How to Optimize How You Learn and Study at School

Academic Genius / By

To learn is to change… Education is a process that changes the learner. – Unknown

The Importance of Continuous Learning

Whether we are at school, college, university or working hard to climb the career ladder, I’m sure that we all understand the importance that continuous and ongoing learning plays in our continued success throughout life.

This IQ Matrix presents you with some fundamental keys to effective learning. Based on the principles discussed within the Memletics Accelerated Learning Manual, this mind map will hopefully provide you with a good foundation on the basic principles behind this powerful learning method.

How to Achieve Your Ideal Learning State

Learning is as much about technique as it is about developing an empowering and lasting psychological and physiological state. You may well have all the techniques and learning methods thoroughly entrenched into your habitual patterns of behavior, however, if you lack the energy or can’t bring forth the required mental effort and awareness, then your progress will undoubtedly suffer as a result. Here are some suggestions to assist you in developing an empowering state that will provide you with the energy you need to excel:

Healthy Cells

Your biology is made up of billions of cells that work cooperatively to keep you healthy and in peak condition. However, through incorrect dietary habits, we drain our cells of the energy they need to promote peak states of learning on a consistent basis. In order to bring back that “zing” into your cellular biology, you need to consume plenty of water, glucose, oxygen (through deep breathing exercises) and get the essential nutrients you need such as amino and fatty acids that will keep your cells at peak levels of conditioning.

Healthy Physiology

Even though learning is mostly a very sedentary activity, it is however very dependent and reliant on one’s physiological health and wellbeing. By partaking in physical exercise, by eating energy rich foods (fruits and vegetables) and through periods of deep relaxation, you will dramatically enhance your learning ability and maximize your potential.

Furthermore, it is easy to take our learning environment for granted and its influence on our physical well-being. Make sure that your learning environment is supportive of your learning needs and that it provides you with adequate fresh air, lighting and skeletal support.

Finally, it is important to understand one’s sleeping patterns and energy cycles that we tend to move through throughout our day. Make sure you plan your learning accordingly with these peaks and valleys in your cycles to achieve accelerated learning states.

Healthy Psychology

Psychology is all about strengthening your mind in ways that will enhance and accelerate your learning potential. This can be achieved in several ways. First, start off by setting empowering learning goals that will propel you forward despite the challenges that you may face.

Secondly, adopt a positive mental attitude that will help you to focus on solutions to problems.

Thirdly, just as you would exercise daily in order to keep your body fit, it is also important to develop the ability to stay mentally alert and centered throughout your day. This requires brain gymnastics and fitness. By this, I mean to challenge your brain with finding solutions to problems, with creative thinking, with memorizing numbers and phrases, and generally with anything that will stimulate it in ways that will take it out of the doldrums of its comfort zone.

And finally, just like your body, your brain also requires periods of relaxation and recuperation on a daily basis. Here are some online resources for Brain Training.

How to Become a Better Learner

Breaking Down the Five Step Learning Process

There are some simple steps and guidelines that one can follow to assist in structuring, organizing and managing the entire learning process. Although please keep in mind that the methods outlined here present one of a number of ways that this process can be undertaken.

Here are some suggestions that can assist you with enhancing the learning process:

Step 1: Locate

Your first step is always to locate and identify the learning materials (books, articles, websites, etc) that you will need for content extraction. In order to be both effective and efficient throughout the learning process, make sure to have all your study materials prepared before moving onto the next step.

Step 2: Explore

Exploration of your resources and topic content is the next step in the learning process. This exploration of your content material should be accomplished through the use of the seven intelligences; namely:

  • Visual (diagrams, graphs, sketches, mind maps),
  • Aural (focus on and record sound),
  • Verbal (lectures, discussions, dramatic reading, creating recordings),
  • Physical (incorporating movement, role-playing, post-it-notes),
  • Logical (analysis, playing with numbers),
  • Social (group learning, role-playing, involving others)
  • Solitary (personal journal, reaction notes, etc).

It is important to move through the exploration phase in a way that enhances your immediate understanding of this material, and this is best achieved through the use of the above-mentioned learning methods.

As a general rule, the more of these methods you utilize throughout the learning process, the more readily and easily you will absorb the material you are studying..

Step 3: Arrange

Here you are basically preparing your content for the process of memorization.

Firstly, analyze the content to get a feel for the type of material you are dealing with. Secondly, select the techniques you will utilize that will be most effective in assisting you with the long-term retention of the materials. Finally, you must now prepare the content in a way that will support the learning methods you have chosen.

Step 4: Reinforce

This is the point where you take everything you have done in the previous steps and begin converting this information into long-term memory. This is accomplished when using the seven intelligences, through varied and creative repetition, and by conducting regular reviews of your material throughout the learning process.

Step 5: eNquire

This process involves the act of measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of your learning. This can be measured in 4 ways.

  1. Firstly, through Immediate Reviews where you take in feedback on a continuous basis throughout the learning process.
  2. Secondly, through Lesson Reviews where you review the effectiveness of the previous steps when learning new material.
  3. Thirdly, you can apply Formal Reviews where you utilize tests and other grading methods to test your knowledge of these principles.
  4. And finally, conduct a System Review by over-viewing the entire learning process and looking at ways it can be managed more effectively and potentially improved in the future.

A Method for Improving Learning

Six Ways to Become an Effective Learner 

There are literally hundreds of creative techniques you can use to accelerate your learning immediately. The more creative you become, and the more variety you add to your learning methods, the easier it will be for you to progress towards your learning goals and objectives.

Here are some techniques and suggestions that will get you started along your journey:

Associate

Here you are using basic characteristics of memory to learn new material. Techniques include peg words, mnemonics, and chunking.

Visualize

Here you are using mental imagery and visual techniques to reinforce your knowledge of the material. Techniques include creative visualization and mental rehearsal.

Verbalize

Here you are utilizing words and writing to improve and accelerate your learning. Techniques include scripting and assertions.

Simulate

Here you are using tools and people to simulate your learning in a variety of different ways. One of the most effective methods for simulation is to role-play your learning.

Perform

Here you learning through methods of anchoring and over-learning the material you are studying.

Repeat

This is about focusing on strategies that will allow you to continuously repeat the information you are learning in a variety of creative ways that will enhance your retention and recall of information. This can be accomplished in many ways, however creating and referring to flash-cards seem to work well for many learners.

Techniques for Faster Learning

Finding Your Preferred Learning Style

Everyone has personal preferences and methods of learning that naturally favor them both cognitively and physically. Although it is important to focus on a variety of learning styles and strategies throughout the learning process, you should, however, spend most of your time on your preferred learning styles for fast and effective results.

Here is a quick breakdown of the different learning styles for your reference. While you are reading through them, take note which learning styles most resonate with you, then zone-in on them throughout the learning process.

Visual Learner

This learner prefers learning through the use of colors, pictures, and images.

Aural Learner

This learner prefers learning through the use of sounds and music.

Verbal Learner

This learner prefers learning through the use of words in the form of speech and writing.

Physical Learner

This learner prefers learning through the physical use of their body, hands and via the methods of touch.

Solitary Learner

This learner prefers learning through self-study methods that don’t involve other people.

Social Learner

This learner prefers learning through working closely and interacting with other people.

Logical Learner

This learner prefers learning through the use of reasoning and logic.

Identifying Your Learning Style

3 Critical Factors to Becoming an Effective Learner

This is quite an extensive topic, however, for the point of this discussion we will keep it pretty straightforward and focus in on three important factors that are critical to your success as a learner:

Goals and Targets

Without a target, you don’t know where to shoot. And if you have no idea where to shoot, then you will either procrastinate and hold back from shooting altogether, or you will simply shoot at everything hoping to hit something worthwhile.

Goals are absolutely critical to your success as an effective learner. They not only set you on target towards a desired destination, but they also keep you motivated and focused in on the bigger picture of your journey through this learning process.

As a general rule of thumb, make sure that your goals are achievable, yet slightly out of reach like a carrot on a stick. This will keep you inspired and moving forward towards the achievement of your desired outcomes.

Planning

If goals are the target you are shooting at, then your plan is the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Within this gap, there will be obstacles, challenges and potential pitfalls and problems that may arise unexpectedly. You must plan and prepare for these surprises, and you must develop a strategy that will not only get you to your target but get you there in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Your plan should essentially incorporate everything that has been discussed throughout this post, and direct you towards your ultimate objectives.

Progress

This is all about measuring the rate of your movement as you progress along your path towards mastering the material you are studying. Measure not only how well your successes panned out, but also take into account your failures and how they can be improved upon the next time around. How well and effectively you measure and track your progress will indeed determine how quickly you are able to reach your learning goals and objectives. Your progress meter will also get you back-on-track when you recognize you have moved off the beaten path.

Potential Learning Challenges You Might Face

Along our journey of learning, there will be times when things could get difficult, when we just can’t seem to make sense of the material we are studying, or when we simply become overwhelmed with the amount of information we are ingesting into our biological computer processor. The first step to dealing with these types of challenges is to simply recognize that they exist and that they might shake us up a little if we are not prepared for the consequences. Once you have mentally prepared yourself for the worst case scenarios, you can then move onto the final step which is working through them in a logical step-by-step fashion.

Here three potential scenarios you could encounter, and a few suggestions on how to deal with them:

Lack of Motivation

We can all suffer from a lack of motivation at one time or another throughout the learning process. Lack of motivation can be triggered through simple things as not getting enough rest, lack of adequate nutrition, not setting inspiring goals, talking to yourself in a pessimistic manner, or even through not having the full support of your peers. In fact, a lack of motivation could also come from any number of factors that haven’t been listed here.

The most important thing to do when you sense that you are lacking motivation is to determine the source that is triggering this feeling. Check to see if it is coming from internal factors within yourself, or if it is coming from external factors within your environment. Once you have identified the source, work creatively to either alter your perspective of the situation or physically do something that will suffocate the trigger mechanism.

Overwhelmed by Fear

Whenever you feel that taste of fear starting to overwhelm you, you must at that very moment understand that fear only comes to those who live with uncertainty. If you are uncertain about something in the future, then you will likely be either fearful or excited about it. If you are afraid, then the only way to counter these feelings of fear is to collect a greater array of resources and information that will allay your fears. The more knowledge you have about something you fear, the greater courage and confidence you will muster to move through this crippling emotion.

Making Mistakes

Mistakes are simply a part of life. As a human race, we have achieved technological success in today’s day-and-age as a result of the mistakes that we have made in the past few thousand years.

Be open to the idea that you will make mistakes, and when they do occur immediately focus in on suitable solutions that will keep you moving forward beyond your current experience. If you do this consistently, you will find that your momentum will tend to accelerate as you hike deeper along your journey of learning.

Challenges for Accelerated Learning

Concluding Thoughts

By sticking with these general guidelines you will set yourself on track towards accelerating your learning potential in many surprising ways.

As a final thought, keep in mind that the journey of learning is never over and that the methods you use to accelerate your learning should always be changing and adapting with the content you are studying and with the person you are becoming.

Time to Assimilate these Concepts

Effective Learning Strategies

Did you gain value from this article? Is it important that you know and understand this topic? Would you like to optimize how you think about this topic? Would you like a method for applying these ideas to your life?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then I’m confident you will gain tremendous value from using the accompanying IQ Matrix for coaching or self-coaching purposes. This mind map provides you with a quick visual overview of the article you just read. The branches, interlinking ideas, and images model how the brain thinks and processes information. It’s kind of like implanting a thought into your brain – an upgrade of sorts that optimizes how you think about these concepts and ideas. 🙂

Recommended IQ Matrix Bundles

If you’re intrigued by the idea of using mind maps for self-improvement then I would like to invite you to become an IQ Matrix Member.

If you’re new to mind mapping or just want to check things out, then register for the Free 12 Month Membership Program. There you will gain access to over 90 mind maps, visual tools, and resources valued at over $500. 

If, on the other hand, you want access to an ever-growing library of 100s of visual tools and resources, then check out our Premium Membership Packages. These packages provide you with the ultimate visual reference library for all your personal development needs.

Gain More Knowledge…

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