Studying My Masters in 1/6th of the Time

so i'm starting my masters of education

soon and um i get a lot of comments

saying like

hey you can't use this technique for you

know whatever

you can't use it to study there so it

doesn't work for me or doesn't work for

that or whatever you know people have a

lot of a lot of opinions about the

techniques um especially when it comes

to the kind of mind mapping thing you

know the video that went

semi-viral so i thought it'd be a rare

demonstration for me

to actually go through and show how it's

not about a single technique it's

actually about how this the technique

is part of a wider system and it

facilitates other parts of the system

like you can have the best rims on a car

you get the best engine but if the

what okay look i don't know much about

cars but if the other parts of the car

are not also good then you're gonna be

held back so there's this concept of a

rate limiting step in science and it's a

really common uh common idea and you

know the way that was first taught to me

was uh in biology class right it's the

idea that you can basically have like if

you imagine like a barrel

and this barrier this barrel is made up

of like

wooden planks but let's say that one of

these wooden planks is only up to

halfway

okay and the rest of this is just blank

how high can you fill it with water well

you can only fill it

you know this high with water because

all the water

is obviously going to leak out the

shortest plank is and that's the rate

limiting step right so if the rate

limiting step is let's say the fact that

you are relying purely on

active recall and space repetition for

which there is this like strange level

of obsession and hype about despite the

fact it can actually make it even worse

because it can become so unsustainable

for example having like 4 000 different

flash cards that they're doing they can

be spending so much time on

justice-based repetition and retrieval

rehearsal that they're actually not

spending as much time on the encoding

aspect of the information which we know

is important so that there is actually

useful stuff to retrieve so

um you know in my experience people that

are relying only on a system of active

recall and space repetition are not

really going to find much success and

actually as you get later and later on

throughout

uh academic careers especially um you

know later university

uh for like maybe like fourth year fifth

year or you know working as a

professional your learning is very

marginally using something like active

recording space repetition most of your

learning will never really happen that

way yes if you're not doing it at all

and you know you've got nothing in in

place that has to do with active recall

and space repetition then yes you are

gonna find it advantageous uh but what

i'm saying is that that's not where it

ends that's kind of where it begins

you have to also have on top of that the

other side of the coin not just the

thing that you're retrieving but

actually being able to uh encode the

information uh at a higher level of

quality to begin with and obviously i've

got a lot of other videos uh that will

talk about this and it's an important

concept so i will continue to make

videos about this anyway

i want to show you how i'm gonna study

for my master's assign tomorrow um it's

a

you know

reasonably you know intense um

sort of course and i'm trying to do

quite well for it so we'll be doing some

pre-study and i'll go through how

uh the way that i

learn fits into a wider system

and it'll be one of the many examples

that i give that shows that this does

work it works for pretty much everything

it works for english maths biology

chemistry physics medicine ecology

accounting

pretty much everything it works for us

it's the way that the brain works so

unless you don't have a brain

it's going to work for you so the first

thing that is always important to do

when starting studying is to figure out

how am i going to be retrieving this

information and how do i therefore

organize it in my brain as soon as the

information goes on it's kind of like

organizing your room it's easier to make

sure that everything is put in the right

place when it goes into your room rather

than throwing everything in your room

seeing that it's a mess then trying to

organize it afterwards if you do even

organize it at all

not even trying to encode it properly

would be like having a messy room and

then just trying to find whatever it is

and then finding it again so many times

that you just memorized exactly where in

the room it was it actually makes more

sense to put it somewhere that's logical

so that it's easier to remember where it

is and then your brain can use that more

effectively

you can see how why uh improper encoding

combined with just lots of active record

space repetition would therefore cause a

very repetitive tedious and

unnecessarily time-consuming learning

process so

i've had a look through the assessment

criteria and i've had to look at the way

that i'm going to be assessed so i

generally understand how i'm going to

need to use this knowledge and right now

i'm learning about autism spectrum

disorder um so i'm going to be reading

this article about autism spectrum

disorder so you can see it's a pretty

decent sized article and that's actually

one of like seven that i'm going to be

reading and i will try to read them all

in one go

uh so because it's such a large amount

of information in order for me to

process that correctly i need to be very

clear about the mental schema in which

i'm going to arrange everything so if

you think about again like a room or a

warehouse you're trying to organize

having lots of different shelves with

lots of different organization is going

to make a lot of sense because it means

that i can categorize it more

effectively if i've got a shelf and it

says all of that stuff has to do with

let's say the diagnosis then that's

going to make sense for me to think

about it in terms of that shuffle stuff

to do with diagnosis but then if that

shelf is not organized then it's still

hard to find stuff on the shelf i may

know that it's in that shelf but it's

still going to be difficult to find

likewise even if i know that this

information belongs cognitively

organized in a group called diagnosis

it's still going to be difficult for me

to retrieve that because there is still

too much stuff in a single shelf so i

actually look at what level of each you

know of that entire bookcase or whatever

am i going to assign for each thing and

i'm not talking about a physical vision

of a bookcase or anything i'm using this

as purely a metaphor an analogy so um

not only do i want to figure out the big

chunks but i also want to figure out the

sub chunks and how those subjects relate

to each other so for example you

wouldn't put your

kitchen

towels next to your socks or your shoes

you know it doesn't really make sense

because it's not a logical place to put

them so i wouldn't really put a piece of

concept that i learned in the first page

that

might relate to the treatment i wouldn't

necessarily put that on the first chunk

that i have which might actually be

about diagnosis because that that

doesn't make sense you know the

treatment actually comes later

so

um right now as i'm reading i'm just

going to be thinking about creating this

mental schema i'm thinking why are these

pieces of information important how can

they relate to each other what are the

chunks i can create and how can i make

that as organized as possible once i

have a good understanding of the scope

of what i'm learning and how it can

potentially fit and fit together i have

a basic backbone i'll represent that in

my mind map and then i'll take that

information and then i'll build on it so

it's a multi-layered approach again if

this is a little bit overwhelming then

don't worry i do go this through this

step by step from beginning to end every

single process every single detail in

the course so again if you're interested

you can check that out

so at this stage i have a basic uh

outline of how it looks and you can see

that it's very simple um it's it's very

bare bone but on the skeleton i'm then

going to build all the other information

on top of it so it'll allow it to be

organized a bit more so as i add more

detail i'm constantly trying to find a

way to organize it and simplify it and

create further relationships so you'll

see that this adapts and changes and

grows as it goes and the larger the

topic that you're doing at a single go

the more complicated it becomes and

the longer it takes to simplify but as

it becomes simpler and simpler and

simpler the learning speed increases uh

exponentially well i don't know if it's

exponential but it gets faster and

faster and faster uh because you're kind

of just building on the same thing and

the foundation starts getting so strong

that actually all the subsequent details

and concepts become much easier to

understand much easier to process

because your organizational structure is

not really changing so much anymore

and then you're able to really just

process and learn it and it just makes a

lot more sense so right now you can i

can definitely tell you you know i've

just been reading through like you know

not very in detail at all but just by

framing this it feels overwhelming

there's so much information there's a

sense of discomfort here but cognitive

load theory tells us that actually

maintaining that discomfort is going to

be good for us in our learning that's

going to fuel us to learn this a little

bit more quickly so i'm used to this

discomfort it's not scaring me at all

the confusion is good it's fuel for

growth

so i'm going to work through this

confusion i'm going to figure it out i'm

going to add more details and we'll see

where it gets to

once i've added on more details once i

go through this extremely long

article

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so it is uh it's been four and a half

hours actually since i last uh recorded

and

uh let me show you what i've got at the

moment

so yeah as you can see there's you know

quite a bit of

chunking and relationships that have

been formed between the ideas

these notes have been taken from

50 pages of a textbook about 40

something pages of a best practice

guideline

uh

11

12 pages from research article and i'm

in the final stage now where there are

four more articles to review about 12

pages in total

and i'll be consolidating them onto this

so uh in total in the last

well and what will eventually become

maybe around five or five and a half

hours uh i will have gone through around

90 pages of

quite academic uh reading i mean you can

have a look at the type of stuff that

this is

um and i feel like i've got very really

good retention on it i had some um

specific questions that i was thinking

of when i was going through this and so

this whole process i was doing was

a combination of those of you going

through our course this is a lot of

order control a lot of um

syntopical reading which is where you

read multiple sources of information

talking about the same topic

simultaneously it allows you to build a

more robust foundation in a faster way

because you're not locked into learning

it linearly a big part of it came from

really being able to create that clear

structure and organization and being

able to organize as i went so the first

um you know i've been studying for four

and a half hours the first uh

40 pages of the textbook

took me a long time a long time it took

me like three hours just to do that

but then after that the remaining 40

pages of this other article

took me only about one hour in total um

so it's getting faster and now uh then

the article after that was

very quick just minutes because i wasn't

really learning anything new however

every time i was reading it i was sort

of consolidating and thinking of more

ideas so that's because of the fact the

organization once it's stabilized

doesn't tend to change much and as i

mentioned before the process became

faster and faster so now i'm on the

other side of the fence really and it

feels much more comfortable the

knowledge feels very comfortable i feel

very uh i feel very confident working

with what i've got i definitely know

that there are gaps in my knowledge and

these are the things that i will take to

my tutorial i'll ask someone that's more

experienced and knowledgeable than me

about this and i'm just in the final

section here

now uh

i thought this would be a good

opportunity to to just outline the

technique that i'm going to be using

right now in terms of just more active

chunking so i have here

24 different

points

and

for me

i need to understand what each of these

24 points is talking about so it's

talking about

important things to consider when

starting an intervention for a child

diagnosed with autism so there are 24

important points and i know that there

is going to be a

link between some of these points there

will be similarities between these

points

for me i'm going to go through a process

of chunking i'm going to collect all of

these points and then i'm going to look

through to see if i can find meaningful

chunks

between them and i'll go through that

process and show you how i can turn

those 24 points into something that is a

lot more manageable rather than trying

to just memorize 24 things which most

students would just chuck onto a flash

card and that's it's done not organized

sitting on a pile on the floor of your

of your memory very hard to retrieve uh

likely to be forgotten not really being

encoded into your long-term memory uh

and obviously that's going to be a waste

of time constantly repeating this and i

really don't want to have to repeat this

process very often i want to learn it

and then i want to be able to apply it i

want to be able to use it and have a

high level of competence

straight off the bat

so let's uh let's go through this

process a little bit it turns out

there's actually only 12 things uh not

24 which makes my job easier but the

demonstration is slightly more lame

uh but i basically i just use a notepad

and i just noted down all the um

key things that they were talking about

and the important thing here is that

when i was reading this i wasn't just

reading in order to like make a list i

was deliberately reading in a way that

made me organize information

to think how can i make it into groups

and how can i chunk it so when you read

with a with a clear purpose that is

evaluating an idea and comparing it

against similar ideas and looking for

similarities and differences and

thinking of different ways that they

could fit together uh and be grouped

um it's a different way of thinking it's

what's called higher order learning and

it's a more effective form of learning

it increases your encoding increases

your retention increases your processing

speed it makes learning more interactive

and more engaging and fun it is a little

bit more cognitively difficult but it's

cognitively difficult in the way that

lying on the couch doing absolutely

nothing is not difficult but it's also

not particularly enjoyable or much of

anything whereas you know doing

something that is enjoyable might take

effort like playing a game might take

effort but it's not that the effort is a

bad thing so it's the same thing as that

we're trying to produce good learning uh

and so actually doing it this way is is

a better

uh use of that time if we're gonna be

spending the time anyway we may as well

learn properly and not just learn

passively students that are very young

you know they really struggle with this

but when you're kind of nearing the end

of high school uh last two three years

of high school you really need to start

developing this ability to take

ownership of the learning uh take

control of it and

be the one that organizes the

information yourself not have someone

else do it for you because as an

independent learner in university

no one's going to do that for you you

have to learn that's that skill at sink

or swim

and and it's better to learn to swim in

the kiddie pool aka high school rather

than learn to swim when maybe your

university grades matter a little bit

more on my list of 12 things

how is it related to the other items on

that list and why is this fundamentally

something important for me and how am i

going to use this how am i going to use

this information so if i think about

that you know i let the brain whirr for

a bit and then we'll see what we get to

in terms of this order and we will see

if we can make this make a little bit

more sense intuitively

and there we go uh so it's been broken

down into

one two three bigger groups and chunks

so i i looked at it and i thought why is

this important for me to know and i

thought okay so we've got three main

reasons of importance uh and then within

the third one the second one there are

three sub reasons for importance you'll

notice that when you do this you'll find

that actually

the

retention and the understanding and the

depth of understanding from

the you know all the concepts that you

do this activity for will be much

greater than if you just read it purely

to try to understand it or memorize it

or recall it so when your brain is

reading or learning something for the

for the specific purpose of trying to

evaluate it and chunk it and group it

and it does that what's called higher

order learning

it will

automatically allow you to understand

and memorize it faster than if you would

actually deliberately try to just

directly memorize it and understand it

which means that to try to to try to to

memorize and understand something in the

fastest possible way you actually need

to not try to memorize and understand it

which is counterintuitive i understand

but this is how your brain works so you

you activate higher order learning and

it fills in all the gaps on the way kind

of automatically and so if you try this

you will find that it's actually a

an engaging and unique way of thinking

that most students aren't really used to

high level learners will already do this

automatically and if you are already

doing this that's good for you uh but

try to use it even more uh more actively

even at a deeper level so once you're

aware of it if you've already got the

basic skill down automatically which a

lot of high-level learners already do

then then use it to another level you

know really create a system out of it so

that's one of the things about the

system that i've created that's in the

course again link below if you care

uh is that it takes the way that your

brain works and then it fundamentally

fundamentally creates the system around

how the brain works

and then we can supplement it with other

things like memorization aids and

flashcard techniques and all that sort

of stuff but you know we really want to

get our basic cognitive process first

otherwise we're constantly just fighting

an uphill battle so let's just take all

of that stuff that was on the computer

and we will just chuck that onto the

mind map

and here we go so

i've added on this little blue part in

there

to the original mind map so it was just

like this before and now it has this

part added so this is the representation

of

that and uh you can see that that is a

lot

i mean less pleasant to look at and

harder to process than this now it's

going to be easier for me to process

because i'm the one that thought about

how to draw it so it makes sense to me

so even if it doesn't make sense to you

trust that it is effective for me and if

you were to do a similar process it

would be effective for you too and that

concludes my study session it did go a

little longer than i expected um just

under five hours but i did cover around

about what like 90 pages worth of pretty

intensive reading and i'm quite happy

with where i'm at um and i will likely

look at this again sometime in the next

few days just to refresh myself because

once the encoding is done the next step

is everyone's favorite active recall and

space repetition but now i don't need to

do so much space repetition and it's not

going to take up too much time because

it's naturally already encoded pretty

well all i need to do is remind myself

where all the different boxes sit on the

different shelves and

the rest is

kind of

sort of automatic and it really honestly

it makes it a lot easier

so a bit of a demonstration um on

the the system now if there were

additional things that i wanted to

memorize i don't need to retrieve this

knowledge in terms of pure factory core

so i don't need to really put any of

this stuff onto flashcards but if i did

need to then i would simultaneously at

this point have put things into flash

cards but uh even if i did need to

retrieve through pure factory record

there's probably only about 10 15 flash

cards i'd have for this whole topic um

hopefully you were able to use this as

an insight into how the process kind of

works once it is refined i don't expect

you to take this video and suddenly know

how to do all the techniques but i do

want you to be able to look at this and

think okay so once i develop the

techniques this is how it can be used

and i want to be there as proof that it

does actually work and it is completely

all in the techniques it's not like my

brain is anything special i just use

techniques that i've practiced thousands

of times and my students naturally are

able to achieve you know pretty good

results from using the same process as

well so hopefully you liked that if you

did if you found this useful please

leave a like if you have any comments as

usual leave them down below if you've

got any questions about how the

technique can be applied um if you're

interested to learn more about the

theories and the techniques and all of

that sort of stuff then check out my

other videos i will plan to put out as

many as possible uh covering different

aspects of the system and different ways

of doing things like mind maps and

improving your memory and reducing

repetition and uh

using different parts of your brain more

effectively and things like that so stay

tuned if you want to hear more about

that sort of stuff

make sure that you subscribe but

otherwise i'll see in the next one

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you