Dr. Malcolm Knowles authored 230 articles and 18 books on andragogy: the science of adult learning [focused on understanding needs of the adult learner]
"Adult learners want to know how they're going to apply the information that they're expected to learn....In fact, in addition to knowing how we are going to use that information, we want to know that it's going to happen soon"
"Most adult brains don't want to learn something unless they have a pressing and immediate need to"
The best way to convince your brain that this material is immediately useful is by immediately using it [Why piano lessons don't start with music theory]
Problem solving orientation instead of sequentially like adolescents
Best to start with a problem and work towards a solution. As adults we want to know that what we are learning is immediately applicable and the best way to do that is by solving actual challenges
Respond better to internal motivation
TIM FERRISS' FRAMEWORK FOR LEARNING ANYTHING FASTER:
Deconstruction: How small can I break things down into their basic units of learning, such as individual vocabulary words or grammatical rules?
Selection: What are the 20 percent of those units that will give me 80 percent of the benefits (Pareto's Principle)?
Sequencing: What is the best order in which to learn these units?
Stakes: How can I use psychology or social pressure to condense my timelines and push myself to learn faster?
Questions:
Why am I learning this information, and how and when will I actually use it?
What level of understanding or knowledge do you need?
How can this information be broken down into small parts? How can it then be recombined into broader categories or themes? Verses of a poem? Chords on an instrument?
What are the most important things to learn based on my personal goals? Pareto's Principle
What is the right order in which to learn this information?
How will I actually access this information?
What will your study schedule look like, and how can you compress/condense timelines? Benjamin Hardy, author of "Willpower Doesn't Work" calls these planned constraints "forcing functions" for example, to learn a new technology at work, volunteer to teach a workshop on it next quarter [real-world stakes]
How will I measure and track my progress?
What will I do if things don't go to plan?
"For this reason, a growing body of research has proven that visual memory is vastly superior to rote memorization - or any other type of mnemonic device you may have used in the past. They don't call it "the picture superiority effect" for nothing"
"If you want to improve your memory tenfold, create novel visualizations, called "markers," for everything you wish to remember"
Creativity is something you can relearn very quickly
Hebb's Law: associating new information with existing, deeply held memories [the Memory Castles does this]
Memorizing the reproductive system in the bedroom, the brains in the office when studying anatomy
Priming the brain
SQ3R: Survey - scan the content, start to create visual mnemonics to be filled in with more detail later Question - "for what reason am I reading this? What's in it for me? What do I expect to see here? Read - speed-reading or normal speed [so that you don't reread or dwell on irrelevant details] Recall - create & improve detailed, visual mnemonics, happens after each paragraph, page, chapter Review - access what we've learned, try, & connect it to previous knowledge, perform spaced repetition [spend more time on this step]
Pre-reading: Surveying, Questioning
Survey: to investigate, examine, question, record information
"How can a quick skim actually improve our reading? First of all, pre-reading enhances our focus and motivation, eliminating drifting off and rereading. At the same time, it actually makes it easier for us to read at higher speeds when we do read. This effect is especially important for dense materials or mixed reading with lots of pictures, like textbooks. How many times have you read a textbook, only to get stuck on a side box in the margins? Typically, these side boxes are there to define terms you don't know or give you some important contextual explanation of a new concept. But breaking your focus in the middle of reading to study them is both slow and ineffective. By first pre-reading the text and any cutaways, we are able to investigate and examine the information we're about to learn"
"But not your normal type of skimming. Instead we're spending a couple of seconds per page, skimming at a speed of about five to eight times our current reading speed. We are not reading the text - or even trying to. Instead, we're looking for titles, subheadings, proper nouns, numbers, words, or anything that doesn't seem to fit in. When we pre-read, we gain an understanding of the structure of the text, and we build a sort of mental map. If there are "cutaways," or terms that jump out at us as unfamiliar, we stop our pre-reading and gain a better understanding before resuming....The Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, is once again very helpful here. In pre-reading, we're looking for that 20 percent of details that give us an 80 percent understanding of what we're going to be reading - or at least what the text is about. This means that when you actually read the text, all you have to do is fill in the rest of the details"
Questioning: Harness prior experience, demand a pressing need and immediate application. We need to understand how it connects to their existing knowledge. We need to be curious! Make a predictive assumption, then check to see if your prediction was right because as humans we like to be right [makes it less boring] Envision scenarios in which this could affect your life. Who are some people in your life with whom you could share it? Using this knowledge in your day-to-day life? Questions of perspective [generated from keywords, not actually reading a text]: What viewpoint do I anticipate the author taking? What viewpoint do I have going into reading this article? Where might the author be wrong? Where am I open to being persuaded on this topic? How could this material be improved? What would critics of this article likely say? Who might agree or disagree with what this article likely says? What would I expect to see in this text that I am not seeing at this speed?
Speed-reading is not about "photographing" a page per second or 5,000 wpm. Not possible
They say that comprehension starts to decline at 600 wpm
Average college-educated reader reads at 200
Speed-reading is possible at the 600-800 wpm range only
Complete overhaul to the way you think and learn
Speed-reading is like slouching because you must "remind" yourself to speed-read
Subvocalization can only do 400 wpm whereas the brain recognizes images in 0.013 seconds
"Because of the way we process language, research shows us that it's impossible to eliminate subvocalization entirely. We can, however, dramatically minimize it and learn to subvocalize only a small portion of the words we read. Doing so yields a great improvement to our ability to read quickly, albeit a very difficult one. In our programs, we call this "breaking the sound barrier," and just like getting up to Mach speeds, it's something you need to work up to"
Our eyes don't move in one fluid motion but in many, tiny, rapid movements
"Fixations" happens when eyes lock focus on something
"Saccades" are the fast movements from one fixation to another
"Saccadic masking/saccadic blindness"= brains shut off vision while eyes are in motion and stitch the pictures back together when settling on a new fixation
Normal reader makes one fixation per word, eight to ten fixations per line [more time in saccadic blindness]
Train oversells to make one to two fixations per line [less time in saccadic blindness]
"Fovea" = what is in very middle of focus
"parafovea" = blurry periphery of vision
Speedreaders can't "preview" another line
Hiding the text immediately after reader's fovea impacts reading speed and comprehension [readers clearly use info from more than just the fixated word for effective reading]
Can capture a line in 2-3 fictions [2-4 words per fixation]
Speed-readers center fixations on the second and second to last words of line
"Progressive overload" : training just at the cusp of your capability and adjusting as soon as comfortable at a certain level, so speed-read at speed you can barely comprehend, courses say to begin reading at 600 [really, just level up]
Cover what you've read with index card & use it to set pace based on the speed you want to go [could mean starting at 350 wpm, figure out how many seconds this is per page!] 50 seconds for average book
"In fact, when you're learning, it's a good idea to stop and "quiz" yourself on what you read. Stop at the end of a section or chapter and list out the details you have absorbed. Then, flip back through the book to see how you did. With time, your comprehension will improve, and you'll begin to feel that you're comprehending much more than you were before"
Speed-reading may take months of practice [but eventually will break the sound barrier and start to absorb speeds of up to 700 wpm]
Cross-pollination expands mind's ability to take in new info
Learning a diverse set of subjects develops a broader set of skills for learning
More anchor points of pre-existing knowledge to connect to [more crossover]
"Cross-pollination states that learning one subject will have significant, unforeseen benefits when learning another. This is not only a reason to learn as much as you can about as many things as you can; it's a strategy you can use to your own advantage. Want to become a better golfer? Put down the clubs and pick up a book on biomechanics, physics, or kinesiology. Want to be a better negotiator? Take a couple courses on body language, psychology, or mirror neurons. The examples are endless"
CROSS-POLLINATION:
Allows us to take advantage of our enthusiasm and passion for learning in real time [we don't have to suppress our passion for learning when it happens] Encourages us to jump within subjects [different material] because brains are forming complex neural networks of everything we know and understand about a subject and impossible to know if the method you are exposed to is what's going to "click" for you
BRUTE-FORCE LEARNING: Comes from Mattan Griffel He got the term from world of computer hacking: to attack from many different perspectives as possible to try and gain access [understanding in the context of learning] "What's more, as Mattan notes, brute force learning teaches us that it's okay not to understand something the first time we learn it. This itself has unforeseen benefits. As we already know, the more spaced repetition and over learning we do, the more likely we are to remember the information long term. Brute force learning, then, is also a way to overlain, without the monotony of rereading the same textbook or rewatching the same lecture. Overall, learning this way takes a lot of the pressure out of learning and prevents us from feeling "dumb" if we don't get it immediately"
BLOOM'S TAXONOMY: 1940's, Benjamin Bloom developed a hierarchy of learning Need illustration
Remember
Understand
Apply
Analyze
Evaluate
Create
"But how do we actually determine how far along we are in any given subject?....The answer, of course, is to test ourselves, in a variety of practical ways"
Commit to testing your skills of the piano, for example, by learning a friend's favorite song for their birthday? That's a pressing need!
"To teach is to learn twice over." - Joseph Joubert
Teaching others is an incredible motivator because we are compelled to improve own understanding and serve that person [pre-reading: imagining how you'd share the info with someone you know!]
FEYNMAN TECHNIQUE:
Pick a topic, write everything on a notebook page that you know of it [use illustrations!]. Add to page each time you learn something new
Pretend to teach topic [simplest terms!]
If stuck, go back to book. Revisit problem areas until it can be explained fully
Simplify, use analogies. Repeat.
"Not only does a quick, twenty-to-twenty-four minute nap help clear metabolic waste, it restores alertness better than even the strongest cup of coffee"
"When we use our brains intensively, metabolic waste causes those feelings of fogginess, pressure, and irritability that we all know too well. What most of us don't know is that our brains, unlike our muscles, are completely unable to clear this metabolic waste while we're awake"
The Pomodoro Technique: 25 minutes with a 5 minute break [repeat cycle 4x until longer break]