The Best Way To Learn and Remember

There are a tons of different ways to learn new skills and new tasks. People stay up and memorize books, finish tests, write essays, take practice tests, listen to people talk and some people just learn by doing. Given all of these different ways to learn a new skill, what is the optimal way to learn so that you can learn new skills faster. To answer this question, lets look at how we think so that we can figure out if this thought process will give us some clues as to how to learn and how to teach others.

If we are to make a choice about something, typically what we do is think about what we have done and then we make a choice based on our memory. After that action produces a results, we then remember what happened. So to summarize what happens, when we make a choice, we create a memory. If you want to learn something and remember it, you then have to choose how you learn something.

To do so, you either figure out how they came up with the knowledge yourself by asking questions about the logic, or you apply their knowledge to your life and see how it works. The best way to learn something and remember it is to ask questions about the logic and then apply that knowledge to something in your real life so that you can question it some more. The more you question, the more choices your make. The more choices you make the more you remember. The more you remember, the more you learn.

For instance, if I was told how to build a car and then had my teacher build the car for me, then from the logic above, I would not learn anything on how to build a car because I never had any choice in the experience. The only choice I had was whether or not my teacher knew what was happening and the answer to that question would be yes because my teacher built a car. Therefore, when someone tells you what to do, the only thing it is reinforcing is that the person who is teaching knows what they are talking about. However, it does nothing to help the student to learn how to build a car. Therefore, the typical lecture model for teaching doesn’t actually teach the students. It only teaches the teacher.

However, if I was asked how to build a car and had someone guide me as I started to build the car, then I would learn how to build a car because I got to choose what was going to happen, either good or bad, which will cause me to remember what I learned. This interaction will help me to understand how to build cars better and thus is a better way of teaching because I choose what happens, which causes me to remember.

Therefore, the optimal way to learn anything is to question and apply it. Learning and reading only gives you the knowledge, but you never remember what you read because you didn’t question anything. Did you question this statement or have you accepted it?

Questioning and allowing for choice is how you teach people. It is way more valuable to ask questions to get an answer then it is to tell people the answer. Did that make sense?

In other words, instead of you asking me ”how do I teach someone something?”, it is far better for me to reply to your question with “How would you teach someone something?” so that you can choose your answer and create memories based on that choice. Once you choose, then I can ask you more questions, which will allow you to choose more and create more memories. The more the teacher asks you questions, the more you will have the answers. And it is answers you are seeking… right?