Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0467: Preparing for a college semester by “front-loading”

Episode Date: December 22, 2015

Chris is looking ahead to the next college semester and wonders what the best way is to “front-load” and prepare for classes ahead of time. Is it possible to create memory palaces before the classes start, and then just fill them out throughout the semester? What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music […]

Master of Memory 467. 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. Chris asked about preparing for an upcoming semester of study. Chris is on winter break between semesters and has materials to start preparing for next semester, but wants to know what the best way is to front load the project and make the next semester a good one. So Chris, my first suggestion is probably one that the listeners aren't expecting, and that is to try

to use this time between semesters to clear your mind as much as possible from what you've been studying and regain some perspective. So try to spend a little time distancing yourself from what you've been studying and regain some perspective. So try to spend a little time distancing yourself from what you've been studying and what you're about to study so you can give yourself more perspective and more objectivity as you approach what it is that you're going to study. You may be between professors, you may be between subjects, and what you really want to do is be able to come at this project from, you know, with fresh eyes and with the ability to approach it from the most meaningful way and not necessarily the way that you've been approaching it before. So give yourself a little bit of a breather. Then I would suggest that you go through

the mnemonic starter guide at masterofmemory.com slash start, which will give you some perspective on just the learning process in general, and it'll help to distance yourself from what you're learning. Try to apply that guide to things that, you know, in the examples that you come up with as you're going through the guide, to learning projects that aren't related to what you've been studying, and then you'll be able to approach what you are studying with fresh eyes. Now, after a week of that, you should be able to go through the starter guide in about a week. Then approach your studies from a strong mindset of exclusivity first of all. So re-approach what it is that you're studying and start with as strong a perspective of exclusivity as you can. Start with what you expect to be, let's say, your hardest class and

try to determine the few things in terms of knowledge and in terms of what it is that you're going to be learning in that class will give the biggest results in your early preparation. That might mean learning the definitions of the hardest terms in the book. So go to the index, see what terms are referenced the most throughout the book in your hardest class, and just get really familiar with what those terms mean because you're going to encounter them all the time. That's one of the exclusivity principles that I really strongly recommend for anyone who's getting into a college class that has a textbook with an index. And maybe it's just, you know, learning the layout of the book so that you know, you know, you have a general, let's say, mind map

of what the topic's going to be. If you just learned that, that could make the rest of your semester easier. But at the same time, there are benefits and drawbacks to preparing too much for a class. When I was in college, I prepared for my Music History 3 class, and I spent a lot of time kind of learning all of the names that I found in the textbook and all of the dates and the topics and things like that. And it did make the class a whole lot easier. But one of the things that I found was that the topics covered in the class weren't the same ones that were in the book. The professor departed from the book a lot more than he had in previous semesters. So there are benefits and drawbacks to preparing a whole lot. So again, exclusivity is going to serve you really well. Just try to determine the things that will

give you the best results for the least work. But again, first, spend some time distancing yourself from the classwork and from the coursework and really from what you're doing in class as much as possible to give yourself some fresh perspective. And I do recommend the starter guide. It's free. You don't have to put your email in or any nonsense like that. Just go to masterofmemory.com start and you'll see how the stuff that I talk about in this podcast all the time works. So thanks for the question, Chris, and everyone get over to masterofmemory.com slash start if you want some perspective on the things that I talk about all the time on the podcast. And then if you have any specific questions, go to masterofmemory.com slash question and leave your question there. 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 in the next episode.