Find out ways to make yourself smarter

The ability to learn new things is perhaps one of the most important skills a person can possess.

According to a story published in The Independent, authors Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel, of Make It Stick: The Science Of Successful Learning say that people need to keep learning and remembering all their lives.

They go on to add, “Getting ahead at work takes mastery of job skills and difficult colleagues. ... If you're good at learning, you have an advantage in life.”

Two of the authors who are psychology professors at Washington University in St Louis say that to learn something is to be able to remember it.

Unfortunately, lots of the techniques for learning that one picks up as youngsters do not help with long-term recall.

The article goes on scoure Make It Stick for learning tips.

Here are a few pointers:

Bringing it back from memory: Flash cards are a great example to recall something from memory. They force a person to recall an idea from memory. The reason retrieval is so effective is that it strengthens the neural pathways associated with a given concept. Psychologists call it the ‘testing effect.’

Connecting new ideas to what one already knows: The more one can explain new learning relates to prior knowledge. According to the authors, the stronger one’s grasp of new learning is, the more connections one create and the better one remembers it later.

Varying the subjects: Working on a variety of things at the same go causes interleaving. Interleaving helps because it helps a person better comprehend a situation to find a solution.

Trying to find an answer before it is given: When one wades into the unknown, puzzling through it, they are far more likely to learn and remember solutions than if somebody sat down to teach them the answers.

Evaluating what happened: Harvard Business School researchers have found reflective writing to be super powerful. Just 15 minutes of written reflection at the end of the day increased performance by 23 per cent for one group of employees.

Using hacks to recall: When you're using an acronym or image to recall something, you're using a mnemonic. According to the authors, mnemonics are not tools for learning but rather they create mental structures that make it easier to retrieve what one has learnt.

Welcome feedbacks: When one gets feedback that reveals their ignorance. Calibration, according to the authors, is simply the act of using an objective instrument to clear away illusions and adjust your judgment to better reflect reality.