Learn, Share, Grow – Techniques to Remember Everything You Learn

December 9, 2019

Below is a lesson from Entrepreneur about 4 techniques to remember everything you learn, as well as our key learning.

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

4 Simple Techniques to Remember Everything You Learn

By Aytekin Tank

October 1, 2019 7 min read

Aristotle once compared the human memory to a wax tablet that starts out hot and pliable, but cools down to something hard and difficult to impress. For a long time, this was the prevailing view of our ability to learn, i.e. when we’re young, our brains are in prime learning condition, but as we age, we find it increasingly difficult to acquire new skills. In layman’s terms: You can’t teach an old dog new tricks … or can you?

Recent research has thrown this long-standing belief into question, demonstrating that other factors, such as an older person’s confidence in their ability to learn, are also at play. So, if we stop thinking that our brain agility is eroding by the minute, we might actually be able to learn something. And in today’s knowledge economy, in which the capacity to quickly pick up new skills is more valuable than ever, this is great news for entrepreneurs looking to make themselves and their teams more competitive.

Continue Reading Here.

Key Learnings:

• Stop thinking that our brain agility is eroding by the minute — you might actually be able to learn something.
• A dedication to learning is the first step toward sickly pick up new skills. Metacognitive actives (such as thinking about one’s own thinking by reflecting, planning and monitoring) can significantly facilitate learning.
• Researched-backed techniques for becoming a better lifelong student:
  • Start with spaced repetition: repeating or reviewing is the only path to mastery. Repetition increases the myelin (fatting coating) around the axioms that connect our brain’s neurons. The more myelin, the faster our neurons work. Spacing out the repetition is even more effective.
  • Take time for reflection: A study found that employees who spent 15 minutes at the end of the day reflecting about lessons learned performed 23% better after 10 days than those who didn’t. Reflection helps spark new ideas. Another study found that our most creative ideas don’t come when we’re consciously focused on the problem — it comes through interaction with people, gaining experiences, letting your mind make connections.
  • Break it down: The best way to learn something is to explain it to someone else. Map out how you would explain something to a child — if you can’t explain it in simple terms, you don’t understand it. When you know where your knowledge gaps are, you can return to the source material and re-learn what’s missing.
  • Transfer what you learn: Take what you study in one context and apply it to another — helps deepen our understanding of both (learning transfer technique.) 2-step process:
    • Deconstruct the knowledge into its fundamental principles.
    • Reconstruct it in a new field.