How do I keep Track of what I’ve learnt
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I have something to confess: I’m an information addicted. I’m always reading books, checking out news, following a few hundred blogs, following another few hundred people on twitter and the list just goes on and on. I bet you do the same.
First of all, this is not about how to just pass over your next university exams but how to keep yourself updated or learn something with all the information we are throw everyday. It’s not possible (for me at least) to keep track from everything I read. People like me reads hundreds of information sources, mostly online. Besides that we also read books, attend conferences, meet new people, etc. We are literally bloated by information from everywhere.
how can we manage to digest this huge amount of information we face everyday ?
We all know there’s no unique answer for that question. Everybody has a different approach when it comes to learn something. Some people prefer to take notes while reading, some people prefer to record audio snippets, some people like to create songs that resemble the information, (your method here). As you might think, I happen to have my own technique (probably not only mine) and it’s being very useful to me.
I read somewhere else a good analogy: we have two “databases” in our brain. One is the short-term memory database and the other is the long-term one. When we read something, every piece of information goes to our short-term memory which is something like a “heap” of unclassified information . As this “database” isn’t classified, our brain doesn’t know if the information is useful or not. Later on, it can be even 10 minutes, when we try to recall some information from it, we may not be able to easily do it because isn’t classified yet. But no worries : how many times happened to you that you remembered something just a few hours later while doing something else? That happens because our searching process is asynchronous.
Ok, our information searching process is asynchronous, so what ? It literally means, your brain is still learning some subject even after you stopped thinking about it. It’s like dispatching a background process. The problem is you need to constantly remember that subject in order to transfer it to your long-term memory.
You can achieve that by keeping a sort of learning log. I’ve tried many tools to help me keeping track of what I want to learn. For instance, a simple text editor, an iphone app. You just need to ensure you have quick and easy access to it….As I’m a very moody person I keep changing, right now, for instance, I’m using a folder of my browser’s favorites bar which I sync across my computers. Sometimes I also use the favorites features from twitter. As I’m always checking them, I keep remembering the subjects I have demonstrated interest. Most of this links are shortcuts to blog posts, interviews, podcasts, which I may have read/listened only once. But just the fact I’m recalling the title, it helps me to internally recall the content I read before from that source. In case I don’t remember what’s the content is about I just go there and skim over the text so I get the general idea. If even doing so, I don’t understand the content, then I mark it to read it later using a javascript snippet.
What happens when my learning log stack is getting excessively big ? Just use your common sense! If you get to the point where you always need to recall every item in your list, something is wrong! So, how many items should you have in your list? It may vary from person to person. In my case I found 10 to be a good size. It doesn’t mean I need to first learn all 10 items and them move to the next 10 items. Some items can be in your list for a relatively long time, it’s strongly dependent on how complex is the subject and how fast you can learn.
Defining when you “learned” something is very subjective. In my opinion, you can’t know everything. My “learned” definition is when I get to the point where I can explain the subject to someone else and they properly understand it. Having a time constraint can help too, like imposing yourself a 15 days limit for the items in your list.
Resources used:
- Learning log (official way) http://www.csudh.edu/titlev/learninglog.htm
- Read it later http://readitlaterlist.com/
Probably Related posts:
When it comes to learning lots and remembering heaps in the minimum amount of time do your research into Spaced Repition Systems (which require you to turn things into a cloze format for active recall) and Incremental Reading.
This stuff is right up in the top ranks for remembering what we learn.
Hey Jarrod,
I didn’t know about that technique. Thanks for sharing. I’ll definitely take a look at it.
cheers
That method is really good indeed. I think that I also make use of it somehow, not in such an organized way though: just recalling some things I have recently read/heard when my brain in idle mode (for instance: showering or other rest-room services, before sleeping, walking/driving to work, etc).
Another method that I think is even more effective for me is teaching the recently learned subject to someone you know. When you teach something you really have to know it, the important details and connections between the littles pieces of the matter. So when you teach someone, you recall these connections and fix them in your brain.
I remember teaching linear algebra to my then-girlfriend
When I can’t find an interested person whom I can teach to, I just pretend I am teaching to myself.
As it usually happens after I have effectively read (or learned) the subject, I think it can also be considered your method
Hi Luiz,
First of all, it´s not MY method. Like I said in the post, probably someone else invented this approach when learning a new subject. I´m glad we share and use the same learning process. cheers!
Muito bom esse artigo!!
Estou adorando ler o teu blog !!!
Paraben Pedro =)