This is obvious to many, but I found it personally difficult to perceive that people learn in different ways – some take less time, some take more for exactly the same task. I do believe that genetics and the environment you grew up in affects the way you learn, however there are some tips and tricks that I use that, in my opinion, can help any learning experience.
Here are a couple of tips to improve your learning effectiveness:
- Revise it within 24. After you’ve learned something, be it vocabulary of a new language, a new concept, or a new technique – make sure that you either revise it or practice it in the next 24 hours. I find that this way the information doesn’t disappear from my short-term memory straight away, and sticks much longer. Afterwards, do the same thing in a week, and then in a month. That way it should be etched into your long term memory, not just the short-term.
- Associate it with something. It’s much easier to retain new information if you can associate it with something you already know. For example if I wanted to learn about the Vietnam War, it’ll be much easier if I already knew some information about Vietnam, e.g. some of their cities, what kind of food there is, roughly even how it looks. The new facts become more relatable and easier to remember, it’s easier to join them together.
- Learn the basics and the fundamentals first. This is just my personal opinion, but once you know the fundamentals of the field, sticking and adding pieces to it becomes much easier. It is much easier to build upon a solid foundation as the pieces just “fit” together, in comparison to disjointed blocks of information, that don’t really have a link. This is especially true in complicated skills/concepts. In my case, I definitely found it useful when learning machine learning. Without the fundamentals, just applying the algorithms I would’ve been lost.
- Make it practical. The best way to master a new skill is to try it in practice. I’ve made the mistake numerous time where I thought that if I just read something I knew it. Now whenever I read something of value, I try to apply as soon as possible. I cannot overestimate how much of an impact it had on my abilities.
- Change your perspective and make it interesting. I find it obvious that something that’s interesting is much easier to learn and master. I’ve personally been blessed (or cursed, I’m not sure yet) that I find almost everything interesting. But because of that I realised that everyone can make it so. Even if you’re learning programming for example and in the beginning it’s soul crushing, as in reality nothing really works, you can change your perspective that if you make one little piece work a day – you’re a winner. Fuelled by these small wins it suddenly becomes interesting. Also, if you start asking yourself questions, “how does this work?”, “what would happen if I did this?” instantly it also becomes more interesting.
- Allow yourself to fail. It’s not a secret that we can’t do everything right the first time. One of my favourite quotes about learning is: “If you want to be good at something, you have to be bad at it first”. When you learn, expect that in the beginning it’s going to be tough, you’re going to get things wrong and that’s ok! Enjoy the process of adding one extra bit to your knowledge and if it doesn’t come out as you expected, take a break and start again!
- Take notes. However good your memory may be, notes help. Studies have shown (Journal of educational psychology) that hand-written notes help you remember better than if typed on a computer. Having said that, any notes are better than no notes, so start taking them!
These are just a couple of tips that I use on a daily basis that (hopefully) make me a better learner. Apply some of them yourself and see where it takes you!