10 tips to help you learn and quickly memorize everything you want

How long do you remember a new knowledge?

If you've ever read the "bestselling" book out of Malcolm Gladwell 's " Outliers", then you've probably heard the "10,000 hours" number. According to Gladwell, who once mentioned a study published by the American Psychological Association in 1993, "it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate training to become an expert." OK".

However, in a 2013 TED Talk talk, Josh Kaufman said that this number was largely misinterpreted and the keyword in Gladwell's book should focus on "Expert" .

It doesn't take 10,000 hours to learn something, it takes 10,000 hours to become a leading expert in a highly competitive field. The research in 1993 was surveyed by the world's top chess players and professional athletes, not those who want to learn how to use the guitar to play Taylor Swift's songs. The more important thing is that most of us don't have the patience to do that.

The key to learning everything the fastest way here is to approach the problem smartly and deliberately , meaning you will have to continually receive new information, analyze, verify, experiment, give make your own assessment and learn the best theory that has been widely accepted. So how do you want to memorize quickly and quickly?

The first thing: You need to identify the skills you want to learn . Want to learn how to write poetry? Blogging? Memorize the lesson? Write a book or anything else? Each topic has a certain difference and requires you to have a specific learning strategy.

Once you've identified what you want to achieve, apply the following steps to easily conquer them.

Note : You can apply the following methods to quickly learn anything you want, including new skills, new subjects, new problems . Below, we call this content according to the original article.

1. Divide the content you need to study into multiple parts and learn the most important module first

Dividing content into small pieces not only facilitates control, but also helps you identify the most important things to remember.

According to Kaufman, most of the things we think are important, it includes many other small things that each contain specific problems."The more you divide the content into sections, the more likely you are to decide the most important part that really helps you achieve what you want."

After that, learn the first important things and you will see, your abilities improve in a very short time.

For example, if you want to play the guitar, you can divide the skill into many parts such as reading music, gestures with fingers, placing fingers in the right position, learning intervals, chords . So somewhat of interest Most important? Certainly learning common chords and placing your fingers in the right chords are the two most important skills because just knowing a few chords is that you can play a lot of songs.

2. Learn from a real expert

Regardless of what skill you are trying to conquer, there are always excellent people about it. Therefore, the fastest way to learn what you want is to find someone who has succeeded, learn how they achieved it from zero and turn them into a "model" to strive for.

According to Tony Robbins - one of today's top motivational and coaching skills development trainers, "It does n't matter how old you are, what your gender is and where you come from, work Using a certain pattern can help you realize your dreams faster and achieve more in a very short time ".

So you can start taking a course, invite your friends / colleagues (who have conquered what you are pursuing) cafe, watch a movie, read about your idol or any other way. Other can help you discover the success path of the people you are using as "model".

3. Learn from many sources

Studies show that the more you use to collect information, the more likely you are to comprehend them. Why? Because each way will affect different parts of the brain and when more areas of the brain work at the same time, the more knowledge we receive, the faster we remember things.

So, don't just read books and read newspapers related to what you want to learn. Try listening to podcasts, watching videos, using phone applications to practice, write down what you have learned, attend events, classes .

4. Spend 1/3 of the time studying and 2/3 of the time to practice

You can only learn more about how to train a skill from studying it. You can spend all the time you want to read about kicking a ball on the golf course but when you go outside, don't expect that you will succeed in the first shot. Surely you know what books say: " Practice makes perfect".

So, what is the time ratio between practice and research?

Dan Coyle - author of two books The Talent Code and The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills (Short translation: 52 tips to improve your skills you ) gave the rule that he called "Rule of Two-thirds" . This means, you should only spend one-third of the time to research, the remaining two thirds really do it.

In a sharing with Time Magazine, Coyle said: "Our brains evolved to learn by doing everything, not just hearing about them . " This is one of the reasons why (for many skills) spend two-thirds of the time to test yourself much better than just absorbing them through books . For example, only for 30% read a self-help book and spend 30% applying the principles you learned from the book to test.

Kaufman also suggested that "grasping the theory just enough" that you can detect problems and how to fix them yourself. Once you have done so, switch to focusing the whole time left to practice.

5. Commitment to practice at least 20 hours

According to Kaufman, you need to spend 20 hours practicing focused and deliberate . Therefore, when you begin to practice, commit to practicing at least 20 hours before thinking about giving up.

10 hours is obviously much less than 10,000 hours but still a huge time commitment in the "everyone is busy" era today. It is equivalent to spending 40 minutes a day for about a month to practice.

Time commitment is the point where we feel the most troublesome but this is also the key to success. You don't need to do the same thing continuously from day to day and then fall into a condition Kaufman calls "The frustration Barrier" , meaning that when you can't feel it. achieving what you want very quickly even though you have committed a lot of time and effort, it is time to lose confidence and tend to give up.

Disappointment is a barrier to progress . However, if the previous commitment will spend at least 20 hours to practice the skill, you will retain more perseverance in disappointing moments.

6. Quickly collect feedback on training effectiveness

Once you've decided to enter the practice stage, make sure you look for feedback on your practice results and promptly fix problems before being irreparable.

According to Gladwell in " The Best People" , what really made The Beatles different from other bands at the time was not just the practice, but that they were the most direct performers in the audience. It is possible to get immediate feedback from listeners about their performances.

Feedback may come from mentors, coaches, friends, family or other sources depending on the skills you are training. However, the key is still from the feedback, you can know the mistake that you do not recognize yourself and capture more appropriate tactics. The sooner you get feedback and fix the problem, the better your skills will improve.

7. Set the deadline for yourself

According to Parkinson's law , "The work always extends itself to take up enough time to set it up (Work expands so as to fill the available time for its completion).

Remember the essays when you were in college, you had a whole lesson to write but you could only complete everything right before the expiration date? This is a typical illustration of the above law.

The trick to turning Parkinson's law into an advantage is to set up your dealine yourself . When you give yourself less time to accomplish something, you will make it more effective. In other words, you need to push yourself to some extent.

For example, when you want to become an experienced speaker, plan events with specific times you need to present to people. Instead of procrastinating, create real tasks, mark them on the calendar, and every time you look up your to-do list, you won't be able to give up anymore.

8. Focus, focus, focus!

In order to learn quickly, it is still important to commit to full concentration and pay full attention to the skill you are trying to train.

"Multitasking" or doing many things at the same time is a bad habit many people have. Many studies also show that we will work less efficiently and increase errors more often. If you think you are an exception, consider this: only 2% of the world's population is truly capable of doing many things at once effectively, the remaining 98% will reduce 40% of productivity and increase 50% of errors when working multitasking compared to those who only do one thing at a time.

9. Get enough sleep

Sleep plays a very important role in increasing the ability to receive new information and skills. When we are alert, new and stimulating situations can prevent new information from being embedded in our minds. Meanwhile, according to a study from a German laboratory, if you need to gather new information, having a previous sleep will help you remember more deeply.

In fact, some scientists believe that the brain actually changes its structure and organization in response to changes in the body and the environment, just like when we learn a new skill.

If we lack sleep, it will be very difficult to get information because the brain has no chance to consider and "absorb" them.

10. Don't hurry to give up when you've just finished "honeymoon"

As mentioned above, people often give up when the time runs out, run out of money, feel scared, lose focus, lose interest .

When we start learning something new, we will enter a stage that many people call "honeymooners." That's when the brain produces the most dopamine. We want to receive appreciation from others and desire to find something new because it makes everyone feel satisfied.

However, when the "honeymoon" is over, it's time we feel disappointed, don't want to continue and be ready from the bunch.

If so, apply the rule of commitment to practice at least 20 hours above and you will see that once you have overcome the most difficult times, good signals will appear.

In addition to these skills, what are the secrets to learning and memorizing information faster? Please share right in the comment section below.