It’s useless to know your brain, whether it is your learning style or what type of thinking you should use to learn, if you are not going to study anything. At the same time, there is no point in starting to study something if you are going to end up forgetting it. If that is the case, you would have better spend your time on something else. That’s why you better make sure that you retain as much information as possible, that your time is well spent. Improve your memory.
Techniques to improve your memory
Spaced repetition
Did you know that when you learn something new for the first time you have a 90% chance of forgetting it? That means that for every 10 new things you study, if you don’t review any of them, you will only remember 1. The best way to counteract this is to review the information after certain time intervals, increasing the spaces between these reviews more and more.
| Review | Intervals | Chances of forgetting |
|---|---|---|
| No review | – | 90% |
| 1st review | 1 day later | 70% |
| 2nd review | 1 week later | 50% |
| 3rd review | 1 month later | 10% |
In case you feel that you are not achieving it despite having reached the 3rd review, you can try to start again but adding your own time intervals. For example, you can add a review for 2 days later or one biweekly. Just remember to always increase the amount of time between each one.
Mnemonic correlations
They are associations you can make between some concept you want to remember with something you are familiar with. You can relate a new name or term to a rhyme, song, story, or similar concept that you already know.
Chunking
The technique consists of dividing the information you want to memorize into smaller segments. If what you have to memorize are numbers or names, don’t force yourself to learn everything at once, first memorize either a few digits or a few syllables. If what you have to memorize is the content of a text, you can separate what you memorize by paragraphs. If the content is in video or audio, you can identify cut moments that separate the closing and opening between topics.
Taking notes by hand
There are several studies that demonstrate the advantage of taking notes by hand as opposed to taking them with a keyboard.
When taking notes with a keyboard, one tends to take notes word by word. In contrast, taking notes by hand “forces” people to summarize. When you are writing, it is more probable to unconsciously force yourself to paraphrase, organize and synthesize the information, which in itself makes you review and understand the topic in question even better.
Feynman technique
This technique, named after Richard Feynman’s research methods, is a mental model for the transmission of information. But…why would you want to transmit information?
Simple. Because one of the best ways to know that you really master a subject is to be able to explain it to others. However, simply being able to explain it isn’t enough, you should also be capable of making a child understand. That is, you have to be able to explain it to someone who does not have the experience or mastery of the topic you are teaching, so you have to be able to synthesize and simplify the information without using too specific terminology or depending on the other person having previous knowledge.
The technique consists of the following steps:
Identify the topic
Define the topic you are trying to master and/or want to explain.
Develop the topic to explain it
Write down everything you remember, trying to explain it in a simple way, without using concepts or terms that are difficult to understand. The goal is to do it in a way that a child could understand.
Identify and study the points or subtopics where you need information
Probably in the previous step you have found certain points that were harder to explain than others and others that you didn’t remember exactly. In this step research what you need to be able to properly explain those points. Repeat the 2nd step until you feel that there is no longer any information you need.
Simplify your explanation, create a story and/or analogies
Once you have finished collecting all the necessary information, go back over the development of your topic. Get rid of any complex language you still use and start implementing analogies or stories into your explanation so it’s even easier to understand.
Cornell Notes
Speaking of taking notes, there is an interesting format for doing so, created by Walter Pauk, a professor at Cornell University.
Note-taking
In this section you must write down what you understand about the class or course. The purpose of this section is for you to fill it out during the class itself.
Cue/Keywords
In this section you must place keywords, either as questions or titles that correspond to the respective paragraph that you have written in the “Note-taking” section. This forces you to identify what is most important in each section of your notes.
Summary
You should only complete this section until the lesson has concluded. As its name says, it should contain a summary of everything seen in the lesson. Of course, most of the time a class has too much content to follow the proposed division format to the letter. You can easily extend the “Note-taking” and “Cue” sections and just add the “Summary” section to the sheet where you finish your notes.
Metacognition
Metacognition does not have an exact definition but it is commonly referred to as the ability we have to reflect, analyze and criticize what we ourselves are thinking.
This process is important since having reflective thinking will help select the information that is worth storing in our brain and discard the information that is not useful to us.
A good metacognitive strategy to make your learning more effective is to ask yourself the following questions:
- What did I learn?
- How did I learn it?
- What was the most difficult thing to learn?
- How did I achieve it?
- What skills did I improve?
This not only forces you to review the information in your head but also to focus on your main objective.
What should you start with?
something, but it is not necessary that you incorporate all of them at the same time. Getting into the habit of incorporating these techniques into your study is a continuous process that takes time, so if you try to cover them all at the same time it is very likely that they will end up harming or demotivating you instead of helping you.
My recommendation is that initially, you only focus on trying 1 or 2 techniques. Observe which ones are easier for you and which ones are more difficult to do. Also keep in mind that there are not 100% strict rules that you must follow to the letter. Stick with what you feel works best for you and adapt them to your own learning style.
Remember that they are tools, you decide when and how to use them.
Now you just need to make your learning to be effective.