Benjamin, i have only recently found your videos, and I see that you have been at it for a while. As a teacher of English, I value the insights you bring to the human learning process. But what's really thrilling is to see that you are not static, you are always evolving. You analyze your own mental processes, which become part of the data that informs your persentations, I hope you are beginning to write the book about your personal learning development. Meanwhile, I'll be watching you and doing some active recall as I apply your insights to my own work.
1. **Understand, Don’t Just Memorize**: Focus on really getting the ideas, not just memorizing facts. This means putting the ideas together in your head in a way that makes sense to you. 2. **Sort Your Info**: To get a topic, arrange and rearrange the info you have. This helps you see patterns and big ideas, which makes it easier to remember and understand. 3. **Start with What You Know**: Begin with the main ideas and what you already understand, then look up anything you’re missing. This creates a strong starting point for more learning. 4. **Mix Your Ideas with the Book**: Combine what you think with what the book says. This way, you see things from different sides and understand better. 5. **Think Critically with Notes**: Your notes should show how you're thinking through the material. Asking questions and analyzing the info helps you learn in a deeper way. 6. **Use Pictures and Maps**: Draw diagrams or maps to connect ideas visually. This can make it clearer how things fit together and help you remember. 7. **Look Back and Reflect**: Regularly think about what you’ve learned and how you learned it. This helps improve how you study. 8. **Apply What You Learn**: Use what you know in new situations. This shows you really understand and remember it better. 9. **Teach and Talk About It**: Explaining things to others, or even to yourself, really boosts your understanding. Talking with others can also give you new ideas. 10. **Review and Use Tools**: Go back to the material from time to time and use tools like ChatGPT or join discussions online. This keeps the learning strong over time and makes it deeper.
Ben, im a hs student whos always been so interested in neuroscience, and it was so fun to see you apply the concepts i knew about learning to learning from books. thank you for the great example!
Hello! Thank you for the video! I'm a med student, and books tend to be my main source of study. I usually take notes from the book I'm currently studying, test myself on that and - maybe the most important thing - I keep updating those notes with new knowledge from other books, my practice and tips from more experienced doctors. I'd very much appreciate new videos about the topic!
There are a lot of RU-vidr, who teach you how to study, and how to learn, and do well in school… I must say with no exaggeration… You are the number one best I have ever seen. I say that as somebody who has been trying to learn from these RU-vidrs for 10 years now. You single-handedly have the best advice.
Great video! Would love to see updates in the future. Keeping track of various "themes"/"plots" throughout the book in a free-form way that makes sense to **ME** is one of those things which seems intuitive in hindsight but would have taken me ages to figure out for myself. Thank you for making this.
Hi, more of this kind of content would be great! Especially history related - I'm wondering how much I should resist linear note-taking and lots of flashcards when the importance of chronology and dates in history make these hard to avoid.
Great! I would love more videos along these lines (how best to learn from books, especially books that are concept heavy like history, philosophy, etc.. rather than data heavy like science, math books).
That book you have in your hand is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read it is one of my most favorite. It was as if stepping into his fantasy novel.
this makes me realize why my ADHD has actually been helping me with my intellect. A lot it's positive characteristics have resonated into affinities such as for these concepts. Switching interests and tasks in the right conditions is a recipe for a smart child with a good thinking foundation. My understanding of any material to this day is praised. I'm still a nobody tho. Emotional trauma can still stunt many aspects of maturity growth. :p
Seems useful. Maybe history classes would have been more interesting if it hadn't only been framed as meaningless names, titles, and dates with nothing else to them. Something watching this brought up is how going back and forth across the same material in different ways can be helpful. Often find it very difficult to go through the same material source more than once. Even if there has been significant time between readings and starting another read through things are standing out as being "effectively new"; they don't often hold the attention enough to continue on. As if there is some form of importance of the novelty found limiter that has been put on. Curious if there are studies showing causing such mechanisms to happen; and others for disrupting it to re-engage learning and or engagement in learning. A different framing question: What effects the required "willpower" portion for the learning process vs the improvements of recall and understanding? Found getting to see multiple approaches to sensitizing yourself to different aspects a great and rare thing to find. Really like the example and demonstration coupled with framing way of going about things in your videos. Seems like so many act as if in avoidance of: example, demonstration, and developing meaningful discernments in framing; as opposed to a more "I'm telling you" having frames pushed only for trying to control - even to the denial of understanding and its development. The sensitizing approach reminds me a bit of a quote by Moshe Feldenkrais, "To increase the sensitivity, decrease the contrast." Would be curious to know more about this "scaffolding" development you mention and examples of what it is like during that process. Most physical scaffolding see is very pre-built and the end aim is a very clear target to assemble and problem solve towards. What kinds of things are useful for when those aren't so clear?
Hi! I participate in high school policy debate which is an activity where I have to research/learn a lot about a certain topic and policies related to it (this year it's basic income, job guarantee's, and social security). I want to understand the literature as deeply as I can so I can make nuanced arguments, rebuttals, and questions. However, it's not feasible for me to do free recall on every single article, paper, book I read. It would take too long. Do you have any recommendations on when to incorporate active recall and how in this context?
Hi Benjamin. Your videos on free recall really helped me study for the first CompTIA A+ exam, and, though I think the second will be easier, I think the strategies in this video might be helpful for it as well as consolidating all of the information. I really appreciate your videos and newsletter. Please keep up the great work.
ever thought about just reading books to create an wholistic understanding of things with keeping retrival to the minimum needed? E.g. if you don't have any professional contact with sport, it migth be enough to have a good understanding in written form about the topic to e.g. make your own sports programm.
Please read!!!: Your methods seem good, but I feel like some of them sound time-consuming. My problem in school was often getting caught up, trying to finish a chapter that took too long to read and then getting behind for the rest of the semester. So maybe if you can adjust these techniques that you’ve given us with a mind of making sure you don’t get behind during the semester, that would be great please.
Hi Ben! First of all english it's not my main language, so sorry if I make a typo. I'm a huge fan of your videos, I always watch it as soon as I can once you upload them; they have helped me a ton in my studies. I have a question about something I have been strugling with; I'm a med student and whenever I have to learn a new topic, wich I have no idea about, like 0 prior knowledge, I found myself having a difficult time trying to figure out what to do. So, my question is, what are your recomendations on the first steps of studying a new topic?? The step forwards I have some sort of idea, like the free recall and relations with prior knowledge, etc., I can work trough, but my problem are those first encounters with the information. Will yo be making a video about this in a future? I think people will love it. Thank you very much for all the information you have upload, it helped me a lot, I'm really thankfull. Take care
Maybe start with a mind map? The idea is that it gives you a bigger picture of what you're learning first then work top down. I'd then recreate that map at the end of the unit to summarize what you've learned.
Hey Benjamin, I'm currently a physics grad student getting ready to take my qualifying exam for the third time. I have ADHD and struggle with organizing my learning, especially when I'm supposed to cover a broad range of topics. I would be really interested in learning more about your take on applying these learning tools when it's a struggle to organize your learning in the first place. Perhaps you can discuss ways to organize learning technical subjects at multiple levels, such as learning for the first time or refreshing. Anyway, great content and I'm looking forward to diving deeper into your catalog of videos!
I'd be interested if you reviewed apps like Obsidian Canvas (instead of Miro) and Readwise Reader for scheduled recall on book notes in particular! You can combine "writing for learning" with apps that do the visualization for you, or where the connections are done through "linking your thinking" but more through writing than fancy graphics (and can even be coded). It might be an excellent option for your own learning or "sense making through words", with a supportive infrastructure that gives you visualizations as an added bonus while you just write and connect things. You can always use paper to discard recalls but using software for permanent and connected notes!
Hello Benjamin, thank you very much for the video. I am currently in the process of studying physics and your methods have been helpful. I'm doing free recall and self-studying a lot and on lectures I'm only writing down equations which I come back to later. This video gave me the idea to experiment with semi-flashcards of equations and describing them later. I would definitely be interested in a follow-up video on the book studying topic.
Hi Benjamin, yes this was very helpful, I'd definitely be interested in seeing how you would apply this to a math or science text (I saw your video on textbook reading, but I'd love to see specifics). Also, any thoughts on IT/dev ops/programming books, I find those often encourage code along/follow along approaches that 1) aren't actually helping me remember anything (I've seen people call it "developing muscle memory", as if you're somehow teaching your fingers how to code) and 2) doesn't lead to any sort if deep understanding of the technology itself (e.g. knowing how to fill in a GUI form for building an Amazon AWS server vs actually understanding what it is you've built).
Really interesting! Could you do it with another subject like math for example? And what could be a good way of learning in group or with a group study math? Specially Olympiad mathematics and problem solving
It would be great to have you layer on this first video. I'm particularly interested in how "learning from a book" would translate when it comes to other genres/topics - for example, what does this look like for medical students?
I second this. I’m looking for a novel way to train Veterinary anesthetists, and rote recitation of facts and sink-or-swim is the common method of training. For complex and integrated systems, it’s hard to find a new way, but I see *such* a need with the lack of application of knowledge
students? Students learn from "textbooks", and he already has a video on textbooks. Things are different when you're reading something as a "student" and not as a "reader".
I really liked your explanation of the learning process of a dense history book. I appreciate that you highlighted your personal challenges and how you learned from them. Also found it useful, seeing how the same facts can be seen from different perspectives according to your learning objectives, and using multiple techniques in helping you make sense of them, find relationships, and incorporating other things you've talked about in other videos, like attention, free recall, self testing, digesting information. Great content :)
Great. This was Justin Sung's one of earlier videos, creation of prior knowledge after each layer of learning one after the other Which is way better than Rote free recall and active recall. This is what I have been doing for a very long time. But this technique is very hard to teach. Edit: Follow this by free recall as a revision method. This way you have both encoding and retrieval together
One idea I toy a lot with lately is that retrieval is the biggest false metric we all fall for in trying to measure our learning. Rather, the best test is the skill you are trying to acquire, which in this case may be explaining Chinese history or using it to add context to and explain aspects of Chinese culture. I come to this conclusion because in my learning a second language while sleep deprived this past year, I found that sleep deprivation hurt my retrieval but it did not hurt my learning because when I am wakeful I read and listen in the language shockingly well and even understand all those complicated little Chinese characters quite well. So I think that good learning is just making many connections, seeing information in lots of contexts, and thinking about the significance of that information, and less so about the performative skill of retrieval, which while useful and desirable, is ultimately easily cheated if we prioritize it. I'm still on the fence if the act of transcribing helps much, because as you mentioned the important work is happening in the mind and I quite easily do that work in my mind without the benefit of paper (・∀・)
Uhmm, no. I think you misunderstood the reason of using Retrival Practice while learning... It isn't a metric for the measurement of our learning. Retrieval Practice IS a study method, a way for consolidate or learning inside of our minds. And..., yeah it's one of the best Study Methods known in the field of The Learning Sciences. So...
@@nelson6814 I do not deny that retrieval practice is a study method of some effectiveness. Mainly I am saying that just because we fail to recall something doesn't mean we need to study it more often or aren't learning it. It gets in there over time as we understand it better, so the intervals between seeing a piece of information can be very long indeed even if we find ourselves having to look it up the first 2 or 3 times. The more common response to failing to recall something is to study it more often or give up thinking you're not learning or getting better, something many spaced repetition programs have built in when they reset intervals or slow them down--entirely unnecessarily and with no basis in science.
As a native chinese speaker who moved to america, i just wanna say your pronounciation is better than my chinese teacher!!! (hes white) your pronounciation is so good
I am currently doing an undergraduate degree in psychology, and I think that it may be important for me to retain the course content in the long-term, especially for some courses (e.g., Research Methods). After the courses conclude, should I continue to do spaced retrieval on the content that I learned? If so, what intervals would you recommend? Currently, I do 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month (repeatedly, until the course ends). Maybe 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 4 months, 7 months, etc.? I fear that I will eventually get overloaded with retrieval practice and eventually forget it anyhow - if I do not use it in my profession.
Ben - so do you keep like a master note that encapsulates all the info you have collected from various resources on a particular subject area or theme (say Battle of Waterloo for example) which you then use to test as part of the recall at a later time
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to make this incredible video. I was trying to figure out what's the best way I can learn neuropathophysiology when I stumbled upon this video. Your video was incredibly easy to follow since you provided a concrete example of how you actually apply your techniques. I began using your techniques with neuropathophysiology and not only has the subject become far more sensible but I also find it much more interesting now. If you can make more videos similar to this tackling different types of subjects, it would be an amazing help to students like us. Thank you again!
- Consider what understanding means at [0:50]. - Organize and reorganize information to comprehend better at [2:05]. - Write down recurring themes while reading at [2:27]. - Organize knowledge into patterns without initially referring to the book at [4:22]. - Fill gaps in understanding by referencing back to the book or online resources at [4:33]. - Highlight uncertainties for later review at [5:06]. - Utilize notes as a tool for self-conversation, not as an end in themselves at [6:20]. - Explore different thematic paths through the material at [7:04]. - Engage with visualization tools to consolidate complex information at [7:40]. - Use a modified flashcard system for important dates and events at [9:38]. - Schedule future dates to recreate and review your understanding at [11:22]. - Reflect more frequently during the reading process for better comprehension at [12:26]. - Build a geographical map early on to enhance spatial understanding at [13:18]. - Incorporate self-testing earlier in the learning process at [13:45]. - Collaborate with others for deeper understanding and new perspectives at [14:12].
I’m curious what your take is on typing/electronic note taking versus pencil/paper. I have read that handwriting tends to help retention? Do you find that to be the case?
For the second step, what if someone is doesnt know anything about the topic. The doc would be pretty short 5:07. 7:50 so I would have to read the book normally. You seem to have a lot of prior knowledge so you can just add stuff on top but what about someone that doesnt know anything about chinese dynasties. Can you make an updated video to this maybe on a more conceptual topic?
Hey hey Benjamin! When you're rereading are you starting from the beginning of the book, chapter, or are you flipping through the pages trying to find the information? How do you find what you don't know, 🤣. This sounds like it would be a pain in the ass on an ebook. I'd probably have to utilize my kindle's table of contents and bookmarks. I love this video and I'm looking forward to implementing free recall and the other organization techniques in my non fiction reading.
I love this video & the other one about deep reading a paragraph. I just watched this video on reading from a philosophy professor ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-uiNB-6SuqVA.html and I'd love your take on it. Do you think his approach would be more efficent or would be compromising on our understanding in the long run since he doesn't use free recall or visualizations
Great video! I love conversing with myself through note-taking! Identifying themes is great for organizing concepts, and it can also help us emotionally engage as we explore meaning. While my husband isn’t always interested in hearing me talk about books, discussing books with others always enriches my perspective and understanding. 😅
My step children's aunt on there father's side has a photographic memory and has a double master's degree so there is something to be said for having a photograph of something in your head.
Hi Benjamin, if you were to be quizzed on that book, how long would you need to pass a BA level class on it (with say a B) could you you break down your proceas into parts? For instance, 12 hours reading + notes, 2 hours (spaces) retreival, 2 hours recall practice or something along those lines. I never know if I'm a dum dum scatterbrain or just don't have the attention span to spend the required hours. Also if you don't mind, i'd be curious what the time difference would be between a D-B and an A. Thanks a lot!
This is just my opinion : He does free recall + encoding so hypothetically he should get more marks than Dr. Justin Sung who focuses on perfection in encoding only
@@murmureetpensees4599 Dr Justin for the understanding part and Dr Benjamin for the overall method. I like Dr Justins method of writing key words and trying to put effort into connecting them. The problem with Dr.Justin's method is there's no way to check if you are doing it correctly and he says that one doesn't become an expert overnight in making connections. We have to train ourselves or take his course to become better at it. Dr. Benjamin uses free recall + connections so we can actively test ourselves and know where we are at. So basically as others are saying a combo of both their methods is beneficial .
It's really hard for me to do that with any accuracy. I can time the number of hours I put into it, but I have no idea what it would mean to score an A or B in a class using the book. Grading itself is highly variable, depending on the teacher and the nature of the exam. You can tack into the teacher's expectations, do well when you take the test, and still not understand things very deeply. Even if we could solve the measurement problem, it's hard to compare experiences across individuals, when we both might have prior knowledge going into it. For instance, I have a mother-in-law who's told me some stories from Chinese history. I've read/listened to Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a fictionalized account of the Three Kingdoms era post-Han dynasty. I knew a little about Liu Bang and Xiang Yu, who fought to become the leader following the collapse of the Qin dynasty. I know some Chinese, making names and places a little easier for me. There are other, less obvious things that would go into it too (reading skills, previous experience reading history books like this, etc.). Does it really matter if you're a dum dum scatterbrain? I may be one, too, for all you know. I think a more relevant question to ask is "am I doing things that best help me understand the material?" If you're doing that, you're doing good.
I have ADHD like symptoms and extremely bad executive function: working memory and inhibitory control. Is there a way to improve this? Perhaps just a general video on how to improve executive function for anyone.
When I made Mindmaps, the effort of organizing and reorganizing the map resulted in understanding. I think that's because of the multiple organization principles you're forced to consider
Amazing Video, Benjamin! Out of curiosity, is the any difference between taking notes with paper and pencil as opposed to using digital boards, like an iPad with a digital pencil, when studying?
I second this! I'd love to see this applied on a self help book. They mostly tend to give you insights to apply into your life, but if you forget or don't apply that to your life, then is it valuable to free recall? Those kinds of things are the questions that pop up
Meteor Man had one of the most extraordinary superpowers of all the superheroes, in my opinion: touching a book and absorbing and integrating the information. Oh, yeah!
I really enjoyed it! You are (always!) quite generous (and funny)! If I would have taken notes... I wouldn't have to play it twice 😁 My brain was already preparing himself to leave a (funny) remark about your beautiful and softly-fluffy red wife... but fortunately I watched your video with more attention during the second time 😅 As an undiagnosed-ADHDer 🤔 I have only wondered about the best approach to achieve the best from a book. Once (upon a time...) I even engaged in transcribing the best parts of a book while reading it (and by hand - considering it would "stick" better)... until I stopped myself from transcribing the whole book. If using an Ebook App, it usually offers that Quotes/Highlight thing... that you can imagine how profusely I'd be using that feature 😵💫 So you can imagine how interesting I've found your free-recall exercise. Quite daunting too! It takes everything to another level. Amazing! So... I guess I can only say I used some of these methods on... TV series 😑. During the "Dark" series, a timeline-generational "map" was very needed to follow along it from the start. And, very recently, I was watching a National Geographic series. During the second episode - while realising it would cover a different theme - I started making connections with the first episode's interviewed people... that I couldn't even remember their names. Maybe if I had taken notes IMDB wouldn't have been needed 😁 [ Now I'm imagining myself during sex... while hitting perfectly a certain spot: - Love, just wait a second while I take some notes and draw a map to your "treasure"... Um... this might not be a very good idea... 🤔] PS: Now even more seriously, after your collaborative idea with your beautiful and softly-fluffy yellow collaborator, I imagined that you could be The One to create a new social network about books/reading. How about calling it Readdit or Readingit? 😁 It could be the perfect way to build that important community you mentioned about readers, so they could exchange ideas about a book after finishing. For example, they could create a Book-Reading event when they were about to finish a book, saying: "This will be the book I will start in a few days... it is about this... and seems interesting because of that..." suggesting it to others that could be about to start a new one. Others could follow this suggestion and then be prepared to gather together in the discussion with a more fresher mind about its contents. Just an idea...
That back and forth is simply active recalling. He has a short video on active recall. It’s essentially, you read/listen to something, then Try to remember it. If you noticed that you forgot something or something is a little fuzzy, simply go back and find out the info youre missing to fill in that gap. Then continue forward with the material.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 📚 Approaching Learning Chinese History - Understanding a book goes beyond memorization. - It involves making sense of patterns, themes, and conflicting evidence. - This video explains the speaker's approach to learning from a book on Chinese history. 02:03 📝 Organizing the Material - Organizing information helps with understanding and memory. - Themes in Chinese history, like famous explorers and dynastic patterns, are identified. - Major dynasties and eras are noted to create a structured framework. 05:06 🔄 Going Back and Forth - Bouncing between personal reflections and the book deepens understanding. - Changing one's prior knowledge enhances comprehension. - The importance of taking notes as a tool for reflection is highlighted. 08:32 🗺 Utilizing Visualizations - Visualizations and organizational frameworks aid in learning complex information. - Different types of maps for different purposes in understanding. - Visual aids help in seeing relationships and connections in the material. 09:38 📅 Flashcards for Precision - Flashcards with important dates and events are used for self-testing. - Dates are crucial for understanding cause-and-effect relationships. - A modified flashcard testing system is employed for specific recall. 11:58 🕒 Stretching Learning Over Time - The speaker plans to revisit the material after a few months to reinforce knowledge. - Consistent engagement with the material over time prevents forgetting. - Learning is a process that requires continuous effort and revision. 12:24 ❗ Potential Improvements - The speaker acknowledges that their approach may not be perfect. - Suggestions for improvement include more frequent note-taking, geographical knowledge building, and collaborative learning. - Collaboration with others can lead to deeper understanding through discussions. Made with HARPA AI ```
video kinda confusing. i love reading books for just that. Including history ones. I am reading a history book now about henry 4th...confusing and boring because the writer seems more interested in showing his knowledge of the french language, rather then events in context. He also comes off like a pompous ass . So, I read a book to enjoy its good story telling. After all, we can only remember anecdotes that link to the current time..... and the building of Paris.
I love your content. Thank you for it. Please practice on the beauty and confidence of your male voice. You tend to end sentences with question mark and overall some really hard to listen pronounciation as if you gargle out words as if you are constantly out of breath and constantly questioning or excusing yourself. Also some pauses between your sentences. Look up how Louis Armstrong is enjoying his voice in "It's a wonderful world" as an example. Lower, calmer a tadbit slower. Also please improve the acoustics of the room. You are amazing overall.
Thanks for all this videos. Listening to you talking about all this I started to think that maybe your book could have done a better job helping you understand and remember. A concrete example would be to incluide a map. As a teacher desining my own materials after a decade of using other's, it's interesting for me to try to apply all this technics to designing and writing better material. Thanks for all the work! This channel has been very useful. Now my tests are interleaved, spaced out, etc.
Hello, I really like your content and I am trying to improve my learning methods for university. One thing that I noticed on myself is that some of your suggestions are quite difficult to apply to STEM subjects, it would be great if you could do a video on that!
As a site carpenter paid on a piece rate basis, I’m constantly seeking ways to optimise my workflow for increased quality and productivity. In my quest for efficiency, I’ve been thinking about creating procedure documents for every aspect of my work. However, given the substantial time and effort it would require, I’m wondering if the potential benefits justify the means. What’s your perspective on optimising learning and documentation in manual professions such as carpentry or do you think experience is far more important and using notes and documentation is not as useful in a manual environment such as carpentry?
One more thing: I'd love to see how you would apply some of these ideas to fiction. I'm an amateur fiction writer. If you wanted to learn as much as possible about how to write fiction from a given piece of fiction, how would you, Benjamin Keep, go about it?
I think you would want to sample more than one piece of fiction, but you could probably get a lot out of just analyzing one. I would want to have the experience as a naive reader first, to have some understanding of what the piece of fiction "does" - how I feel suspense or sadness or realization or excitement. Then I would think of it as a process of reverse-engineering. The "different paths" idea might come up again: you can look at characters and character arcs; plot, plot points, and chapter/section divisions; themes, morals, or points of the story; writing style, characterizations, etc. Go through the piece just focusing on one angle or one part o things. I might consider what would change if a character made a different decision - how that might make the story more or less engaging; more or less meaningful. How a lengthier description of an event might make things better or worse. All kinds of hypothetical things you could do to change how the piece of fiction affects a reader or alters what the story says. At some point, either within the piece you're analyzing or looking at multiple pieces together you have to identify what "works" and what doesn't work for you as the reader/experiencer. And, like the hypothetical exercise above, you have to figure out why something works here, but why it doesn't work there. I might also think about how to replicate certain feelings or ideas or write certain kinds of characters or describe things. Not to imitate things exactly, but more like practicing little bits of fiction writing. A person goes into a coffee shop and gets into an argument with a stranger. That might be a single scene that gives you practice at writing an argument (perhaps with one character who's already on edge). And compare that to a scene that you've analyzed, which would give you more insight into the decisions that the writer made. Those would be some initial thoughts, anyhow. Good luck!
I saw a book on your shelf in a video from 2 years ago that looked like my book I'm reading but I couldn't make it out. Came to a new video to see if if I'd be able to see it in another video and instead it was actually a video about the book itself. What a strange cosmic coincidence...
I wonder if you have any videos like this (or ideas for videos) on retaining understandings of more abstract concepts? I'm a grad student in English/Literature and find it difficult to apply a lot of the examples I find online to what I work with. I'm thinking about philosophical theories, critical theories, economic theories, mostly. I've watched some philosophy PhD's talk about how they slog thru Hegel or whatever but I'm convinced there must be a better, more specific, science-backed way than paraphrasing at the each section... I also need to figure out a bettersystem for reading poems and fictional texts too but that one's going to have to be my own journey in which I figure out which elements or bits of analysis I personally find most important to pull from the text. The closer it is to my primary research focus, the easier it is to retain because I'm reading FOR something... I do struggle with reading stuff outside of my focus. Love these videos, though! I read a lot of historical info too in order to contextualize my readings and this is immensely helpful. Flash card methods especially don't work when I'm specifically learning the info in order to connect it to the core literary texts from a specific time period! Thinking about historical info in terms of connections and intertextuality is the only way I've ever succeeded!
Hi Benjamin. Your videos are great. Years ago, I learned a lot from the book Make it Stick, now your videos seems to me as a perfect complement. My two cents: I think that one never is really done with a good book in the same way that any topic has infinite depth. Rereading a book after reading another book on the same topic can be enlightening. I like your way of putting things when you say that a book is a tool to make sense of something. The book per se is unimportant (I am not saying that the work of the author is meaningless, just saying that the important things is how we interact with the world, and the book are just a tool from that world)
Benjamin really appreciate your time and effort putting things down in such a easy to grasp manner. But does it help? Tremendously, I’ve closed few gaps and im completely getting rid of any boundaries around encoding knowledge. Btw hello from Shanghai.
Hey, great video. Could you do a video where you focus on how to maximize the learning process for skill training, like musical instruments (preferably piano). Thanks.
my strategy pretend to teach a 5 years old kid , which means understanding to depths , add some visualisation of concepts note taking in questions so that it easy use to make like active recall making relations to the topic you know either similarities or difference spaced revision
do you plan your days or intentionally build new habits? I've read some books about it, but the sources of information in those books are rather outdated, I am curious about your opinion on this. And this video is really helpful, thanks.
interesting video! I am definitely looking forward to your future improvements! I am trying to apply this style to learning language theory, and while it's definitely a different field, I like seeing the overlap.
Finding this channel is like winning the lottery. If you truly internalize the information learnt here and manage to apply and refine it in a way that works for you, you’ll learn information, make sense of and retain it in a way that you would’ve never thought possible before. I don’t do this often but these videos are genuinely worth re-watching many times to truly get the point.
