Cover Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash (adapted)
Old wisdom that’s proven to be false but is still spreading
In the past three years, I’ve been very deliberate in learning a wide variety of new skills. In total, I’ve learned over 80 skills. In the process, I’ve researched the topic of learning how to learn extensively and applied all the advice I could get.
Was all of it good? Certainly not.
In this article, I want to share with you some myths that were busted and my experience with each of them. The myth-busting was done through research by Ulrich Boser, founder of The Learning Agency. You can get the highlights here.
Start ignoring the following myths and you’ll already be a better learner.
10,000 hours of practice leads to mastery
Practice the same thing over and over for 10,000 hours and I can guarantee you won’t reach mastery. To reach mastery, you have to practice smartly, and no number of hours would ever work for each person and skill.
You want to target specific sub-skills where you’re lacking. Then acquire the necessary knowledge to learn them. And finally, and most importantly, you have to apply it.
This is a cycle you’ll have to repeat over and over, with no real time limit.
There is no such thing as a learning style
Science shows that everyone learns better visually. You’ve heard the saying “an image is worth a thousand words” before, right? Well, it’s true. You may have a preference, but your brain learns best through your eyes.
So, with everything you want to learn, always make sure to find ways to make it more visual. If you’re looking for a hack, that’s a very effective one.
Learning one subject at a time is better
Never do the same thing over and over again. An approach I’ve been using for over three years is to learn three new skills every month. I chose three for the sake of working different parts of my brain, and it works.
Outside of that, as I mention in my course, you should interleave as much as you can.
Interleaving is a process where students mix multiple subjects or topics while they study in order to improve their learning — source
Essentially, you take one subject and mix it up with subjects of the same branch. Take science, for example. You could interleave with math, physics, and chemistry.
The reading process can be sped up
When you read fast, you lose information. Eye-movement expert Keith Rayner, argues that even going beyond 500 words per minute is improbable because the mechanical process of moving your eye, fixing it and processing the visual information can’t go much faster than that.
A better alternative is to smart/skim read. Instead of going page by page and following the regular flow, you instead scan the book for the golden nuggets.
We can multitask while learning
You think you learn better by reading and watching Netflix in the background? Think again. Even music can be a distraction for your knowledge acquisition, unless you lose yourself to it.
For example, the only way music can be effective is if you don’t even know it’s playing in the first place. This happens to me a lot. The key is to put the same song on repeat. Ideally, that song doesn’t have lyrics.
Re-reading boosts memory
It does help you retain a little more, but it’s negligible compared to involving other senses. Essentially, read, apply, then re-read as needed. If it’s something that can’t be “applied”, rephrase in your own words out loud a few times.
Use Spaced Repetition to figure out when next to effectively recall something you learned.
Highlighters work
Highlighting just means you think something is important. You may not have all the evidence that it is at the moment you are highlighting. That’s a major pitfall in learning. People study their highlights without ever questioning if they were right, to begin with.
And as per the myth above, if you re-read your highlights, it won’t make you remember them better. Instead, teach what you know to someone else. Especially to someone who has some knowledge of the topic so they can correct you if you’re wrong.
Learning depends on intelligence
Oh, no, no, no! I’ve learned to learn pretty well and I don’t think I have incredible intelligence. The last time I “tested my intelligence” I was average (to my dismay).
Learning is all about knowing how the brain works and employing techniques to facilitate everything. I share 10 effective ones in my course.
Everything you need to know
Here are learning myths that were busted and you should stop believing in now to become a better learner:
10,000 hours of practice leads to mastery
There is no such thing as a learning style
Learning one subject at a time is better
The reading process can be sped up
We can multitask while learning
Re-reading boosts memory
Highlighters work
Learning depends on intelligence
You can do this!
— Danny