Accelerating Knowledge Acquisition: Strategies for Learning Faster
Mastering a new concept can take a lot of time and dedication, but what do you do if you need to learn something quickly? If you’re looking for the answer to this question, you’ve come to the right place! With the help of test prep expert Ted Dorsey, we’ve compiled a list of tips to help you learn things faster, whether you need to cram for a test or just want to speed up your learning process in general. Learning how to learn is one of those meta skills that nobody ever really teaches us. For example, when I was in med school, I spent some time learning how to learn, which meant I could study more efficiently. These days, even though I don’t have to sit exams, learning is still a huge part of my life. I’m trying to get better at making videos, learn how to write better articles, and create better systems for managing my team. So, in this article, I wanted to share nine evidence-based tips that I’ve found really helpful. Learning quickly gives you a great competitive edge for personal and professional development. Learning aids in acquiring critical thinking skills and discovering numerous ways in which we can relate with people from different cultures. It is the only way to deal with the continuous change in our life so that we can move forward with ease. And as science proves, there are five ways that help you learn and remember new knowledge faster.
The Foundation of Effective Learning: Preparation and Mindset
Before diving into specific techniques, it's crucial to establish a strong foundation. This begins with understanding the meta-learning behind what you're going to learn. This is a quote that’s attributed to Abraham Lincoln, and he’s talking about the power of preparation. Let’s say we’re trying to learn something, like the guitar or a new sport. We should spend a decent amount of time figuring out the meta-learning behind what we’re actually going to learn before we do anything else. For example, when I was learning how to play the piano by ear, I spent a decent amount of time on the ‘Piano Learning’ subreddit, where I could read loads of interesting posts about how to play by ear. If you’re interested in learning how to learn in a study-related context, I’d highly recommend you read the book “Make It Stick” - it’s brilliant.
Furthermore, adopting a growth mindset is paramount. Understanding that you are going to make mistakes and be pretty bad until you have mastered what you are learning is called having a growth mindset and is about not being afraid to fail. When testing ourselves and practising, getting instant feedback is vital for effective learning. This immediate feedback loop means you can improve quickly. If you are studying for an exam and doing practice questions, whether you get a question right or wrong, you will want to see an explanation and understand how you can improve. If you are learning a new skill, having a tutor or coach critique your technique and provide you with ways to improve that you can put into practice immediately is one of the fastest ways to improve. When first learning CrossFit, I had literally no clue about gymnastics and Olympic weight-lifting technique, and having a coach and trainer was vital to correct my form straight away and encourage and critique what I was doing in an instant feedback loop that kept me focused. Despite this, it can be difficult to hear that we are not good at something, and if feedback isn't provided in a constructive and meaningful manner, it can be a knock to the ego. This is especially true at the start of the learning journey where encouragement can help you to stay motivated and excite you about learning more, while criticism can put you off. If you don't have a coach or learning partner, you can encourage yourself by celebrating small wins and rewarding yourself for hitting learning goals.
Active Engagement Strategies for Deeper Understanding
Passive learning is tempting, but active engagement is key to faster acquisition. By fully focusing on the thing we’re learning, our brains are able to pick things up much faster. The first is the five-minute rule. The idea is that if we want to do something and we’re finding it difficult to start, the five-minute rule tells us to just work on the thing for 5 minutes. Then, after five minutes, we’re allowed to stop. We don’t have to continue if we don’t want to. But, more often than not, I find that if I’ve already started doing something, I do actually want to continue. The second ‘crutch’ I found useful is to chuck my phone away. I know it sounds simple, but we’re so glued to our phones these days that by tossing your phone on the floor or leaving it in the kitchen, we can remove a key point of distraction and force ourselves to focus, free from distraction.
A core principle is to practice retrieval, also known as active recall. The idea behind active recall (or retrieval practice) is that we don’t learn by trying to put stuff into our brains. Unfortunately, this word ‘testing’ has many negative connotations. Because we think of testing as a school thing where we’re going to receive a grade and get judged. That’s why when learning to play the guitar, there’s only so many tutorials we can watch before we actually have to start putting it into practice. The point is, we have to test ourselves so our brain has a chance to work to retrieve the information. In the field of learning, there’s this concept called ‘desirable difficulty’. For example, if I were trying to play tennis against Roger Federer, it would be way too hard. But, equally, if I were playing tennis against a 10-year-old who hasn’t played tennis before, it wouldn’t be much fun. I probably wouldn’t learn anything. The difficulty is at two different extremes. Ideally, I want to be playing tennis against someone who’s at my level or just a little bit better than me. That’s the arena in which I’ll learn best. And, that’s why having a coach is a good idea. A good coach can moderate their game to be at my level. So, whatever it is we’re trying to learn, try to apply this concept and make things only slightly harder than our current level. After all, learning isn’t supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to be a little uncomfortable.
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When you’re learning something, it’s tempting to do it passively. But, by fully focusing on the thing we’re learning, our brains are able to pick things up much faster. The first is the five minute rule. The idea is that if we want to do something and we’re finding it difficult to start, the five minute rule tells us to just work on the thing for 5 minutes. Then, after five minutes, we’re allowed to stop. We don’t have to continue if we don’t want to. But, more often than not, I find that if I’ve already started doing something, I do actually want to continue. The second ‘crutch’ I found useful is to chuck my phone away. I know it sounds simple but we’re so glued to our phones these days that by tossing your phone on the floor or leaving it in the kitchen, we can remove a key point of distraction and force ourselves to focus, free from distraction.
If you’re in a class, listen carefully to the lecture and write down the keywords and phrases you hear, and if you’re learning something online or from a book, rewrite what you read in your own words. Oral repetition cuts down on learning and review time because the information is more ingrained in your brain the first time you learn it. After you’ve read through or practiced something, test your memory by reciting everything you just learned. If you need to remember keywords or phrases, try writing down their definitions without looking them up. If you have flashcards, use them to test your knowledge. Make a note of what you have trouble remembering so you can go back and practice it some more. For example, if you’re testing yourself on a textbook chapter, summarize everything that happened in your own words.
Immersion and Practical Application
There’s a great book called Ultralearning by Scott Young, where he talks about his journey learning different languages in three months. His takeaway from this experience was that language learning is about immersion. For example, when I was learning how to become a close-up magician, a lot of my early practice was in front of my webcam or a mirror. But, my webcam/mirror wasn’t really the arena where I’d be performing my magic. So I made it a point to try to perform my magic for real people as much as possible. Eventually I got pretty good at performing in front of friends and family, so I started reaching out to do paid gigs. Although, I probably wasn’t good enough to get paid for the magic I knew at the time. But, that’s not the point. My advice: step out of your comfort zone and fully immerse yourself in the thing you want to learn.
When doing practice problems, promptly check to see if your answers are correct. Use worksheets that provide answer keys for instant feedback. Discuss answers with a classmate or find explanations online. As you study the information yourself, try to think about how you would teach it to a friend. What main points would you emphasize? What key facts, definitions, and concepts would you include? If you don’t have a friend to do this with, that’s okay! Dorsey explains that mnemonic devices help you keep new facts in your mind. If you're trying to learn coordinating conjunctions, for example, Dorsey says that the FANBOYS acronym (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) would be helpful. “The more you practice with [mnemonic devices], the more second nature they become. Mnemonic devices can be sentences, too. “Find a way to make it apply to you,” suggests Dorsey. For example, if you’re reading a book for English class, try relating some of the plot points to things that have happened in your life. Assess whether any of the characters remind you of friends or family members, and then connect them in your mind.
Optimizing Your Study Environment and Habits
Doing the exact same thing during every study session can get a bit dull, and if you’re not focused and engaged, you won’t learn the information quickly. Instead, try out new study methods on a regular basis to keep things fresh. Your brain gets tired when you overload it with information, so breaks are essential to keep your study sessions productive. Try to give yourself a few minutes every hour to rest and step away from what you’re learning. Try the Pomodoro technique. Stay focused and work hard for a 25-minute chunk of time, then take a 5-minute break. Reader Poll: We asked 814 wikiHow readers if they think taking breaks increases productivity, and 69% of them said yes. When it’s time for you to study, get in the zone, eliminate distractions, and focus on only one subject at a time. For example, if you find yourself thinking, “This is way too much to learn.”
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To remember what you have learned, it is crucial to periodically shut down. A study in the journal Psychological Science shows that sleeping in between classes helps to better remember the material. In an experiment conducted in France, participants were taught to translate 16 French words into Swahili over two sessions. Participants from one group studied in the morning and then in the evening of the same day, and participants from the second group studied in the evening, then slept, and in the morning they came to the second lesson.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University say that as you learn new skills, it's helpful to change the way you train them. In their experiment, participants had to master a task on a computer. Those students who used a different, modified method during the second session ended up performing better than those who used the same method a second time.
Addressing Difficulties and Maintaining Momentum
What if I'm having trouble learning a difficult subject? Ronitte Libedinsky is an Academic Tutor and the Founder of Brighter Minds SF, a San Francisco, California based company that provides one-on-one and small group tutoring. Specializing in tutoring mathematics (pre-algebra, algebra I/II, geometry, pre-calculus, calculus) and science (chemistry, biology), Ronitte has over 12 years of experience tutoring to middle school, high school, and college students. She also tutors in SSAT, Terra Nova, HSPT, SAT, and ACT test prep. Try to remember that learning is a process, and no one is born understanding difficult subjects, like math. It's okay if you're not fast at it. You can take the time to learn at your own pace. Try to focus on small goals and the progress you've made so far instead of getting overwhelmed because you don't know everything yet.
How can I study without being distracted? Put your phone away, study in a quiet place away from other people and challenge yourself to stay focused on your studies for just a half hour at a time. Take a five-minute break after a half hour to recharge, then get back to studying. I understand everything in class, but then I forget everything when I get home. Take good notes in class. Never start a chat or group conversation just before starting your studies. Avoid any sort of distraction during studying hours. The advice in this section is based on the lived experiences of wikiHow readers like you. Decide what you struggle with the most and spend more time on that. If you know you excel in one subject, allocate less time on that to maximize your energy for others.
At Med School I had a few subjects that I was pretty weak in. Like neurology. If you’d asked me what Guillain-Barré syndrome is, I’d have absolutely no idea. When it came to studying efficiently for my exams, I knew that I should probably focus on those areas that I don’t know that well. I found this really useful because whenever we’re learning or studying anything, it’s very tempting to just do the stuff that seems familiar to us. If we’re studying for an exam, it’s very tempting to open the book to page one even though we already know that stuff. But, learning only really happens when we’re trying to fix our weaknesses and there’s a decent level of difficulty. So, if we want to maximise our learning and learn faster, we really want to focus on those areas of weakness.
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Leveraging Tools and Techniques for Retention
In the world of studying, there’s this thing called ‘active recall’, which applies to learning anything. I have a video about this. The idea behind active recall (or retrieval practice) is that we don’t learn by trying to put stuff into our brains. Unfortunately, this word ‘testing’ has many negative connotations. Because we think of testing as a school thing where we’re going to receive a grade and get judged. That’s why when learning to play the guitar there’s only so many tutorials we can watch before we actually have to start putting it into practice. The point is, we have to test ourselves so our brain has a chance to work to retrieve the information.
Feedback is one of those words that can cause instant anxiety. Especially if we’re starting something and we’re not too sure of our own abilities. Again, this is why having a coach for stuff is actually really, really helpful. Ever since getting a personal trainer, everything in the gym has improved for me: my biceps have gotten bigger and I’m one-step closer to becoming a Gymshark athlete. Before I’d probably train once in a blue moon and occasionally ask a friend to check my form. It wasn’t a particularly tight feedback loop.
When we’re learning something we actually want to try and learn it in more depth than we necessarily need to. For example, most of being a doctor is just following guidelines and a precise set of rules for everything we do. For some doctors, they think that as long as they memorise these guidelines they’re doing their job well. In my experience, it’s hard to say that camp two is objectively a better doctor than camp one. The concept of ‘overlearning’ also applies to learning the guitar. It’s very easy for us to learn a song by following a tutorial. However, the problem with following a tutorial is we’re just training our fingers to go to a particular position. So, although the end result is the same and we play the same thing, we have a deeper appreciation as to why things are the way they are.
Basically, there’s this concept called the ‘forgetting curve’ that was discovered by a guy called Hermann Ebbinghaus in the 1800’s. And the forgetting curve tells us that when we learn something - whether it’s a fact, a skill, or whatever - we’re going to forget it after a certain period of time. So, in order to retain that information, we have to keep testing ourselves on the thing for our brain to absorb the information fully. It’s like with our muscles: if we don’t use our muscles, they’ll atrophy and get smaller. Thankfully we can combat the forgetting curve by using this concept of spaced repetition. The idea is that we need to learn the same thing at spaced intervals if we want to encode it into our long-term memory. For example, if I were learning a song on the guitar, I’d practice it on day one, the following day, one month later, and six months later. And by spacing out the practice of this thing, eventually it’s going to become muscle memory. If you want to use spaced repetition in your own learning - especially fact-based learning - there are some great apps you can use. I personally enjoy Anki. It’s an incredible app that completely revolutionised my experience of med school.
We often tell ourselves that we can’t teach someone something because we’re not an expert at it. But, for me, that’s not true. In fact, C.S Lewis talks about this thing called ‘the curse of knowledge’, which is that when we’re trying to learn something, we often don’t learn best from experts. And, certainly for me, I found in med school that my favourite revision sessions or lectures were given by medical students in the year above me rather than the world-class, Nobel prize winning professor. When I started teaching medical students, and teaching guitar/piano, and teaching YouTube with my part-time YouTuber academy, I found that it really solidified my own knowledge and understanding of that thing. So, as a general policy, whenever I’m learning something I’ll try to document the process. Learning how to learn is an incredible skill and spending just a couple of hours to understand these concepts can 10X your learning. If you enjoyed this article, I’d highly recommend you check out the books Make It Stick and Ultralearning.
To learn faster, try making a mind map of the information you're studying by laying your flashcards, pictures, and notes out on the floor and connecting similar concepts and themes together with string. Then, study the information that way so you can easily picture your map in the future when you need to recall the topic. You can also learn faster by reviewing things you learn as soon as possible after you learn them. For example, instead of waiting until 3 nights before a test to study, try reviewing the topic right after you learn it so it sticks in your mind.
Lifestyle Adjustments for Enhanced Learning
Studies have shown that you have improved memory after doing aerobic exercises. It also helps increase your body’s production of a protein that supports how your brain cells grow and function.
