I’ve been learning things for a long while but I still don’t have a reliable set-in-stone technique for getting things into my head.
You first need to learn the very basics concept of what you’re trying to learn, sometimes you’re jumping straight to subjects that won’t ever make sense to you unless you memorize it.
This is the problem with most of people, they learn a lot of stuff, but not the very basics, because they think it won’t be necessary.
I can only learn if I understand the how and why something is as it is.
For example: Why is 1 + 1 equals 2? Who said it’s equals 2? Is it really equals 2? Or maybe we all just agree that it’s equals 2 so we can talk the same language in numbers? Why do we need to know that 1 + 1 is equals 2?
This kind of very basics I mean, you need to find a purpose on what you’re learning and bring it to practice.
Your brain stores different information different places. So read the information, hand write the information, say the information out loud, put the information in your own words, make it colorful, draw it, etc. Gives you more that one area to recall the information in your brain. Also, repetition. Don’t just store it once and hope you remember it.
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Depends on what makes you struggle to learn.
I need to get up in the morning same time and go out of my home or I’ll get distracted by all my fun stuff I’ve got.
There was some free online course that was learning how to learn or something like that. I found it useful.
So I passed a board cert last year. I treated studying like a job. Work hours/off hours/break times. Phone was away.
Pen and paper for taking notes and understand that reading comprehension is a resource that has a cooldown. In other words, take breaks and learn how to glean information while reading quickly. Its a skill and it takes time. This is a decent breakdown of some academic reading techniques.
Lastly, practice and experiment. There’s a difference between knowing things and memorizing, and knowing things is only half the battle. Its really hard to feel like you’re progressing if you cant apply what you’ve learned when the time comes. Practice takes the the things you’ve memorized and turns them into things you know. My advice on practicing is to get weird, have fun and enjoy the discovery of learning new things. It makes the process of ‘sucking until you dont’ so much more enjoyable.
Take notes while you read if it’s a topic like history or literature. Write a few sentences for each page summarizing the contents. The summarization effort will make you mentally process the info, which will help retain it. Write down the page numbers so you can find the material later
Also, shut off your phone if necessary, to not get interrupted by notifications.
If you like listening to music while studying, use instrumental music only, or music in a language you don’t understand.
Go somewhere outside of your home where you can be comfortable. Only go to that place when you’re studying.
Doing the most difficult tasks early in the day before eating a heavy meal. After lunch my brain shuts down and I can only do simple admin that needs little creativity.
Writing notes by hand has been proven to be more effective than typing. Take notes by hand as you go through the source material, then rewrite them (still by hand) into a neat, organized document. Index the document and store it. The act of writing out and engaging with the information to reorganize it will go a long way towards improving recall later, and if you do forget you’ll have a quick reference ready to brush up. Bonus points if you add a section to the neat document linking it conceptually to other knowledge, as that builds even more pathways in your brain to that information.
A lot of people have suggested writing by hand so I’ll consider doing that instead of my laptop then. Any advice on handwriting notes
The Cornell system is pretty famous note-taking method. I also saw while checking for the Wikipedia page for that, there’s a partial wikibook on Note-Taking with some various tips and links, and a Note-Taking article that outlines several methods.
But my advice would be not to stress too much about how you’re taking notes. Writing helps with memory, but from what I can tell it’s really the act of taking the information, choosing what to write down and how to re-word it that does the heavy lifting.
So basically, just do it, even though it’s imperfectly. Sit down to learn something, and as you read, watch, or practice, decide what’s important and jot down something on your paper that you think captures the idea.
Also be wary of the trap of buying nice pens and notebooks. That stuff is cool if it motivates you to actually start taking notes, but can drag you down if you let yourself get too particular about it.
Take the content as slowly as possible, take notes, and apply it where applicable to see what you can learn from what’s applied. That’s what I was doing for a while, and it seems to pay off for me very well.
Do it as a group, ideally with people you respect and get along with but don’t necessarily like. Do it early.
And handwrite everything.
If there is a library, go there, way fewer distractions.
Libraries are awesome!
pen and paper
or pencil if you prefer
it just fucking works.
also, you won’t ever retain things you don’t use on a frequent basis. that’s just how memory works.
