Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0426: Reading vs. studying: Which should happen first?

Episode Date: October 26, 2015

Christian is preparing for the ArcGIS Desktop Associate Exam, and he is using a very dense study guide. Which is better: To read the guide first, or to study through it and then read through after making notes? I give my thoughts. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String […]

Master of Memory 426. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Christian submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Christian says, this December I hope to take the ArcGIS Desktop Association exam. The suggested study guide is helpful, though dense. It has 24 chapters of in-depth explanations and summary tables of geospatial concepts, sample questions, Python computer code commands, and point-and-click

computer exercises to prepare a student for the certification exam. And as bad as it sounds, I need to be able to recall about 75% of the book's content for the exam, and at least that much to competently keep a job in the field. My thoughts are to read through the text to understand not only how the program works, but also why each function works. After that I plan to review the text, arranging each chapter into a letter of the alphabet and a corresponding memory palace I've already constructed, and then link each trivia question and computer command to a location inside a memory palace with a PAO system. I've used similar systems before, but not on this large of a scale. Before I waste time and energy, I wanted to get your take on my strategy. So Christian,

the first thing that I'm noticing here is that you're mentioning an approach that is to read first and then create organized notes afterwards. Now, you mentioned at the very end of your question not wanting to waste time and energy, and so let's be proactive and make sure to choose an efficient learning approach that isn't going to waste any of that time and energy that's so important, especially with your test in just a month or two. So first of all, reading before making notes used to be my approach. I would read a book from cover to cover. But the thing is, I've come to conclude that it's really not worth reading something unless I'm actually assimilating the information in some way. Unless, of course, I'm reading just to enjoy something, for example fiction, but obviously that's not what's going on here. So what you want to do here is determine what will get you actually learning most efficiently

and absorbing the information as well as possible. And so for that reason, I wouldn't read first and then make notes afterwards. I would actually do the study before reading. So do look through the book, first of all, to determine how the program works, but only just enough so that you're on a broad scale and it's just enough to start making sense of the details that you'll then assimilate. At that point, you can use the memory palace that you're talking about with the PAO system and linking everything together with these images, but I would challenge you not to read the book from cover to cover because it takes so much time and doesn't get you the results that you want. And just as a

little comment here, it's kind of interesting to think how a lot of people who spend more time studying are doing it very inefficiently and learning less. And there's something, there's a very interesting phenomenon. I'm not sure if it has a name, but I kind of call it lazy busyness, where you're spending more time doing something the somewhat easy way that's actually the harder way or takes way too much time, where you could be spending probably 25% of the time and learning better. And this is a great example right here,

where you can read the book from cover to cover but really not learn much, or you can actually study the book by looking through it and making notes and organizing it and then reading it afterwards, and then all of the information makes sense. Now, Christian, in your particular case, I'm not calling you lazy because you have obviously been proactive and you have your systems that you've figured out. I just thought that I'd make that comment because it's something that I've seen a lot with a lot of my Spanish students, for example, people who want to watch a movie from beginning to end in Spanish or listen to Spanish radio or something like that, where you're not really absorbing that much information that way. But if you spent less time and more mental effort into taking just a two-minute section of that Spanish film

and really understanding all of the dialogue, just two minutes, you're actually learning a lot more. So bottom line is, I do like your system, Christian. I think that it'll work for you. Just make sure to study before reading rather than the other way around. For everyone listening, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com

slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.