Quick learning ability helps you to outsmart your classmates or colleagues, experience a greater edge and stay on top of the achiever’s list.
However, this ability doesn’t come easy and one has to dedicatedly apply constant effort to develop this skill.
Have you ever wondered about what your friend is doing different from you to succeed as a quick learner?
He might be applying one or more of the following strategies to establish himself as a quick learner.
1. Repeatedly Practice
Some people can understand a subject by just glancing through it or studying it just once.
However, the majority of you need to keep on repeatedly practicing it until you master it.
So change your attitude of simply learning about something but practice repeatedly to become the master of the subject and you can learn anything related the subject with ease.
2. Deeper Learning
This is a very useful strategy that can be tried by anyone who is looking to master the skill of quick learning.
In this technique, you can ask ‘why’ at least five times while trying to understand a problem.
Experts have always advised to go deeper when learning a subject just until you explore everything related to it.
3. Create Mind Maps
When approaching a subject, creating mind associations and developing mind maps can do the trick to learn it faster.
By maintaining proper mind spacing, you will be able to easily relate what you are learning new to what you have already learnt.
The visual representation of information lets your mind to process it faster.
The technique includes drawing map on large sheets of paper by grouping similar items, organizing facts and explanations, connecting them with colourful pens, using note cards, pictures and more.
Students can also try out efficient online mind mapping tools for better results.
4. Use the 80/20 rule:
A quick learner would apply the 80/20 rule whenever applicable in their study phase.
According to this rule, 20% of work lets you get 80% of your value.
For instance, you just need to consider 20% of the words that will be used 80% of the time while learning a new language to grasp the language in quickly.
Depending on the subject, focus on the areas that give you the biggest return on investment.
5. Exercise your Brain:
Just like your workout your other parts of the body, it is important to exercise your brain to make it alert and respond faster.
For that, you may try setting yourself a new challenge or start learning something new every time.
Fun resources such as BrainHQ and Lumosity can be a good choice to exercise your brain that eventually makes you a better learner.
Such activities can enhance your attention, cognitive abilities, memory, and brain speed.
A faster brain can process the information in a quicker fashion that makes you a quick learner.
Know More: 16 Innovative Ideas to make your Teaching Methods More Effective
6. Draw it out:
Speed reading is a very good technique when you are trying to master the skill of quick learning.
However, instead of reading the subject all the time, you can just draw it out so that the brain processes it much faster.
This is how you use visual thinking for learning when words and pictures complement each other.
The pictures can help to add layers and dimensions to a thought which helps you to process and understand it faster and better.
Flow charts, picture maps etc can be good study tools that let you study smarter.
7. Simplified Learning:
Simplifying, summarizing and compressing the information help you to learn a subject more quickly.
You can try out mnemonic devices such as acronyms which can increase learning efficiency.
A vast or confusing set of information can be grouped or summarized in the form of a diagram, comparison table, or mind map.
These types of tools let you learn the subject in quick succession and it is also very easy to revise what you have learned in future easily.
These are good memorization methods to learn and remember a list of information easily.
8. Teach Someone Else:
This is a very interesting and important strategy you can apply in your study phase to learn quickly and understand better.
You can teach someone else what you have already learned or at least pretend it by teaching a pillow.
Another technique is to teach you by looking into the mirror.
This method is very efficient to let you retain more or less 90 percent of the information that is already learned.
The effect is more if you can do it just immediately after you learn the subject. Sharing the knowledge also lets you to know how much you know your subject and identify any gaps.
9. Combine Learning Modalities:
Instead of just sticking to a particular learning style, you can just change it up and include a variety of learning modalities.
Let it be any subject, changing the way you practice it helps you to master it in a pretty faster way.
You may mix up reading the writing, listening etc to see the difference.
Many studies have noted that students who keep on changing the learning techniques yield better results than those who used the same technique.
This helps students to have a productive study time as they can learn things quickly and cover up more portion in less time.
10. Keep up a Positive Attitude:
After all, it is important to keep up a positive attitude in life to master any skill.
If you want to be a quick learner, having an optimistic mindset is a key factor.
This helps you to bounce back quickly and try harder once you experience a setback or failure.
Such a student will be able to accept failure as good feedback and work on it for more progress.
For that, you can keep on challenging your instinctive thought processes which ultimately ends up molding a quick and efficient learner.
Considering these strategies can help you to be quick learners and you would eventually be able to pick up anything instantly.
All these strategies are more or less related to the mental strength and exercising as well as keeping up the spirit for learning.
However, preparing your body to respond well to these challenges and being physically healthy is equally important to be a good learner.
For that, you have to exercise at least three times a week and maintain good physical fitness.
This improves your memory power, brain function and minimizes the occurrence of depression which helps you in the path of quick learning.
Also, maintain good sleeping habits and make sure you have a quality sleep time every day by sleeping at least 8 hours every night.
In addition to this, maintain proper and healthy food habits and include foods like blueberries and omega fatty acids that help with the brain function