How to L*E*A*R*N*

New habits, attitudes, and knowledge in five easy steps

Want to master new understanding, build a new habit, or shift your thinking more quickly and effectively? You can give your brain a boost, helping it encode and ingrain whatever you’re looking to teach it, with this simple mnemonic: L*E*A*R*N*.

That’s right: simply LABEL, ENCOURAGE, ASSOCIATE, REPEAT, and…well, NIGHTTIME. I know: “nighttime” isn’t a verb. But the “nighttime” boost is such a winner I was willing to violate grammatical parallelism. Thanks for indulging me. And read on.

LABEL

We prime our brains to build connections to new information when we warm them up with a label. Saying “New habit” or “Healthy food choice” gives our brains a heads-up, so to speak, on what happens next. Our brains respond by wiring that thing that happens next to the label and to existing thoughts, memories, or habits associated with it. Think of a label as a “warm up act” that prepares your brain to start making connections.

ENCOURAGE

Imagine teaching a child to ride a bike. “That’s it!” you’d likely offer as you jogged alongside. “Great! You’ve got it!” Heck, you’d probably say the same if you were housebreaking a puppy.

(all together now…) Awwwwwwwwww…..

Well, your brain likes a bit of praise and applause too. “Self talk” helps us encode new information more efficiently, especially when emotional processing (think “positive reinforcement”) is activated. Encourage yourself as you would that eager child or bright-eyed puppy. Thinking “Great progress!” or “This is getting easier all the time” only takes an instant — yet it helps your brain map what you’re learning in positive, keep-on-trying ways.

There’s a reason Olympian Laurie Hernández whispers “I got this” before she competes. If it’s good enough for her it’s good enough for you.

“I got this.”

ASSOCIATE

After all, that’s what the brain is best at: connecting old information and new in ever-changing maps. Actively associating lets you “recruit” the power of existing cognitive maps to help bolster the new ones you’re building. Memory champions do this all the time, associating visual images and all kinds of other multi-sensory concepts with the new information they’re looking to ingrain.

Mind master Joshua Foer shows how in this five minute video. Like it? He spills more secrets here.

REPEAT

Frequency boosts retention. In fact, frequency can even convince the brain to overwrite known facts with known falsehoods. This “Illusory Truth Effect” illustrates the brain’s literal nature when it comes to mapping: it wires what you fire. So fire away when you want to speed learning. Bonus points for repeating the same information in several ways (saying it and writing it, for example), for using rhymes, and for coming up with mnemonics, like…well, L*E*A*R*N*.

NIGHTIME

This one’s my favorite. Your brain prunes itself while you’re sleeping, and it favors recently used information as it tends to its maps. One way to make sure the thing you’re working to learn is “recently used” is to bring it into active thought at night. As part of your evening wind-down routine, call up the things you’re looking to learn or remember. You can even go through the steps above to energize the thought across multiple brain centers. Read more about the pruning process here — and consider that falling asleep with your tech at your side actually makes you more tuned to tech when you wake up the next morning…so plan your nighttime routine accordingly.

I’ve been playing with nighttime routines for the last six months and the results have been astonishing. As I’m falling asleep, I bring three things to mind: my main goals for the next day (I often do a mnemonic with the first letters of those goals), a longer-term vision or plan that matters to me, and something I want to remember from the past day. These thoughts seem to be waiting for me when I wake up the next morning. I feel primed to focus on what matters in a masterful way.

Like it? Then…you got this. Try it with your favorite New Year’s Resolution and let me know what you L*E*A*R*N*.

Follow me here for mindful tips and updates on my upcoming book: Back In Charge, available October 2017.