Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens

Teaching others is a great way to learn, even if your student is a dog!

The television, or other background noise, can distract your attentional octopus. This takes up one or more of its arms, making it more difficult for you to make full use of your working memory.

hear the birds singing, and see the little rabbit trails.

But just understanding a concept does not create a set of brain-links. You must practice a new concept to create the set of brain-links. Understanding and practice go together.

Take notes by hand. It enables you to make brain-links out of the key ideas more easily. A poor working memory can be a good thing. It can allow you

Learning physics can assist you in learning economics, and how to create more beautiful pottery. Transferring ideas from one subject or activity to another helps you to be more creative. It’s like a template you can adapt from one area to another.

When you try to remember random things, you need to link them to things you know well. Like the route around your house. This makes them much easier to recall. As Nelson said,

Famous statesman Benjamin Franklin was a terrible writer when he was a teenager. He decided to do something about his problem. He took pieces of excellent writing and jotted down a word or two of the key idea of some of the sentences. Then he tried to re-create the sentences from his head, just using the key ideas as hints. By checking his sentence

Don’t cram. Space out your learning over several days. That way you’ll have more nights of sleep for more dendritic spines and synapses to grow. Your lessons will sink in.