How to Learn Without Memorizing

Is Your Brain a File Drawer or a Web of Ideas?

• Many people try to learn as if there brain were a computer: by memorizing the information in a sequence.
• It makes more sense to learn the same way your brain is designed, by connecting ideas together into a web.

Creative Learning

What I’d like to advocate in this article is a more creative, spontaneous form of learning.

There are lots of ways you can learn creatively:

1. Through Metaphor. Connect ideas together by relating them to something you already understand.
2. Through Diagram. Create diagrams showing the relationships between ideas.
3. Through “Like, But…”. Link ideas is to relate one piece of information to another, noting their difference.
4. Through Visualization. Make ideas more concrete by imagining them in a visual format.
5. Can You Explain it To a Five-Year Old? Connect ideas together. A difficult idea, to something you understand easily.
6. Childhood Creativity Meets University Courses. Use the imagination you had when you were five. Link weird and bizarre combinations of ideas together.
7. With a Group. Most memorization is a solo pursuit. But connecting ideas doesn’t have to be.

The 70% Rule for Self-Education

• This means I try to achieve 70% understanding and memory of a set of ideas before moving forward.
• This approach works because it takes as much effort to learn the last 30% as it does to the first 70%.

Original post created by Think Simple Now and Summarised by Craig. (Read Original)