Note: This article is from blogger Aytekin Tank, who shares his experience with memory enhancement.
For a long time, this was the prevailing view of our ability to learn; that is, when we are young, our brains have excellent learning abilities, but as we age, it becomes difficult for us to acquire new skills; in other words, you cannot teach an old person as you teach a young child.
However, according to recent research, the confidence of older people plays an essential role in their ability to learn, so if we stop thinking that our brain's flexibility is gradually decreasing, we may actually be able to learn something. In today's knowledge economy, the ability to quickly acquire new skills is increasingly important, which is critical for older entrepreneurs looking to enhance their capabilities and the capabilities of their companies to compete.
As CEO, I read industry posts and blogs daily, as well as at least one factbook and I hire global consultants who keep our employees abreast of the latest tools and strategies. We have been able to make significant progress in areas where our competencies need support, such as enhancing our site's ability to appear in the first results within search engines.
But commitment to learning is just the beginning. Learning can be significantly aided by metacognitive activities like planning, observing, and reflecting on one's thinking. After considering the above, I wanted to share some tried-and-true methods with you that have been supported by science so that you can keep learning.
Simple techniques to remember everything you learn
1. Spaced Frequency
Whether learning to play the saxophone or studying a foreign language, repeating the musical scale or reviewing the vocabulary is the only way to master it. Practice or repetition leads to mastery, and there is a scientific explanation.
Repetition increases the fatty layer of myelin around the axons that connect the neurons in our brain, and the more marrow material, the faster our neurons work, and thus our ability to learn improves.
It turns out that time spacing between repetitions is more effective than having them all in one session.
In Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language and Never Forget It, author Gabriel Wyner explains:
"Over four months, for 30 minutes a day, you can learn and memorize 3,600 cards with 90–95% accuracy, and these cards can teach you the alphabet, vocabulary, grammar, and even pronunciation without getting bored. These cards represent a useful and fun challenge."
So not only do we increase our ability to memorize, but we also avoid dwindling enthusiasm or boredom.
Create a manageable study schedule before using this learning strategy, and then pick an effective system for storing and organizing information. We used to use cards, but now we have practical software options like Evernote and SuperMemo.
Don't forget to test yourself periodically, as monitoring progress indicates an increase in your motivation to continue.
2. Make time for meditation
Meditation is crucial for learning and improving performance at work. Harvard professor Francesca Gino and her colleagues found that employees who spend 15 minutes at the end of the day thinking about lessons learned from their experiences get a 23% better education ten days later than those who don't.
In addition to strengthening what we already know, meditation helps us find new ideas. I used to come up with the best product ideas when I was not at work, and I used to find the best solution to problems that bothered me for weeks during morning exercise or while walking after lunch, as the psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman explains, "Our most creative ideas do not usually appear when we focus on the problem with our full awareness.
Great ideas come from interacting with others, gaining knowledge, and allowing the mind to connect disparate events to analyze a problem effectively." Kaufman found that 72% of people form creative ideas in the shower, as it provides a suitable environment for thinking.
Our brains make links between the information we have already obtained, which is why I encourage my employees to take advantage of their vacation days. They return to the office after enjoying the holiday, full of energy and vitality.
3. Simplify the idea to remember
Teachers agree that the best way to learn something is to explain it to someone else. For this reason, the first step in the learning formula developed by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman is to pretend that you are teaching the topic to a child or, at least, to apply the following steps to explain a subject to a child.
"If you can't explain something in simple terms, it means you don't understand the idea yet," Feynman once said. You can quickly determine if you truly understand a subject or have knowledge gaps in it if you can explain it smoothly.
Feynman's method advises you to return to the topic's source and relearn what is lacking when you find those gaps.
When my wife was pregnant with our second child, I decided to take (mostly) three months of continuous paternity leave and to do so, I had to delegate a large part of my responsibilities to my employees.
Months ago, I started guiding my colleagues through each task step by step, and I quickly realized that by teaching them how to do my job, I was strengthening my skills in addition to learning about the areas I needed to improve.
4. Transfer of learning
Canadian entrepreneur Elon Musk has an extraordinary learning ability, from software and energy to transportation and aviation, and is the CEO of a space exploration technology company.
He is a knowledgeable person and an expert in various fields, but in fact, Musk's wide range of knowledge is an integral part of his ability to learn because taking what we study in one area and applying it to another helps deepen our understanding of both, a technique called learning transfer.
According to Musk's interviews, this technique is followed by a two-step process: First, dividing knowledge into its core principles, and second, reconstructing it in a new field. If you want to improve as a cook while studying Italian, you can easily enroll in cooking classes taught in Italian.
This method improves your understanding of the language and your ability to cook simultaneously. Your ability to innovate increases when you are knowledgeable.
for example, the thorns that stuck in the pants of the Swiss entrepreneur and engineer George de Mestral and covered his dog's fur made him invent the idea of designing the Velcro adhesive, which is the famous industrial stabilizer that is widely used in daily life, where it enters into the manufacture of clothes, shoes, bags, and many others. It consists of two pieces: one with many hooks, and the other piece consists of cilia and loops, which stick together just by pressing them, and they smoothly disengage.
Entrepreneurs and their organizations need continuous learning to benefit and keep up with development. On a personal level, I believe this approach enriches daily life. Just believe in yourself, and you'll see that you can pick up new skills at any age.
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