I was watching a video with Jim Kwik in it where he was talking about how all learning is state-dependent which means that the state your brain directly affects the quality of your learning.
The Idea
So I said to myself, “What if we set-up a learning ritual where we maximize a specific amount of time focused on learning” and I immediately got the image of a robot being plugged in daily for their daily update.
And that may produce some mixed feelings but the core of what I focused on was this artificial brain downloading massive amounts of information daily and then using those “updates” to operate more effectively.
So I got super excited! I mean, what if our current method of learning is only 5% of what it could be? What if we could switch up a couple of things and then 100x our time learning? That would change everything right?
So I have started a “Learning Ritual” that I’m going to test it for 1 month and then come back with the results to see if it’s worth continuing.
As of right now, here is what my routine looks like.
My Routine
15m Exercise – this is to “wake up” the brain. Our brains are organs that consume large amounts of oxygen so I want to move around and get the oxygen pumping into my brain so that my brain is at its optimal setting.
Get a large bottle of water – our brains require a large amount of water to operate so I want to make sure I’m hydrated during this entire process.
Then my 1 hour of learning begins
I start with speed reading – I don’t take notes while reading. Instead, I force my brain to remember what’s important to me, and at the end of the chapter, I recap what stood out to me & what I want to remember onto a note pad with a pen to increase my retention.
After about 25m or reading (this gets me through 3 chapters in a non-fiction book) I switch to video learning.
I use Linked-In Learning or YouTube and watch the videos at x2 speed. The increased speed forces me to focus and prevents me from becoming distracted. For videos, I hand write notes on my notepad during the video because my hands are free.
An important point to note here – I pre-load my videos. Meaning I create playlists on YouTube BEFORE my routine so I’m not searching for a video or a course to watch. I have all of them loaded up before so I can go from video to video at lightning speed which maximizes the amount of information I process.
After 35m of video watching, I sit back and take a couple of deep breaths – learning like this is not passive. It’s very active.
Then I begin my recap process. I review the notes I made on my note-pad and for the concepts that I really want to memorize I put them into a flashcard app where I can visit it at my leisure and test myself until I have these concepts fully memorized assuming I don’t fully memorize them during my learning ritual.
And that’s it – with an hour of pure learning this ritual consumes 1.5 hours of my day which I think is very doable.
Notes
At the time of writing this, I have only tried this ritual twice…. But I am in love with it. My brain is super awake and ready to consume information at a speed I never thought possible. My memory has increased and my retention is so much better than what it was before that I don’t know if I’ll ever stop.
Also, I don’t know if I’m just hyped that I discovered a new system or what but I actually amazing after this ritual. You know how you feel after a good workout and your body is just alert and feels good? That’s how my brain feels. I’m happy and ready to go.
Now, this is still the early stages of testing. We will see how this plays out long term but so far I have high hopes for this new system.
Like I said earlier, I’ll do another post/video in a month recapping this experiment so that you can know if it’s something you want to duplicate in your own life.
But until then, thank your future self for reading this and I’ll see you later.
Chase E – Bite Size Success