The Brain
It might come as a surprise to you, but your brain is more powerful than you think. There, you hold important memories. There, emotions are created and re-experienced. There, your daily routine develops. There, your habits set. There, is where your personality forms.
The Problem
Here is the problem though. It started after technology made its way to every touch point of our lives. Think back to the time when you had to Air Tag or Tile your wallet. Think back to the time you had to pull out a calculator to calculate the tip. Or think back to the time you lost your cell phone but can’t recall a single number because your contact list was lost with it. The ease of convenience has come with a great cost. It has made our brain weak.
And what can be worst? Well, according to a Forbes article, everyone is dealing with 500% more information compared to our counterparts 50 years ago. So fifty years ago, Digital Dementia (DD) and Information Fatigue Syndrome (IFS) didn’t exist, but now it does.
The Jim Kwik Way — BE FAST
Luckily, I came across a talk presented by learning expert, Jim Kwik. He shares his insights on how we can learn better and how we can maximize long-term retention with effective use of time.
B elieve
In psychology, the confidence-competence loop states that the greater the belief you have in yourself to acquire a skill, then the more you’ll practice the skill. The more you practice, the better you become at it. This closed loop creates mastery.
Who knew? Surprise! No one is born a genius. When we see someone accomplishing a genius feat, it’s because they put in a lot of deep work and practice. Everyday, they push a little further and refine their process. Since this process is refined into their daily routine too, the results compound quickly.
E xercise
Exercising daily has a lot of health benefits.
Who knew? A 15–20 minute walk outside will work just as good as a cup of coffee. The only downside is if you’re also 15–20 minutes walk away from the nearest coffee shop (in that case, walk the opposite direction — ha).
F orget
Children are the fastest learners because they are able to forget that they don’t know. They are curious and open minded, so it’s like they don’t even know they’re learning when they are.
Who knew? Bruce Lee once remarked, “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash.” So learning is a lot of like adapting, you need to empty your mind. If you don’t empty your mind, how can you adapt? How can you fill it with new information? How can you discard old information that’s not longer true?
A ctive
We learn better through creation. Creation requires creativity.
Who knew? There’s a subtle difference between capturing and creation. Most of us capture information by either highlighting or copying down what we read or listened to. But to learn better, we should leave the left half of the page for capturing notes. Use the right half of the page to generate application and thoughts by answering three questions.
- How can I use this?
- Why must I use this?
- When will I use this? (Put this in your calendar)
S tate
All learning is state dependent, so have an upright posture and environment conducive to information retention.
Who knew? By slouching and not sitting upright, you’re collapsing your diaphragm. Since the lungs have less space to fill up with air in a slouching posture, less oxygen goes up to the brain. Less oxygen for the brain reduces cognitive function, hence giving you a kind of brain fogginess.
T each
The best way to know that you’ve learned something is if you can teach it to others. The first step is to learn the material well yourself, then you can make an impact in the world by teaching it to others. To help others improve their lives.
Who knew? Even though it wasn’t in Jim Kwik’s presentation, this part reminded me of The Feynman Method. Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize physics winner and taught at CalTech, said that if you cannot explain what you learned to a child, then you haven’t fully learned it.
Other Important Notes
4I’s for alignment
Information -> Inspiration -> Implementation => Integration (Success)
Most of us stop at the first “I”, which is “Information.” We learn something, but we don’t use it. Why is that? Well, it’s because we learn something that’s uninspiring for us. If we can’t genuinely answer the three questions (see the “Active” section above), we will never get to the “Implementation” part. When we are inspired by what we learn, we will implement it. When these fall into place, we have total alignment for “Integration” — this is why some people are successful and some aren’t.
Emotions and Forgetting Curve
We are biological in nature. We are driven by, what? Emotions. If we combine emotions with information, then what we learn will stay in our brains a lot longer. It’s also common sense, because if we don’t review the material we learn shortly after we learn it and review a few times more with spaced repetition, we will forget it quickly (see Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve).
Why we read slow?
According to Jim, we have three causes
- Most of us haven’t upgraded our reading skills since we were 6 years old.
- We have too many digital distractions or are constantly multitasking, so we cannot focus.
- We subvocalize what we read, so we cannot understand the meaning of a word until we sound it out first. This limits the reading speed because we can only read as fast as we can sound out the word. Some ways to solve this problem is available through this exercise.
Resources
Book sold on Amazon: Simon Sinek’s Start with Why | Simon Sinek
Book sold on Amazon: Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Free Podcast: Jim Kwik’s Kwik Brain
Website: Waterloo’s Curve of Forgetting
Youtube Video: Jim Kwik’s How To Double Your Learning Speed
Youtube Video: Jim Kwik’s Unleash Your Super Brain to Learn Faster
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