Learning anything superquick is SIMPLE

since

childhood i’ve often been enamored by

displays of extraordinary memory

by people who seem to be no different

than you and i

i’m sure all of you probably felt the

same way on many an occasion

after all doesn’t it make us wonder how

someone can be so great at learning

things

while we face a constant struggle today

i’m going to let you in on a secret one

that can change your life

it certainly changed mine i’m going to

tell you

about a simple method which will help

you learn anything

super quick yes that’s right we’re going

to unravel

the secrets to being an efficiently

quick learner

now before i begin i must tell you

that while the method in itself is quite

systematic in its approach

and effective in its outcomes adopting

and adapting this method to your life is

going to take a little practice

but once you’re there it’s going to make

learning even complicated things

reasonably simple and as quick as can be

so now let’s get straight to it the

methodology i’ve developed for myself

over the years

is quite literally called simple

s-i-m-p-l-e

an acronym it really is just that

six baby steps that can help you

supercharge your brain

to accomplish remarkable feats of

learning

so when i was an engineering student at

iit bombay

pursuing my dual degree i had to submit

a master’s project thesis

and for any of you familiar with the

process the first step

in the research journey involves

literature survey

reading an extensive set of research

articles on your chosen area of work

written by other researchers the process

can get really intimidating

there is so much to read and such

limited time

and that’s when the first step of this

method actually rescued me big time

the first step is s sensory involvement

that is seeing speaking writing

touching and hearing so basically

what you do is that you involve as many

senses as possible

in the process of immersing yourself in

learning

that way if one sense feels exhausted

the

others help balance the load of learning

and together

the process becomes much less fatiguing

and much faster

now what i did for my learning process

was

that i started reading the contents of

the paper out aloud

under my breath so that i don’t disturb

the others while actually dragging

the cursor over the screen to highlight

the text that i was reading as i went

along

now that way my hands help my eyes focus

on a particular area of the page while

my speech was getting fed back to me

as an audible input as if someone is

reading to me

now this maximized my sensory

involvement as much as i could probably

manage to do

and what happened because of this well

it allowed me

to improve focus and retain information

for

much much longer without tiring out but

you see

this in itself is not sufficient why

because the amount of work done

is humongous so i needed another step in

the right direction

and here i figured step two

step two is i identification

you need to figure out the three most

important points

to focus on in a given page paragraph or

section of information

remember the key is just three important

points

now what that does is it doesn’t

overload you

with needless issues and keeps your

brain tricked into feeling

that the content is easy enough to

master quickly because

there really isn’t too much to know

so what i started doing was i started

breaking down

every section of a paper into three most

important points

that i could identify based on now what

i was reading more efficiently

and believe me within a matter of trying

my hand

at this strategy over a couple of papers

i was

not only becoming great at finding out

what i needed to focus on

it was happening really quickly this

of course is aided a little by prior

knowledge of the background

that i was looking for but then that’s

something that we all generally have

anyway

and even if we don’t the first few pages

which are usually

the slowest to read up drop a great deal

of hints

now some of you may ask what if there

are more than three important points

that’s very possible yes here’s the

trick in that case

the moment you figure out the three most

important points

while you’re scanning the remaining text

your brain will automatically help you

find patterns

that it feels will justify what you’ve

chosen to focus

on for example try reading what’s coming

on your screen now

if you’ve read correctly the text will

read this text is jumbled

quite substantially and still makes

sense this is the power of the brain

that you can leverage

to make sense of even jumble lettering

it is this very power

that you will automatically hone in the

process of identification

without actually taxing your brain

you’re

literally tricking your brain to helping

you connect stuff

without reading or focusing too much on

it explicitly

and this automatically led me to the

third step of the process

m making sense of the three

most important points that you’ve zeroed

in on

practically as you master the arts of

step one and two

three in fact starts happening quite in

parallel

as i was reading my brain was connecting

the dots

in much the same manner as yours did in

the sentence i just showed you a couple

of minutes ago

it automatically started imputing

meaning to the information based on the

context

which i was now just quickly skimming

over and now you see

suddenly there’s a sense of clarity that

starts coming in

from stuff that you actually didn’t know

and stuff

that you haven’t particularly even

worked on focusing on

this is what amazed me a lot

in no time now i was actually reading

much faster engaging with the content

much sharper

and analyzing the information much

clearer and better

than what i was ever doing before and

all this happened

in just three sim steps i haven’t even

reached

the ple part yet so yes the making sense

of stuff part

becomes much quicker and much easier

if you are automatically great at

sensory involvement in identification

a few pages down and making sense

becomes

very very easy because now the brain

also has context

to connect the information to now this

was going

wonderfully well for me personally until

i hit an unexpected roadblock

sometime during my teaching journey the

thing is

i didn’t realize that there are a few

more things i was

unconsciously doing till my students

needed me to help them

do better and that’s where it hit me

step number four p personalizing

is a vital cog in the entire process

that

most people don’t really understand too

well

now what is personalizing i’m sure

many of you here are fans of sherlock

who probably no doubt heard

of the words memory palace yes so while

i can’t see you do it

let me still ask you to raise your hand

in case you heard about this

i’m sure right now you’ve probably

raised your hand

so what exactly does the memory palace

or any similar technique achieve the

answer

is as simple as it gets it helps you

to convert data to a form that you can

easily connect with and hence visualize

when you want and where you want now

some of us love images while many others

would probably love songs

i personally know a lot of students

who’ve learned the entire periodic table

with one song which is a remarkable feat

of personalizing learning

the trick is fairly simple no matter

what you want to learn quickly

after you’ve reached the same stage you

now convert these pieces of information

into a format that you can best relate

to

be it an image a song a memonic a crazy

word

or even a movie scene you’d be amazed

how it helps to help you get quickly

retaining content very very fast

now picture this imagine a boy and a

girl who’ve never

met but whose parents want them to get

married to each other

obviously they’ve got two choices one is

resist meeting each other never get to

know each other

and therefore when they get married

they’re going to be hiccups along the

way

obviously not the fastest of processes

the other is

did they meet each other in a nice

coffee shop sit down without moving

around too much

get to know each other comfortably

smooth out the issues

and of course that will lead to a much

more comfortable much more better

marriage in the long run right

now if you replace the boy and the girl

with chemicals and if you replace the

coffee shop

with a catalyst providing a surface area

for them to sit around and combine

you’ve just understood the mechanism of

how a physical catalyst action

happens to speed up a chemical reaction

now that was fairly simple wasn’t it

and this is what i did to personalize

things for myself

and in turn my students it works even

today

now many people ask me can you do this

with all subjects

the answer is yes of course in

mathematics

whenever i’m struggling with formulae

what i tend to do is

i group similar formulae into bunches of

two and three

and create a correlation between these

formulae now

that way even if i forget one of the

formulae

the other formulae help me to remember

what i’m forgetting

now let me give you an example we know

that sine of 3 theta

is 3 sine theta minus 4 sine cubed theta

yes

now what i do in my head is i think of

it this way i think of sine and cos

as somewhat opposites of each other so

if i replace a sign with a cos

what i do is i replace every plus with a

minus

and vice versa now suddenly that leads

me to the easy way of remembering

the formula for cos 3 theta which is 4

cos cubed theta minus 3 cos theta

you see this may seem like an easy

example to work with

but the point is that the same general

principles

can be used on many other formulae

right you can easily choose to replace

the sign with the cost the plus with the

minus

and that opens up a bunch of

possibilities which will help you to

remember

a lot of different formulae very very

easily

now that wasn’t too hard to figure out

with this trick

was it this is the beauty

of personalizing many people would

probably now

feel that that’s the end of the trick

you don’t really need

anything more to do but actually

there are two very very important small

steps

that people often skip often neglect

okay the fifth step in the entire

process here

is l letting go and this is something

that most people are actually unable to

do

once they start focusing on learning

something

ask yourself this how many times have

you gotten stuck

with a particular problem and never

gotten past it without wasting lots of

time

if your answer is many times i won’t be

surprised at all

that’s just the way our brain is wired

to work sometimes

we focus too hard on something and try

to know everything about it

without realizing that it’s just

fatiguing our brain

and making us less productive on things

that could otherwise still be managed

and here’s

where we need to learn to let go don’t

stick

with the same content for too long move

on

even if you think the picture in your

mind isn’t fully evolved yet

or that mnemonic hasn’t seeped in

completely don’t worry

don’t over tax your brain the brain

shouldn’t get too bogged down

or else it will stop listening to you

just give your brain a small push and

help it to move on

that way it will help you to focus a lot

better

remember we’re trying to speed up the

process of learning here

and letting go allows you to learn most

of what you need to

on a faster timeline finally

we reach the sixth and final step that

clinches the deal completely

e evaluate yourself at short intervals

remember i told you not to stick to

learning that one bit of information for

too long

but that doesn’t mean that you don’t

come back to it

by all means this is perhaps the most

underestimated step now keep revisiting

what you’ve committed to your memory

periodically to check

how well you’ve learned for you that

period

can be an hour a day or a week but the

key is

to keep on fleetingly coming back

remember

don’t stick to it just revisit it and

evaluate

how well you know what you know make

this

your feedback mechanism this will help

you

build a long-term memory and also allow

you to understand

what kind of information sticks longer

and better for you

and that will help you make the slight

tweaks in the learning process

that will help you overcome any small

drawbacks that you may face along the

way

well it really is that simple

to learn anything super quick all you

need now

is a little effort to put these six

steps into practice

and i’m hoping that after today each one

of you

embarks on your own remarkable simple

super quick learning journeys thank you