The 1st of September is officially the “back to school” day for me. Before you return to school there are several great things you can do to make school easier. Clearly, a student, a parent, and an expert will do very different things. Here I want to show the options for each category.
30 days of training for absolute beginners.
If you hear about accelerated learning for the first time and have 30 days, this is still good. You can actually achieve a lot.
Several years ago I already wrote a nice training schedule for 30 days. http://www.keytostudy.com/30-days-training-schedule/
The focus is on training visualization and memory so that when you get back to school you can remember more and better. If you train 4 sessions a day, between 30 and 90 min each, you will be ready for school.
Practice penmanship
The equipment we use, quality, and descriptivity of notetaking absolutely improve what we remember. Both students and experts can benefit from better penmanship. I have a masterclass on that
https://keytostudy.thinkific.com/courses/penmanship-and-fonts
(Do not pay the full price. Here is a time-limited 80% discount coupon: PEN_TO_STUDY_80. The coupon is unique for this article.)
The masterclass is roughly equivalent to 10 Udemy courses. Here are some ideas from the course you can put to use immediately:
- Doodle. That doubles comprehension.
- Practice highlighting and creating cheat sheets.
- The fonts you use for writing and displaying information matter. Choose the right fonts.
- Not all equipment is good for all tasks. Choose the right equipment for what you do,
- If you need to draw on a whiteboard, it is a special skill you need to train separately.
Work on general knowledge
When we learn something it connects associatively to everything else we know. If we learn something entirely new it does not even generate curiosity: we need to connect it to something we know…
So the more we know, the better we are. There are several ways to boost general knowledge. We can simply review the subjects we want to learn. Then we ask questions and perform our own research. Research is a strong word. The idea is generating 5 words keyword combinations and read the 10 most interesting search results from the 3 first pages in Google Search or Google Scholar. Then modify the keywords and repeat.
Typically the results of what we learn by ourselves will be complementary to what we will learn in the classroom. Even if we take an online class, it is likely to be very different – as the format of teaching is very different.
We can do something else entirely and take a book about the subject. The books can be very boring, but if you acquired speedreading skills – not too hard.
Rest and travel
This is good advice for everybody: students, parents, teachers, and experts. Before starting something new, take a vacation. There are several strategies here:
- Get closer to nature. Do something athletic in a totally natural environment. Turn off the mobile devices. Sleep well. Eat organic food. Meditate, including walking meditation. Usually, this strategy improves resilience.
- Collect new experiences. For example, travel to an exotic country, try new food, and communicate with the locals. I honestly recommend visiting museums. The location may be thematic: Greece, Italy, UK, or Israel. It is especially true for those who major in arts and humanitarian subjects. Abstract subjects may become connected with very real experiences.
- Take an intense course. You can learn one of my masterclasses, yet there are other choices. For example programming or business-focused boot camp. This option is good if you plan to moonlight during your school year.
Build a plan for the upcoming year
A year is a lot of time to invest and subjects to discover. You can brainstorm the best way to use the year ahead of you:
- Find what you are passionate about, or try to be passionate about what you need to do anyway.
- Acquire new habits or get rid of the habits you do not like.
- Outline three goals for the upcoming year.
- Daydream the way you are going to work. Do you need better equipment?
- Work on your productivity skills. Even cooking dinner you may discover tips that will make your life so much easier.
- Allocate the resources you may need. Do not wait for the last moment if you need a loan. The more notice time you get, the better terms you can potentially find.
I have minicourses about productivity-related subjects
https://keytostudy.thinkific.com/courses/keytomission-passion-and-actuation-minicourse
and
https://keytostudy.thinkific.com/courses/keytovision-productivity-minicourse
[Minicourses are cheap, but they are also included in bundles and if you buy 1:1 with Anna I may simply open it free of charge. Contact me [email protected]]
Do not procrastinate
Whatever you want to achieve in a month, start as soon as you can. 5 weeks are much better than 3 weeks. You can accomplish more and minimize risks. A month is really very little time. It is hardly enough to practice memory skills. Every subject above requires roughly a month. Even a good journey requires a month to plan, buy, do actual travel, and create a travel diary with photos. If you take the time to procrastinate now, maybe you will need an entire year for the next opportunity…
