We are always learning new things daily to live and thrive in this world, whether it’s a smartphone for my grandma, a foreign language, or a new tool at work. No doubt, organizations are always preparing their employees to maximize productivity.
Study shows that 67% of U.S employees have taken a new course to boost their skills to stay in demand. Employees need to do upskill or reskill for many reasons: more opportunities, different career paths, side projects, etc.
1- Don’t take notes with a laptop
The study shows that handwriting your notes means you’ll learn more. Taking notes by hand improves both comprehensions because you’re forced to put things in your own words to keep up.
Which means you’ll remember what you heard a lot longer.
As a result, you’ll remember a lot more. Perhaps this is one of the main reasons why so many successful people keep handwritten journals.
2- Teach other people or just pretend
Teaching is the best way to learn anything faster. Many studies show that teaching improves teachers’ understanding of the material.
When teaching someone else, you have to retrieve what you studied to teach it properly. You don’t need to teach a group of people, and if a student is not available, just pretend someone is sitting next to you and start teaching the concept. Here is another great article to learn anything faster by Feynman.
Simply teaching your partner, family or friend will help you learn the material faster.
3- Multitasking
Say absolute no to multitasking. Research shows that effective multitasking is not possible; it’s actually detrimental to your mental health and productivity.
Fact: When you switch between two tasks, you break your focus.
Our brain is wired to avoid multitasking. Apparently, we are just switching from one task to another. Several studies show that a single task at hand will improve your learning experience.
4- You need a tomato
Yes, you need a big tomato to learn faster.
I meant to say use the Pomodoro technique to learn anything faster. I use this online tool Pomofocus, and it’s absolutely free. You can adjust according to your attention span.
Anything less than 30 is just not enough, but anything more than 50 is too much information for your brain to take in at one time. — Ellen Dunn (Learning Strategist)
5- Fight procrastination with the 2-minute rule
I adopted this 2-minute rule a couple of years ago to do almost anything in life. It’s pretty simple if the task is going to take less than 2 minutes, do it right now.
I kind of use this rule for learning or reading purposes, next time you feel procrastination, make a deal with yourself and start the task for only 2-minutes. After 2-minutes, you can stop, but you just need that 120 seconds kick to keep going.
Treat the 2-minutes rule as an ignition. It’s a simple trick to convince yourself, even if you know that you’re about to trick yourself.
Conclusion
To wrap up, let’s review the 5 lessons I shared above:
- I prefer to take notes with pen and paper to learn faster and better
- The best way to learn anything faster is to teach others: partner, friends, kids
- Multitasking is bad for your mental health and productivity.
- Get a tomato (Pomodoro technique)
- Try to adopt the 2-minute rule
Keep learning, and thank you for reading!
