Learnemy

Learning how to learn is important. There is tons of information and skill sets out there but if you don’t know how to learn them, they are pretty much useless to you.

For most people, the only method they know about learning is by remembering and regurgitation. I believe that you’ll be very happy to know that this method is not the only method you can use. I’m going to share with you the main scientific theories on how people learn so you can come up with tips to make yourself a better learner.

You learn by association

Give me one word for each of these terms:

• Prada
• People’s Action Party
• Birthday

Why do you have those words when you see these terms? That’s because you have learned to associate them with the words you came out with.

Ivan Pavlov discovered this insight. He would ring a bell before presenting food to dogs and repeated this pairing for some time. What he found out was that the dogs would salivate upon hearing the bell as though as food was in front of them, even if the food was not presented to them after the ringing (man, imagine the disappointment on the dogs’ faces!).

You learn through trial and error

So you can’t fry an egg properly. But after several attempts, you finally did it and now you can fry the perfect egg with your eyes closed. Why? That’s because you learn what to do and what not to do with each failure.

That’s what happened to the cat in Edward Thorndike’s experiments. He created a box that could only be opened by pressing a button within it and placed a cat in it. Food was left outside the box so the cat was motivated to escape. The cat initially faced difficulties, but after each successful escape, it could do it much quicker. Based on the gradual drop in time needed to escape the box, the experiment suggested that the cat figured how the box worked from trial and error.

You learn by consequences

“I’ll count to three and if you don’t stop doing that, you’re getting It,” you mother said when you were young. You learn by observing consequences of your actions.

(By the way, did anyone last beyond the count of three? I always stopped at two so I had no idea what would happen after three.)

BF Skinner demonstrated that with pigeons. In his experiments, he gave food (the reward) every time a pigeon does an action that Skinner intended for it to learn. Watch how Skinner made a pigeon turn around in the video below:

If that’s too much science for you, watch how Sheldon trains Penny.

You learn by watching

“Watch and learn” is a common phrase we used that’s actually based in science. We learn by watching how a behavior is performed.

Albert Bandura exposed a group of children to an adult model who was asked to attack an inflatable clown (called as a Baba doll) and exposed another group of children to an adult model who played peacefully with the doll. Once the children were given the opportunity to play with the doll, children exposed to the aggressive model imitate what they had seen and behave aggressively toward the doll.

You learn by experiencing

Between reading about programming and actually creating codes, you’ll learn better the latter way than the former.

Edgar Dale looked at the most effective ways of learning by teaching people similar material in different ways and noted the ability to recall the information after being taught. The chart below shows that teaching a material is better than merely reading it.

Experience also means to stimulate the senses, especially the visual sense. Research has found that majority of knowledge held by adults (75%) is learned through seeing. Hearing is the next most effective (about 13%) and the other senses — touch, smell and taste — account for 12% of what we know.

What can you do with these theories?

Scientific theories may seem really fluffy and inapplicable to real-life situations. But you cannot ignore them because they offer the foundation to understand how we learn. If you have some learning tips to share, leave them in the comment box below.

Don’t worry if you can’t think of how to make use of these theories, I’ll be providing you tips you can used based on these theories in the next article. Check back soon!

Picture credits: Cone of Learning

If the only Chinese new year (CNY) phrases you know are ‘gōng xǐ fā cái’ and ‘xīn nián kuài lè’, you should learn more phrases this year!

How to use greet people during CNY

Greet people by first saying ‘祝你’ (zhù nǐ), which means ‘I wish you’ before moving onto the different phrases. There isn’t a sequence to saying them, nor is there a limit on how many phrases you can use. Generally, an elderly is happier to hear more of these well-wishes, but make sure you don’t go from being impressive to obsessive!

The phrases

龙年行大运 (lóng nián xíng dà yùn)
Definition: May your year of the Dragon be filled with good luck.

金玉满堂 (jīn yù mǎn táng)
Meaning: May your home be filled with treasures.

身壮力健 (shēn zhuàng lì jiàn)
Meaning: May you stay healthy and be full of energy

心想事成 (xīn xiǎng shì chéng)
Meaning: May you accomplish whatever you set to do

生意兴隆 (shēng yì xīng lóng)
Meaning: May your business prosper

财源广进 (cái yuán guǎng jìn)
Meaning: May you have abundant source of income and receive wealth and fortune.

笑口常开 (xiào kǒu cháng kāi)
Meaning: May you always have something to be joyful about

步步高升 (bù bù gāo shēng)
Meaning: May you rise higher in every step of the way. It usually refers to a job promotion.

新春大吉 (xīn chūn dà jí)
Meaning: May the new Spring brings you good fortune

万事如意 (wàn shì rú yì)
Meaning: May everything goes the way you wish for.

Bonus: To be used with your friends and NOT to someone with seniority.

长命富贵 (cháng mìng fù guì)
Meaning: Live long and prosper (to be used with the appropriate hand sign)

愿力与你同在 (yuàn lì yǔ nǐ tóng zài)
Meaning: May the force be with you

Happy Chinese new year!

Creating New Year resolutions are easy (in fact, you can reuse them year after year) with the SMART criteria. What’s difficult is to keep to your New Year resolutions.

Here are 7 steps you should take to help you achieve your goals for 2012.

1. Create an Action-Plan

You need to come up with a list of tasks that you need to take in order to reach your goals. To prepare this list, you have to do research – go learn how to achieve your goals. Your research will give you insights on what small steps you need to take.

Another method is to work backwards. Say you want to lose 10kg by 31st December 2012, which works out to be roughly 1kg per month. In order to lose 1kg a month, you’ll need to exercise X minutes per day (you’ll have to find out what X is by doing research). So the item ‘exercising X minutes every day’ will be in your action-plan.

Do set aside exact timings to do each task. For example, exercise every day from 6pm to 6.30pm.

2. Plan rewards

All work and no play make everyone sad. Although some goals are rewarding by itself (e.g. no more breathlessness over a flight of stairs as your fitness improves), rewards are great to keep you going. Rewards can be anything – trip to the theaters, dresses, and gadgets – whatever you will look forward to.

So go ahead and enjoy that chocolate ice cream for every 5 tasks you have completed. You deserve it.

3. Remind yourself

The surefire way not to keep to your New Year resolutions is to keep your goals and plans tucked away in that dust-collection corner of your room. So don’t do that!

Instead, put your goals and plans EVERYWHERE.

Put some reminders on your pet, if it doesn’t mind.

It doesn’t have to be text. You could stick a picture of a dress you’ve wanted to wear, or a family portrait could remind you of your goal to quit smoking.

Your rewards could also be used as reminders. Put up that picture of the Maldives or iPhone to remind you of your goals.

4. Track your progress

You can’t see improvements unless you make an effort to track them. Tracking helps you reflect on what you have done so you can plan on how to improve.

To help you track your progress, you could simply draw up a calendar and note down what you have done. Else, you can use some of these free trackers online:

1. iDoneThis: This service will send you an email every day that you can reply with what you’ve done for the day. All entries are kept in a calendar form so you can track your progress.
2. HabitForge: Helps you form new habits in a 21-day cycle. If you miss the habit for 1 day, it’ll restart.
3. Rootein: Similar to iDoneThis, except with more functions. You can create a list of to-dos and check them off when done.

5. Be Accountable

We humans like to be consistent. If you tell your friend that you’re a helpful person and he points out an incident where you resisted helping someone, your immediate emotions will be surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment. This experience is known as cognitive dissonance.

You want to put yourself in this uncomfortable situation. It seems like a bad idea, but its discomfort is a good source of motivation: you do your best to avoid it.

How do you create accountability? Don’t keep your goals private. Tell your friends (or blog about) your goals and plans, and update them regularly on your progress.

6. Troubleshoot

Don’t write off your plans just because you’ve failed on many attempts. Instead, try to find out what is the underlying cause of the problem.

For example, let’s say your goal is to sleep at 12am every day and you’ve failed to do so for the past week. Here’s how you should analyze your problem by asking tons of ‘why’:

Why can’t I sleep early?
Because I had too many things to do.

Why did I have so many things to do?
Because I can’t finish them.

Why can’t I finish them?
Because I underestimated the time I need to complete my work.

In this scenario, you will realize that the root of the problem has more to do with how you plan your work than setting 12am as your bedtime. With this insight, you can correct the problem and continue pursuing your goals, instead of labeling them as impractical and forget about it.

7. Tie goals to charity

How about making a pledge to donate $10 to a charity of choice for every kg you lose? In this way, your efforts are tied to doing good and this will motivate you greatly. Just think of all the welfare the animals at SPCA could get, simply because you kept to your goals!

This kitty will go hungry if you don’t exercise. Still have the heart to slack? 

Try, try again

Perseverance is the key to success. Don’t beat yourself up just because you couldn’t keep to your goals. Don’t give up either. The air doesn’t smell fresher in January; so don’t wait till the next January to start again. Just pick a date and you’re good to go.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!

Picture credits: Failed resolutions, Dog, Uncle Sam, Cat