People must learn very diverse kinds of information and skills. Not only do topics differ greatly but the very structure of knowledge can differ. Our learning goals can vary and so can the degree of perfection required. To match this variety of learning tasks, you will find it helpful to have a broad checklist of things to keep in mind when you study. Our minds give us several major resources we can use, and both our minds and reality put ob-stacles in our way.
Our Minds’ Resources:
As humans we come with several major resources that help us learn. Oddly, it is pos-sible to ignore these mental resources and still learn, but to learn more slowly. If you do use these resources wisely, you can learn more and save time.
Attention. When we pay attention, we intensify our mind’s ability to understand and remember. We come with the ability to partly control what we pay attention to. When we are distracted, we can pull our attention back to what we want to focus on. Implication: Pay attention! Don’t let distractions last very long.
Goals. When we want to get a certain result, our mind will help us. We come with the ability to set goals and work for them. Implication: Choose useful learning goals. Don’t read or listen passively.
Self-tests. When we test our degree of learning and find out whether we are reaching our goal, we can know when we’ve learned enough. Implication: Test yourself.
Our three memories: We come with a sensory memory (lasts 2 to 4 seconds), a working memory (lasts 15 to 20 seconds), and a long-term memory (lasts a long time). Implication: Work to exploit these memories’ powers.
Recent contact with information: When we have recently seen, heard or thought about a certain bit of information, it gains freshness and is easy to recall for awhile. Implication: Review shortly before a test or a skill performance.
Associations. Our minds are always associating from idea to idea. When we focus on some experience or idea, our mind retrieves into working memory the things we have associated with it. It happens partly by following our goals and by what is already a learned association. Implication: Intentionally create associations and stimulate associations in order to recall memories.
Knowledge and skill memories: Our minds store some learning as knowledge of facts, experiences, and ideas. We store other learning as knowledge of how to do procedures quickly and accurately or to build skill in an action. Implication: Notice whether your learning goal is to learn knowledge or to build a skill; you will study them differently. Learn knowledge by elaborating on it and testing yourself and expect to learn it in a few tries. In contrast, learn a skill by practicing it in small bits and comparing your results to the ideal. Practice again and again over many days.
Different ways of representing knowledge. Our minds also let us store knowledge visually, auditorily, in terms of feelings, through touch, through movement. We also have an episodic memory. We can also represent information in terms of stories and personal experiences and abstract concepts. Implication: Learn knowledge several ways and associate them together to give yourself several memories of the same event. When you read, translate the words into other representations you can imagine. And when you take information in through your senses, talk to yourself about it to put it into words.
Many ways to associate. Be aware that you can make associations within each way of representing the world. You can use multiple representations for a subject; the most common are visual and verbal memories, and there are many more. You can also consciously make associations between two or more representations. Again it is common to associate visual to verbal memories but there are many other ways. The more associations one makes, the more ways one has to retrieve knowledge later.
Obstacles to learning:
There are several major obstacles that can slow down our learning or can make us learn mistakes. If you can spot these obstacles ahead of time, you can work around them and still learn.
Memory fades. Sensory, working and long-term memories all fade over time. When reading long passages, our memories for the first taught facts and concepts may have faded by the time we get to later passages that use them again, and we cannot recall them. Implication: To successfully learn and remember material, we must strengthen new information quickly and keep renewing it.
Interference occurs. When we try to learn several things close together, our minds will confuse many of them and weaken the accuracy of our memories. Implication: We need to use techniques that overcome interference.
Distractions lower attention. When we try to focus on something, other noises and sights can capture our attention. Moreover, inner feelings and thoughts can also distract us. When we are trying to do two or more things at once, our attention keeps switching back and forth and weakens our focus on any one of them. Implication: Fight distractions.
Too fast working speeds prevent learning. When we feel we must rush to get a learning task done, we can outrun our mind’s limited speed of taking in information, making associations to it, and making impressions stronger. Implication: Make your working speed adapt to your mind’s natural speed of working.
Complex material hinders learning. When a book has to explain a topic with many parts that lack an obvious pattern, it is hard to understand and hard to remember. Implication: Recognize complexity and study to make it understandable.
Large volumes of material hinder learning. When there is a lot of material to remember and too little time to learn it, we can fail to reach our learning goals. Similarly, when we are trying to develop skills doing procedures with many parts to them, we may not have enough time to practice and will fail to build up skills. Implica-tions: Recognize heavy demands and choose the most important to study.
Meaningless material hinders learning. When we study new information and cannot find any natural meaning to it, our memory for it will grow unusually slowly. Examples of relatively meaningless material are new symbols, numbers and dates, new technical terms, people’s names, and arbitrary facts. Implication: When you notice that material is meaningless to you, study it by using mnemonics, by doing extra repetitions with flash-cards, or by finding ways to make it meaningful.
Misconceptions. When we already have learned confused and partly mistaken information about a topic, these misconceptions may keep us from learning the new correct information. Implication: Be aware when your mental model does not match what the author is teaching and do extra studying to cancel the old and strengthen the new.
Bad habits. When we have already learned a skill in an area where we are practicing new skills, the old skill will keep intruding and interfere. Music teachers say it’s easier to teach someone an instrument if they are brand new to it than if they know a little and have bad habits. Implication: Be aware of situations where an old skill must be unlearned and a new one substituted and know that you will need extra time. Be merciful to yourself.
Bad habits of reading and studying tend to persist. When you want to improve your reading and practice and study habits, your old habits will tend to persist. A common bad reading habit is to read passively, just letting the words and meanings slide by. Implication: Be prepared to need time to practice better study habits.
More Implications for Studying:
