Five books to teach you how to learn
Editors MakeRight.ru have chosen five powerful books that will pump memory, teach you how to work with large amounts of information, tell you about the principles of the brain, and much more.
“How to Read, Remember and Never Forget,” Mark Tigelaar
For several years, Mark Tigelaar studied learning processes – how people read, perceive and remember information. As a result, he created his own method, which is aimed at making it easier to work with a large amount of information.
Those who can work quickly and efficiently with a large amount of information and have a good understanding of it receive significant advantages in work and study. But the good news is, being able to read quickly and memorize well is not an innate talent, but a skill that can be trained and improved.
In short, here’s what the author advises to do:
Distribute work, reading and training in blocks;
Focus on one task at a time and don’t switch between tasks too often;
To learn to read faster, direct your gaze with a pen or finger;
Actively interact with the material: explain it to others, check yourself with the help of questions;
“Fill the void” – if during reading there are extraneous thoughts, it means that you are not reading fast enough;
While taking notes, take short notes using keywords and mind maps;
Consider each new piece of information as part of the big picture;
To better memorize, use absurd and ridiculous images, use imagination;
Review information that is already in your long-term memory.
“How to take smart notes”, writer and scientist Sonke Ahrens
Most people take notes in one way or another – we create to-do lists, write social media posts, write out quotes. We write a lot when we study, research, take notes of lectures and books, we take notes when we want to remember something or when we feel the need to collect our thoughts. Any intellectual test requires records.
Sonke Ahrens’s book teaches the illustrious and effective method of note-taking “Zettelkasten”, which translates from German as “file cabinet” or “filing cabinet”.
Several important note-taking principles from the author of the book.
One of the important principles is simplicity! Simplify processes and it will lead you to big results!
Another principle of the method is internal reward. In the process of work, you get pleasure not from external rewards, but from the realization of improving your thinking and improving your skills. External rewards are dangerous – they force you to fall into a vicious circle of short-term decisions. With Zettelkasten you become a fan of your work, you don’t have to come up with incentives to stay focused, it just happens.
Another principle of the system is the importance of writing. Written work is understood not as a task separated from other research processes, but as a part of the research itself, as a means of organizing thinking, memorization and research. Therefore, while learning to write, we simultaneously learn the research process.
The next principle is that you don’t start from scratch. The new intellectual effort builds on the intellectual work already done; you don’t start from scratch. When working with Zettelkasten, you proceed from what you know and what you are interested in. In the process of work, your knowledge increases, you move on to other topics, gain experience, improve understanding, find ideas for a narrower study. Also, this approach helps you to notice your bias and not fall into mental traps, you remain open to new things.
Remember, writer and neuroscientist Lisa Jenova
Memory problems affect everyone to one degree or another, including smart, talented and educated people. A person can remember thousands of decimal places in Pi, but forget about the wedding anniversary or the place where they parked their car. Another weakness of memory is associated with the inaccuracy of our memories, with their susceptibility to distortion and editing.
Liza Jenova is a renowned writer and neuroscientist.
Remember is Jenova’s first non-fiction work. In it, the author shares his knowledge of a neuroscientist about the principles of memory and tips for improving it, and also talks about why the normal work of memory requires forgetting.
A few short ideas from the book on how to improve your memory:
Pay attention to what you want to remember. Often times, remembering difficulties are not related to memory problems, but to attention and distraction problems.
Look for what you want to remember, meaning and meaning for you personally, listen to your emotions.
Feel free to write down what you want to remember. Prospective memory is very weak in all people, we constantly forget what we set out to do.
To activate episodic memory, change the environment, master new activities, keep a diary.
While mastering new information, do not just passively reread it, but test yourself, ask yourself questions.
Go back to what you learned from time to time. Memories can disappear without re-retrieval.
Don’t panic if you notice that your memory isn’t working the way you want it to, and you’re not remembering everything you want to remember — effective memorization requires forgetting. In addition, our working memory is very limited, without repetition we remember very little.
In the process of memorization, use visual images and master mnemonic techniques – they will help to more easily extract information from long-term memory.
To slow down age-related memory impairment, lead a healthy lifestyle and keep learning new things.
“Neurofitness”, neurosurgeon Rahul Jandial
Rahul Jandial is a practicing neurosurgeon, neurobiologist, renowned specialist in the field of medical and surgical methods of treating brain cancer.
In his delightful and incredibly useful book, the author set out to separate the science of the brain from myth and tell what is known with certainty about the brain today.
Rahul Jandial gives three simple tips on how to survive to old age and keep your sanity.
First. Education. Numerous studies show that education significantly reduces the risk of dementia in old age.
Second. Social connections. Communication has a stimulating effect on the brain.
Third. Physical activity. There are many studies that prove the effectiveness of exercise for brain health.
“The Unbreakable”, entrepreneur and author of books Nir Eyal
In her book The Uninterrupted, Nir Eyal addresses the issues of deteriorating ability to focus work, the impact of technology on a person and increasing dependence on it. Despite the fact that many books and articles have been written on these topics, Eyal’s book is notable for the fact that the author suggests first understanding the true reasons for our susceptibility to distractions, and then adopting the methods of neutralizing them.
According to the author, in the future there will be two types of people: those who allow others to control their attention, and those who can call themselves “inert.”
Nir Eyal’s approach involves changing thinking and replacing habitual reactions with new ones by rethinking the internal trigger.
This process consists of four steps:
Step 1: Track the negative emotion that precedes the distraction. Concentrate on this inner trigger.
Step 2. Record the internal trigger. It is good if you also write down the time when it originated.
Step 3. Study the negative sensation with the curiosity of the researcher. The basic principle is do not judge or blame yourself.
Step 4. Be very attentive during the threshold moments – the transition from one task to another during the day – from meeting to meeting, from task to task. In these empty times, we are especially vulnerable to distractions.
Our beliefs affect our actions, and our actions affect the perception of ourselves, our temperament. Remember, what we tell ourselves and how we present ourselves matters.
