A key part of deliberate practice is building strong, expansive mental models of your domain space, and to do that experts are very effective at using their long term memories. Here are some tips on how this can be done (from helpguide.org) with some comments on how I currently go about things:
- Pay attention. It’s pretty amazing how little attention you pay to things you come across during the day. For example, I didn’t encode the tips that Colvin lays out in his article that I mention in the previous post at all and can’t recall them without looking them up. Having the motivation to pay careful attention (at least 8 seconds is required apparently) is crucial.
- Memorise using the method that best for you. I am, likely the vast majority of people a visual/textual and experiential learner.
- Use as many senses as possible. The more, and more different senses that you can use like saying something out aloud, writing it down as well as looking at it, the better chance of it being retained.
- Connect new information to things you already know. It makes the information more vivid and understandable and easier to remember. I suspect I do this already on a very rudimentary level. Also, the benefits from this would accrue, as the better your memory, the more easily you can connect old information to new.
- Structure information into organised sections, by categorising, writing down, modelling, connecting etc. This ties in with the next point:
- Really understand the underlying ideas of complex topics. Don’t concentrate on the huge amount of details, but the core concepts and be able to explain these principles to someone else. Really understand the issues.
- Learn things repeatedly over a long period of time. Come back and relearn things. Learn things beyond when you can already recite it back.
- Stay positive and motivated.
- Learn some mnemonics and other strategies.
Posted 2 years ago
