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Let emotion move you to learn
Did you know that everything that was taught to you at school was wrong —
Now whoaah there, OJ! I better hold my horses there.
Not everything taught at school was wrong, in fact, that’s a sweeping statement on my part.
A lot of stuff may be (or simply isn’t relevant to your occupation), but rote memorization is.
What’s that? You may ask.
It’s basically that technique your math teacher may have taught you when you were a lil’ lad first memorizing your times tables.
Now, I may only be an American citizen, but I believe that math is taught the same pretty much universally. If not, then feel free to correct me.
For example, if you’ve ever used rote memorization (ex. repeating 2 x 2 = 4 in your head 100+ times), do you still remember the facts or times tables that you learned?
Turns out, even mathematician Eugenia Cheng “has never memorized her times tables,” but she has “internalized” it, as said in her book The Art of Logic in an Illogical World.
This can be done with experiences, visualizing in 3D, and “engage our emotions or personal experiences while learning,” that will “likely get embedded more deeply in our consciousness.”
You have to “feel what it’s like,” rather than getting bloodshot eyes by staring at your times tables all day, hoping to just get it.
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After all, rote learning is said to be used without much active engagement or critical thinking.
So… does that mean we’re flesh and blood computers who remember every single line of code that’s programmed into us? Turns out, our mind is not meant to operate according to rote memorization, or rather, like a metal computer.
Emotion is necessary
To learn something that you really think is gonna help you, internalizing it through a personal experience is necessary.
Even if you’re not in school, learning anything shouldn’t feel like a chore for the above reason. After all, school is supposed to prepare us for adulthood, right? So at some point we have to realize the better way.
Funny too, as someone who’s in college studying algebra, I’m finding it tempting to simply memorize all the rules. That’s where the book, The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, has become incredibly timely in order to help me find that better way.
While there are no rules to internalize concepts, there are a few examples to try.
- Visualizing by replacing variables (like x and y) with people you love.
- Applying what you need to memorize/learn with the real world.
- Learning with a friend and even turning it into a game.
While these 3 are very general (you’re probably confused by the first one), they’re techniques that really work.
For that first one you might be confused about, Cal Newport talks about it in his book Deep Work, a visualizing technique used by Ron White — a mental athlete who went from having a poor memory, to being a 2-time USA Memory Champion.
If you’re curious in checking his technique out for context, here’s a YouTube video (doesn’t have to be for the Bible).
Takeaway
Rote memory is not for those wanting to learn for the long-term, that’s where internalizing lessons and definitions is the natural and more human way of learning.
Even if it isn’t a mainstream strategy, it sure is a powerful one.
After all, life isn’t an exam.
There’s no grading criteria to the decisions you make every day and how you make those decisions, there’s only the outcome, which — from your personal experience, helps you make better choices for the future in how you learn and grow.