How To Learn Faster & Retain More Information
Learn more with less effort.
Last year, I decided to return to writing and the STEM field.
In doing so, I had a bunch of learning cut out for me but I couldn’t approach it the way I traditionally approached learning(when I was in high school where I nearly failed out) because I was pressed for time.
I took three exams over the last year, earning two I.T. certifications — the CompTIA A+ certification and the CompTIA ITF+ certification.
I passed these exams on my first try using some learning techniques I’ve never used before.
As it turns out, there’s some science behind these methods. But I’m not going to get into the science so I hope you can take my word for it.
The 3 Coat Learning System
I’m not much of a painter but follow my analogy here. When painting a house or a room, you can follow the 3 coat paint system.
The 3 coat paint system consist of primer(the primary coat), the intermediate coat and a top coat.
Learning is similar.
You can prime your mind with a first layer of pre-learning by scanning the material, asking yourself some meaningful questions such as:
“What is this section/chapter trying to teach me? How does it relate to the big picture?
Priming is where you’re creating a mold or scaffolding of the big idea. You’re taking a high-level approach to the material which sets yourself up for filling in the details throughout the following layers of learning.
You apply a second intermediate layer of learning effort by reading the material or attending a lecture. This part is important because it’s where you want to be the most confused. It’s where you’re going to spend the most amount of effort trying to “catch” as much of the material as possible while maximizing retention.
Attending lecture and being as intellectually challenged as possible ties into the next section with regard to cognitive load but more on that later.
The last layer is finally recalling as much of the material as possible through active recall. Essentially, you’re going to teach the material as if you’re an expert. At this point, you should try to break the concepts down and explain it like you’re teaching a five year old child.
Active recall is important because you’re actively stimulating the parts of your mind responsible for retention of the material and you’re reinforcing the connections you’ve made while studying.
Stop Taking Notes
Taking notes gives you a false sense of learning.
We’re in the age when we think being busy is productive. We feel like when we’re moving, we’re improving but that’s not necessarily the case.
As a student, I use to think the more notes I took, the better. But that was far from the truth.
Thinking back, because hindsight is 20/20, I realize that I learned better in classes that I actually enjoyed.
Why is that?
In classes that I actually enjoyed, I had a tendency to skip note taking because I’d be so engaged with what the professor was teaching.
Also, in classes that I enjoyed, I participated more. When I was confused, I asked for clarification. When the professor asked the class to explain a concept, I raised my hand and answered. When the professor asked someone to come up to the board, I volunteered.
All of the behaviors above promotes cognitive load progression, where I allowed my mind to undergo mental stretching. It allowed my mind to be stressed just enough that it stretched my brains capacity to learn and retain information directly.
Taking notes atrophies your cognitive load capacity because you’re fooling yourself into thinking you’re taking information in when it’s actually going through you like a milkshake from a dodgy fast-food restaurant.
Think of it like weight training, the more load you put your muscles under, the stronger they get. Training your concentration is similar. Incrementally increasing time spent in a focus session, increases your concentration over time.
And the less notes you’re taking, meaning you’re engaged with the lecture/learning period, the more cognitive load you’re placing your brain under.
Read, Pause & Lecture
Read a section, pause to think then lecture to an imaginary classroom.
Read, pause & lecture is similar to active recall but it’s done periodically throughout a chapter. You can also utilize this technique during a video lesson.
If the lesson is organized well, it will be broken up into sections. And each section would, ideally, be part of a big idea. As you read through the sections, pause and lecture to an imaginary student or classroom.
Get up and pace back and forth as you’re lecturing for full-effect.
The idea is to, once again, stimulate your memory. But you also want to relate it to the big idea of the chapter.
Hypothesize & Experiment
Take the information in its raw form, make an assumption about its application, then apply it to a lab experiment. If you fail, go back to the material and see where you went wrong.
I promise you’ll learn more this way.
I use this approach for the CCNA. I also used this approach for the CompTIA A+ and the CompTIA ITF+ exams.
Labs facilitate a system where you can fail your way to learning success. Failure is part of the process. And you learn a hell of a lot more during failure than you do with success.
The biggest benefit to failing your way to success is that you’re intimate with the details of the concepts. When you fail, you have to inquiry deeply about why you fail. And when you succeed after failing you’re that much more knowledgeable about why the solution works as well as how it works.
Learning should be an active process with minimal note taking during the learning event in order to increase cognitive load and retention. If you want to learn faster and retain more information over the long run, take a systematic approach to learning instead of passively reading and writing.