Are you Learning Faster & Better?

How can we learn quicker and better? Life is short, but we have to learn an extensive material.

If there is any Model if we adopt which can instruct us to remember better will be invaluable for our career advancement.

What do you say?

Experiential learning theorists, such as Kolb, admit we can learn better from our experiences when we spend a moment thinking about them. 

These concepts are expanded to leadership in the action–observation–reflection (A-O-R) model, which explains that leadership development is heightened when the experience involves three distinct processes: action, observation, and reflection. 

If an individual act but does not observe the consequences of her actions or reflect on their relevance and meaning, then it represents limited understanding to claim he/she has gained from experience. 

Because some individuals neither observe the consequences of their actions nor reflect on how they could alter their actions to develop into stronger leaders, leadership development through experience may be better understood as the improvement emanating from repeated operations through all three phases(A-O-R) rather than simply in terms of some objective dimension like time.

The same pertains to any learning activities. 

I hear, and I forget.

I see and I remember.

I do,, and I understand.

Confucius, ca. 500 b.c.

The aphorism by Confucius, even though relatively dated, captures what is still widely believed in how to best learn and memorize novel actions and activities: “Learning by doing” emerges superior to “learning by seeing or hearing” 

Growth from the A-O-R Model particularly occurs when one observes their actions and reflects on the consequences of those actions (Hughes, Ginnett, Curphy, 2012, p.47).

Action: What did you do?

Capture your experience.

Observation: What happened (i.e., results, impact on others, etc.)?

Capture your experience.

Reflection: How do you consider it now? How do you perceive it? What would you work out differently next time when you are encountered with an identical situation?

Capture your experience.

The best way we can learn deeper from our daily experience is to note down everything. While taking notes by hand is slower and more cumbersome than typing the act of writing out the information fosters comprehension and retention.

The better our notes are, the faster we will learn. Knowing how to take thorough and accurate notes will help us to remember concepts, gain a deeper understanding of the topic and develop meaningful learning skills.

Let us maintain Logs and journals which is a tool for our learning and reflection.

“I never pay attention to anything by ‘experts.’ I calculate everything myself.”- Richard Feynman.

Reflecting on work intensifies its understanding. It encourages learners to take charge of their own learning. Reflecting on experiences promotes understanding and complex learning. We foster our own growth when we control our learning, so some reflection is best done alone. Reflection is also enhanced, however, when we ponder our learning with others.

Reflective learning is an approach of allowing learners to step back from their learning experience, helping them to develop critical thinking skills and improve on future performance by analyzing what they have learned and how far they have come.

The law is, if we don’t instantaneously pick up the experience of what was understood, we will unfortunately speedily forget it. Here is some information around learners retention:

People forget 40% of what they understood in 20 minutes and 77% of what they understood in six days.

People forget 90% after one month.

People forget 50-80% of what they’ve understood after one day and 97-98% after a month.

A defining condition of being human is that we have to understand the meaning of our experience. —Jack Mezirow

Interviews are another way to lead us to share reflections about our learning and our growth in the Habits of Mind. An individual can interview another individual, or colleagues.

For the last 10 years, I have been composing in numerous blogs and capturing my thoughts and understanding so that I can reuse them and perhaps others also can benefit from it. It has supported me tremendously, and I confess the above-mentioned process will benefit everybody to grow into a stronger human being.