I’m sure that you know many ways to improve memory and IQ. Learn a language, usemnemonics, get enough sleep, exercise and blah, blah, blah.
But what if they are too boring? You’re a descendant of great explorers after all!
Where’s the adventure?! Where is the madness chasing away the shadows of conservatism? What if the method for the perfect memory is licking your knee while wearing a helmet filled with cottage cheese?!
I guess we will have to wait a bit for the final answer. But find comfort in the fact that scientists are relentlessly looking for out-of-the-box ways to boost your memory.
Just take a look at this bizarre list!
1. Clench your right fist
Picture by: Robbie Veldwijk
Pretty weird, isn’t it? Scientists from Montclair State University established that a group of volunteers who clenched their right fists while acquiring new material and then clenched their left fist when recalling that material remembered more than control groups who didn’t clench their fists at all.
2. Hold Your Urine
You’ve heard me right. Next time when you have to go wee-wee, hold your horses. It seems that holding your urine improves decision making before choosing an immediate or a delayed financial reward.
The research was appreciated all around the world – a Dutch scientist conducting this study, Mirjam Tusk, was actually awarded IgNobel.
3. Spend a Few Minutes Looking At Trees
Picture by: Andreas Krappweis
If you are not a nature-loving and tree-hugging hippie you might want to reconsider – staring at a photo of trees or a brisk walk in the woods can improve your memory and attention performance by 20%.
4. Think Aloud
A study with 30 younger and 31 older adults showed that thinking aloud boosts the performance of older adults on a short form of the Raven’s Matrices (Bors & Stokes, 1998, Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58, p. 382) but did not affect other tasks.
In the replication experiment, 30 older adults (mean age = 73.0) performed the Raven’s Matrices and three other tasks to replicate and extend the findings of the initial study. Once again older adults performed significantly better only on the Raven’s Matrices while thinking aloud. Performance gains on this task were substantial (d = 0.73 and 0.92 in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively), corresponding to a fluid intelligence increase of nearly one standard deviation.
Source: “How to Gain Eleven IQ Points in Ten Minutes: Thinking Aloud Improves Raven’s Matrices Performance in Older Adults” from Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, Volume 17, Issue 2 March 2010, pages 191 – 204
5. Sniff Rosemary
Picture by: Hagit Berkovich
One study revealed that memory in healthy adults could be improved by the aroma of rosemary essential oil. People in a rosemary-scented room performed better when it comes to remembering events and being aware of the need to complete tasks at particular times (McCready & Moss, 2013).
6. Wear Red
You must admit, there is something intensive about this color. Russell Hill and Robert Barton, two researchers at the University of Durham, have systematically analyzed all the matchups of the 2004 Athens Olympics.
In 2008 they conducted the analysis of the teams of England’s Premier League from 1947 to 2003 which brought similar results.
The theory has it triggers feelings of dominance among the players wearing that color while having a threatening effect on the opponents.
7. Eat Cocoa Flavanols
It seems an antioxidant in chocolate appears to improve some memory skills that people lose with age.
Participants with the memory of a typical 60-year-old improved to that of a 30 or 40-year-old after only three months.
They drank a mixture high in antioxidants called cocoa flavanols for three months and performed better on a memory test in comparison with people who drank a low-flavanol mixture.
But before you start smearing chocolate all over your body with a manic look on your face read this:
To consume the high-flavanol group’s daily dose of epicatechin (one of flavanoids), 138 milligrams, would take eating at least 300 grams of dark chocolate a day — about seven average-sized bars. Or possibly about 100 grams of baking chocolate or unsweetened cocoa powder, but concentrations vary widely depending on the processing. Milk chocolate has most epicatechin processed out of it.
So I guess we will have to wait till some new product is created. Shame.
8. Chew Gum
Doing it might increase your recall by 20% on a short test due to improved blood flow to the brain. Additionally, it helps you to stay more focused on a task. On the other hand, it increases your chances of beings socially isolated if you can’t help but smack your lips!
9. Eat Walnuts
Picture by: Adrian van Leen
Why? Well, walnut? (shut up, I AM hilarious!), The research showed a significant improvement in learning skills, memory, reducing anxiety and motor development in mice fed a walnut-rich diet.
Scientists suggest that “the high antioxidant content of walnuts may have a contributing factor in protecting the mouse brain from the degeneration typically seen in Alzheimer’s disease.”
10. Ignore Stereotypes
That’s one is pretty ironic – if you remind older people of stereotypes about age and memory, they will perform worse in tests (Hess et al., 2003). One can only wonder if this phenomenon has the same effect on blondes. Anyway – ignore stereotypes and you’re good to go.
Why don’t you give them a try? Just don’t use them all at the same time. That might be awkward.
Are you going to use any of these methods? Let me know!
Many people dream of having a fantastic memory. Who can blame them! Being able to recall information on a whim seems to be the hallmark of every genius.
The reasons are plenty, and everyone seems to have their own explanations. Some blame disinterest and apathy of learners, while others claim that our brains aren't created to hold significant amounts of information. While I can't offer any advice in this article for dealing with the former, I can help you with the latter.
Let's see what the biggest problem in learning effectively and memorizing tons of information is and how to overcome it.
How Much Information Can We Possibly Remember?
Many people are under the impression that the capacity of our memory is the biggest problem in learning effectively. That's a myth. Unfortunately, if you try to google the answer to how much we can remember, you will get information that is outdated and doesn't reflect the state of our current knowledge.
That's why I will try to give you a number based on my research.
Previous studies about the capacity of our memory
A recent study from 2009 published by Azevedo and colleagues estimated that there approximately 86 billion neurons in the human brain. We also know that each neuron forms about 1,000 connections to other neurons, amounting to more than an eighty-six trillion connections. Neurons combine so that each one helps with many memories at a time. At the same time, a couple of years ago, scientists from the Salk Institute discovered that instead of 3 synapse sizes, as we previously believed, there are 26 discrete sizes.
They can change over a span of a few minutes, meaning that the brain might have a far greater capacity for storing information than previously thought.
In the past, professor Paul Reber from Northwestern University, who at the time believed there were about one billion neurons in the brain, estimated our brain's memory capacity at about 1,5 petabytes.
So what happens if we include the information mentioned above?
We would arrive at the number closer to 215 petabytes, and that is without taking into consideration additional synapse sizes. If we include 23 of the newly discovered synapse sizes, knowing that in computer terms, this value corresponds to about 4.7 "bits" of information per synapse, we will get about 860 petabytes.
One petabyte is 10^15 bytes of digital information.
As you can see, that's a scary number. However, it tells us one important thing.
Your memory's capacity is not what's holding you back. You could learn a new piece of information every second of your life and live to be 500 years old, and you wouldn't even scrape the surface of what's possible.
A Great Example of the Vast Capacity of Our Memory
There is a good chance you've heard of Kim Peek. He was a savant and the inspiration for the character Raymond Babbitt in the movie Rain Man. Many sources claim that he could memorize between 95-98% of almost any book by reading it in about 1 hour. According to The Times newspaper, he could accurately recall the contents of at least 12,000 books.
Is there any exaggeration in his feats? Highly unlikely. There are lots ofvideos on YouTube that showcase his fantastic memory. Here is an excellent documentary about him. Well worth your time.
Of course, it's easy to dismiss what he was capable of because of being autistic. Nevertheless, I think that what was unusual was his ability to access all the information, not how much he remembered.
Other Problems in Learning Effectively That I Will Omit
Before I get to the meat of the matter, I want you to know that other common learning obstacles may stand in your way.
Why have I decided to leave them off? Truth be told, if you used spaced repetition software, you could ameliorate most of these pains. If you think you don't need these programs then, no offense, but you're like one of those guys who think they are at the nudist beach only to wake up naked at a local playground when their acid wears off. In other words, — you might be a tiny bit delusional.
What's the Biggest Problem in Learning Effectively?
Remembering is supposed to increase our efficiency in dealing with situations that occur in our lives.
Think about something as simple as seeing a person with a knife. It's doubtful that your reaction would be anything else than fleeing like a challenged dodo bird.
In other words, in the perfect world, certain situations or information should trigger our pre-created scripts as a response.
For that reason,
the biggest problem in learning effectively is our inability to connect information into meaningful models (i.e., schemas), which can be accessed easily.
Notice that it doesn't matter how much you try to cling to different information. Most of them fade into nothingness after a relatively short time.
So the real question is, how should you use your memory capacity to remember different information you confront to increase your efficiency with dealing with those situations.
Three things are required for a skill to be used or a behavior to occur (Fogg 2009):
1
Motivation
2
Ability
3
A trigger
1. Motivation
In our case, I assume that you're not plagued by apathy, and you want to use and apply your knowledge. That leaves us with the remaining two requirements.
2. Ability
Ability can be understood as either knowledge, i.e., possessing the right information or psychomotor skills. I have argued that you can't think effectively without the right information. And no — being able to google something doesn't count. Failure to meet this condition will lead you to build automatic responses based on random pieces of information. As a result, both the quality of your thinking and its effects will be subpar. Garbage in, garbage out.
A trigger can be understood by one or more things that set off your ability.
What can be a trigger?
Almost everything can be the trigger. However, they are based on a combination of one of the five senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste) and emotional state.
The problem is that not everything should act as a trigger. You don't want to be standing in an elevator and release your inner surgeon. Nor do you want to sit on the beach and suddenly recall how to program in Python. Triggers should be perfectly tied to a given informational set.
There is one more element missing to understand these interrelations fully.
How Is Our Knowledge Organized?
If you want to learn how to overcome the biggest problem in learning effectively, you must first understand the basics of how our knowledge is organized.
The schema theory is probably the best way to do it.
The Schema theory claims that what we currently remember is affected by our background knowledge (i.e., what we already know). In other words, our prior knowledge can significantly influence our current knowledge.
"According to this theory, the knowledge we have stored in memory is organized as a set of schemas, or knowledge structures, which represent generic knowledge about objects, situations, events, or actions that have been acquired from past experience."
"Schemas represent all kinds of generic knowledge from simple knowledge, such as the shape of the letter ``A'', for example, to more complex knowledge such as knowledge about political ideologies or astrophysics. Like the action schemas, knowledge schemas may be linked together into related sets, with superordinate and subordinate schemas. So, for example, the schema for ``table'' would be linked to schemas for ``furniture'', ``rooms'', and ``houses''.
A schema has slots that may be filled with fixed compulsory values, or with variable optional values. A schema for a boat would have ``boats'' as a fixed value, but has ``oars'' and ``engine'' as variable values.
Schemas also supply default values. These are the most probable or typical values. If you are thinking about some particular boat, and you cannot remember the color of the sails, the boat schema might supply the default value ``white'' as being the most probable value to fill the color slot.
`Schema'' is used as a general term to cover all kinds of general knowledge. However, we can also differentiate more specified versions of schema which are called scripts.
Scripts consist of general knowledge about particular kinds of events, or frames, which consist of knowledge about the properties of particular objects or locations (Cohen).
How to Overcome the Biggest Problem in Learning Effectively
My quest to become competent in lots of different domains started many moons ago. What I couldn't figure out for a long time was why I regularly failed to recall information I previously memorized. It didn't matter if I relied on mnemonics or spaced repetition software. A couple of weeks passed, and all the knowledge evaporated. It took me much time to understand that isolated pieces of information are nonsensical to the brain and have little to no practical value.
An example of fallacious reasoning based on isolated bits of information
In one of our discussions my son's nursery teachers mentioned fleetingly that if a child suffers from a persistent cough, it's undoubtedly a sign of parasitic infection.
Can it be true?
Absolutely. Some intestinal parasites (e.g., Ascaris) can lay eggs that might end up in your lungs. We also know some species of parasites that can be found exclusively in the lungs. However, does one piece of information warrant such a diagnosis? Absolutely not.
Dozens of things can cause a cough. Saying that it's X or Y based on one piece of information doesn't have much sense (or it's plain stupid).
For example, if it was a parasitic infection, then in this region of the world, there is a chance it would rather be some intestinal parasite whose eggs migrated to lungs. In that case, way before the occurrence of cough, we could notice some other symptoms, e.g., gastric discomfort, rash, diarrhea, etc. Even then, we would need to run further tests to narrow down possible causes.
Conclusions based on isolated pieces of information are almost always fallacious.
2. Provide relevancy to the information you learn
My past self was not only failing to understand that remembering isolated pieces of information is useless. I also couldn't wrap my head around one simple fact.
Abstract information gets forgotten amazingly fast
If this abstract information is also isolated, then the forgetting will happen almost immediately.
Your goal as a learner is to make this information as useful as it's possible. It should be a part of your reality. We didn't evolve to remember rubbish information. Whatever we learned or remembered was usually necessary for our survival. This was and is true for many things like remembering what not to eat, how to perform certain skills to earn your living, etc.
Whenever I teach medical professionals, they are always baffled why I remember some seemingly trivial information. The disappointingly dull answer is - I brute-force myself to make relevant connections.
Example - biophotons:
When I was learning about biophotons, one of the things I learned is that their emission is a type of bioluminescence. It can theoretically be triggered by reactive oxygen species. That led to a forced, but funny (for me!) conclusion that I turned into a flashcard:
Q: How can I use biophotons to light up my room?
A: eat lots of mercury (= inflammation)
The logic being that this action would trigger a massive inflammatory reaction. Is it exactly true? Not exactly, but it helped to cement the concept in my head, and this is what truly counts.
3. Categorize your knowledge into relevant scripts
You already know that your abilities need triggers. Hence, your goal is to categorize your knowledge into relevant scripts which should get triggered under the right circumstances. Even then, it's easy to overdo it by trying to squeeze too much information into one script, which leads to cue overload.
Cue overload is the phenomenon wherein the slower and less accurate recall is caused by too many associative links (the fan effect; Anderson, 1983a).
Example - lie detection:
Many people, quite naively believe that one gesture is enough to spot a liar — quite the contrary. Real experts usually analyze body language based on clusters of different gestures and cues.
In that case, your ability, i.e., analyzing body language or getting suspicious, would be triggered by a specific combination of cues. Without those cues, your abilities won't get activated. It's not like your amazing skills will be activated around the clock.
It's funny to hear some body language experts claiming that their skills are like the curse, and they can't seem to turn it off. I can almost see them watching some low-budget erotic movie thinking, "hmm, judging by the cues he is not a real plumber, and he didn't come here to unclog the pipes".
4. Create many different scripts for every piece of information
Just like memorizing isolated information is nonsensical, so is combining it into one or only a few scripts.
Any kind of information is by its nature multi-faceted. You can't expect one script to give you a complete picture.
You should do your best to combine those different facets into many scripts, whereas each one of them presents you with a different perspective. The more scripts you create, the more complete and original your thinking will be.
The Biggest Problem in Learning Effectively - Summary
Way too many people believe that the capacity of our memory is the main problem in learning effectively and remembering a lot. It's not the case, but I do understand this line of reasoning. If you believe that remembering a lot is not possible, then you won't make an effort, and you will end up being right (see self-fulfilling prophecy).
The truth is that you can be an expert in many different areas (or at least very competent) if you only learn how to acquire information and turn it into relevant scripts. Unfortunately, no amount of reading will get you close enough to your goal. It's all about the conscious effort and following the plan.
How to Learn Effectively and Memorize a Lot
Don't learn isolated information
Provide relevancy to the information you learn
Categorize your knowledge into relevant schemas that get triggered by the right cues
Create many different scripts for every piece of information
Do you want to share your own experience with memorizing a lot? Leave me a comment!
Done reading? Time to learn!
Reading articles online is a great way to expand your knowledge. However, the sad thing is that after barely 1 day, we tend to forget most of the things we have read.
I am on the mission to change it. I have created over 30 flashcards that you can download to truly learn information from this article. It's enough to download ANKI, and you're good to go.
There is this persistent belief in the world of language learning that seeing a word a couple of times will allow the information to effortlessly sink in.
If you don't know anything about memory it might seem like a logical and tempting concept.
After all, the repetition is the mother of all learning.
Laying your eyes on some piece of information time after time should make remembering easy, right?
Not really.
Not that learning can't happen then. It can. It's just excruciatingly slow (read more about passive learning).
I would like to show you a couple of experiments which, hopefully, will help you realize that a number of passive repetitions don't have that much of influence on your ability to recall information actively.
Let's start with a great experiment which went viral recently.
Drawing logos from memory
Signs.com has conducted a fascinating experiment, asking 156 Americans between the ages of 20 and 70, to draw 10 famous logos as accurately as possible. The only trick was, that they have to do it without any visual aids, simply from their memory (source - BoredPanda).
How did participants do?
Let's take a look at a couple of examples.
The apple logo, which one could argue is very simple, was somewhat correctly drawn by 20% of participants. If you are having a bad day, here are some of the less successful attempts.
The Adidas logo was correctly recalled only by 12% of participants.
Ok, I know that all this begs a question - what does it have to do with memory?
Implications of the experiment
The experiment's original intent was very interesting on its own. However, if you take a good look and prick up your ears you will soon discover that there is more to it! The experiment is trying to tell us something!
What's that, Mr. Experiment? What are you trying to tell us? - passive learning sucks!
Come again, please? - passive learning sucks!!!!
Now, why would Mr. Experiment say such a thing?
How many times would you say that you have seen, so far, Apple's or Starbuck's logos?
50? Don't think so. 100? Highly doubt it. 1000+ ? That's more like it.
It's a safe bet that an average participant in this experiments has seen each logo at least several thousand times. Several. Thousand. Times.
That's a lot, to say the least.
Let's look at their final results. Surely, with that many "reviews" they must have remembered logos quite well.
Don't know how about you but it's one of the sadder things I have seen in my life.
And I have seen a cute kitten getting soaked by the rain and crapped on by a pigeon.
But it's all good because there is a lesson or two in all that doom and gloom.
1) Retention intention matters
It wouldn't be fair if I didn't mention this - one of the main reasons why people don't remember information is that they are not even trying.
If you have a neighbor called Rick who you hate, you won't care much if he is sick. Rick can eat a d*** as far as you are concerned. You don't want to remember anything about the guy.
The chance of remembering anything if you have no intention of conserving that information is close to zero. It was clearly a case in that study.
Who is warped enough to deliberately memorize logos?
2) Number of passive repetitions has limited influence on our ability to remember
This is likely to be the most important lesson of all. Sometimes even dozens of repetitions of a given word won't make you remember it!
3) Complexity of information matters
If you look at the table, you will notice another interesting, and logical, thing. The more complicated the logo the less accuracy we could observe.
Arguably, Starbucks' logo is the most complex of them all. Not surprisingly it could only boast a recall rate of 6%.
It stands true for words as well.
The longer or the more difficult to pronounce a word is the harder it is to commit it to your memory.
Interestingly, some comments suggested that all those companies failed at marketing.
It is clearly not the case. Above all, companies aim at improving our recognition of their brands and products. And that we do without the slightest doubt.
Other experiments to test your ability to recall
The experiment conducted by sings.com had its charm. However, you don't need to make inroads into other areas of knowledge in order to carry out a similar study.
It's enough to look around.
1) A mobile phone test
According to comScore’s 2017 Cross Platform Future in Focus report, the average American adult (18+) spends 2 hours, 51 minutes on their smartphone every day.
Another study, conducted by Flurry, shows U.S. consumers actually spend over 5 hours a day on mobile devices! About 86% of that time was taken up by smartphones, meaning we spend about 4 hours, 15 minutes on our mobile phones every day.
It means that you take a peek at your mobile phone at least 40-50 times per day or over 10000 times per year.
Now a question for you - how confident are you that you would be able to draw your mobile phone without looking at it?
2) A watch test
It's safe to assume that if you have a watch, you look at it dozens of times per day. Most people hold their watches dear and carry them around for years. That would make it quite plausible that you have seen your watch thousands of times.
The question stays the same - how confident are you that you would be able to precisely draw your watch without looking at it?
3) A coin test
Yet another object which we tend to see frequently.
Choose a coin of some common denomination and do your best to replicate it on a piece of paper. Results might be hilarious!
What's that? Your curiosity is still not satiated?
Then you mightdesign an experiment and run it to see how much you can remember after one hour of reading compared to one hour of learning actively some random words (i.e. using them in sentences),
Let me know in the comment about your results if you decide to run any of those tests!
Especially the last one!
Why is passive learning so ineffective?
1) You think your memory is extraordinary
This is an interesting assumption behind passive learning which you might do unconsciously.
You see your brain like a humongous harvester of information.
Wham-bam! You reap them one by one. The assumption, as beautiful as it is, is plain wrong.
Your brain is more like a bedraggled peasant with two baskets. There is only so much crap he can pick up throughout the day.
2) Brains want to forget
You see, your brain constantly works on forgetting most of the thing you come into contact with.
Why should your brain care about some words if many of them don't occur that often in everyday language?
3) No attention and no encoding
The simple memory model looks more less like this:
1
Attention
2
Encoding
3
Storage
4
Retrieval
The amount of attention you devote to a piece of information you want to acquire is almost non-existent. Just a glimpse and your roving eye is already elsewhere.
And since almost no attention is allocated to your learning, there can be no encoding as well (more about encoding here).
Passive learning and the illusion of knowledge
Did you know that research estimates that about 50% of the primate cerebral cortex is dedicated to processing visual information? That makes a vision the most important sensory system.
No wonder that our vision is the closest thing we have to the perfect memory.
In one of the most famous memory experiments of all times (1973), Lionel Standing proved that it is hard to rival vision in terms of capacity to retain information (Standing, L. (1973). Learning 10000 pictures. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 25(2), 207-222.)
Learning 10000 pictures
Lionel Standing, a British researcher, asked young adults to view 10,000 snapshots of common scenes and situations. Two days later he gave them a recognition test in which the original pictures were mixed in with new pictures they hadn’t seen. The participants picked out the original pictures with an accuracy of eighty-three percent, a jaw-dropping performance. - Robert Madigan - How Memory Works--and How to Make It Work for You.
Impressive, right?
Not exactly.
The thing is that this information is not something you know actively. You can recognize it but cannot retrieve it most of the time.
Don't get me wrong. Knowing something passively has its advantages and can be a really powerful factor in creative and thinking processes. But if you want to speak a language you have to know vocabulary explicitly.
Energetic nodding and grumbling worthy of a winner of the one-chromosome lottery don't count as a conversation.
Why passive learning makes us believe that we "know"?
In another famous experiment, memory researcher Jennifer McCabe showed why students think that cramming and reading are superior to studying by recalling (which has been proven time and time again to be a better learning method).
In the said experiment, students from two different groups had to read the same one-page essay.
The first group was supposed to recall and write down as much information as they could upon finishing.
The second group was given a chance to restudy the passage after they finished.
One week later both groups were tested on their memory for the passage. Not surprisingly, the second group crashed and burned. Its performance was far worse than the one of the first group.
What's more, students from the second group were actually quite confident that they would fare better.
"How could they be so wrong?", you might ask.
Most likely, they based their answers on their own experience. They knew that when they finished reading material over and over, they felt confident in their memory. The facts seemed clear and fresh. They popped into mind quickly and easily as the students reviewed them. This is not always so when recalling facts in a self-test—more effort is often required to bring the facts to mind, so they don’t seem as solid. From a student’s point of view, it can seem obvious which method—restudying—produces better learning. Robert Bjork refers to this as an “illusion of competence” after restudying. The student concludes that she knows the material well based on the confident mastery she feels at that moment.
And she expects that the same mastery will be there several days later when the exam takes place. But this is unlikely. The same illusion of competence is at work during cramming, when the facts feel secure and firmly grasped. While that is indeed true at the time, it’s a mistake to assume that long-lasting memory strength has been created. - Robert Madigan - How Memory Works
Illusions of competence are certainly seductive. They can easily trick people into misjudging the strength of their memory as easily as they can encourage students to choose learning methods that undermine long-term retention.
The best defense is to use proven memory techniques and to be leery of making predictions about future memory strength based on how solid the memory seems right now!
Final thoughts
As a long-life learner, you should understand that passive learning is one of the slowest ways to acquire knowledge. Adopting such a learning style creates the illusion of knowledge which further perpetuates this vicious circle.
The best way to approach passive learning is to treat it as a complementary method to active learning. The rule is simple - once you are too tired to keep learning actively, you can switch to passive learning.
Done reading? Time to learn!
Reading articles online is a great way to expand your knowledge. However, the sad thing is that after barely 1 day, we tend to forget most of the things we have read.
I am on the mission to change it. I have created over 14 flashcards that you can download to truly learn information from this article. It’s enough to download ANKI, and you’re good to go. This way, you will be able to speed up your learning in a more impactful way.
Scouring the internet to find the ultimate language learning method is no mean feat.
Around every corner, there is something new trying to seduce you. And most of the time you give in. "Why not", you might think, "It sounds reasonable".
You don't even notice when this search turns into a bizarre blind-folded tasting. One time it's an acorn. Other time it is a piece of crap.
What's even worse, almost every person swears by his own method. "Listen, I learned Japanese by yodeling. I am telling ya this is the way to go!"
It is all confusing and disheartening.
That's why I want to show you how to evaluate learning methods.
Hopefully, upon reading this article you will learn how to navigate those murky waters and make more educated decisions about your learning.
But let's start with a question I have heard many times.
Why bother with choosing the right method?
1. It saves time
Nothing is our in this world but time - Seneca
You should treat the choice of a potential learning method as an investment.
Would you ever open a newspaper, close your eyes and just pick some stocks randomly? I don't think so.
That's why I would suggest that you approach choosing a language learning strategy the same way.
Don't behave like a happy-go-lucky hippie. Spend an hour or two to think it through.
It will pay off, I promise. It really makes a difference.
Very often 10 minutes of a good learning method might be worth an hour (or even more) of a crappy method. (* cough* Duolingo *cough*).
Imagine what you could do with all that saved time!
Of course, pondering over this decision for too long is no good either. Don't think too long.
Simply evaluate a couple of methods against the guidelines found in this article, choose the right one and move on.
2. It boosts motivation
I don't believe in motivation. I believe in habits and systems.
But there is no denying that motivation is a force to be reckoned with. Especially when you take up a new learning project.
However, there is one big problem. Motivation is a capricious mistress.
One day she is lovely and charming, while the other day she goes berserk and kicks you right in the nuts. That's why relying on motivation is not a good long-term strategy.
Nevertheless, choosing a right strategy will help you notice results of your learning much quicker. And in my experience, there is nothing better to fuel your motivation.
3. It solves most of the other learning problems
Probably you already know it but just in case - most of your learning-related problems stem from the wrong choice of learning methods
Can't keep more than two languages in your head at the same time? Wrong learning methods.
Keep on forgetting words? Wrong learning methods.
I hope that by now, I have convinced you that choosing the right learning method is not a waste of time.
The next thing on the agenda - learning fallacies.
The Most Widespread Learning Fallacies
There are a lot of people who offer you their advice in good faith, even though they themselves are ill-informed.
It's equally important to know, not only what works, but also what doesn't work and why. At least if you want to be a good "b*shit" detector learning-wise!
Here is the list of the most important learning fallacies you may fall subject to.
Fallacy #1 - My method works
There are not many people strolling around and saying, "My method sucks and guarantees no results whatsoever. Use it!".
Everybody is convinced that their learning method is great and that the other guys suck (confirmation bias, anyone?). Here is a corker - they are all right.
Absolutely all learning methods work.
It comes as a shock, right?
Pick any method you want. If you stick to it long enough, you will see some effects. If you just keep plugging away, eventually you will learn what you have set out to do.
Even the worst of the worst methods work.
I am the best possible example of this.
My default method of learning English years ago was to:
write down every word I didn't know
rewrite it from a dictionary
read it
In other words, I was rewriting a dictionary.
I really do hope that I was fed with a lead spoon as a child. At least I would be able to justify myself just a little bit.
I have managed to write away 12 A4 notebooks this way. Pure madness and the hands down the crappiest method I have ever heard of.
Yet, I managed to learn English fluently and get all the Cambridge Certificates. The miracle?
No.
I just kept plugging away at it. Many hours per day. Until I succeeded.
You can see learning as rolling a big ball from point A to point B.
Your learning methods decide how heavy the ball is and thus how much time it will take to get it to the finish line.
The heaviness of the ball doesn't make it impossible for you to achieve your goal. It just takes longer to do it and it is more difficult.
Main takeaway - just because a method works doesn't really prove anything unless you measure the average results which it gives you.
Fallacy # 2 - I like it (aka personal preferences or learning styles)
Months ago I wrote in one of the articles that learning styles don't exist. The hell ensued.
I got plenty of angry e-mails. Some people started behaving like an upset stereotypical Brit, "Iconoclastic heresies, my good chum!". Others would gladly spit into my cereal if they got a chance.
No wonder. I have found a lot of statistics saying that over 80 or even 90% of teachers believe it to be true. Thor only knows how many students have been infected with this idea.
And this is why so many people have a very strong opinion about it.
However, let me repeat for dramatic effect.
Learning styles don't exist*
* You can read more about it here. It's not perfect but it should dispel most of your doubts.
Most of the time when people use this term, they mean "personal preferences".
They prefer to see information visually, orally or in some other way.
PREFER is the key word here.
It doesn't mean that learning this way is more effective. It means you like it more.
An author who enjoys music the most will think that the music is the best way to learn. Another one will try to convince you that spending more time outside is the ultimate solution.
But there is some silver lining here.
Liking a given method makes it more sustainable. You can use it longer than some other methods without feeling fatigued.
It certainly counts for something and you should always have such enjoyable learning methods in your arsenal.
Main takeaway - just because you like a method doesn't make it effective memory- and time-wise. It does, however, make it more sustainable.
Fallacy #3 - Everybody learns differently
Everybody learns differently is just a special case of the snowflake syndrome.
I get it, you are without the slightest doubt special in your own way. However, don't make a mistake of thinking that
learning differently ≠ learning effectively.
Let me explain why we are not so special and so different when it comes to learning.
We are the product of the evolution. Our brains are in many ways very similar.
Your working memory capacity is probably the same as mine. Surpass it and you can say goodbye to remembering things.
You learn most of the things better by doing.
Your attention is very limited.
Your brain needs regular breaks during learning.
You learn better when you space your learning.
The list goes on and on.
So yes, you are special in many ways. But not in the ways your brain acquires knowledge.
Main takeaway - our brains absorb information in a very similar way.
Fallacy #4 - It's based on science
I know what you are thinking. How the hell is this a learning fallacy? Is it not important for a method to be based on science?
Yes, it is crucial.
However, there is one problem with that. People love numbers, statistics and quoting research papers.
It makes everything more believable. You can come up with any crappy theory and method, back it up with some research paper and people will buy it.
There are a lot of companies which do exactly that. They apply flaky results of some fishy research paper(s) to their learning method and sell it for big bucks.
At least twice per month, I get requests to write a review of some "revolutionary" software. Most of the time the only revolutionary thing about it is spaced repetition.
Obviously, spaced repetition algorithms are amazing. But it doesn't justify paying for it 20-50$ per month (you know who you are!). You can go ahead and just download ANKIfor free.
That's why this is the trickiest fallacy of them all. Don't buy into some method just because it sounds sciency. I can guarantee you that almost every method is based on some research paper. Whether its creator knows it or not.
Main takeaway - just because a method is based on a research paper it doesn't make it effective.
Fallacy #5 - There is one method
There is no perfect learning method.
You can't build a house with only a hammer. You need other tools as well.
Learning is too complicated to approach it from only one side. It doesn't matter how good this method seems, be it mnemonicsor anything else.
That's why you should always aim at creating your own personal toolbox.
Main takeaway - there is no perfect method. You should always have at least a couple of them in order to learn effectively.
Important factors in choosing right learning methods
Although I would love to give you a perfect recipe for success in learning, I don't think it is possible. What's more, I will restrain myself from suggesting the methods I use personally or teach my clients.
Instead, I will show you which criteria you can use to evaluate the general effectiveness of different methods.
A good method should
a) be based on science
“As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Learn how your memory operates. Once you master this basic information it will be much easier for you to assess different learning methods. (read more about it hereand here).
As Aristotle once said
“The fact is our starting point.”
The more "science boxes" your learning method checks, the better.
b) be sustainable (easy to use)
Although not every learning method has to be sustainable, it is good when at least one of them is something that you can do for a long time and you find it pleasant.
Want to switch to another method? Test them against each other.
e) give you feedback
You don't want to do something without knowing whether it is right or not. A good method should always provide you with some amount of feedback.
Final Words
Choosing the best learning methods is definitely not easy. It might take some time and experience in order to tell the chaff from the wheat.
Nevertheless, it is always worth the effort. The amount of time and frustration you can potentially save is really gigantic.
Good luck!
Question for you - are there any methods you are currently using that you would like me to analyze? Let me know in the comments. Feel free to include your own analysis.
Done reading? Time to learn!
Reading articles online is a great way to expand your knowledge. However, the sad thing is that after barely 1 day, we tend to forget most of the things we have read.
I am on the mission to change it. I have created over 13 flashcards that you can download to truly learn information from this article. It’s enough to download ANKI, and you’re good to go. This way, you will be able to speed up your learning in a more impactful way.
Contrary to popular belief, not all learning leads to enlightenment and self-development. Oftentimes, lousy learning practices can lead to the contrary. Instead of acquiring in-depth and meaningful knowledge, you end up learning random and superficial pieces of information of questionable credibility.
In other words, stupid learning can turn out to be a waste of time, whereas smart learning will, unsurprisingly, make you smart. As such, it should be a priority for any self-respecting student or professional.
Unfortunately, most people learn by feel. Partly because of the undisciplined approach to knowledge acquisition and somewhat because smart learning has become a bit of a trite slogan in recent years. We all know we should do it, but hardly anyone knows what it is.
Let's tackle this topic step by step.
What is smart learning?
There are 5 key traits that characterize smart learning.
1. Optimizing your reviews
If you still haven't got the news. We have known for over 140 years that optimizing reviews allows us to slow down memory decay. About that time, a brilliant German psychologistHermann Ebbinghaus proved that we could significantly slow down memory decay by revising the learning material at the right moment.
The famous Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve depicts this phenomenon.
You would think that 140 years is plenty of time, but I assure you it's not. The concept of optimizing your reviews is still relatively unknown.Spaced Repetition Software, which allows you to revise learning material at the optimal intervals automatically, is nowhere to be found in public schools or at universities. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are few and far between.
Keep in mind that using programs like ANKI is not the ultimate solution. Yes, using it will certainly make you a better learner than about 70% of the population.
However, what makes it really effective is using it correctly, i.e., applying the right learning methods while reviewing information in ANKI. Spaced repetition algorithms are your white canvass, but you also have to know how to paint to get the best effects.
Primary sources refer to previously established scientific facts (e.g., math, physics, and chemistry textbooks) or firsthand, fundamental research that is based upon observations or experiments (e.g., research articles in journals).
(2) Secondary sources
Secondary sources or secondhand sources refer to any learning resource which loosely relates to the primary resources and/or interprets them in a certain way (e.g., interviews, YT videos, etc.).
Roles of both sources of information
Both types of sources can be very useful in learning. The first one provides you with the certainty that the information you acquire is true.
Secondary sources, on the other hand, can help you make sense out of that information.
Sometimes hearing somebody's opinion on some matter can help you connect the dots and arrive at the right conclusion.
Always prioritize primary sources
As long as you focus on relentlessly acquiring knowledge from the primary sources, you can rest assured that your expertise will keep on growing and will be of the highest quality.
The problem arises when you try to derive a big chunk of your knowledge from secondhand sources. It always means one thing — you suspend your right to have any meaningful opinion.
You scarf down any crap which people dish out. And make no mistake. There are very few people who put in time and effort to really learn something.
Most simply regurgitate different anecdotes and old wives' tales to boost their ego.
Unless you prioritize learning from the primary sources, you will never be able to tell what's true and what's not.
Trust the facts, not the experts. Way too many people have their own agenda and have no problem with profiting from the naivety and ignorance of the others.
If you want to see for yourself how wide-spread that behavior is, go ahead and look up some popular language-learning websites. You will be lucky to find even one quotation on most of them.
As Dr. Johnson so wisely observed, truth is hard to assimilate in any mind when opposed by interest. Moreover, strong feelings about issues do not usually emerge from deep understanding and knowledge.
However, it doesn't mean that you literally have to suck in everything. With all due respect to the hard-working scientific community, when I read medical or memory studies, I rarely care who has written them. I won't waste any brainpower to remember it.
Why? Because ANKI is also a browseable database! If I need to look up the authors of a certain study, I can get this information within seconds.
You should always try to separate the worthwhile from the wooly.
It won't always be obvious to establish what's relevant and what's not. Sometimes only time will tell. There were times when I started memorizing random stuff only to realize after some time that I don't need to know it by heart.
In other words, figuring out what's worth memorizing requires some trial and error, and it's heavily dependent on the depth of knowledge you want to acquire and on the conditions you will retrieve it in.
Definitely, one important criterion which can help you guide this decision process is choosing whether you want to master a certain discipline or be decent/good at it.
Personally, I wouldn't decide to learn a lot of scripts or commands by heart if I was just programming for fun. However, if you want to learn a programming language to the "native" level of familiarity, you can't be too picky. In return, that will allow you to sketch out personal utility software, scripts, and hacks rapidly.
4. Choosing the right learning strategies
Choosing the right learning strategies depends on a lot of factors. However, there are two crucial elements that you need to incorporate if you want to become a successful learner.
This is the basis of any learning success. Skipping this part makes as much sense as trying to build your house from the second floor.
Stop learning passively
The idea that we can acquire information effectively by reading or listening is as rife as antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea. Yes, you can learn this way, but this process is excruciatingly slow.
It doesn't matter how many relevant scientific studies get produced every year that show that passive learning is useless. The illusion of learning always seems to have the upper hand.
Students who engage in active learninglearn more -- but feel like they learn less -- than peers in more lecture-oriented classrooms.
When memory researcher Jennifer McCabe posed a similar question to college students, she found an overwhelming preference for the second strategy, restudying, even though this approach is known to be inferior to the recall method in this situation.
Why did the students get it wrong?
Most likely, they based their answers on their own experience. They knew that when they finished reading material over and over, they felt confident in their memory. The facts seemed clear and fresh. They popped into mind quickly and easily as the students reviewed them. This is not always so when recalling facts in a self-test—more effort is often required to bring the facts to mind, so they don’t seem as solid. From a student’s point of view, it can seem obvious which method—restudying—produces better learning. Robert Bjork refers to this as an “illusion of competence” after restudying.
The student concludes that she knows the material well based on the confident mastery she feels at that moment. And she expects that the same mastery will be there several days later when the exam takes place. But this is unlikely. The same illusion of competence is at work during cramming when the facts feel secure and firmly grasped. While that is indeed true at the time, it’s a mistake to assume that long-lasting memory strength has been created.
Illusions of competence are seductive. They can easily mislead people into misjudging the strength of their memory, and they can encourage students to adopt study methods that undermine long-term retention. The best defense is to use proven memory techniques and to be leery of making predictions about future memory strength based on how solid the memory seems right now
Here are other articles concerning passive learning:
One of the best ways of amassing impressive knowledge within a relatively short period is concentrating on what's evergreen. Even though it's not possible in every single case, I believe that this is something we all should strive for. Political leaders will change, programming languages will evolve, but physics, math, and even psychology will remain almost unchanged at their core.
Focusing on those subjects will allow you to build evergreen knowledge that can be applied almost everywhere regardless of circumstances. What's more, the more you learn, the easier it will be for you to expand your knowledge. Every discipline contains nuggets of wisdom that can be transplanted into other areas.
Most of relevant theories of learning to acknowledge that learners’ knowledge bases are the most important moderating factor influencing our ability to acquire information (e.g., Chi, De Leeuw, Chiu, & LaVancher, 1994; Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994).
In other words, the more of such knowledge you gather, the quicker you will be able to learn!
Does it mean that you should try to master all the big disciplines? Of course not (unless you want to). Be picky and adjust your choices to your needs.
Whatever you do, remember this. Acquiring evergreen knowledge is an investment that will keep on giving and will never go to waste.
WHAT ARE EXAMPLES OF EVERGREEN KNOWLEDGE?
1
The exact sciences (math, physics, etc.)
2
The art of persuasion
3
The science of memory and productivity
4
Popular languages
5
The basic nutritional and medical information
6
The basic financial knowledge
7
Creativity
Summary — What is smart learning and how to apply it to become a better learner?
Smart learning is a fantastic learning philosophy. I am not only its big fan, but I also practice it every single day myself.
It can be seen as the best of the worlds, i.e., productivity and the science of memory.
At its core, smart learning involves 5 key elements which, if applied correctly, can help you to learn faster and become a better learner:
1
Optimizing your reviews
2
Choosing the right learning materials
3
Knowing what you can forget
4
Choosing the right learning strategies
5
Concentrating On What’s Evergreen!
Done reading? Time to learn!
Reading articles online is a great way to expand your knowledge. However, the sad thing is that after barely 1 day, we tend to forget most of the things we have read.
I am on the mission to change it. I have created over 23flashcards that you can download to truly learn information from this article. It’s enough to download ANKI, and you’re good to go. This way, you will be able to speed up your learning in a more impactful way.
Being a polyglot sounds like such an amazing thing, doesn’t it? Admiration, fame, money, women throwing themselves at your feet.
All these things are not only great but also completely imaginary.
Ok, just a bad joke. It is pretty great.
But plenty of people notoriously underestimates how much time it takes to maintain and learn languages. I am sure you know the type.
They love to assume that the only prerequisite to master many languages is some unspecified talent.
I get it. If you say, “I envy you, I wish I could speak so many languages but I just don’t have a knack for it”, you don’t have to feel guilty.
That’s why they keep sucking the rationalization’s tit until they get all warm and blissful.
And who knows? Maybe they are right to some degree. We are all born different. Wiring in our little brains differs from one another.
Some people might actually have some head-start. But one thing is sure – no magical combinations of neural networks will ever make you a polyglot if you don’t put in the long hours.
How many?
It’s time to unveil the mystery.
For the past four weeks, I have been trying to track down how much time I devote to learning and maintaining my languages each week.
But before we get to that, let’s start with the baseline,
My Current Language Levels
Here are my current levels:
English: C2+ (C2 level + a couple of specializations)
Swedish: C1/C2
German: C1/C2
Russian: C1
Esperanto: C1
Czech: B2/C1
Spanish: B2
French: A2/B1
As a side note, I can’t understand why some people say that they know a language when they can barely string a sentence together. Your language is not dormant – it is mostly forgotten. Deal with it,
No one would go to an interview claiming that they know JavaScript but “not right now”.
Somehow, this practice seems to be quite widespread in the language learning world.
C1 level
You might notice that I learn my languages to at least C1 level. There is a very good reason for that – language attrition happens muuuch slower on this level than on the lower ones.
Once you get there, you can start taking breaks from that language to entertain yourself with other projects.
Time Breakdown
WORK
Let’s start with my unfair advantage – I teach / train people for a living. It allows me to spend considerable amounts of time while being surrounded by many languages.
Currently, I teach/coach 30+ people per week.
Main languages I teach are:
Swedish – 8-10 hours
German – 8-10 hours
English – 8-10 hours
These are not your usual conversations. I work almost exclusively with professionals. Each hour I spent with them is designed to jog their memory and bring them to the point of exhaustion.
That requires from me quite a considerable vocabulary which is awesome.
If we add to this mix a couple hours of consultations each week, we get a pretty decent number.
Total time: 24-35 hours
SPARE TIME – LEARNING PART
I am not sure whether it’s sad or not but I spend most of my waking hours learning and/or experimenting with memory systems. None of these activities are carried out in my mother tongue.
I figured out that since I know it pretty well it would be a waste of time.
Basically, it means, as absurd as it sounds, that Polish (my native tongue) and French are the least frequently used languages by me.
It leads to some bizarre and funny situations. Sometimes my brain plays with me and prompts me to conjugate Polish verbs in a really weird way – I have created monsters like “wypróbowywałem” instead of “wypróbowałem” more times than I would like to admit.
Quite a side-effect, huh?
Another interesting side-effect is dreaming in foreign languages. I have actually had dreams where people were speaking one foreign language and my brain was displaying subtitles in another.
Yep. Who needs drugs when you have languages.
Anyway, reading, talking, noting, writing are all done in various languages.
The rough breakdown looks more less like this. Mind you that these numbers reflect only a couple of last weeks and they are bound to change. They have to adjust to my needs, after all.
English– 15-hours. As much as I would like to suppress the use of this language throughout the week, it is impossible.
About 80% of e-mails I get are in English. 98% of all scientific papers I read are in English, no other language comes even close when it comes to their quality. I would say that I read at least 300+ pages per week in that language.
And let’s not forget about writing articles. Once again English prevails.
Czech – 5 hours per week. Mostly reading (10-15 articles per week) and learning/revising vocabulary.
Russian– 3-7 hours per week. Mostly revising and learning vocabulary. I read maybe 1-2 articles per week. Oh, and let’s throw about 2-4 episodes of TV series to this mix!
Esperanto– 1-2 hours per week Mostly revising and learning vocabulary. Unfortunately, there are not many websites in Esperanto which overlap with my interests. It means that I read maybe 0-2 pages in Esperanto per week.
Swedish– 4-6 hours. I need to maintain my Swedish skills at a high level because of my job. I tend to read 10-20 articles per week and tend to watch a fair share of YT in Swedish (I highly recommend I Just Want To Be Coolchannel, if you are learning Swedish).
French– 0-1 hours per week. Currently, I am busy with many projects and the sole victim of this state of affairs is French. As a not so surprising result, my French is deteriorating rather fast.
German– 3-5 hours per week. Besides learning new words and revising old ones, I read about 5-10 articles per week and watch a bit of YT.
Spanish– 3-4 hours per week. Mostly revising and learning vocabulary with some articles here and there.
And just for the clarity’s sake – I learn and revise my vocabulary by talking in order to keep it active.
Total time: 34-40 hours per week.
SPARE TIME – ENTERTAINMENT
Now it really gets weird!
I tend to watch a lot of TV series with my girlfriend – about 15 hours per week. It’s great fun. However, it has bothered me for a long time that everything we watch is in English.
That’s a wrinkle I couldn’t iron out.
And then it dawned on me – why not turn this ordinary activity into another language learning exercise?
Why not translate everything actors say into one of the languages I am trying to improve?
As I thought so I did. I have been doing it for about 4 months now and it has really helped me improve my fluency in a couple of languages.
“What about words or phrases you don’t know?”, you might ask.
I have an easy but effective system which takes care of that problem. I memorize them with mnemonicson the fly and quickly note them down after each episode.
Next day I look them up and encode them. Quite an elegant solution, isn’t it?
Of course, it doesn’t work each time. Sometimes I am just too tired and I let myself get sucked into a TV whirlwind.
Total time: 5-15 hours
The Final Result
The results were beyond interesting. It was no secret to me that I learn a lot but I didn’t think that it’s that much!
Not even once did I sink below the level of 70 hours per week, although I am sure that it might happen in the future.
Thank God I am not a crack addict. Otherwise, I would be this guy who crawls through broken glass to lick other junkies’ nostrils to get his daily high.
Total time: 63-90 hours per week
Want to increase your weekly learning time? Read on. There is some food for thought for you there.
ACTIVE vs. PASSIVE LEARNING
Active use: 35-50 hours per week (talking to others or myself)
Semi-active use: about 15 hours per week (translating TV series in my mind)
Passive: 15-35 hours per week (reading + listening/watching)
CHALLENGES
Over 70 hours per week is certainly a lot of time. That’s why there is one important question which begs to be asked.
Does it all come easy? Or does it require some tremendous amount of will power? At the risk of rubbing some people the wrong way the answer is – It does come easy.
At this point of time in my life, I do most of those things without giving them much thought. But I had to work my way up to get there.
And believe me – it was a long walk and the slope was slippery.
There is definitely a number of challenges you need to face if you want to pump up your total learning time. Here are some of them.
CREATING HABITS
Definitely one of the most important things to master, if not the most important one. If you want to make sure that you will learn day in, day out, you need to build within yourself the urge to do it.
The urge that can only be built and fueled by habits.
Forget about the motivation. Motivation is for suckers. You have to show up every day until the habit of learning becomes the extension of yourself.
Only then will you be able to not only learn a lot without much effort but also crave it.
The general of productivity is that the fewer decisions you have to make, the better your general efficiency is. It’s hard to argue with that.
Let’s say that you want to read something, How much time do you usually spend before you pick up an article? 5 minutes? 10 minutes?
It might not seem like a lot. However, it adds up very quickly.
Soon it may turn out that at least a dozen of hours per week is trickling between your fingers.
The same goes for choosing movies or YT videos.
Me?
I am hell-bent on not letting that happen.
I would rather spend this time weaving wicker baskets than losing it due to my indecision.
That’s why my input-gathering process is almost fully automated.
In the morning, when I arrive at my desk with a steamy mug of coffee, everything I need is already in my e-mail box. Scientific papers, videos, articles. Everything.
I don’t need to spend even one minute more than I should trying to find the necessary information.
And yet, as you can clearly seem I still spend a lot of time learning and maitaning my languages which leads me to the last point.
WHY I WON’T LEARN NEW LANGUAGES ANYTIME SOON
People learn languages for different reasons.
Mine has always struck people as eccentric.
I haven’t learned languages because of my deep love for them.
No doubt I have fallen in love with them during the process of learning (except for French – f*** you French!) but my affection hasn’t been the main factor.
The main reason was always the pursuit of better memory.
And even though I know that I still have a lot to learn memory-wise, I know that learning languages won’t get me much further.
I don’t find languages challenging anymore. Sure, I haven’t learned Basque or even one of Asian languages. But I don’t need to.
The general principles of learning and memory improvement won’t change just because I switched to a new language.
And to be honest, what’s the difference between knowing 8 and 9 languages?
Or 10-12? Not that big, in my opinion.
However, the time you need to maintain them grows significantly with every new addition. Of course, some learners trade quality for quantity but I personally prefer to truly master the languages I know.
Languages vs other branches of knowledge
I have read in some scientific paper that learning a language to C1 level is tantamount to graduating from studies.
How come?
Both activities require thorough knowledge and understanding of about 10000 words/concepts.
But I don’t believe it to be true. I don’t know many college graduates who can use their knowledge as fluently and practically as C1 language learners can use their vocabulary.
And that is what bugs me. Why would I learn another language when there are so many other mysteries just waiting to be solved (I guess it’s the FOMOsyndrome?
So many branches of knowledge which seem to lure me. Every day, I seem to find yet another thing which I don’t know much about.
The choice is simple – I can either excel at many other things or simply learn another language or 5.
The latter is infinitely less exciting and practical.
So what’s next?
Years ago I promised myself that I would master 10 languages till I turn 40.
Right now I am 31 and I still have plenty of time to achieve my goal.
But I think that this time I will take my time.and stick to learning some other things and hopefully running this blog full-time.
CONCLUSION
Not everyone needs to be a polyglot but if this is a path you decide to tread, you should be fully aware that it requires much time and effort.
The path is fraught with various obstacles. Get rid of one of them and soon you will realize that another one took its place.
But if there was just one thing, I would like you to take away from this article, it would be this one:
You have to make the languages you learn a central part of your life, only then will you be able to truly master them.
Question for you:
What stops you from learning your target language(s) more often?”
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