How to Learn Anything More Deeply, Smartly, and Quickly
Have you ever wondered how some people are really quick at learning even highly complex things? Not everyone can sit and concentrate on a complicated subject for a few hours, let alone a few days. Some people think that only a few gifted individuals can achieve this kind of persistence and dedication. However, there might be another reason to explain this.
The idea of cutting down distractions is known to many of us, yet, very few of us implement it. It’s not hard to concentrate on something, and it’s hard to get rid of our distractions. The notifications in our phones, the people around us, the promises of the Internet, the craving for social media, all these tiny distractions are standing in our way of efficient learning. This article is geared towards helping you unlock the secrets behind learning more deeply, smartly, and quickly.
Working and Learning
Experts say that finding isolation while working and learning can help you wire your brain to focus on the process. For example, learning highly technical things like undergoing Certified Ethical Hacker training requires intense focus and needs you to engage your mental faculties. Since these highly technical things can seem boring and onerous, shutting your door and finding isolation proves to be an effective way of telling your brain that you are serious about learning to get in the deep focus zone without spending a lot of constant willpower to resist the distractions.
With just this initial alignment of your brain, it becomes relatively easier to focus on the task at hand than to even think about various distractions waiting for you at the other end of the door. Shutting your door does not just mean locking your room. It also means leaving your phone out of sight, switching it off, or just putting it on silent face down. It also means that you might have to declutter your desk to reduce external inputs that might act as possible distractions automatically. It can be said that physical isolation is the first step towards mental isolation, which is necessary to learn better, deeper, and smarter in this case.
Learning on a Digital Device
But what about the situation when you are learning on a digital device? Unlike attending physical classrooms, when you are using your phone or your computer to, say, learn ethical hacking online, or something equally complicated and technical, then it becomes extremely tedious and hard to resist the distractions right in front of us. In these situations, you can’t really practice the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ formula as the Internet is what you are using to learn. And the most difficult part is that learning from home, especially through recorded lectures, means that no one keeps an eye on you.
Self-discipline is hard for a lot of people. Therefore, keeping yourself from opening your mail, checking your Twitter account, or going into the rabbit hole of the internet can seem impossible at times. However, practice leads to improvement, if not perfection. In such cases, you can use to-do lists with strict time frames to help you stay on track like a hamster.
Studies have also found that running a timer while doing a task can help your brain single-mindedly focus on the task at hand and channel all the energy in achieving the goal within the timeframe, like accepting it as a challenge and using the excitement and the competitive spirit as motivational fuel.
If you find these tips interesting, you should try them the next time you are sitting with your book, laptop, or training material.
