,” Stickgold said.

In other words, it’s not that the dreams led to better memory, but rather that they are a sign that other, unconscious parts of the brain were working hard to remember how to get through the virtual maze. The dreams are essentially a side effect of that memory process.

The new study was reported online on April 22nd in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. (ANI)

Ten tips for being happier

1. Don’t start with profundities.
When I began my Happiness Project, I realized pretty quickly that, rather than jumping in with lengthy daily meditation or answering deep questions of self-identity, I should start with the basics, like going to sleep at a decent hour and not letting myself get too hungry. Science backs this up; these two factors have a big impact on happiness. 

2. Do let the sun go down on anger.
I had always scrupulously aired every irritation as soon as possible, to make sure I vented all bad feelings before bedtime. Studies show, however, that the notion of anger catharsis is poppycock. Expressing anger related to minor, fleeting annoyances just amplifies bad feelings, while not expressing anger often allows it to dissipate. 

3. Fake it till you feel it.
Feelings follow actions. If I’m feeling low, I deliberately act cheery, and I find myself actually feeling happier. If I’m feeling angry at someone, I do something thoughtful for her and my feelings toward her soften. This strategy is uncannily effective. 

4. Realize that anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
Challenge and novelty are key elements of happiness. The brain is stimulated by surprise, and successfully dealing with an unexpected situation gives a powerful sense of satisfaction. People who do new things — learn a game, travel to unfamiliar places — are happier than people who stick to familiar activities that they already do well. I often remind myself to “Enjoy the fun of failure” and tackle some daunting goal. 

5. Don’t treat the blues with a “treat.”Often the things I choose as “treats” aren’t good for me. The pleasure lasts a minute, but then feelings of guilt and loss of control and other negative consequences deepen the lousiness of the day. While it’s easy to think, I’ll feel good after I have a few glasses of wine…a pint of ice cream…a cigarette…a new pair of jeans, it’s worth pausing to ask whether this will truly make things better. 

6. Buy some happiness.
Our basic psychological needs include feeling loved, secure, and good at what we do and having a sense of control. Money doesn’t automatically fill these requirements, but it sure can help. I’ve learned to look for ways to spend money to stay in closer contact with my family and friends; to promote my health; to work more efficiently; to eliminate sources of irritation and marital conflict; to support important causes; and to have enlarging experiences. For example, when my sister got married, I splurged on a better digital camera. It was expensive, but it gave me a lot of happiness bang for the buck. 

7. Don’t insist on the best.
There are two types of decision makers. Satisficers (yes, satisficers) make a decision once their criteria are met. When they find the hotel or the pasta sauce that has the qualities they want, they’re satisfied. Maximizers want to make the best possible decision. Even if they see a bicycle or a backpack that meets their requirements, they can’t make a decision until they’ve examined every option. Satisficers tend to be happier than maximizers. Maximizers expend more time and energy reaching decisions, and they’re often anxious about their choices. Sometimes good enough is good enough. 

8. Exercise to boost energy.
I knew, intellectually, that this worked, but how often have I told myself, “I’m just too tired to go to the gym”? Exercise is one of the most dependable mood-boosters. Even a 10-minute walk can brighten my outlook. Having trouble sticking to your exercise regimen? Here are 

9. Stop nagging.
I knew my nagging wasn’t working particularly well, but I figured that if I stopped, my husband would never do a thing around the house. Wrong. If anything, more work got done. Plus, I got a surprisingly big happiness boost from quitting nagging. I hadn’t realized how shrewish and angry I had felt as a result of speaking like that. I replaced nagging with the following persuasive tools: wordless hints (for example, leaving a new lightbulb on the counter); using just one word (saying “Milk!” instead of talking on and on); not insisting that something be done on my schedule; and, most effective of all, doing a task myself. Why did I get to set the assignments? I found it hard to give up nagging—in fact, I came up with 

10. Take action.
Some people assume happiness is mostly a matter of inborn temperament: You’re born an Eeyore or a Tigger, and that’s that. Although it’s true that genetics play a big role, about 40 percent of your happiness level is within your control. Taking time to reflect, and conscious steps to make your life happier, really does work. 

 

Using Simple Tools to Increase Your Brain Power

There are a number of ways to increase your brainpower, including the many exercises, mental habits and dietary suggestions found in the hundreds of pages of this website. But the ones we tend to forget about and under-value are those that are essentially external extensions of our brains. The most obvious example used to be having a good library of reference materials, such as a set of encyclopedias.

In recent years the external tool that does the most to immediately expand the range of most people’s knowledge – and therefore increase the useful power of their minds – is perhaps the internet. It might even be fairer to say that it is Google, since the efficient use of the resources online requires a way to easily find and access them. You currently have a thousand encyclopedias and other resources at your fingertips and available in seconds, something most people couldn’t imagine a few decades ago.

In the past, if you wanted a good basic understanding of a subject you might have had to subscribe to and wait for magazines, make several trips to the library, and even visit those who had the most knowledge in a given area. This process could take weeks, months or even years. Now you can spend a long weekend of intensive online study and have a basic grasp of a new subject area.

What’s more, even in an area in which you are well-read or an expert, you can quickly grab data that you need to research or write about something. This two-minute process might have previously involved waiting a day or two for a library to open, and then spending an hour driving there and searching the books. Now you get what you need to use and then quickly move your thoughts on to other matters, perhaps to more fully develop a theory or idea. In other words, you increase your brain power just by the sheer efficiency that is possible with these tools.

Even Simpler Tools to Increase Your Brainpower

The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande, inspired me to write this page. I was looking through the book yesterday at a local bookstore/coffee shop. Gawande is a surgeon and writer who suggests that we can reduce or eliminate many of our accidents, mistakes, disasters and failures in health care, law, government, finances and more, by using simple checklists. He uses numerous true stories and research to demonstrate this. For example, he shows how a checklist saved a drowning victim who was under water for thirty minutes, and how a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units in Michigan virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection.

It occurred to me that the checklist is essentially external programming for our brains. As Gawande points out in his book, we often know all the steps to take to accomplish something, but life is complex enough that we forget one or two of them once in a while. Our brains need the help of a checklist to make that knowledge work for us. Doctors in one hospital he writes about were forgetting at least one of the steps necessary for safely completing a particular procedure. Once a checklist was used consistently, the rate of the deadly infections that are cause by mistakes in this procedure dropped by more than two thirds, saving many patient’s lives.

I recall working in a restaurant twenty-five years ago. All of us employees were having trouble remembering all the things that had to be done at the end of each night. Amazingly, despite the almost daily reprimands that came each following day, nobody had a simple checklist for the thirty or so tasks that needed to be done. As soon as I was in management, I made one and left a copy for every night shift to check off as they closed down the restaurant. Simple as that.

When military planes became more complicated during World War Two, pilots could still manage to fly them. Humans can be trained to do astoundingly complicated things. What they can’t do very consistently is is remember every step of a complicated (or even simple) procedure every time they do it. Unless, that is, they have an external memory – a checklist. After they were introduced, pre-flight checklists were credited with preventing many plane crashes.

A good checklist is a valuable tool, but not necessarily easy to perfect. If it is too long it may be ignored or lead to time delays that cause their own problems (we don’t want a brain surgeon pausing to work through a 200-item checklist). If it is too short important items might be forgotten. Try to include those things that are most crucial and/or most commonly forgotten.

A simple to-do list is another great brain power booster, at least if you consider the power of your brain to be not just in the amount of thoughts it can think, but also in what it can actually translate into action. Writing down your goals is another of these cheap and easy-to-use tools.

Notes that are displayed on your computer desktop can remind you of basic principles and ideas that will improve your thinking.

An example of the latter is the list of questions I used to keep handy. They included, “What other perspective can this be seen from?” and “What parts of this are crucial?” and similar questions designed to keep my mind seeking out new ideas and better understandings.

Lists, reminders, statements of principle, checklists, and search engines are all free and simple tools you can use to increase your brain power and to help you translate that power into real-word results. See if you can find a few areas where they might help you.

Tools ‹ Studie Your Own Mind Technique — WordPress

Tools ‹ Studie Your Own Mind Technique — WordPress.

Education and Learning

 

Speed Reading

Radically Increasing Your Reading Speed

Speed Reading can help you to read and understand written information much more quickly. This makes it an essential skill in any environment where you have to master large volumes of information quickly, as is the norm in fast-moving professional environments. What’s more, it’s a key technique to learn if you suffer from “information overload”, because it helps you to become much more discriminating about the information that you consume.

 

The Key Insight

The most important trick about speed reading is to know what information you want from a document before you start reading it. If you only want an outline of the issue that the document discusses, then you can skim the document quickly and extract only the essential facts. If you need to understand the real detail of the document, then you need to read it slowly enough to gain the full understanding you need.

You will get the greatest time savings from speed reading by learning to skim excessively detailed documents, although the techniques you’ll learn will help you improve the speed of all the reading you do.

 

Technical Issues

Even when you know how to ignore irrelevant detail, there are other technical improvements you can make to your reading style which will increase your reading speed.

Most people learn to read the way young children read – either letter-by-letter, or word-by-word. As an adult, this is probably not the way you read now: Just think about how your eye muscles are moving as you read this. You will probably find that you are fixing your eyes on one block of words, then moving your eyes to the next block of words, and so on. You are reading blocks of words at a time, not individual words one-by-one. You may also notice that you do not always go from one block to the next: sometimes you may move back to a previous block if you are unsure about something.

A skilled reader will read many words in each block. He or she will only dwell on each block for an instant, and will then move on. Only rarely will the reader’s eyes skip back to a previous block of words. This reduces the amount of work that the reader’s eyes have to do. It also increases the volume of information that can be assimilated in a given period of time.

A poor reader will become bogged down, spending a lot of time reading small blocks of words. He or she will skip back often, losing the flow and structure of the text, and confusing his or her overall understanding of the subject. This irregular eye movement makes reading tiring. Poor readers tend to dislike reading, and they may find it harder to concentrate, and understand written information.

 

How to Use Tools

Speed reading aims to improve reading skills by:

• Increasing the number of words read in each block.
• Reducing the length of time spent reading each block.
• And reducing the number of times your eyes skip back to a previous sentence.

These are explained below:

• Increasing the number of words in each block:
  This needs a conscious effort. Try to expand the number of words that you read at a time: With practice, you’ll find you read faster. You may also find that you can increase the number of words in each block by holding the text a little further from your eyes. The more words you can read in each block, the faster you will read!

• Reducing fixation time:
  The minimum length of time needed to read each block is probably only a quarter of a second. By pushing yourself to reduce the time you take, you will get better at picking up information quickly. Again, this is a matter of practice and confidence.

• Reducing skip-back:
  To reduce the number of times that your eyes skip back to a previous sentence, run a pointer along the line as you read. This could be a finger, or a pen or pencil. Your eyes will follow the tip of your pointer, smoothing the flow of your reading. The speed at which you read using this method will largely depend on the speed at which you move the pointer.

You will be able to increase your reading speed a certain amount on your own by applying these speed reading techniques.

What you don’t get out of self-study is the use of specialist reading machines and the confidence gained from successful speed-reading – this is where a good one-day course can revolutionize your reading skills.

 

Key points:

By speed reading you can read information more quickly. You may also get a better understanding of it, as you will hold more of it in short term memory.

To improve the speed of your reading, read more words in each block and reduce the length of time spent reading each block. Use a pointer to smooth the way your eyes move and reduce skip-back.

 

Mind Tools

In the next article, we look at use of Reading Strategies, the second key technique you need to read faster, and beat information overload. To read this article, click “Next article” below. And to learn more about this subject, look at the “Extension Resources” section at the foot of this article.

Your Netbuc Team

http://www.netbuc.com