How can we learn smart, not hard?

To be honest, I thought I was a fast learner.

Back in high school, I would’ve read a textbook in relaxed putting my feet on the desk the night before the exam. It’s not cramming in my brain, but a deep reading. There was nothing I can’t understand. If I can understand deeply, I was able to play with it. I have never tried to memorize all those complicated names, places, and things. It just came to me and I enjoyed it.

Yeah, you’re right. I am bragging now.

But these days I couldn’t recall the word that I have already looked up in the dictionary right before.

What’s the reason? Am I wrong? Or sadly am I aging? I decided to hack the way my brain works. I really wanted to figure out how to learn smart, not hard.

Before the beginning, we need to understand the mechanism of the brain.

There is no such thing like a drawer in our brain. Information from one neuron flows to another neuron across a synapse. Synapse is the key factor connecting nerve cells. We can enhance our learning potential by strengthening the connection.

So, what can we do to better the connection?

There are many theories that explain how to master a skill. Today, I’d like to share with you guys 3 key things.

First, I do love the moment that my eyes bright with delight and excitement when I learn.

Scientists proved that positive emotion is very important for your learning potential. Because all learning is state-dependent. Information combined with emotion creates a long term memory. So, don’t push yourself to the corner. Don’t criticize yourself not to be good anymore. Because your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk.

Instead, do yourself a favor and have fun.

Find the content you can resonate, find the moment you can focus, find the place you can enjoy. Whatever it is, find a fun way. Your own way. Don’t follow someone else’s success story. If you don’t enjoy the moment, sadly, all your efforts could be a waste of time.

Second, in order to remember for a longer time, spaced repetition is the best way.

Spaced repetition is retrieving something out of your memory in spaced interval. Our forgetting curve looks like an exponentially decaying curve. It’s natural for you to forget almost everything after reading. So it hacks right around the time you’re starting to forget it. You can use flashcards for the spaced repetition.

You just sort the cards by the order you can’t remember what’s on the other side of the card. And target your weakness and revisit the information you can’t remember with more frequency. Focus on what you can’t remember more frequently. Once you start using it, you swear by it.

The last one is my favorite. A good conversation.

When we are reading, we are likely to be in an illusion of competence. We feel we know it. But learning is not a spectator sport. Learning is the process of intaking information and wrangling with it on my own and creating my own words. In order to understand more, we have to ask better questions. To get a better answer, we have to access to the point with a new pathway we have never been before. Question and answer is the most integral parts of the learning process.

Talk to you. Converse with your partner. Teach and summarize what you learn. Review it, Recite it, and Rehearse it.

If you don’t recall what you learn, you can find the information you consumed and crammed in is gone. One of the most effective ways of learning is choosing a topic that interests you and presenting it in the toastmaster club.

You know what? Synapse is the connection, not a drawer.