Thursday, January 21, 2010

Learning Acceleration

Learning is an essential process to students everywhere. And students need to know the best way to make sure they can learn information quickly and easily.

So, how can we accelerate learning? The secret is to pay attention.

If you didn't hear it or see it, you won't remember it.

So, how can we pay attention?


Lifestyle


In order to perform at you optimum physical and mental ability, you need to pay attention to your lifestyle.

First you must get sufficient sleep. A healthy adult requires 7-8 hours. Recent studies show that 8 hours is significantly better for you.

You must eat healthy, nutritional foods. Your brain can't work on sugar and caffeine alone!

And you must stay active. Physical exercise is good for your body, and it has other benefits as well, emotionally and mentally, too!

Finally, mental exercise. If you don’t use it, you lose it, so do mental exercises as well. The best mental exercise is learning a new language. If you already multi-lingual, solving various puzzles and word problems can help you stay sharp.

Social connections. There are many doctors and scientists who have made the connection between healthy aging and an active family or community life. It turns out friends are good for you!


Toastmasters International, the organization which makes improving communication look fun and easy, provides some ways to pay attention:

At every meeting, someone is selected count every "um," "eh," or "ah" the speaker makes. The “ah-counter” is responsible for counting all the unintelligible utterances that come out of a speakers mouth. It takes a little effort, so you definitely have to pay attention to count them.

Every speech gets evaluated, the evaluator gives feedback on the words, body language and content of the speech. Pretend you are the official evaluator for this speech, lecture or class.

It is recommended to take notes during the speech, as if you might be tested on it later. This helps you perform the evaluation and also helps if you need to review the information later.

Other creative ways to pay attention

I recently heard that doodling is beneficial to listening. You don't need to exert much effort to scribble on a piece of paper, so it doesn't interfere with listening, like daydreaming does. While daydreaming you may be 90 miles away in Orlando, or 4000miles away in Paris (France), so you definitely cannot attend to the speaker or teacher.


Then of course, there's self-hypnosis. This can be used to make sure you are a brilliant student and perform well on tests, but the regular practice also enhances your memory and concentration. And since hypnosis is defined as focused attention, you can even use it during class. There are books that instruct about self-hypnosis techniques, but most people will find it helpful and enjoyable to learn from a Consulting Hypnotist.


Thank you for paying attention. I hope you learned something!

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