Smarts: Four things worth learning about learning {*style:<b>Read. Recall. Write. </b>*} Experiments show that the way most of us try to learn new material is inefficient. We read and reread a passage until we think we understand it. {*style:<b>Do it forward and backward </b>*}I usually hike through a forest preserve in a clockwise direction. {*style:<b>Test, Retest </b>*}People often study as subject until they can get 100% right on a test of their understanding of the subject. Even more generally, good intentions alone are not enough. {*style:<b>Get to the theory behind the fact </b>*}Many people have a self-imposed learning disability : They focus on "just the facts." Understanding the principle of compounding allows you to see that a very small change in the interest rate makes a huge difference over time and that when paying off a debt or saving money, a small change in the amount you add or subtract each month makes an enormous difference - pennies - in how quickly you reach your goal.
Simple Ways To Study Better Knowledge is the essence of smart thinking. No matter how much raw intelligence you have, you are not going to succeed at solving complex problems without knowing a lot. That's why we spend the first 20 (or more) years of our lives in school. Robert Bjork and fellow PT blogger Nate Kornell have explored some of the study habits of college students in a 2007 paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review . Of course, guidelines from memory research come from studies in idealized circumstances. To address this question, Marissa Hartwig and John Dunlosky related the study habits of college students to their grade point average (GPA) in a 2012 paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review . The students with the highest GPA were more likely to study by testing themselves than the students with lower GPAs. All college students tend to focus their study on upcoming assignments. Finally, the time of day that students study also matters.
Surviving Tough Times Dick Marcinko, author of and other books about the Navy Seals and related topics, says that when he is looking for tough men for his units, he looks for warthogs, not gazelles. A gazelle is fast, lovely, and elegant. Warthogs are ugly and slow. To Marcencko, a gazelle is someone who does things effortlessly and well. They're smart and talented. Because they've never to dig deep, they don't know how to do it. To get into Seal Team 6, you go through days of grueling, hard grunt labor. The Navy Seals swim - one of their primary missions is underwater reconnaissance They got to one point in the testing where the men were supposed to grab two buckets full of rocks and swim across the pool with them. Some of them did - those guys made the team. One guy grabbed the buckets, jumped in the pool, and started running. The drill instructor snarled at him in disgust: "What the f**k is wrong with you a*****e?!" "I can't swim!" He made the team. That's what warthogs have: grit. Those kids are warthogs.
Introduction to accelerated learning: 3. Review and recall Learning cannot take place without memory, and we expect our students to be able to process, synthesise and recall a vast amount of information every day. There are, however, some simple strategies that we can employ to help them to do this. Firstly consider the natural concentration span. A rough guide is that concentration span in minutes is equivalent to chronological age in years, +/− 2 minutes. That means that even our most attentive 18 year olds need a short concentration break every 15–20 minutes. So when planning lessons, think about providing a brief break or change of focus or activity every 15 minutes or so. Beginnings and endings of lessons are vital times in terms of review and recall. Reviewing information is also vitally important for longer-term recall. Review a lesson you have recently taught which involved a long activity.
Think You Know How To Study? Think Again Meat Eaters Downplay Animal Minds The decision about whether to eat meat has a moral dimension to it. The animals that we use for food are complex creatures. Deciding to eat them means accepting that they will be killed so that you can eat them. That is not to say, of course, that people grapple with this decision at every meal, but in some way everyone has to make some decision about whether to eat animals. And before I go any further with this discussion, I should mention that I have been a vegetarian for about 10 years now for a combination of economic, health, and moral reasons. An interesting question about eating meat involves how people grapple with the issue that many animals people eat are reasonably intelligent creatures. In one simple study, the researchers asked (meat-eating) participants to rate how willing they were to eat a variety of animals ranging from houseflies, to fish, to chicken to elephants to gorillas. It isn't just thinking about animals being used for food, though.
10 Tips to Study Smart and Save Time I recently got my marks back from University. My grade point average was a 4.2 out of a possible 4.5, resting between an A and a perfect A+. In itself, this isn’t an incredible achievement. Is it just natural talent? This strategy of organization I label holistic learning. Learning is a process similar to building a house. You are fed building supplies, bricks, mortar and glass. Memorization – Instead of building anything you simply stare at each brick for several minutes trying to record its position. There is nothing particularly wrong with either of these strategies, assuming they aren’t your entire strategy. Learning Holistically The alternative strategy is to focus on actually using the information you have to build something. Metaphor – Metaphors can allow you to quickly organize information by comparing a complex idea to a simple one.
Why Do Depressed People Lie in Bed? If you've personally suffered from depression or known someone who has, you know that when people are really depressed, they have a strong urge to stay in bed. Why do depressed people lie in bed? It isn't because of great snuggle time under the blankets. Beds are the location in the house most associated with inactivity A perfectly able-bodied person can't bring him or herself to rise out of bed. The intuitive answer is that a lack of motivation is to blame. The intuitive answer is okay as far as it goes. First, we have to detour to contemporary evolutionary psychology , which tells us that moods have a function: Moods help us pursue goals efficiently. These relationships between moods, goal, and effort hold for a variety of species. So this alternative theory turns the standard explanation on its head. Have you ever had difficulties getting out of bed? Write me with your experience at chartingthedepths@gmail.com
5 Education Hacks - How To Refuel Your Brain Without Any Excuses ← LMLRN How To Get A Degree Education, Learn A New Language, Teach Your Children Calculus, and Read Thousands of Books for Free Long gone are the days of Encarta Thesaurus and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia has all but obliterated the need for a hard copy of any information. The Internet has changed the face of education and the new generation are going through school with an unprecedented amount of information at their fingertips. There are so many reasons NOT to study such as: Price, Location and Time. We’re going to show you that there really are no excuses. No matter what you want to learn, there will be a source on the internet. 1. A degree education isn’t available to everyone for many reasons. Coursera: Coursera has partnered with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. 2. The Khan academy was started by donations and is now significantly backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google (See this video featuring Bill Gates).
You're Stronger than You Think Thank you for spending some time with me at my new Psychology Today blog! It's an honor to be here, and I hope I can contribute something to the wonderful community of bloggers here. While I plan to blog on various topics, one theme I hope to revisit on occasion during my stay here is the potential within each of us, the amazing things we human beings can do when we put our minds and hearts to it. So much you read these days seems to emphasize what we can't do rather than what we can . For instance, don't blame yourself that you can't (say) pass up those cookies, because you're evolved—or genetically predisposed, or trained by your upbringing—to crave them. Any or all of those things may be true, of course. Take procrastination , for example: people have devised many brilliant coping mechanisms and workarounds to cut down on procrastinating behavior. Every day people conquer addictions, quit bad habits, and stop engaging in destructive behavior—we can do amazing things, if we try .
How to Learn More and Study Less Photo by fatal Cleopatra Editor’s note: This is a guest post written by Scott Young. Every Monday is Productivity & Organization Day at Zen Habits.The title of this post sounds impossible right? My current GPA is a 4.2, which rests midway between an A and an A+. Place first in a three province wide chemistry test. I say all this not to boast about how great I am, because I feel my accomplishments are rather modest compared to many people I know. More studying time won’t help if the way you are studying is flawed to begin with. Holistic Learning Smart people don’t just learn better. Holistic learning is basically the opposite of rote memorization. Excessive studying shows you aren’t learning holistically. How to Boost Your Study Habits Holistic learning isn’t like a brainstorming technique or mind-mapping. But there are some tools that can help you shift your learning habits so they become more holistic: Visceralize – You’ve probably heard of visualizing, right? See also:
The 7 D’s of Relationship Destruction All of us sometimes engage in behaviors that make our partners uncomfortable. The actions listed below can tear your relationship apart and if they have become part of how you relate to each other, you will have significant problems sooner or later. It's important to avoid the following: 1. If you don't tell the whole truth as soon as possible, when your mate finds out, it could kill your relationship. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. When you puts chemicals into your body, it puts you on a different level than your partner and relating will be more difficult. Avoid these actions and you may actually find yourself living happily ever after. Dr.