AI is here. We are in the age of terminators vs men. As more tasks are now handled by AI, how can we stay relevant? Your ability to connect, innovate, and problem-solve is critical because these are tasks that AI cannot do, at least not currently. More importantly, you must be adaptive and respond quickly to external demand as AI is still evolving. Learning faster and better is the new edge you have over others.
Here are 4 proven learning strategies that still work today. (They are not your usual “have enough sleep and exercise” type of advice.)
1) Plan your learning … How much, how long, and how often
- Bite-sized it! How do you eat a large elephant? One bite at a time! Likewise, how to learn a large chunk of knowledge? Break it down into small, digestible pieces so that you do not feel overwhelmed. Learn at your own pace.
- Revisit, recap, and review your learning material regularly. Your brain needs reminders before it remembers. Psychologists call this “spaced repetition”.
- Time your learning – do a bit of learning or ponder over what you do not understand just before you sleep. Your subconscious will continue to work to internalise it after that. Synapses, connections, and memory consolidation form when you sleep.
2) Engage your senses to create context-dependent memory
- Create a stable learning environment for yourself to learn … same seat, same background music, same coffee. You will get into a learning state faster and learn more efficiently.
- learn actively through multisensory. Use all your senses, or as many senses as possible, during learning…. move, doodle, gamify (with yourself or others), reflect, ask questions, … so that it becomes part of you.
- social learning … surround yourself with motivated, passionate people who love the same subject. Allow yourself to be fully immersed in the subject, where you eat and talk about it every moment. Learning by osmosis happens when you gradually pick it up from others.
- relate your new skills or knowledge to something you already know. If you just learned a new programming language, ask yourself how this language is different from the ones you previously knew. If you learned a new customer service technique, ask yourself how this technique is different from the older techniques you learnt.
3) Summarise in diagrams to visualize the process and flow
- Look for the most critical and essential ideas to achieve mastery, which are the 20% that you should acquire to get 80% of the results. What is the one big idea or 3 key points from the learning?
- Create a visual model to summarise the key concepts for yourself and for easy reference.
- Teach and explain it in simple words to another person, or even better, a child. Anyone can make a subject complicated. It takes a genius to put it simply. Identify where you struggle with the explanation and improve it. This is better known as the “Feynman Technique”, named after Richard Feynman, the physicist who shared the Nobel prize in 1965.
4) Pressure test yourself to up your ability
- Challenge your brain, and your brain will “grow” just like your muscles. You learnt more after being challenged. This is also called “desirable difficulty”.
- Give yourself a test. Start with a smart recall (ask yourself how you can) and apply what you know in a real situation. Push yourself to explore different elements of the content by changing and questioning it.
Lastly, a word of caution. Learning is great. However, the danger of over-learning is inaction. Learning creates the illusion of “busyness” and makes you feel occupied and productive. To some extent, it is a great excuse for non-action.
We all know that the key to success is action. You cannot achieve anything from just studying it, though studying is the first important step.
Authored by Tan Teck Beng without the assistance of AI.
Image generated by Gemini