How to Boost Your Study Habits
Holistic learning isn’t like a brainstorming technique or mind-mapping.
It is fundamentally changing how you look at the process of learning
and how you absorb information. As such, there isn’t an easy ten step
program to master it.
But there are some tools that can help you shift your learning habits so they become more holistic:
- Visceralize - You’ve probably heard of
visualizing, right? Visceralizing means taking all of your senses and
connecting it to information. Studies have shown that people remember
more vividly information that comes to us in an emotionally aroused
state. Linking feelings, senses and imagery to bland ideas makes them
more real. You probably counted on your fingers when learning numbers,
why can’t you do the same when you are learning now? - Metaphor - The heart of holistic learning is
relating things together. Metaphors are literary devices that link two
things that normally don’t go together. Come up with metaphors to
describe more complicated ideas in simpler terms. - Ten Year Old Rule - Explain ideas to yourself as
you would to a ten year old. Sure, this isn’t always possible in your
last years of a medical degree or learning how to apply neural networks
to computer AI. But the idea is that you should be able to “dumb down”
an idea enough so it seems obvious to yourself. - Trace Back - Put away your books and start with a
random fact or concept. Then relate that idea to another concept in
your subject. Keep doing this tracing pattern until you’ve linked many
ideas together. The Gupta Dynasty reminds you of ancient Greece which
reminds you of Socrates, reminding you of Confucius… - Refresher Scan - Scan through information in your
text book. Notice whenever you encounter information that you either
don’t remember or weren’t 100% sure about. Quickly link that
information back to existing ideas through viscerlization and metaphor.
If your refresher scan is turning up more than a few points per
chapter, you haven’t learned it thoroughly enough. - Compress Information - Not all information works
well for holistic learning. A common point cited to me is learning
anatomy for first year medical students. Anatomy involves learning
arbitrary Latin names for hundreds of different elements of your body.
There often aren’t clear patterns and constructs, just a dry list of
facts. When encountering information such as this, your goal should be
to compress it. Find ways to group information into smaller chunks of
memory through pictures or mnemonics. - Write - Take a piece of paper and write out the
connections in the information. Reorganize the information into
different patterns. The key here is the writing, not the final product.
So don’t waste your time making a pretty picture. Scribble and use
abbreviations to link the ideas together.
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