Home

Ingredients for Learning

2 min read

The six critical ingredients for effective learning are: attention, alertness, sleep, repetition, taking breaks and making mistakes.

Focus (Attention+Alertness )

  1. Doing 20min exercises, focus-attention meditation and breathing techniques helps to improve your attention and alertness.
  2. Caffeine can also improve alertness.
  3. Your alertness decreases after eating meals.

Ultradian Rhythm:

  • Every 90 minutes, we go in and out of peak alertness
  • Chunks of peak alertness for the 8 to 30 mins (related: Right state of mind)
  1. Have proper sleep - before and after studying.

Effects of Sleeping

  • resets immune system, metabolism and emotional control
  • get rids of “junk” during the day
  • short-term memory consolidates into long-term memories (from Hippocampus into the Cortex)

Repetition

Repetition is key to reinforcing connections in the brain and improving recall. Practice Testing: A type of active recall - flashcards, quizzes and mock test. (related: Note Taking methods) Spaced repetition: involves spreading out learning sessions over multiple days; it tackles the forgetting curve.

  • Level of Intervals
    1. immediately after memorizing it
    2. before going to sleep
    3. 1 day later
    4. again before going to sleep
    5. 1 week later
    6. 3 weeks later
    7. 2 months later
    8. 6 months later
    9. 2 years later

One-trial learning: We can learn things in one go when a strong emotional component is tied to an information. (related: How do we learn?)

Taking Breaks

  • New information is unstable.
  • ==Avoid retrograde interference - which can occur when learning same things back-to-back==.
  • Take a 10 to 20 min break - rest or do mundane tasks.
  • Try learning something similar after 1 hr or preferably the next day.

Mistakes

  • Making mistakes increases activity in focused attention networks,
  • It increases attention and creates a feeling of anxiety.
  • Embracing and learning from mistakes creates opportunities for neuroplasticity,
  • Don’t wait till you are “prepared”.
  • When we get it right, dopamine is released in your reward circuits,
  • Unlocking your adaptability.

Also see: Ultra Learning

Source: Brain Hack: 6 secrets to learning faster, backed by neuroscience । Lila Landowski । TEDxHobart

Graph View

Backlinks