Speed Learning Pattern #1: Know What You Want.
Recently took a look at Ivan Perez’s Recent Post, on which he begins to outline some principles for speed learning. This is a topic that I’ve been interested in lately as well, and I thought I’d take a crack at the topic from a different angle. It’s about a pattern I’ve noticed whenever somebody is talking about efficiency, organization, or doing things fast, and it’s called knowing what you want.
Knowing What You Want
Knowing what you want is ESSENTIAL to learn things fast. Without answering this fundamental question, you end up wasting time and energy learning things that are irrelevant and useless. If you apply this pattern, you focus only on what you need.
Let me use this principle to show you how knowing what you want can help you read a chapter that was assigned to you.
A typical student, when assigned the chapter, would sit down, go to the first page, start at the first word, and read through till the end. Seems like a no-brainer. However, this student is ignoring a fundamental question: “What do I want?”
So, let’s say the student did ask “What do I want?” before they started the chapter. Here are some possible answers they might come up with:
- I want to pass the test
- I want to learn about the material
- I want to find a specific piece of information
- I want to understand the authors writing style
They would then take their answer and come up with things from the material that could help them get what they want.
- I want to pass the test
- I want to know the vocab.
- I want to understand the point of the chapter.
By knowing what they want, they can then focus on only the relevant portions of the chapter, rather than reading the whole thing. In order to identify the chapter, they’ll need to use Speed Learning Pattern #2: Finding the Main Idea. I’ll talk about that next week.
For this week, try applying this pattern next time you have to learn something. Rather than just going at the material with no purpose, ask yourself “What do I want to learn?”, then focus only on the material that’s relevant to the answer. This pattern alone can cut your learning time in half.
-Matt
[...] Check out Matt’s article about Speed Learning on Life of Matt [...]
This is fantastic stuff. I really am looking forward to part 2, as this is an area that I have been thinking about a lot lately as well.
One technique I have been using is to give myself a time limit that is about 2/3 as long as I would normally take to do my assignment. This simulates the “cramming” feeling that generates the most efficiency out of me.
-Boran (Caligula)
[...] By Boran I would just like to link to the ongoing discussion between Matt and Iván Pérez on the topic of learning efficiently. I will be watching this, as I personally [...]
[...] Update: Check out Matt’s article about Speed Learning on Life of Matt [...]
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