How To Train Yourself To Have An Exceptional Memory

I'm a learning coach and a doctor. But

to be honest, I think I have a pretty

bad memory. 10 years ago, I spent every

hour of every day just studying, mostly

just relearning stuff that I kept

forgetting. But today, I can learn 100

pages of a dense textbook with over 90%

retention. And the reason that I can do

that today when I definitely couldn't

before is because I spent thousands of

hours learning about learning. I learned

about how the memory works and I learned

how to train my memory. I went from

studying and constantly relearning to

studying less than before while actually

getting better results both in medical

school and for my masters. And in this

video, I'm going to share four of the

most important learning science

principles about memory and how you can

apply that to your own learning so that

you can train yourself to have an

exceptional memory. Now the first and

most important thing we need to start

with is what memory actually is. Because

if you are like how I was, you are

probably thinking about memory

completely wrong. I used to think that

some people just don't have a great

memory. I feel like I spent so much time

learning and studying when people around

me didn't have to spend that long and

they were getting better results. They

were remembering more. Things clicked

for them more easily. So clearly there

was something going on inside their

brain that was better than me. And what

I realized after reading so much

research and experimenting and reading,

you know, books like this is that memory

is not a fixed trait. It is not

something that you have or don't have or

is good or isn't good. It in fact it

doesn't even make sense. Memory is more

like this box. So if you imagine this

cube here is a piece of information,

right? You might have uh read something,

you know, someone said something to you,

you heard it, it went into your ears,

you saw it with your eyes, it went into

your brain, and it became this

information inside your brain. And after

a while, after enough time passes, one

of two things is going to happen if we

make it simple. Number one, we're either

going to remember it or number two, we

will forget it. And depending on what

happens, we say whether we have a good

or bad memory. If we forgot it, then we

say, "Oh, we have a bad memory." If we

remembered it, we say, "We have a good

memory." But this is not the case at

all. What's really happening here is

that this piece of information

is attributed

with a level of memory. The memory is a

characteristic. It's a quality. It's an

attribute of the information. And the

way we impart this information with the

quality of good memory is through the

way we construct it. We can't just read

things or hear things and then just

immediately know. It's passing into our

brain and our brain is actively

constructing its interpretation of what

you read or heard. And so the way we

construct this is incredibly important.

If we construct it using a very flimsy

quick process, you know, just using like

paper and some tape and putting together

this box and like boom, it's done. Then

that is going to be very fragile. It's

going to degrade very quickly. That's

not strong. Whereas if we use a very

robust method with more robust uh

materials, it might be a little bit more

costly and time consuming, take some

more resources, take a bit more effort.

But if we create this box with metal

plates and weld the sides together and

and seal it off perfectly, then that is

going to last a lifetime. And the

difference between someone with a great

memory versus someone with a bad memory

is that the person with a bad memory is

used to constructing things in a very

haphazard fast way. Whereas a person

with a great memory is used to using a

robust construction method which imparts

a high stickiness of memory to this

information which leads us to naturally

hold on to and remember that memory over

time. And I think this concept is

summarized really well by this American

psychologist called Daniel Willingham

who said that memory is the residue of

thought. When we recall something, we

are not retrieving a piece of

information that's locked away in some

archive in our brain somewhere. What we

are doing is that we are remembering the

thoughts and the processes that we

experienced at the time when we engaged

with that information. So if we

construct haphazardly very quickly and

we don't give it much thought, there's

not much to remember. So a lot of my

focus when I was going through the

learning science as well as when I was

coaching for the last you know 13 plus

years was how do you construct memory to

be more robust? What are the principles

and the methods? And this is a huge

topic, like really, really huge. And so

there are so many different things that

influence our memory, but I'm going to

distill them down to what I think are

the four most universal, most applicable

that come up in the research time and

time again. And also give you some

tactics and examples within that to see

how you can apply that to your own

learning. So the first major principle

and method for improving your memory is

the spacing effect. Now, even if you

don't know a lot about learning or

learning science, uh you may have heard

about the spacing effect. This is a very

very simple concept that basically just

says that when you repeat something,

you're going to remember it for longer.

Anytime we have new information enter

into enter our brain, our brain under

goes something called knowledge decay.

And that's this line here. It's decay.

What this means is that over time, the

amount of knowledge, so knowledge here

on the y-axis, well, our ability to

recall that knowledge goes down. So in

the beginning, the first time we learn

it, the time is basically at zero. We're

going to remember everything hopefully

because we we literally just learned it.

And then after a period of time, we're

going to forget. So some studies say

that after about a week, we forget about

50% of everything that we've learned. So

half of what you learn, you forget about

a week later. Interestingly, people

overestimate that. So most people think

that they will remember about 70 or 80%

a week later, but when you objectively

test it, it usually tends to be about 30

to 50%. So we forget a lot of stuff very

quickly. And the idea with the spacing

effect is that if we hit that same

knowledge again a few days later and

then, you know, maybe a week later and

then some time again after that, each

time we hit it, this decay curve starts

flattening out. So instead of being so

steep, it looks like this and then it

looks like this. And then eventually

it's it's so flat that we're we're

basically never going to forget this.

And so the spacing effect is a really

important foundational principle to

understand because it first of all sets

up the expectation that you're not going

to be able to remember everything that

you learn just by learning it one time.

And so you should expect to need some

level of repetition. Now sometimes you

get this repetition very naturally. So

if you're learning something for work on

the job, you might naturally need to

recall and test yourself on this during

the you know during your work. But if

not you need to make sure that there is

that time carved out to allow yourself

the repetition that you need. Now the

issue here is that when you only rely on

the spacing effect or if this is the

major effect that you're using to try to

boost your memory, you're going to run

into a lot of problems. The way you

review that information makes a big

difference to how much it flattens that

curve. There are some methods that are

very passive that don't involve much

thinking. And so it doesn't contribute

much benefit. It doesn't make that

memory any stickier. And so you'll need

five or six or seven or even more

repetitions for it to be in your

long-term memory. And then usually after

that, like 2 3 months later, you'll

forget it anyway. Whereas there are

other methods that involve a bit more

deeper thinking where when you use this

method you only need like one or two

more repetitions for it to be in your

long-term memory. And so in the modern

day if you are learning a lot of stuff

and you don't have much time to learn

you're going to run into the problem of

being completely overwhelmed by the need

for repetition. And this is basically

what happened to me. I had thousands of

flash cards that I had built up and I

was spending hours and hours every

single day just getting through these

flash cards and I was forgetting faster

than my ability to review it. And so if

your entire studying methodology

revolves around the idea that you need

to repeat something, you know, five plus

times to remember it, that's not

mathematically scalable. And so while

you do need to use spacing as part of a

robust learning system, you should never

only use spacing. So even though this is

the first one that I'm covering, it's

probably, I would say, the least

impactful.

The second one makes this much more

effective. The second principle I'm

going to introduce you to is the

generation effect. The generation effect

is this finding that's been found across

decades of learning science research.

which says that when you produce your

own knowledge, you will remember it

better than if you just read it or hear

it. So actively generating knowledge is

more memorable than passively receiving

it. So that's the technical definition,

but in practice that's actually really

confusing because what does that even

mean? What does it mean to actively

generate knowledge? Some people think

that it means you have to create, you

know, synthesize this new novel piece of

information, you know, some some brand

new idea or you have to write some kind

of research dissertation about it. But

that's not the case at all. The easiest

way to understand what the generation

effect really means is that your brain

will remember things better if it needs

to do more work to get to the answer. So

I'll give you some examples of what this

actually means. So first of all just

summarize that. So your brain if it does

more work equals good. So here's an

example of some passive learning methods

and then I'll give you the more

generative

alternatives.

So one example of a passive learning

strategy might be just rereading

your notes.

So this is very passive because it

doesn't involve much thinking. The

generative version of that might be

rewriting your notes

from memory

from recall.

So you can see that this is going to

involve a little bit more work. Your

brain is going to have to do more

thinking. It takes more mental effort to

recall it and then also write it out

again. Another example might be

listening to a recording or a lecture or

a course or something. So instead of

just listening, a more generative thing

might be pausing

every two or three minutes and then

summarizing

the main points of what you just heard.

A common passive one here, uh,

highlighting highlighting the the

technique that I love to hate, very very

passive. Instead of doing passive

highlighting, a generative version of

that might be turning those things you'd

normally highlight,

turning them into practice questions or

challenges. Or another passive example

might be like copying someone's notes or

copying explanations or or writing down

what the lecturer or the instructor

says. So a generative version might be

to paraphrase,

right? write it down in your own words

or maybe even think of asking really

good critical questions about what you

are writing notes on. So you can see

there's a really clear trend here and

you can do this for basically any

technique. You just take one that's

fairly passive and unfortunately also

usually very common and you can turn

that into something that's more

generative just by thinking how do I

insert my brain in there more? How do I

involve my brain in thinking, figuring

things out, having to recall things,

piece things together to actually form

this knowledge? So, all of that thinking

is construction and that involves more

thoughts, usually more complex and

deeper thoughts and those thoughts are

usually more connected to each other.

So, they form a stronger network and all

of those things leave a longer and

stronger residue of thought, aka

stronger memory. Now, if you are trying

to train yourself to be more generative

in your learning, which you should be,

one thing that you might run into, is

knowing when it's enough. Because you

could technically just keep iterating on

this. So for example, instead of just

writing something from recall, uh maybe

you test yourself first before you do

the recall and then maybe you then

instead of just recalling it linearly,

maybe you teach it to someone and then

maybe after you teach it to someone, you

also map it out in a mind map. Uh and

then maybe you teach off of the mind

map. And then maybe you use the mind map

to generate even more questions for

yourself. And then when you answer the

questions, maybe you answer each

question in its own little mini mind

map. You know, it goes on forever. you

can sort of make it harder and harder

and harder and harder. And the rule of

thumb here is just go one step beyond

wherever you are comfortable with until

you get the result you need. You do not

need the perfect learning mechanism for

every single learning situation. If

you're at a networking event and then

you meet someone for the first time and

you just want to remember their name for

the next hour, maybe instead of just

listening to the name, you sort of

mentally test yourself. Maybe you apply

the spacing effect. you try to use that

name again in conversation a few times

that could be enough to keep it in your

memory for that particular purpose. On

the other hand, if you are a software

engineer and you're learning about a new

technology that has the potential to

completely disrupt your industry and you

know there's all sorts of implications

on the on the projects you're working on

and the problems you need to solve, you

need to learn that very very deeply. You

do not want to have to go back to the

reference material every, you know, 15

minutes because you keep forgetting the

stuff that you're learning. In fact, you

won't even be able to build real

expertise because you don't even

remember enough about what you've

learned to build on it. You'll fall into

the trap of, you know, reading a bunch

of stuff and technically understanding

it. But by the time you finished the

book, your actual expertise hasn't

increased more than the fact that you

are now aware of a few concepts and

interesting facts. And one of the worst

things that you can do when you are

training yourself to have a better

memory is reach way too far outside of

your existing current level of habits.

If you're currently very very used to

this passive learning here and most of

your learning sits within this zone,

it's going to be, you know, almost

impossible for you to try to go all the

way to, you know, something over here.

If you're if you're at level one, level

10 is going to be overwhelming. And so

if you want to actually get real

improvements in your memory on a daily

basis where every day your memory is

just getting a little bit better, then

it's imperative that you progress your

technique in accordance with the

principle of marginal gains. This is the

idea that you can just improve by 1%

every single day and the gains will

compound over time exponentially. If

you're 1% better every day, after an

entire year, you will be 37 times better

than you are today. And so, get into

this habit of when you're learning

anything new, whether it's about

improving your learning skills or any

other skill, just think about what your

current level of skill is, where you're

comfortable at, and where your current

habits sit. Then, think about where you

want to get to, and just take one step

closer to there. Take that one step, and

then stabilize until that becomes a new

habit, and then take another step. And

by doing it this way, you make sure that

you have a consistent path towards

improvement where every single step you

take is producing a meaningful realworld

benefit to your current problems and

situation. If the skill level you want

to get to with your learning is, you

know, at the very peak over here, but

we're starting right down here at the

bottom, then don't waste time trying to

jump to the top. You will jump and jump

and jump until you eventually give up.

Meanwhile, the person who is just

steadily step by step walking their way

up the mountain is going to eventually

reach the top. And even if they don't,

they are still going to be much higher

than the person who is wasting time

trying to get to the top in a single

jump. So here's what you should do if

you want to start using the generation

effect a little bit more. And you can

pair that with the spacing effect. Write

out your learning schedule from Monday

to Sunday and identify the times where

you're going to spend time to review and

space out your learning. when you're

going to do a little bit of that

repetition and then ask yourself how you

are going to review the material. Write

down the technique or the method you

normally would have used and just ask

yourself what is one step more

generative than what I was planning on

originally doing. And every two or 3

weeks do the same thing. Look at it

again. Look at the techniques you

normally would have used and you can

take an additional step. Just by doing

this very simple exercise where we pair

generation with spacing, the amount of

repetition that you will need will start

going down. Now, on the topic of

repetition, as you do this and as you

try to improve the quality of your

construction process, you're going to

find that you struggle with a few

techniques. As you try to make it more

generative, it involves more mental

effort. It's more challenging, and

you're going to need some trial and

error to get it right. And to give you

context, for me to steadily improve my

construction process to go from where I

was studying all the time to being able

to, you know, learn 100 plus pages of a

textbook with super high retention. That

took me years, like several years of

diligent, consistent hard work. But it

shouldn't take you several years because

a lot of my time was wasted on just

figuring out what was right and what was

wrong. And there also just weren't a lot

of resources then either. I mean like

this this book which is by the way

really good summarizes like 30 years of

learning science research. This was

published in 2017. By 2017 I already

read that research myself and spent the

thousands of hours to do that. And so

the reason I'm telling you this is that

if you want to save some of that trial

and error for yourself and just learn

from the mistakes that I already made,

then one thing that I'd recommend that

you check out is my free newsletter. the

emails that I send out every single week

where I've sat down and I've thought

what are the things that I wish I knew

when I was first starting and I packaged

them into these three to five minute

emails with some practical takeaways and

things for you to work on during that

week. It's pretty much like an entire

learning skills course delivered to you

through email. So if you're interested

in that, it's totally free. I'll leave a

link for you to sign up to that in the

description below. But on to the third

principle. So that was spacing and

generation. The third one is the testing

effect. The testing effect is really

self-explanatory. It says that when you

test yourself, you're going to remember

things better. But the part that I'll

add in there to make it more effective

is that the way you test yourself

matters a lot. Let's say I'm a senior

executive of a company and I need to

make some really important difficult

decisions about the the direction and

strategy of this company. And in order

to help me make this decision, I'm going

to go and learn a little bit about these

different industries. And to make sure

that I remember everything that I'm

learning so that I can really use it to

make this decision, I'm going to test my

recall on each fact through flashcards.

Do you notice something seems a little

off there? One method of testing is very

isolated, very discreet, just testing on

facts. You can see that my ability to

regurgitate facts probably isn't going

to translate that well to being able to

make these complex decisions. Well, the

same principle is true for all forms of

testing. Whenever you learn something,

you normally need to apply that

information in a certain kind of

context,

whether that's for an exam or for work.

And they're going to be multiple

different levels or depths of knowledge

that you need to apply that information

to. And so if you're only used to

testing yourself at a certain level,

then you can expect that your competence

will only increase at that level. And so

while doing practice questions and

practice exams if you're a student are

really effective way of testing

yourself, you have to check are these

questions and exams testing me at the

right level for how I need to apply this

knowledge. And this is especially

relevant if you're a professional and

you're learning not just for an exam but

also for your career where a practice

exam or the exam itself may not be

testing you in the way that you need for

your long-term career. I felt this

sharply myself where in my first few

years of university I felt like I was

really getting hang of studying. I was

getting A's and A minuses for my test. I

wasn't studying very much to get those

grades. Then when I enter into hospital,

I actually failed my first clinical

attachment and I realized that the

methods of studying that I'd been using

before were way too academic and they

didn't translate into really seeing a

patient in the real world, diagnosing

them and thinking about a management

plan. So when you test yourself, think

about what kind of thinking, what kind

of problem solving, what kind of recall

am I being forced to do right now and

does that reflect the type of recall and

thinking that I will need to do later

for you know my ultimate purpose. That's

the first thing. The second thing is

about how you actually learn from the

mistakes you make when you're testing.

So effective testing should be marked by

at least two different symptoms. First

thing is that it's actually level

matched, which is what we've just been

talking about. But the second is that it

finds and fills gaps

in your knowledge very effectively.

There's this common sentiment that I see

sometimes with the students that I work

with who will test themselves, but they

test themselves in a way that they know

they're not going to get things wrong.

They test on the subjects they're

stronger at. They ask questions that

they they're more familiar with and they

sort of consciously or subconsciously

avoid making mistakes. And I think the

idea is that there's this feeling that

if I make mistakes, it's an indication

that I'm not going to do well in my

exam. But that is the complete reverse

way of how it should be thought of. The

idea with testing is that you want to

find and fill these gaps proactively.

You want to identify these gaps so that

you don't make these same mistakes and

errors later when it really matters. And

so the faster and earlier you're able to

find these gaps, the better it's going

to be for you. And unfortunately,

most people when they learn something

for the first time have a lot of gaps.

And so if you're testing yourself in the

right way, the first time you test

yourself on something that you have

learned for the first time, you should

find truckloads of gaps and errors. And

for a beginner, this can be very

confrontational and conflicting because

it's a a hit to your confidence and it

makes you feel like, man, I've already

spent so much time learning it. How am I

going to get enough time to fill all

these gaps? But the correct perspective

is the gaps are there. The only

difference is whether you are aware of

it or not. And so if what you care about

is having real performance later when it

really matters, then it is a much better

position to be in to feel overwhelmed

but at least aware of all of your gaps

than blind to them and falsely

confident. And there are two parts to

doing this effectively. It's the finding

and the filling. These are actually two

different aspects. Finding a gap means

that the way that you test yourself is

difficult enough. Obviously, you know,

don't go overboard, but you want to

simulate real challenging scenarios that

you're going to face yourself with. And

you don't just want to test yourself in

a difficult way. You want to test

yourself at this level as early as

possible because it gives you as much

time as possible to fill all those gaps.

So, the first round of testing that you

do should involve something that is

very, very difficult. The next part is

about filling those gaps. So, you found

it, you've tested yourself in a

challenging way. How do you fill that

gap in your knowledge? On the plus side,

this can be very easy. It seems that

when you test yourself and find a gap in

your knowledge and then go to just learn

and fill that gap again using whatever

method you might have used before with a

little bit of generation applied to it.

Your brain is more effective at creating

robust knowledge than if you had never

tested yourself in the first place. So

what this means is that you could use

the exact same method to learn

something. But if you learned that after

finding out it was a gap because you

tested yourself, for some reason your

memory is just stronger. But the biggest

thing we need to avoid here are the

traps of recognition and overconfidence.

Recognition

is when you see something and you

recognize what it means. So if I

previously, you know, studied from this

textbook and I tested myself on

something in here and I, you know, got

it wrong and then I read the answer and

I recognize the answer and I think, ah,

yeah, that's right. That's the answer.

Yes, I remember now. You don't remember

now. All you do is you recognize that

that is the correct answer. So if the

answer had been completely wrong, you

might have recognized that hm that

answer doesn't make sense. it doesn't

mean that you can actually generate that

answer from scratch by yourself. And so

the gap between our ability to recognize

something and actually recall something

is huge. We can recognize the Mona Lisa

as a painting when we look at it. It

doesn't mean that we can actually

reproduce the Mona Lisa from memory. So

to avoid recognition, what you have to

do is when you test yourself and get

something wrong and then you check the

answer, don't judge your level of

confidence based on whether that answer

makes sense to you or not. Ask yourself

why. If it makes sense, was I not able

to get it right? And regardless of what

you find, make sure you test yourself on

that. again not in exactly the same way

but through some kind of variation

testing on the same part of the

knowledge and then see do you get it

right or wrong so that's recognition so

we want to make sure that we avoid

recognition the second thing we want to

avoid is this overconfidence and what

I'm referring to here is very

specifically when you test yourself on

something and you are not confident

about the answer that you've given but

then you check the answer and then you

become confident because you got it

right that is the incorrect judgment to

make. If you felt unconfident when you

were giving an answer, it means that

there's a gap. If there was no gap, you

would have felt confident giving the

answer. All it means is that either you

were lucky with the answer or you were

lucky in the way that it was tested and

you were asked that question and you

just so happened with the knowledge you

had to be able to put it together in the

right way. But if you are asked that at

a slightly harder level or a slight

variation or, you know, a little bit

more complicated, you may get it wrong.

So, as a rule of thumb, when you learn

something and you feel confident about

what you've learned, always be

skeptical. Test it. Test yourself at

enough of a difficulty to find the gaps

that you don't see. Be wary of

overconfidence.

But if you are underconfident about

something, believe it. Assume that there

truly is a gap there and don't convince

yourself to be confident of that. So,

that's the point about avoiding

overconfidence. So these are the nuances

about testing. It's not enough just to

test yourself. If you're not testing

yourself in the right way, and then when

you get feedback from your attempts,

you're not processing it in the right

way, the benefit of testing goes down

precipitously. One of the doctors I'm

training for their board certification

exams was telling me about how they

spend hours and hours every single week

just going through this question bank.

And they've gone through thousands of

questions and every time they sit down,

they're getting through like 50 to 100

different questions. And after I taught

them about these nuances, they slowed

that right down so that each session

instead of doing 50, they're only doing

five to 10. And so even though they were

actually doing less questions, they

started getting more benefit from each

study session because the quality of

learning they're extracting per question

is so much higher. Before they would get

questions wrong and then be tested on

very similar questions later and then

get them wrong again and then it would

take a lot of time to fill those gaps.

Whereas now when they get a question

wrong, they're never getting that

question wrong later. And that change

came from mostly just avoiding

recognition and overconfidence. So that

was the third principle, the testing

effect. So far, we've got spacing,

generation, and testing. And you can see

how they can all come together. When you

do your spacing sessions, each time you

repeat it, this is a great opportunity

to test yourself. When you're testing

yourself, you want to apply these

principles. And when you're filling the

gaps, you want to make sure you

generative in the way that you think

about it. When you learn something for

the first time, you want to make sure

that you are doing enough generation.

And so these principles apply

universally for every type of learning

scenario that you find yourself in. But

there is one thing missing. Been

watching my videos for a long time, you

might guess what this last one is.

Because personally, I think this is

probably the most important out of them

all. And this is higher order thinking.

Higher order thinking and higher order

learning is a term that's used for the

specific processes and types of thinking

that create long lasting knowledge and

deep understanding of information. And

amazingly, all of these methods share

the same commonality that they look at

pieces of information as part of a wider

network. And an easy way to understand

what higher order of thinking really

means is to think about information that

feels relevant versus information that

feels irrelevant. Imagine being back in

school learning a topic that you really

don't care about. You're not interested.

Your teacher is boring and you're just

sitting there learning it basically

because you just need to pass some exam.

That topic feels more difficult to learn

because it's so irrelevant. Whereas

think about something that you know a

lot about. It could be something

academic. It could be something for your

work. It could be a favorite hobby or a

book or a movie. And I bet if I tell you

a fact, a new fact about that topic, you

would be able to think about it,

understand the implication of it, how it

affects everything else around it, and

probably remember that new fact forever.

You don't need any spacing. You don't

need any flashcards. You don't need to

write any notes. It's almost like this

network of knowledge just comes out to

grab this new piece of information and

it's consolidated into your memory

immediately. The reason that happens is

that when a topic is irrelevant. We

can't connect it to anything else. So

our brain is finding it very difficult

to actually have thoughts about it. And

so even if you want to build really

robust memory, you're not going to be

able to because you don't have the

resources there. you don't have enough

thoughts to layer on top and give this

that good memory attribute. On the other

hand, for the topic you know a lot

about, you have this wealth of

information. And as soon as this

information comes in, there are so many

different angles that you can think

from. And so this information doesn't

exist in isolation. It exists in the

context of everything else you know

around that information. And being able

to think about new information in a way

that fits it into a network is what

higher order thinking and higher order

learning are all about. And the reason I

said that this is so important is

because when you use higher order

learning, you're able to increase your

memory drastically. This is the secret

to how instead of having a knowledge

decay curve that looks like this one,

you're able to learn something for the

first time and immediately have a decay

curve that looks like this. It's almost

flat. And yes, you still need to repeat

it and test yourself at some point

later, but you may not need to test

yourself for another month. And even

then, your attention is 80 90%. And

learning to think at this higher order

translates directly to how well you can

use the generation effect and the

testing effect. Higher order thinking

naturally involves more mental effort.

To do higher order thinking correctly,

you have to generate more. And being

familiar with higher order learning

allows you to test yourself at the

higher orders, which is usually the

level you need to get to to solve

complex problems or have deep

discussions and write thought-provoking

essays or to make highstakes complicated

decisions. Interestingly, it's also the

inability of AI to do higher order

thinking and reasoning that makes it so

bad in scenarios that are really complex

where there are a lot of different

things interacting with each other and

the situation is nuanced. So, here are

some ways that you can train yourself to

be better at this higher order of

thinking and higher order learning. Uh,

and now again, this is a huge topic and

you know, training this is kind of like

my main thing. So, I'm going to simplify

it for you in this video. So first of

all, higher order thinking is all about

being integrated in your thinking.

Thinking about the big picture, creating

a network of information rather than so

this is what you want to do. And what

you don't want to do is you don't want

to be isolated. You don't want to think

about things fact by fact or concept by

concept. And you definitely don't want

to be stuck in the trap of trying to

memorize information through just

repetition. Remember, you don't have to

memorize things because if you apply

these principles, you naturally

construct a better memory, which means

that your attention is better and you

will just automatically remember it. If

you are actively trying to memorize what

you are learning through just reading it

again and again, that is like a super

super red flag. That flag is neon red.

There are times when you do have to

memorize things, but it is the minority

of your learning and usually only after

all of these other things have failed.

So what are some techniques that you can

use to get better at this higher order

of thinking and learning? The first and

maybe simplest one that you can apply is

creating analogies. Try to create

analogies often when you're learning. Go

through a concept, pause, make an

analogy. You can even make analogies of

your analogy. So have multiple analogies

and then bring them together to create

one mega analogy. The reason this works

is that creating an analogy forces you

to think about what you're learning in

the big picture. It pulls you out from

just thinking about each piece of

information as fact by fact by fact and

it asks yourself how does it all come

together? How can I tell a story with

this? Another method that you can use is

teaching. Teaching is also a method of

testing that you can utilize. But

importantly, the way you teach matters.

If you just ramble on this endless

internal monologue and the thoughts are

very disorganized, that's not going to

be very easy to follow and you're not

having to use your higher order thinking

skills to organize it. So try to teach

it in the most intuitive, most logical

way possible. That is the easiest to

follow. Some people say teach it to a

10-year-old. This framing is great

because it forces you to think about it

simply, but you don't have to just do at

a 10-year-old. If you teach at a

10-year-old, sometimes you miss out on

that really detailed technical

information that you want to test

yourself on. The point is that you want

to use teaching as an opportunity to

organize all of your thoughts and think

about which concept or groups of

concepts should I talk about first? What

makes the most sense for me to start my

teaching with? You can see that in order

for you to make that decision and make

that judgment, you have to be comparing

each concept against every other

concept. It's a very integrated network

style of thinking and of course that

involves a lot of mental effort. That's

a lot of generation. There's a lot of

thoughts. That's a lot of residue.

Another method that you can use is mind

mapping

or any form of nonlinear notetaking. The

reason this is good is because it

visualizes the connections that you're

making instead of writing things out

linearly sentence by sentence which

makes it easy to be locked into this one

fact at a time kind of perspective.

Creating a nicely connected mind map

forces you to take a step back and look

at the big picture. But at the end of

the day, whether you're using analogies

or teaching or mind maps, these are just

methods that try to get you to think in

a certain way. Remember, it's higher

order thinking. It's not higher order

drawing a mind map. It doesn't matter

whether you create an analogy or teach

or make a mind map if you're not

activating the right thinking process.

And an effective way of training

yourself to get good at this thinking

process is as you are trying to use

these techniques and doing any other

type of learning after every session ask

yourself these three questions. Question

number one, how often am I trying to

connect what I'm learning to the big

picture? How often am I zooming out and

thinking about the overall purpose of

what I'm learning? The answer to this

question should be almost constantly.

There should not be more than two or

three minutes at a time where you are

not coming back to the big picture. And

yes, that is very challenging for people

who have not experimented with higher

order learning before or don't have

those habits. But remember what I said

about the marginal gains. If you are

down here in terms of your current level

of habits, do not try to get to a

constant level of thinking immediately,

just do it a little bit more. Zoom out.

Look at the big picture once every 10,

15 minutes. And once you're comfortable

with that, do it every 5 to 10 minutes.

Just take one step in the right

direction. So that's the first question.

The second question to ask yourself is,

how often do I actively try to simplify

what I'm learning? Simplifying is all

about trying to understand something in

such a way that you don't need to

memorize it, making something feel more

intuitive and more obvious. When you do

this, it forces you to think about the

information in relation to what you are

already familiar with. Creating

analogies is an example of trying to

simplify information. When you ask

yourself this question, the answer

should be after every concept, after

each block of new information, you

should be pausing. You should be

thinking about what you've just learned

to simplify it and apply that thinking

to it and create a robust memory. You

don't want to end up with 14 pieces of

new information that you now need to

apply all of this thinking for

simultaneously. That's going to be way

too overwhelming. And the third question

is, how long do I delay

creating relationships? What this means

is how long do you wait after having

heard something or reading something

before you think about how it compares

or connects with something else? Do you

read sentence after sentence after

sentence after sentence just trying to

understand everything that you have read

and then only after one or two pages go

and think about okay how does it all

relate to each other? How are they

similar? How are they different? How can

I simplify and group these things

together? If you're doing that, that's

way too delayed. It's going to be very,

very hard for you to make sense of that

because there are so many connections

and so many possible relationships,

you're going to be spending hours just

working them out. It is much more

efficient to think like an expert where

for each new piece of information,

you're immediately trying to think

about, okay, so how does that compare to

what I already know? How does that

compare with what I've just learned? How

can I simplify and group that

information? And this is actually the

part of higher order thinking that most

beginners trip up with the most and they

get stuck on. They're so used to

consuming and consuming information

assuming that just understanding means

that you're going to remember that they

feel very very uncomfortable with

ignoring how deeply you've understood it

and just going straight to creating

these relationships and thinking about

it like a network. But the reality is

that when you think about it in a

network, it actually helps you to

understand. Comparing something that you

don't fully understand with what you

already know and the other things that

you've learned deepens your

understanding of it. On the other hand,

when you just try to understand each

thing in isolation, all it does is it

increases the risk that you've

misunderstood it. And so when you ask

yourself, how long do I wait? How long

do I delay before I start forming these

relationships? It should be as close to

zero as possible. And again, this is

challenging, so take it step by step.

And so these four principles, spacing,

generation, testing, and higher order

thinking, if you're able to apply these

principles in the way that you learn, I

can guarantee you that your memory will

shoot up. Your memory may not be

exceptional overnight, but if you

continue to take one step at a time,

just getting 1% better every day, you

will improve. That's how I improved and

that's how all my students and coaching

clients improve. Now, if you like this

video and you want to see how all of

this maybe fits in with the bigger

picture of learning and all the other

techniques you might be using, then you

might be interested in checking out this

video here where I talk about learning

more holistically and how you can

actually build a learning system. The

principles I talked about in this video,

they all apply to everything that I

talked about in there. So, if you're

looking for the next step in your

learning journey, check that video out.

Thanks so much for watching and I'll see

you next time.