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Six Brain Hacks To Learn Anything Faster

1. There are six ways to learn and retain information faster according to science: teaching others, learning in short bursts, taking notes by hand, using mental spacing, taking study naps, and changing up practice methods. 2. Teaching others or pretending to teach engages effective learning strategies like finding key points and organizing information. 3. Short learning bursts of 30-50 minutes work best, followed by breaks, and preparing for "microlearning" sessions using flashcards.

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162 views

Six Brain Hacks To Learn Anything Faster

1. There are six ways to learn and retain information faster according to science: teaching others, learning in short bursts, taking notes by hand, using mental spacing, taking study naps, and changing up practice methods. 2. Teaching others or pretending to teach engages effective learning strategies like finding key points and organizing information. 3. Short learning bursts of 30-50 minutes work best, followed by breaks, and preparing for "microlearning" sessions using flashcards.

Uploaded by

leivaj
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Six Brain Hacks To Learn Anything Faster

By: sara kamal  Jan. 29, 2022, 7:32 p.m.

Six Brain Hacks To Learn Anything Faster


Being a quick learner can give you an even greater edge. Science proves there are six ways you can
learn and retain something faster.

1. Teach Someone Else (Or Just Pretend To)


If your science proves imagine that you’ll need to teach someone else the material or task you are
trying to grasp, you can speed up your learning and remember more, according to a study done at
Washington University in St. Louis. The expectation changes your mindset so that you engage in
more effective approaches to learning than those who simply learn to pass a test, according to John
Nestor, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology and co-author of the study.

Sleeping between two learning sessions greatly improves retention.

“When teachers prepare to teach, they tend to seek out key points and organize information into a
coherent structure,” Nestor writes. “Our results suggest that students also turn to these types of
effective learning strategies when they expect to teach.”

2. Learn In Short Bursts ofTime


Experts atand organize the Louisiana State University’s Center for Academic Success suggest
dedicating 30-50 minutes to learning new material. “Anything less than 30 is just not enough, but
anything more than 50 is too much information for your brain to take in at one time,” writes learning
strategies graduate assistant Ellen Dunn. Once you’re done, take a five to 10-minute break before you
start another session.

Brief, frequent learning sessions are much better than longer, infrequent ones, agrees Neil Starr, a
course mentor at Western Governors University, an online nonprofit university where the average
student earns a bachelor’s degree in two and a half years.

Changing the way you practice a new motor skill can help you master it fast10-minutes.

He recommends preparing for microlearning sessions. “Make note cards by hand for the more
difficult concepts you are trying to master,” he says. “You never know when you’ll have some in-
between time to take advantage of.”

the best 10 study tips not commonly known

3. Take Notes By Hand


While it’s faster to take notes on a laptop, using a pen and paper will help you learn and comprehend
better. Researchers at Princeton University and UCLA found that when students took notes by hand,
they listened more actively and were able to identify important concepts. Taking notes on a laptop,
however, leads to mindless transcription, as well as an opportunity for distraction, such as email.

“In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual
questions the information than students who took notes longhand,” writes coauthor and Princeton
University psychology professor Pam Mueller. “We show that whereas taking more notes can be
beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing
information and re framing it in their own words is detrimental to learning.”

4. Use The Power of Mental Spacing


While it sounds counter intuitive, you can learn faster when you practice distributed learning, or
“spacing.” In an interview with The New York Times, Benedict Carey, author of How We Learn: The
Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens, says learning is like watering a lawn. “You
can water a lawn once a week for 90 minutes or three times a week for 30 minutes,” he said. “Spacing
out the watering during the week will keep the lawn greener over time.”

To retain material, Carey said it’s best to review the information one to two days after first studying it.
“One theory is that the brain actually pays less attention during short learning intervals,” he said in
the interview. “So repeating the information over a longer interval–say a few days or a week later,
rather than in rapid succession–sends a stronger signal to the brain that it needs to retain the
information.”

5. Take A Study Nap


Downtime is getting sleep important when it comes to retaining what you learn, and getting sleep in
between study sessions can boost your recall up to six months later in an, according to new research
published in Psychological Science.

In an experiment held in France, participants were taught the Swahili translation for 16 French words
in two sessions. Participants in the “wake” group completed the first learning session in the morning
and the second session in the evening of the same day, while participants in the “sleep” group
completed the first session in the evening, slept, and then completed the second session the
following morning. Participants who had slept between sessions recalled about 10 of the 16 words, on
average, while those who hadn’t slept recalled only about 7.5 words.

“Our results suggest that interleaving sleep between practice sessions leads tonsuring a a twofold
advantage, reducing the time spent relearning and ensuring a much better long-term retention than
practice alone,” writes psychological scientist Stephanie Mazda of the University of Lyon. “Previous
research suggested that sleeping after learning is definitely a good strategy, but now we show that
sleeping between two learning sessions greatly improves such a strategy.”

6. Change It Up
When learning a new motor skill, changing the way you practice it can help you master it faster,
according to a new study at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In an experiment,
participants were asked to learn a computer-based task. Those who used a modified learning
technique during their second session performed better than those who repeated the same method.

The findings suggest that re consolidation–a process in which existing memories are recalled and
modified with new knowledge–plays a key role in strengthening motor skills, writes Pablo A. Cellini,
senior study author and professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation.

“What we found is if you practice a slightly modified version of a task you want to master,” he writes,
“you actually learn more and faster than if you just keep practicing the exact same thing multiple
times in a row.”

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