How to learn everything — 5 learning hacks nobody told you in school
--
I’ve spent 12 years in school and 5 years in university, but in those 17 years, nobody ever bothered to show me how to learn. But the reality is that learning is easy when you know how your brain works.
In this essay I will introduce you to 5 learning hacks that will increase your learning success and maybe also your grades:
1 . Have fun
After spending years in schools & colleges, we tend to forget that learning is a fun activity. Small children love to learn new things, it is when coercion starts at school that our motivation for learning dwindles.
So I recommend not forcing yourself to learn things that don’t interest you. In most cases, the content will not stick anyway.
However, I understand that this is not always possible when you are still at school.
In this case, try to find an angle that interests you. For example, if you love physics and math but hate history, you can make the latter more interesting by learning more about the experiments of Archimedes, Pythagoras, or Galileo. This also works the other way around: As a history nerd, you could spark your interest in math by learning how the old greeks calculated the radius of the earth or the number Pi, or how Galileo disproving Aristotle’s theory of gravity by dropping objects from the tower of Pisa.
2. Use mnemonics
“Mnemonics are mainly about visualizing abstract information. This works because our mind is a visual machine: It doesn’t work well with abstract or non-personal information like numbers, but it is pretty good at remembering pictures and stories.
As a consequence, converting numbers into relatable pictures makes them a lot easier to remember. And the more humorous, absurd, or sexual the images become, the easier it is to decipher the abstract information later.
But mnemonics don’t just work with numbers: They’re also useful for all kinds of information that doesn’t trigger images in your head.
Let’s say that you are trying to learn German and you have difficulties remembering the word “schnell”, which means fast.
