Rapid change and growth characterise the world you are living in. To keep up, you must adapt rapidly as well. The demand on you to learn things faster is now ever with you. Being slow and nonchalant will get you kicked out or left behind. As a business person or as an entrepreneur, you must learn and learn faster while you are at it. There are proven ways that can help you to learn faster and put you ahead. This is what we are delving into here; these are simple, practical ways.
Handwrite When Note Taking
Some studies have been done to show handwriting notes can improve retention and comprehension of information. The thing here is when reading, watching or listening to study material you must take down notes by writing them down. I have seen this to work wonders especially for me. It is interesting how I discovered this method back in early high school without knowing it was scientifically proven.
My approach was radical though. Say, I have 20 pages of study notes to go through. I would commit them to memory word for word then write it down from memory. By the time I was done with that, I had successfully retained and grasped the information.
What you can simply do though, is to copy and write down study notes on a matter from source to somewhere. If you can actively and attentively do that, it helps you to quickly grasp the information. You can even use a less demanding method where you paraphrase, that way you put the information you are taking in, in your own words.
Let me add something I use that you can use as well: When note-taking compose them in such a way that they are triggers or cues. This will create the platform for an assessment method I simply call the funnel method.
Suppose you have soil or small pebbles in a funnel. If you dislodge or remove say, one or part of soil or pebbles at the bottom opening of the funnel, what happens? There is a likelihood that the rest of the contents will pour out. That is what you can do with your handwritten notes.
You craft them that way and probably stick them on a wall, door or anything you can look at any time. Your goal will be such that when you lay your eyes on a piece of notes, it will release all the information on that from your mind.
I just gave you examples you can consider but the bottom line is to cultivate handwriting when note-taking.
Distributed Practice
This is yet another approach that has been proven to work through empirical studies. The distribution principle here speaks of repeated, short, study times spaced out over time. Instead of studying intensely for say, 4 straight hours, you distribute the practice. You can split up the 4 hours into 30-minute sessions – I recommend that especially. So, when the 30 minutes is up, you move away from that and focus on something else. You could even take a break. By so doing you will be giving your mind time to digest and consolidate the acquired information. Then you repeat the process. How distributed the practice is varies from person to person and context to context. For example, you can do just 30 minutes daily of you have the liberty. In some cases, it might not be possible given the urgency. The basic approach is small, repeated sessions spread out over time.
Self-Testing
I once mentioned something along these lines in one of my articles. This was when I discussed critical thinking techniques. One of the techniques I mentioned there was CRIDABESSQ. This is an abbreviation I came up with, with a buddy of mine when we were in high school. It stands for Critical Data Analysis By Effective Self-Set Questions. It is poetic how I, later on, found out that there was a scientific basis to that method. It is has been demonstrated via many studies that self-testing helps you learn faster. Here is how my buddy and I would do this.
Suppose I want to learn on a particular subject e.g. Java Script. I would imagine or assume what kind of questions I would want answered by a certain piece of information e.g. a book. After writing them down, I would go through the book. As I was doing that I would see if my initial questions are being answered. Again, in the process, I would come up with more questions as I studied along.
By the end of that process, I would have several self-set questions. Afterwards I would put the book aside and take a break. Then I would return to the questions and answer them without the book. Afterwards, I would return to the book and refer to it to mark and assess my answers. This would help me to take note of areas I have grasped and those I still have to grasp. I would repeat the process till I grasped everything. This is my personal example to show you how self-testing works.
I guarantee you that if you use these proven ways you will learn faster. I have used them and still use them; especially considering that my line of work demands me to learn extremely fast. Plus these ways are scientifically proven with several studies having been done. In 2022 you can learn so much and quite fast by using these methods.
