How to learn something efficiently
Hello everyone! If you are tired of the current style of your learning procedure and looking for a better way to learn something new, this post is for you. I should mention that learning anything needs some amount of attention and commitment. However, we can make full use of that commitment to learning very effectively. Let’s breakdown the story into two parts.
1. Introducing to the learning
2. Common mistakes in learning and tips to learn efficiently
What and why learning…
Learning is basically getting new experiences, skills and memories so that conscious living beings act accordingly. The learning process is happening in any conscious living being continuously by intentionally or unintentionally. For unintentional learning example, subtle facial expressions can be stated. However, in this post, let’s stick to the intentional learnings.
The reason why conscious living beings should learn is basically to survive. If they can’t learn who their predators are, that creatures will be extinct. Being a higher conscious living being, the human is having much more complicated needs and wants in learning things in their day-to-day lives. For example, to be social, to educate themselves, do a profession, teach the descendants etc. Humans possess a high capacity for learning. Let’s talk about some common mistakes and some tips to overcome them.
Common learning mistakes and tips to learn like a pro…
Think about your favourite song. Can you recall the lyrics? Of course, you can. For most of us, our favourite song’s lyrics are in our memory even without we try to remember them. This is very same for memorizing our friends’ names, remembering our favourite movies’ and TV shows’ plots etc. While these things are easily remembered, why can’t we easily remember some mathematic equation or a chemical compound or a quote by a poet? The answer is the need for that particular piece of information in our lives. The song is remembered since the enjoyment. The list of the friend names is remembered since we spend our time with them. This phenomenon seems like in disadvantage for us. But, we can make use of it. The only thing we have to do is make our learning a life need. For example, consider having to learn some theories related to economics. Mapping the theories with real-life and personal related example incidents would make learning the theories much easier. In this manner, you’ll be able to make the theories and learnings your own. Of course, you’ll have to memorize some new technical terms.
Having a need to know something is also really important. in some exam-related situations, our need is to pass the exam. Actually, what if the actual need was to learn the subject? For example, we learn some games with complex rules such as chess even without having to face exams or take quizzes. I recently listened to this ted talk, in which the speaker brings the point that if we want to learn a new language, just do it for the purpose of communicating in that language with some real people. Thus, having a genuine need to learn something is always helps.
Trying to memorize things without focusing on the context is very inefficient. This mistake is commonly done when studying for some exams. Memorization of facts is very important and essential for studies. However, we should manage the limited capacity of our memory effectively. Therefore, some context knowledge would help us in arranging the newly learning stuff in an efficient manner. For example, consider learning about the properties of computers. it is very hard to memorize each type of computer’s components separately. Then, a context should be built to make a real-life hierarchy of the different types of computers in order to facilitate easy learning. For instance, knowing desktop and laptops are computers, first memorizing the components of a computer and distinguishing between the differences in laptop and desktop components reduces the amount of memory to learn those. Then unnecessary redundancies will be eradicated from the memory.
Even if we are really good at learning things, we might get forgotten some facts we learn really quick. The following image shows how a typical human retains details he/she learnt. We have to be aware of this forgetting (retaining) curve. Remember the chats we had with our friends about cartoons in childhood. Those chats made our memory in those cartoons last longer. We can apply the same for the learnings in our education and everything. Teaching some friend who is unclear about the subject matter, talking and clarifying with a friend on the subject is very helpful. Moreover having a purpose of blogging, telling stories, and sharing own learnings is also helping with the learning process. Read the article on forgetting curve (link in the image caption) for more details.
Finally…
Most of us have come across the saying ‘learn from mistakes’. As the saying states, we should experiment, make mistakes and keep a consistent passion to learn something. I hope you enjoyed the post. you might also have some tips in learning effectively or some different views on the tips pointed here. please let everyone know those in the comments. Happy learning !!!
