I wrote this post as there have been many people who kept asking for some information about learning. As I was writing a post, I thought that others might also be interested in this as a big chunk of the demographic of scanlation readers are poor students in college or highschool.
Time spent studying does not equal learning.
More studying time won’t help if the way you are studying is flawed to begin with.
Holistic Learning
Smart people don’t just learn better. They learn differently. While many students get caught up in memorizing facts, intelligent learners know to seek the bigger picture and connect the facts together. This form of learning I call holistic learning.
Holistic learning is basically the opposite of rote memorization. Instead of reciting lists of facts, rules or formulas, you seek to connect ideas together. Instead of having separate boxes in your head for geometry, algebra or ancient India, you deliberately link facts together, so they form a bigger picture.
Excessive studying shows you aren’t learning holistically. It shows that you didn’t learn the material the first time. If you properly link ideas together to see the bigger picture, studying should only be a brief refresher.
How to Boost Your Study Habits
Holistic learning isn’t like a brainstorming technique or mind-mapping. It is fundamentally changing how you look at the process of learning and how you absorb information. As such, there isn’t an easy ten step program to master it.
But there are some tools that can help you shift your learning habits so they become more holistic:
Visceralize
You’ve probably heard of visualizing, right? Visceralizing means taking all of your senses and connecting it to information. Studies have shown that people remember more vividly information that comes to us in an emotionally aroused state. Linking feelings, senses and imagery to bland ideas makes them more real. You probably counted on your fingers when learning numbers, why can’t you do the same when you are learning now?
Metaphor
The heart of holistic learning is relating things together. Metaphors are literary devices that link two things that normally don’t go together. Come up with metaphors to describe more complicated ideas in simpler terms.
Ten Year Old Rule
Explain ideas to yourself as you would to a ten year old. Sure, this isn’t always possible in your last years of a medical degree or learning how to apply neural networks to computer AI. But the idea is that you should be able to “dumb down” an idea enough so it seems obvious to yourself.
Trace Back
Put away your books and start with a random fact or concept. Then relate that idea to another concept in your subject. Keep doing this tracing pattern until you've linked many ideas together. The Gupta Dynasty reminds you of ancient Greece which reminds you of Socrates, reminding you of Confucius…
Refresher Scan
Scan through information in your text book. Notice whenever you encounter information that you either don’t remember or weren’t 100% sure about.
Scan a second time after 24h!
Quickly link that information back to existing ideas through viscerlization and metaphor.
Scan a third time after a week!
If your refresher scan is turning up more than a few points per chapter, you haven’t learned it thoroughly enough.
Remember, the secret number is THREE!
Compress Information
Not all information works well for holistic learning. A common point cited to me is learning anatomy for first year medical students. Anatomy involves learning arbitrary Latin names for hundreds of different elements of your body. There often aren't clear patterns and constructs, just a dry list of facts. When encountering information such as this, your goal should be to compress it.
Find ways to group information into smaller chunks of memory through pictures or mnemonics.
Write
Take a piece of paper and write out the connections in the information. Reorganize the information into different patterns. The key here is the writing, not the final product. So don't waste your time making a pretty picture. Scribble and use abbreviations to link the ideas together.
May 30th, 2010 at 1:59 PM
Thanks for this, very interesting and useful.
May 30th, 2010 at 2:14 PM
cool post Silv,also it’s nice to see this site knows it’s demographic.
May 30th, 2010 at 3:13 PM
Thanks…I could use this…
May 30th, 2010 at 4:20 PM
thanks for the post, maybe it’s time to come up with a new design/layout for the site? silv’s article’s, and regular manga updates?
May 30th, 2010 at 4:40 PM
You are new, the blog was always more than just about manga.
May 30th, 2010 at 7:22 PM
interesting read.
also, i love the pics that were used :)
May 30th, 2010 at 8:13 PM
silv not really new, I’ve been around since the days when you first started doing Eden, just things seem a bit disorganized ever since this layout/format came out
May 30th, 2010 at 9:16 PM
Put more of that stuff online…
;-)
May 30th, 2010 at 10:49 PM
We have a twitter account when somebody updates the post. We also started adding the newest releases at top. What do you think is unorganized? Those featured, non manga post will later return to the side category by themselves. So no worries about organization. Thanks for being a long time reader, how about telling us about your favorite manga series so that we might be able to find the one or another good series to keep track off.
Thanks phil, I know you are an avid reader of mu :)
May 31st, 2010 at 12:02 AM
Ok, just cleaned out the trash. If people start thinking that they decide what’s posted here, then they are dead wrong.
May 31st, 2010 at 12:42 AM
You fucking Nazi! You deleted my comment!
May 31st, 2010 at 12:46 AM
Rolf. Useless as it was, I did indeed. Shall I delete the next comment as well? I don’t remember you ever participating in the discussions or providing ANYTHING useful yet that could be beneficial to the site. But if you DO provide some good manga links, I will forgive you and not ban your country from visiting this site.
May 31st, 2010 at 3:06 AM
You guys are doing a good job at posting the mangas, most of the ones I follow are posted here, and I started reading a good few thanks to this site. If you’re interested in new projects, there’s this manga called “Bestia” by Ikegami Ryoichi, 4 volumes and complete in japan. Would be great if someone resumed and finished tling it.
May 31st, 2010 at 11:04 AM
personally if i wanted to read this kinda stuff then id search for it myself.
i dont think this is the right place for this, but whatever, you’re the boss!
its true, MU was always about more than manga, it was about manga, raw manga and anime!
jimbo – i would love to see bestia tl’d but there are no raws around, (that i know of)
May 31st, 2010 at 1:59 PM
Well, I dont want to get the situation worse, but I think Silv should be more accepting to the critics, so he can do an even better work.
I for once appreciate the info, but should like to see more manga news too.
May 31st, 2010 at 4:36 PM
^ I CAN be more accepting to criticism but I don’t have to. Look at how many year’s we’ve been online and how much effort our great authors have put into the site. Me for myself is pulling a lot of strings to keep all the projects hosted and online. Random remarks about how they prefer to read other series is ok, as long as it does not discredit the author who actually wrote the article. I have a no-tolerance-policy for bitching leechers who contribute nothing but whine about how they can’t see their manga fast enough. This is the kind of spoiled attitude that I’m motivated to prevent.
May 31st, 2010 at 11:06 PM
Jeez, it’s not like these are replacing the manga ones or anything, I just think of it as a bonus.
June 1st, 2010 at 12:26 PM
Just wanted to say, loved this article.. it came just at the right time.
June 6th, 2010 at 3:43 PM
The article is very well done, but the pictures are totally great lol! Although I don’t really need this, I read the whole thing with great pleasure :D