Critical Listening: How to Quickly Understand Difficult Things

this was me five years ago I'd just started medical school I spent most of my days going from lectures to work to staying up until late trying to learn more information than I'd ever imagined and this is when I realized something uncomfortable about myself the more I disliked a lecturer the better I became at that topic now at first I thought I was overcompensating for what I believe to be terrible teaching but then I realized it wasn't about them at all I was behaving very differently in these lessons you see if I loved a subject and a lecturer I would be a perfect student I'd be bringing my iPad and making notes in the class having revision schedules and revision notes but if I disliked a lecturer I was a brat I would sit down sometimes with my legs and my arms crossed and criticize almost everything that they were saying and yeah it turned out that those were the subjects that in the end I understood the best learned the fastest and performed the best in it seemingly made no sense and it took me years to realize that there was a specific mindset and perspective that I I now use intentionally all the time in order to learn things faster and better and focus more I call this critical listening and I will be explaining it and breaking it down in detail today using the medical topic of glomerulonephritis as an example because lots of you agreed it's a difficult topic to learn and you can of course use this for anything else but I'm just going to jump straight into it very first step to critical listening and ideal learning for me is to have a very very focused mindset and I know this sounds super vague I find it really annoying when people tell me to focus it's like telling me to be smarter or to be faster unless there's specific guidance or advice I don't find this helpful and I'm going to explain how I do it in a way that works for me every single time it will sound quite cringe and uncomfortable but it it genuinely helps so I'm not going to apologize for it basically if I'm sat in a lecture thinking that someone is there to teach me they might as well be dancing around naked as they explain things and I still wouldn't be able to focus on them but what I think of when I'm in a lecture is not that I am a student and that is the teacher and I'm being taught things what I think is that I have a job and in front of me I have an expert who's talking about something and I need to translate and be critical of everything that they are saying and process it in a way that I can give it to someone who is an idiot does not care about the subject and does not know anything about this object myself so in this instance I am not the student in this game in my mind I am the critical translator who takes and processes this information on top of this I want to be as mean as I can in my mind I want to tap into that energy that I have and you might relate to this for someone who I completely dislike if there's someone that you find really annoying and they're saying something I don't know if you've been in that situation where you are hanging on to every single word because you are waiting for them to slip up and say something that doesn't make sense to prove in your mind that they don't know what they're talking about this is how I perceive what the lecturer is saying I am assuming that they might be confused I know that they're the experts but I'm just going to check is what they're saying does it make sense is it consistent does it tie in with everything else even though I cannot check the facts of what they are saying because I don't know the topic they know what they're talking about I can check their logic if they are explaining things properly if they are leaving any gaps or any issues within the knowledge and this is what I am going to be focusing on in this way I'm fully critical and I'm fully switched on and I am assessing their ability to explain and to teach and two things I know this sounds really really mean but for perspective I am one of 400 students in this room just sitting there they don't see me they don't know who I am and this is all just happening in my head as a way to motivate myself it's not personal against the lecturer I'm sure they're absolutely great and the second thing is criticism is such a good way to learn because for example sample if I describe assessing something paying attention to it comparing with how it fits within your own framework of the world and how the world works and therefore giving feedback on what the issues where they are and how it works is that criticizing something or is it learning something it's very very similar so I want to lean into this because it gives me more motivation as soon as I've switched myself on in this perspective where I'm sitting down thinking fine you have me here for an hour show me what you can teach and say about this topic and I'll see how good you are at doing it using this sort of mindset I can then get into the learning itself so there are three main steps that I do every time with critical listening the first one is to avoid Whiplash and this is so so important what I call Whiplash is the fact that a lot of lecturers will just jump into a topic straight in no warning just completely assume that you know what they're talking about and what the context is and what the subject is and every next sentence that they're saying you're just sat there being beaten around by information going oh my God what what is happening where am I and it takes so long to orientate myself so what I do every time when a lecture starts either while the lecturer is just like fumbling about with the slides or the presentation or the computer or even in the few seconds when I'm sitting down I am thinking what is the context here and I want to find as many associations as possible in my mind already so using glamorlonephritis as an example even as a first year medical student I would have gone glamorous that's a part of a kidney nephritis nephron that's like again kidney so the glomeris of the kidney and itis is inflammation so there's these three things so I'll think kidney blood pressure edema I'll think urine I'll think itis infection immune system being immunocompromised not using contrast in x-rays so I find all the words that can come up and try to predict almost what are the elements of the thing that we are going to be talking about and this is so important because it kind of primes my brain already for where this new information will set rather than kind of just connecting it to absolutely nothing in my head as a fourth year medical student I'll probably come up with a lot more things when I'm thinking of glamorada nephritis but even in the very first instance there will be things there even if you're completely not a medic and I say you're going to watch electronic nephritis you could probably get started with the fact that oh my next door neighbor's daughter she's a doctor that's one Association or that time you went to hospital or like medication or a cannula or an IV line these are things that can come to mind and they will be helpful if you identify them in the very first instance if I had a lecture on astrophysics I'd probably think Matthew McConaughey and that would be something more than thinking from absolutely nowhere second step is where the active work actually begins and the lecture starts talking so at this point what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to separate the logical backbone of what they're saying from the fluff of what they are saying so as soon as they start explaining something that I realize is important for example in this case I want to understand what the hell glamorous nephritis is this is the first tab that I'm opening in my mind what is this thing what does it mean how does it work and in this case I am going to be waiting within everything that they are saying for them to answer this question and every time that they prompt new things are important that opens a new tab in my mind so when I'm separating the answer to my open question with the fluff the fluff is going to be the things that in your mind you're just going yeah yeah just get to the point like when you're listening to a lawyer or when you're listening to a politician and they're just adding words to the question but you're thinking you're not I just want the points here the main backbone of what you're saying so let's say the lecture in this case starts abstaining glomerular nephritis and he starts talking about best membrane the capillary epithelium I'm like I don't care what's actually happening so here I'm like skip skip in my mind I'm hearing it but I I have this question where's my answer finally he mentioned something relevant which is staff and strap which are infection and that could be a cause for glamaronephritis this is relevant information so this is my open tab of Rockland Maryland is and once I've heard staff and strap I am going to say glamorous nephritis is an information of the kidney caused by a bacterium so this is my hypothesis if you know about glamoronephritis this is not true but this is all the information I have until now and this is the answer that I am giving myself it's very very important that as the lecture is continuing I have continuous hypotheses so I'm not just passively listening to what the lecturer is saying I'm jumping to conclusions immediately they say something I jump to a conclusion and when they disprove it with information in the future I change my conclusion this is a much more active process than waiting for them to finish because there's actually a lot that says that when people are speaking or when people are writing things they come up with conclusions at the end of everything that they are saying while when we are consuming information either reading or hearing it we and actually being intentional with it we are coming up with conclusions along the way this is a process called chunking and it's much more effective to do chunky also people like Minto have said that formulating conclusions about what you're reading while you're reading can be more effective in understanding the process that is going on so it helps me keep my attention and it helps me be active about what is being said by formulating conclusions as the lecture is continuing so in this case this is my hypothesis I'll keep this tab open and see if the lecturer says anything else that will disprove this and I'll just continue later in the lecture it's mentioned that things like lupus or other autoimmune conditions can also induce glomerular nephritis or be associated with it even without a previous infection so in this case this hypothesis that I made is now altered and I'm saying okay it's not just an infection it can also be caused by a malfunctioning of the autoimmune system and then I'm thinking oh okay what do I know about this and as the lecturer is potentially talking about something else or going into details that are not relevant to me immediately I am thinking autoimmune system self-attack is the IGA I've opened a new tab is the physiological mechanism of glomerular nephritis IGA and I keep this open in my mind these are the things that I sometimes will write down so if a lecturer has not immediately answered a question that has come up in this new tab chunking process in my brain these are the things I will be writing down and go IGA question mark and this is the notes that I'll be taking rather than specific information it's especially valuable if I come up with wrong conclusions because this means that I can adjust and change what I'm learning in a way that's much more effective so for example if I'm hearing this and I think people with an affected immune system so immunocompromised patients are patients with HIV must suffer less from this because their immune system is less likely to attack themselves for example and if this is provenated to be false one I'm more likely to remember is because it's not only new information but it's something that I made a mistake on and secondly it opens up a whole bunch of automatic questions as in I came to this conclusion what did I not understand along the way that didn't make sense that I need to adjust also day as I'm coming up with these conclusions and statements a lot of the things that the lecturer will say next will just make perfect sense to me even with a very basic familiarity with the topic mentioning things like issues with urine hematuria edema this is all something that I could have easily predicted if there was an issue with the kidney in the first case and as the lecture progresses I'm also predicting things in my mind what are the tests that I would run what do I think are the outcomes for these patients how would we cure these patients how would we follow up these patients what age groups are most likely to be effective these are questions that I think of automatically as soon as we're starting a lecture we're having a condition explained to us and these are things that I am a lot better at doing now obviously in my fourth year than I was in my first year because I do this in the spaces of fluff fluff is very hard to identify the earlier on you are in a subject because you just don't know what you should know and what you shouldn't know but this is a combination of what you are being taught and how much you need to memorize and learn and also how much you need to know about yourself for example I know I'm really bad with learning numbers and new words so when I'm in a lecture and I'm just being given like a list of tests or given a list of different conditions or a list of different definitions for something I won't even listen to this because I'm just not going to memorize It Anyway this is a space for me to process what I've just heard and predict what is coming up rather than focus on what is being said if suddenly they're saying this is the glamorative rotation rate that we expect for these patients and these are our guidelines I'm not listening I'm thinking of something else because I know I can study this when I need to for the exam this is not important what's important is me actually understanding what part of the immune system are involved what parts of the kidney are being damaged how these are being cured how do we measure them what would a histological slide of this look like these are the things I'm trying to predict and find them talk about later rather than is it 53 or 24 nobody cares about that so this is something that in the beginning is going to be hard but later as you progress you're kind of going to know what the exams will ask and not ask and what you're supposed to know and not supposed to know if you've just started a subject and it's the very very beginning I would keep things very very simple and make sure that when you end the lecture you know how to answer in the most basic sense what was being taught that day so that just the core backbone of the information even if you have no extra fluff on it that's absolutely fine a core genuine understanding that sits in the right place of your brain and connects to the other parts of information your perspective of the world is so invaluable and you'll be actually able to answer a lot on this topic and learn and build it up so much easier if you're more advanced and that subject is going to be a lot easier to open a lot more tabs at once this is also why I'm not writing during these lectures I'm just sat staring at the lecture and really thinking in my mind I have one two three three four five things I'm thinking in this case I might go what's going on nephritis what's nephrotic syndrome what's lymphatic syndrome what's the difference between them what part of the immune system is involved do I need to do dialysis when is dialysis indicated how do immunocompromised patients react to these sort of things how soon or how late after infection does this usually happen how does it present differently and in children and adults how is it treated differently in children and adults is there any individual things that are different for children that I'd seen these these are questions that would be coming up in my mind in a more advanced state but this is the level that you'll very easily get to if you keep doing this sort of process during the lecture itself the other benefit to this is that if you are writing down core logical questions and finding holes in the reasoning of the lecture because very often they're professionals so they're just used to this sort of stuff that's all they talk about is the kidney for example so they might miss out on explaining very essential things that as a second year third year fifth year medical student you might not know that well so when there's a hole when they make a jump and you just write that question down and go wait why does this part the kidney being affected lead automatically to this sort of effect on the body that could be a question that you can ask the lecturer later and because you have this question when you're doing revision you can only use the core logical questions that you had and this is much better recall than having recall on numbers or figures or guidelines or things that are much more easy to look up on you're always focused on the logic of the subject that you are studying in my first year where we had in-person lectures I would always walk up to my lecture after and ask them um the questions that I had written down and that just kind of resolved everything within that lesson so the lecture would be over and I had a perfect ish understanding most of the time of what we were talking about and that was 90 of my learning done I had to of course do all of my revision and all of my extra studying later but my learning was finished I understood the things I was talking about because I made sure that things connected that I knew what it was about and that made logical sense and I tried to never waste the lectures mostly because I had to work quite a bit alongside medical school so I did not have as much time so when I was in a lecturer I had to be there I made sure I made the best out of that time so the majority of my learning was an understanding was actually done then and this was super super valuable I would really recommend trying to do this process very easy to understand I think quite active and tiring to do but super super effective and this is something that I do not only with my lecturers but also what's happening in my personal life despite it probably being a really exhausting thing so a great resource to use instead is 80 000 hours which are completely free so it's firstly mind-blowing and secondly they're very kindly sponsoring this video so I would really really recommend them A bunch of people at 80 000 hours organization have come together and done this very critical thinking on what we are doing and the impact of our actions on our personal future and the world's future together in a group of endless resources that are absolutely invaluable if you are alive today and have a career today and are the kind of person that is interested in the reality of what we are doing and the direction that we are going again this is absolutely essential I think to stay in touch with as we progress there is an absolutely free guide that you can get with my link Down Below in the description that will discuss the impact of different careers and how they can affect your personal life your morals your ethics and future but also there is a great podcast that I would listen to the very recent one is on chat gbt and other sorts of AI and how they will impact our jobs and this is something that I've been reading also in another book recently so it's super super interesting I would really really recommend staying in touch with the progression and the ethics of our future and careers as we are going forward in life so there'll be a link below if you do want to check that out using my link you'll be able to sign up for their newsletter and be sent over a free copy of their in-depth career guide which is an incredible space to start thinking with some professional support about some of the bigger questions in your life and otherwise if you made it so far thank you so much for spending the time with me I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day if you count yourself and others and don't believe everything you think thanks bye

Channel: Elizabeth Filips

Views: 655,117

Keywords: exam tips, study tips, exam tips for students, how to study, how to write essays, essay exams, how to study for exams, ali abdaal, thomas frank, cambridge university, how i ranked 1st at cambridge, university, university of cambridge, spaced repetition, cambridge student, active recall, cambridge medicine, ali, study with me, how to revise, how to study faster, how to learn difficult things, how to learn hard things, study, how i ranked first, self studying

Id: UlMCTUvxa78

Length: 18min 0sec (1080 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 20 2023