How to Learn and Work Smarter
By Helen H. Hand, Ph.D.

They say that the key to achieving success in today’s world is not to work more, but to work smarter instead. So, what does that mean? We know that when we add RAM or upgrade the processor in our computer, we’ll get the job done more quickly. Is there a comparable way that we can upgrade our brains?

Psychologists use the term “metacognition” to refer to our thinking about our own thinking.  When we step back from what we are doing and look at ourselves with some objectivity we can consider how we are going about our tasks and make choices about how to proceed.  Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists identify a myriad of ways we can intervene in the way we learn, process, and recall information in order to become more effective. 

To sharpen focus and increase absorption of information, be intentional about the mindset you bring to the task or project. Learning specialist Don Woodruff, suggests that to get the most out what you read, it helps to “establish a clear purpose and determine exactly what are you going to ‘do’ with the information. At work, if you are given a document to read, find out what your boss wants you do with the information. Before you start to read, establish a clear idea of what you will do with the new information. The level of specificity of your purpose matches the degree in which your attention will be focused.”  Howard Berg, on record as the world’s fastest reader, suggests another specific strategy: Create a visual image of thought balloons with “who, what, when, where and how” labels hanging from them. As you read, be searching for those answers and when you find them, mentally place the answer in its appropriate thought balloon.  Seems silly, perhaps, but you will find that you get the information you need efficiently and remember it later.

In this day and age, there is much more information available to us than we could ever have time to read.  The good news is that only about 40% of written material is actual information and the rest is explanation.  Howard Berg points out that much of the time you grasp the point being made and it is not really necessary to read the explanation to understand what you need to learn.  If you are actively observing and directing your learning and reading, you can determine when you can skip over the extraneous explanation or the information you already know, to zero in on what is new or what it is you need to learn to reach your goals for that particular project.

Memorizing and recalling information can be greatly enhanced with specific strategies.  Short-term memory, the ability to recall information in the seconds and minutes after it has been presented, can handle only a few bits of data and it fades very quickly.  Chunking is one technique used to absorb more information into short-term memory.  For instance, if you take a string of ten numbers, such as 7820876524 and group the numbers—782-087-6534—as in a phone number, you’ll have a much better chance of remembering those numbers a minute after you’ve first heard them.

How much of the information you absorb that gets converted into long-term memory can be increased when you make the material more meaningful, emotionally salient, or personal.  Pairing personally relevant images with names or other bits of information that you want to recall can greatly increase your ability to hold onto that information. As Howard Berg points out, the brain is hard-wired to look for patterns in the world, for when we can see patterns we know what to expect and how to behave to maximize survival.  By organizing material we are trying to learn into meaningful patterns and creating a context for that material, we make it much easier for our brains to hold onto the information.  Two-time Guinness Book record holder for memory was able to recall the order of 59 decks of randomly shuffled playing cards by organizing these into meaningful patterns in his mind as they were shown to him.

In order to maintain information in memory, rehearsal of that information is essential.  As Don Woodruff points out when teaching people to increase their vocabularies, “what you repeat over and over will become part of you.”  A variety of mnemonics or memory tools can be used both to rehearse and retrieve material we want to be able to access.  Let’s say you want to remember a several step process for a science class.  Imagine the rooms of your house and place each of the steps of that process in a room.  Vividly visualize the room and the activity taking place there.  Then, when you want to recall the process, systematically walk through the rooms of the house and bring back to mind the step of your process that occurred in that room.

These are just a few of the metacognitive skills that can be employed in learning. The more self-aware you are of your own learning process, the more effective you can be.  You “work smarter” when you consider what the task you are facing requires, what tools will be most useful, and choose the way you tackle your project.  When you know your own strengths and weaknesses as a learner, you can use your strength and compensate for your weaknesses by employing specific learning strategies.  The more strategies you have in your bag of tricks, the smarter a worker you will be.

Colorado Free University presents a series of seminars this fall that will teach a wide variety of metacognitive strategies for reading, learning, and remembering.  October 7 Joe LoVerde shares secrets to Maximize Your Memory and Building Mental Muscle. On October 25 Howard Berg presents How to Learn Anything Faster, Better: Succeeding in Your Information Rich World and Mega Speed Reading. On November 1, Don Woodruff teaches Advanced Power Learning Strategies and Master the 40 Words Successful People Use. On November 15, memory record-holder Dave Farrow presents Millionaire Memory.