We’ve all experienced that feeling of boredom and frustration after we’ve repeated in our heads something that we had to learn, over and over again, but without any success.
What if our memory is not at fault, and we simply don’t know how to do it the right way? Here are some tips to help you learn…how to learn.
And by learning I don’t necessary mean doing your homework, these tips also apply to any kind of activity that requires study and discipline, those tips helped me a lot in my journey here, on Steemit.
Firstly, you should only move on to another idea or information after you’ve understood what you just read or did. If you jump from one information to another without focusing and understanding each one of them, you’ll later find out that you’ll have a lot of gaps and missing ideas.
It’s like trying to solve a math problem without the formulas, or like trying to promote a product without knowing what it does.
Another great thing you can do is to create connections between the things you’re learning, and the things you already know. It’s much more easier to memorize any information if you associate it with something that you are familiar with.
For example, if you’re trying to learn about hormones and you’re passionate about nutrition, you should try and connect those two, to see what they have in common. One of the biggest obstacles in the process of learning is finding the utility of the information you’re trying to assimilate.
Ask yourself “Why is it necessary for me to learn this? How is this going to help me?”. When you manage to answer those questions, you will find it easier to learn.
There is another important aspect when it comes to studying. The thing is, your mind is tricky and it might play some games. You should pay attention and notice the difference between understanding something and recognizing it. The fact that you recognize an information doesn’t mean that you understand it and that you know how, when or where to apply it.
Try to use the Pareto principle: you can obtain 80% of the results with only 20% of effort. Only select the important information, don’t get lost in the details. Even more importantly, prioritize what you have to learn.
In this way, you’ll have a clear order in which you have to study things and you’ll be able to create a scale of your progress.
Lastly, it’s important to expand your limits everyday, step by step, by giving 1% more than you gave the day before. Instead of spending 10 hours on a weekend working on something, you should work on it 20-30 minutes a day. With this kind of progression you’ll learn how to discipline yourself and you will evolve as a person.
