Introduction: Charlie Munger said: "There is not a single smart person I have met who does not read, and there is not a single one". Today is April 23rd, World Book Day, everyone should read, but why do many people study ineffectively? In fact, they have not mastered the method, so how to study?
Why do some people work for many years and still don't make progress?
You think he didn't work hard, but he was constantly reading and studying, but it didn't work, and his level didn't improve at all.
One of the core reasons for this is that he can't learn.
3 reasons why a person's learning is ineffective
A person who can't learn will generally make the following 3 mistakes.
The first, without combing.
He seems to work hard every day, reading books and learning new things every day, but he has no recollection, summary and review.
The famous German psychologist Ebbinghaus proposed a forgetting curve, to the effect that:
If you review everything immediately after memorizing everything, you can recall 100%, recall after 20 minutes, forget 41.8%, forget 55.8% after 1 hour, forget 66.3% after 1 day, forget 72.8% after 2 days, remember only 21.1% after 31 days, and forget 78.9%.
A lot of people are not combed, on the surface, he is ingesting new things every day, and it seems that he has learned a lot of knowledge, but he doesn't remember anything.
The second, always in the comfort zone.
As mentioned in Deliberate Practice, there is a basic truth about any type of practice, that if you never push yourself out of your comfort zone, you will never improve.
That's right. If a person stays in his comfort zone for a long time, then he seems to be very diligent and works overtime every day, but in fact he is repeating at a low level.
For example, some people have worked for 10 years, but they don't learn new skills, but they just use the first year of work experience for 9 years. He didn't deliberately improve his abilities, and in the end his work ability was not even as strong as that of a newcomer. Even because of the progress of the times, the abilities he had in the past have become unimportant, and the abilities have depreciated.
Therefore, when learning, we must cross our own boundaries, so as to break the cognition and achieve refinement.
Third, there is no unity of knowledge and action.
Why do some people know a lot of knowledge and truth, but they still can't live this life?
Because, he did not turn "knowing" into "doing". Between "knowing" and "doing", there is a distance across the Pacific Ocean.
If you can't turn knowledge into action, learning is also ineffective.
Remember, learning isn't about what you remember, it's about whether you solve a problem.
You see, if you don't master the method of learning, you don't learn well.
The essence of learning is extreme repetition
So, how do you ensure that learning is effective? I think it's extreme repetition.
1. Extreme repetition and refresh cognition.
Many people have a fixed mindset, always staying in their comfort zone, and when they encounter problems, they always think of "impossible" and "impossible", and they are always running away.
And people with a growth mindset are always thinking "I can give it a try" and "I'm willing to challenge".
If a person lacks a growth mindset, it is impossible to learn effectively because he will eliminate the input of information.
Therefore, it is necessary to establish a growth mindset, learn new knowledge like a sponge, and constantly refresh your cognition.
But you can't forget it after learning it, you have to digest it. Physicist Richard Feynman has proposed a Feynman learning method, which is worth our reference. There are 4 key points in the Feynman Method.
(1) Select a target. First of all, you need to identify a knowledge point that you want to learn.
(2) Teaching. When you're done, try to teach the knowledge to others.
(3) Error correction learning. During the simulation, you will encounter stuck, and this is when you will have to relearn and review.
(4) Simplification. In the end, you understand, and you have to express it in easy-to-understand words.
In short, you have to explain something clearly to others in the simplest words through your own language, and let the layman understand.
2. Extreme repetition and positive action.
In his book Outliers, Gladwell argues: "Genius is not seen as extraordinary because of superhuman talent, but because of continuous effort." 10,000 hours of training is a necessity for anyone to go from ordinary to extraordinary."
I couldn't agree that repetition is very important. Only when the quantity reaches a certain order of magnitude will the quality be improved.
So one of the ways to make progress is to find the most important and valuable things and repeat them.
But I think that we should not be aimlessly "naïve" repetition, but extreme repetition.
What is extreme repetition? That is, in the process of repetition, you have to do it better and better every time, and improve it every time.
If it's just a low-level repetition, it doesn't make sense.
3. Extreme repetition, feedback review.
The U.S. Air Force has an ace military program in which they divide the best cadets and student pilots into two teams and engage in air combat.
At the end of the air battle, the instructor will extract footage of the encounter between the two sides, obtain detailed data, and then ask them, "What did you notice and take when you were in the air?" and "What mistakes did you make and how did you change them?"
And the coach will tell them how to change the tactics, and finally integrate the lessons learned into the actual combat and get back into the fight. Relying on this method, the combat effectiveness of the US Air Force has been greatly improved.
We should also do the same, we have learned the knowledge, we must practice, as long as there is action, there will be feedback, then we can improve and iterate according to the feedback we get, and finally produce good results.
You see, these three steps are actually the "learning loop model" of cognition-behavior-feedback-outcome, and through the continuous cycle, you will become better and better.
Finally, to sum up, the essence of learning is extreme repetition. Through effective learning, we can turn the knowledge we have acquired into problem-solving skills and become a master.