You're Not Slow: Become a Speed Learner in 20 Minutes

when knowing how to learn is considered a core life skill that no one's actually willing to teach and when the speed at which you grasp things is considered to be a measure of your intelligence it's no wonder that so many of us are left feeling that we are stupid and slow and unintelligent when I truly believe that if you've only ever had terrible teaching your whole life you can't say for sure that you are a bad learner or a slow learner because you've never actually been given a proper chance at this and I'm definitely not an expert teacher or a teacher by any stretch of the imagination but as someone who has had to get a very distractible brain through life and medical school I do have quite a bit of experience with having to teach things to someone very fast and so if you're also looking into new learning methods and if for whatever reason you want to optimize for Speed and your brain works like mine here's what works for me and how I conceptualize and teach myself things and think of information in a way that optimizes for doing things as fast as possible let's just get straight into it now there are four main steps in my learning the first two of which are almost invisible because I think not a lot of people do them not a lot of people realize that I do them and when they catch me in step three step four they think oh my God she's so fast at learning when it's not the same because they haven't done the first two steps that I keep doing every time so I'm going to jump straight into them these two first ones I think are the absolute most important so the very first I call safety netting this is where I focus on things like emotions limits implications and connections for everything that I'm due to learn and I create a specific space in my brain for that thing where I understand the very very basics of it and how it connects to everything else in a way that creates the best surface and priming for me to be able to add information on later and I'm going to explain how I do this in detail and why basically I've observed a lot of learning in my life and I've kind of seen how fast or slow it can be and when it is effective and ineffective and the fastest most effective learning I have ever seen in my life actually happens in the doctor's office so what happens is that you can see a very good doctor in two or three minutes give a patient a complete crash course in a medical condition that they knew nothing about and they just become so empowered in understanding everything about it they might not have known anything about asthma before they walked into the office but once they leave they know what it is why they might have it what how it affects them what to do with it what medications to take how to take those medications what might go wrong what to do when those things go wrong where to go when those things go wrong what further testing might be needed who the other Specialties that are involved are it's just completely insane and you see these patients within three minutes basically understand more about their clinical condition than I sometimes know as a medical student with a foundation in physiology and anatomy and all of that stuff so it's absolutely incredible this is the best teaching that I have ever seen is doctors teaching things to patients and so I've paid a lot of attention to what happens here and I've tried to isolate what are the elements that make this teaching and learning so effective and how I can Implement them for myself and this is the a conclusion and what I think I do basically when I'm safety netting something so at the very first instance when I'm trying to learn something the questions that I'm going to ask myself are what are we talking about and at the very very core in the simplest terms possible for example mechanics in physics is about how bodies move in space and this is the essential thing like the very very core where this set so already just by saying this sentence I know that I can draw from things that already exist in my mind and information that is already there and I can slot this section of physics where it's supposed to be the same thing with medical conditions the same thing with skills like editing I really want to create a space on what am I doing here what am I achieving and what am I learning then I want to go on and see why this thing is important and how important is it actually the same thing when we Safety Net in medicine we tell a patient well if you don't take the medication this is what happens if you skip it this is what happens if things go bad this is what happens so I want to have a good measure from knowing nothing to knowing everything how important is this what's this used for and how important are those things so I can assign it a level of importance in my mind and therefore allocate it accordingly next one of the most important steps in safety netting and preparing myself to learn something is understanding the limitations and the connections of what I'm about to learn and what I mean by this is that for example if I'm learning to use a new app I need to know what I can do when I become an expert at using this and what I cannot do even when I'm an expert at this thing so for example I know with Final Cut Pro what things I can do and then if I want to do other animations or other things what other app do I need to use this is before I've even started and the reason for this is that it really draws upon things that are in my mind and really helps me conceptualize and step back and really really see how this fits in my brain and in my perception of the world I'm drawing upon things that I already know desires I already have needs I already have things that are already true and established in my brain rather than starting on a foundation of nothing and in this way I'm also connecting things with pre-existing thoughts in my brain so this also means that in the future when I'm about to learn more about this thing I know that because it's connected to this other app or because this formula in physics is also used in this field in mathematics I know that I can draw on pre-existing information which will then help me learn new things a lot faster questions I also look to answer for myself is where do I need to go for further knowledge on this topic once I grasp it what does an expert in the field involved in this knowledge look like this seems like a random one but it really really helps if you put a name to the career or the profession that are involved in whatever you are learning it can still then help draw upon those fields and anchor it to different parts of my brain that are associated with this thing once I've established what this thing is about why I should care about this thing how much I should care about this thing what I can do once I learn this thing what I still can't do one time once I learned this thing what an expert in this field looks like and where I can go to get more information or become more of an expert in this field I kind of have a very strong safety net and a very strong mesh in my brain already about where this information is going to start sitting and this very very core thing is kind of similar to the Feynman technique which is basically explaining things to a child but it goes above and beyond that it's basically focusing on the periphery and on the context of the thing that we're about to learn without ever looking at the specifics themselves because I don't care about the specifics yet I want to create a space for the specifics rather than starting there now when I am learning in real time the way that I create the safety net is that for example if I'm sitting in a lecture on a topic I never take notes during that lecture I'm not writing anything down I'm just sitting down and listening to what the person is saying and trying to essentially focus on what the core skeleton of the point that they're trying to make is and very often lecturers are not too good at putting things in context so I have to do this work myself while I'm sitting down but I'm just focusing on the very basic things which is why when I'm in a lecture you'll probably see me ask seemingly stupid questions of the sort of so what we're talking about is or so correct me if I'm wrong what you actually mean is that if this happens then this happens or you're saying that the thyroid is important because of neural development this sounds like a really basic question but this is the level that I want to keep things and a lot of my time investment when I'm learning goes in this very very very core because if these foundations are missing then any sort of details will have no right to set can be forgotten a lot faster I'll have to go back to the basics because I can't connect things with one another but creating this strong Foundation means that everything has its own place I'm much more empowered in actually understanding things the way that a patient really really understands their clinical condition even though they don't need to know the anatomy and the physiology of things they're better able to understand conceptualize and framework things and still be highly effective in what they're trying to do so this is what I do in the beginning step one safety net what is this about and what does it mean how important is it how does it connect to things in my mind hopefully I can draw from emotional things so if safety nets that I'm creating in my brain kind of trigger parts of my mind that have to do with for example things that I think are unjust or things that I have not resolved in the past or things that I'm genuinely very invested and curious about this can add to the energy and the focus and the attention and therefore the speed with which I'm able to process information in the future so I think this emotional component really adds to how effectively I can learn things and how fast I can learn things and this leads me to my second step which I think is also equally very underrated and this is focusing on the core Basics what I mean by the core Basics are the applicable rules that are so so simple that very often people won't even mention them because they'll assume that we've known them or learned them in high school or learned them a very long time ago or because they are just the bread and butter that people in lecturers or doctors or professionals use they don't even consider that people might not know these basic things but these are the things that move the needle the most the reason I focus some core Basics is because I've realized very early on in life that these were the things that helped people learn fast so for example I went to a music school when I was younger for a while and I could see that people who already knew one musical instrument were so much better at learning a new one than people who knew none at all so even though someone who was a violinist had never touched a piano before they'd be so much faster at learning the piano obviously because they know how music works and they know how to read notes and they have a good conceptualization of the basics of timing and Rhythm at all of these things so even though these two instruments are quite different it gives this person a big upper hand because they have a good grasp of the core basics in the same way if you are a mechanic for example it's a lot easier for that person to learn to fix fridges than it is for someone else who doesn't know anything about this because they understand the very basics of things like electricity and how to do Maneuvers and the little technical things that they might need in order to learn this task so I was very often obsessed since I was younger with very very poor basic things and this is again where I spent a lot of my time and when I still do this so whenever I start a new subject or a new thing that I need to learn my mind immediately goes what is the basic thing here so for example I'm studying Pediatrics in University now and I know that when it comes to Children the most important thing is they're breathing because that's the first thing that's effective so Pediatrics lungs very important breathing issues in children or I'll think well in when it comes to physiology of the kidney the most important thing is it controls blood pressure which when I was younger I thought that the heart control blood pressure it doesn't it's the kidney so these very basic things that you really need to have a strong grasp on in order to effectively build information in the future because small things you can learn here and there but unless you have these core essential Concepts it becomes very difficult to build true information so I really focus on these things the easiest way that I find and isolate the core Basics are if I'm lucky to have an expert who I can talk to who's quite insightful I will ask them what's the bread and butter of the things that you do or what are the clinical conditions that you see three to four times a day or what's something that you do every single week without fail and if I don't have access to these sorts of things I become very good at judging experts at what they're doing so for example in order for me to become a good video editor I didn't have access to any I would just look at a lot of YouTube videos and go what are the small things that really identified a professional editor from a non-professional one and that doesn't tend to be weird little animation things it very often is how tight is their a cut so it's kind of realizing what are the things that move the needle the most and how quickly can I grasp these things I then will spend a lot of time focusing on the basics for example in maths if I learn a formula and then I learn a new chapter in trigonometry I'm not going to learn the new formulas yet I'm going to try and use the ones that I already know which very often I can't do because I need the new formulas but basically then I also understand the limits of the information that I already have what it can be used what it cannot be used for so so I have these really strong core basics in mind and a very strong toolbox on which to build things and I have a very core basic language and understanding and familiarity with whatever kind of Niche and thing I'm trying to learn which gives me a huge kind of leg up in what I'm trying to do even without knowing all of the extreme things or all of the complicated things these are the first two most important steps that I do in any learning ever I sit down and I think what is this about and where will this slot in my brain and what are the easiest things and the most important things that I can learn about this that I can grasp first and as I become very impatient with learning these things I then have a much stronger familiarity with the things that I'm about to learn and I'm in a very good position to then build on this information later so this is where step three most people will see me and think oh my God she's so fast but that's because they're just starting at step three I've done step one and two so with all of this information I go into the rest of the categorization which from me falls into two more groups which are admin and good for you so basically whenever I'm approaching a book or anything to learn I will kind of divide all of the information into different groups so first will be the safety net which is kind of the backbone and the skeletal Logic the second group is the core Basics these are things that I have to grasp as soon as possible before I do anything else the third group is admin and this depends on the person but I know that I really struggle learning new words and numbers and things like that while I find Concepts very easy to learn so if I'm trying to learn fast all of the words and the numbers I'll just say this is admin I'll learn it later and I won't let them hold me back but I'll focus on learning the logic because I'm the sort of person who can study a whole like disease or condition and I'll know everything about it but I would not be able to tell you what it's called so I'll put this name of it in the admin category of I'll learn this later when I have the time or when it's important but I'm not going to let it hold them back so any small thing that holds you back I'd slot it in the admin category and lastly is the good for you category and these are the things which it sounds bad to say but are kind of not relevant are not important at all almost in most of the cases and you're not interested in them and these go in the good for you category so there are things that are kind of not important and not relevant but I'm very curious and interested in in which case I will learn them anyway and they become admin or core Basics but the things that are kind of irrelevant I don't care about I don't mind if people know them and I don't basically and they just fall into this category because any field is completely endless so there is definitely going to be a huge amount of stuff that fall in there so once I do this thing every time that I'm approaching information I can just scan through it using Speedway reading I actually have a video on how I speed read somewhere I just scan through everything with speed reading and I slot it into these categories automatically and then I know that I can start doing my actual learning which is create my safety net create my core Basics and establish those then focus on the admin and building on these things quite fast and then the things that fall into good for you I just don't care about I might be familiar or not depending on how my interests vary and the topic that I am trying to learn and this is how I appear to be a fast learner I think and how I kind of Empower myself and categorize things in this way also essential to this is the concept of Jumpy learning and strategic drowning which I talk about in detail in another video which I'll cure just to not waste your time but that is basically that I don't study things in the order that they are given to me I study things in the order that I am interested in them because my attention is a very limited resource and if I am going through things in the order that they are given but I'm not interested in them I am burning learning through my motivation and my attention to the point that very quickly I'll have to stop but if I preserve my motivation and my attention because I am going wherever it goes it always stays at a maximum level and I will learn in a non-linear way but I will only stop when I'm tired rather than stopping when my motivation runs out because it almost never does so in that way even though I might start a chapter one go to chapter 9 chapter 7 chapter 8 chapter 3 chapter 2 chapter 5. it doesn't matter I'll jump back and forth in the way that makes sense to me because I have the core Basics and my Foundation is very very solid it's very easy with me to just have my core Basics and then I'll be able to approach any chapter of the book and it will still make sense because I know where these things will slot and fit in in the majority of the cases so this is how I kind of organize things in my brain now the one last thing I want to expand on in this video is where to find good core Basics because I think this is something that I find quite frustrating I wish people wrote whole books or had full courses on just the very basic things that are the most essential things in any sort of field that you're trying to learn because they would make life a lot easier but I don't often find them and the kind of hack that I use very often is that I go and look at very Advanced things that really challenge my core Basics or they assume that I know the core Basics to a level that they become very well established so for example when I used to be in high school I used to watch a lot of University lectures and biological topics or I used to watch documentaries that were really Advanced I don't really care about the specifics of remembering the details of what's going on there but because they use very high level basic formulas or basic knowledge on biology and Physiology it then meant that my knowledge of these things was established very very well and so very relevant to this video is curiosity stream which are very kindly sponsoring it and this is a website which has a whole bunch of documentaries on so many topics I've gone through quite a few in medicine and in genetics and they are a perfect way of really really establishing your knowledge on these now the reason I very goodlessly promote curiosity stream for people with low attention spans for me is not only for the documentaries but because for the price of just one takeaway for a whole year you also get access to nebula which is where educational creators like myself post our videos in a space that is completely ad free nebula is a platform that doesn't even have an algorithm and so when I go there I know that I am able to just watch the thing that I came for with minimal distractions which I find is super super effective and so you can have access to both of them which hopefully would be a good companion for your online learning probably with you and me do a lot of online learning on the internet at the moment I found these two resources to be a perfect companion for myself teaching so there will be a link in my description if you want to check that out but otherwise if you made it so far thank you so much for spending this time with me I hope you have a wonderful every day because yourself and others I don't believe everything you think thanks thanks bye

Channel: Elizabeth Filips

Views: 2,772,625

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: _wzJnWCBWkI

Length: 19min 19sec (1159 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2022