With recent success of our “Become a superlearner” Udemy class and book with the same name, I am often reminding myself our humble beginnings and principles that became key to our methodology. The keytostudy methodology was built as a result of many years of research by Anna Goldentouch and myself. The methodology is built upon the following ideas:
- Getting things done. Our students are asked to have clear goals, to use their skills while learning to achieve meaningful results, to find time and motivation to practice. We consider hands-on experience more important than theoretical understanding. Unlike many other methodologies, we build several skills gradually in mutually complementary form to produce the best results. Focusing on one particular skill may render the whole system ineffective.
- Visualization. Our visual processing is much faster than our audio processing, in a similar way GPU is typically stronger than CPU. However to use it properly, information needs to be encoded into a format that our visual cortex can process. We use visualization to achieve just that. There is more than one way to effectively visualize concepts: creatively, logically and otherwise. Occasionally our students fail to visualize consciously and still are capable of great speed, maybe subconsciously.
- Memorization. Strong memory is a key to effective learning. We are not focusing on memory athlete skillset, but on tasks that students and teachers, businessmen and lawyers, programmers and engineers, doctors and linguists perform in their personal and professional life. Therefore we adapt the memorization techniques not to remember cards and numbers, but to remember textbooks and functional elements.
- Speedreading. Once the brain is trained to process large amounts of data, speedreading becomes very handy. Currently speedreading is probably the best way to learn a lot of data on almost any subjects. When we started to develop the methodology in early 2000s books were still the main modality of reading. Today we consume most of our information in digital format and we adapt our methodology accordingly.
- Analysis. It is unreasonable to remember more than can actually be used. It is counter-productive if fictions of our imagination mix with the information we learn. The advanced skillset always includes adaptation to the material, use of prior knowledge, prioritization of what we read and developing the best strategy for our personal style and personal need.
- Community. Building and maintaining strong community of superlearners is a very high priority for us. People are different and we can help each other become better. By working with Jonathan, Suraj and many others we are building a strong and flexible community capable of learning and developing.
Your success is our success. Please do not hesitate to contact me [email protected].
