I watched an Olivier Roland’s video and I learned good stuff.
I discovered that there were techniques to learn quickly and effectively based on science. These are things I didn’t learn at school and I think it’s the same for you.
The concept of the school system is to teach you how to memorize and use your new knowledge « at best » in new situations. It means that the school prepares you « at best » for your life. In fact, you prepared to have the minimum in your life.
You can spend 20 years or more in school and the school never teach you to learn. In fact, you only memorize for your exams.
it’s true that school can’t do everything so if the school doesn’t teach us to learn, we’ll learn that elsewhere. Here are some simple tips and tricks to learn effectively. These are things that help you improve your ability to learn to have more success in your life.
There are several universal skills you need to train to have an excellent learning ability :
Long-term memory
Learning how to properly memorize things you need or want to learn allows you to memorize more easily and for longer. Having an elephant memory is really handy.
Working memory
Working memory is where you download the element of your long-term memory to process them.
Ability to focus
Improving your ability to focus allows you to focus on something without being distracted. This improves your productivity and allows you to truly experience the present moment.
Will
Improve your will allows you to have the strength to reach your goals without self-sabotage. For example, you make a diet and your will allows you not to eat chocolate cake or you have a workout program and your will allows you not to play video games every days.
Motivation
Learning what motivates you and keeping this flame of motivation allows you to be more motivated than 80 % of people. Motivation means having more energy, more enthusiasm and more creativity in all that you do.
Know that there is good news. You can improve all these skills with tools and method in mode 20/80 (Pareto’s law).
Case study
In 2008, researchers from the University of Bern in Switzerland and the University of Michigan in the United States found something revolutionary. What they discovered is that it’s possible to significantly increase our fluid intelligence. Let’s make a comeback in the past. In 1970, psychologists Raymond Cattel and John L. Horn found a concept that accepted by the majority of psychologists. This concept is that our intelligence divided into 2 main categories : fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence.
Fluid intelligence is our raw intellect. This means that it’s our ability to think logically and solve problems in new situations.
Crystallized intelligence is our intelligence regarding our skills our knowledge and our experience.
Before 2008, researchers thought it was impossible to improve our fluid intelligence. These researchers believed that fluid intelligence was innate and that the crystallized intelligence was tied to what we learn.
In 2008, Dr Jaeggi and a researchers team created a software designed to train working memory and tested it on 70 people divided into 4 groups.
The groups used this software 20 minutes a day for 8 to 19 days. They passed an IQ test before training with the software and after training with the software. The results compared to 4 other groups that hadn’t used this software.
The results were extremely surprising. All the people who have used this software have had a better IQ test. Here is the detail of the test result :
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Fluid intelligence increased on average by 40 %.
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The increase of fluid intelligence is directly related to the time going on to train with this software. People who trained for 19 days had increased their fluid intelligence 4 times more than those who trained for 8 days.
This show us that we can train our working memory as we can train our physical strength and endurance by doing sport.
This is what this software does, it trains our working memory. We use our working memory to count, read, play chess, think and so on. We can train our working memory as a muscle.
This is the end of Part 1. In Part 2, we’ll see how to concretely improve our intelligence.
Share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.
-Steph