Nowadays it is increasingly essential to continue to learn new skills. That’s why “learning to learn” can be your secret weapon for success at university and in life.
10%. A miserable and tight 10% (maybe less). That’s how I actually used over the past 10 years of work, of what I learned at the University. Yet today I consider my basic college experience.
Although I have not made full use of the knowledge of my degree course, in those five years of Engineering I learned one of the most important skills for my personal growth: learning to learn.
Without the challenges of a demanding academic career, in fact, I do not think I would have ever beaten so to develop an effective study method.
Necessity is the mother of invention
In today’s article, I would then share with you what are the 3 key skills for “learning to learn.” Essential for those who are at university. Essential for those who want to compete in the modern world of work. We see the first!
1. Cognitive abilities
Comprehension, memory, concentration, reading, writing, mathematics, abstraction: being able to study first of all means to integrate and leverage those that are the main cognitive functions of the brain.
To do these two ingredients are essential: method and practice.
That is, you have to know what are the best techniques to exploit the full potential of your cognitive abilities and you have to then practice these techniques for long enough to reap the benefits.
Having deepened over the years many of these techniques of study, I decided to organize them systematically in the list below. Specifically, for each of the major cognitive functions, there is the related strategy (or strategies) to strengthen or consolidate them:
Practical applications
Choose a cognitive area where right now you’re feeling particularly low, read the following article on the study and put into practice the techniques suggested for 7 consecutive days.
Once you have tested the effectiveness of these strategies, we decide whether to continue to strengthen that specific cognitive function or switch to the next.
Now that we know how to take care of our cognitive abilities, it’s time to investigate what are the other essential skills for learning.
In fact, many students make the ‘mistake of simply improve their memory or their ability to read, ignoring equally important skills, if not fundamental for success at university and in life in general. We find out what they are.
2. Organizational skills
I have to confess something. The first few months of college freshman I was terrified that I would study what would be super-complicated and that to succeed at university I would need supernatural abilities.
Well, it was not a walk, but what I discovered after a few months is that with a little ‘of application there was no matter that it was unreadable.
On the contrary, the real challenge was to be able to keep up with all college commitments.
In short, to learn to learn we must not overlook the ‘organization of the study. Here then is what are the key organizational skills to succeed at university and related links for further information:
Unlike cognitive abilities, in which I asked you to choose an area to your liking, if you really want to excel in organizational skills, you will need to follow a precise order.
Stop procrastinating the study is the key: this is, therefore, the skill on which you will need to concentrate now. Read the first article that I linked you to become aware of the insidious workings of a mandate.
Once you have known better than your enemy starts with organizing your individual study sessions thanks to the technique of the tomato. It is not the only time management strategy that exists, but it is a good starting point, especially for students.
Only AFTER you have got a good rhythm of study, applies the exam planning strategy. This way you avoid a classic mistake of students: make beautiful plans that never respect you.
Well, we see the last of skill category on which you need to work to excel in the “science of learning.”
3. Emotional skills
You can learn about the best study techniques and be more organized a Marine sergeant, but if you have zero desire to study or even worse, if you put on the books and think about the next exam will generate a kind of anxiety, your sessions study will be disastrous.
That’s why learning to learn also means being able to manage our emotional states and exploit their potential to achieve our learning objectives.
Read also: 10 tips to be a good student
Specifically, we can identify two major emotional skills, indispensable for students of all ages. As before, next to the single skill I brought you an in-depth link to understand it better and find out how enhancing it.
Anxiety and lack of motivation can have very different causes and manifestations between them, but either way, if we do not develop the skills needed to manage these emotional states, we will get stuck in our academic career.
So the message I want to convey is that they learn to understand and manage our emotions is part of the learning process.
And in that regard, in addition to the specific recommendations that you find in the articles linked above, I have only one practical advice for you. small steps and take it easy.
Take a small step at a time (marathons of study are unnecessary and harmful), focused only on the next chapter, on how to the next 25 minutes. Erase from your mind the rest.
Conclusions
This article was decidedly different. it can help you share in their studies and to develop the key competence which has been so important in my life.
If you are among the historical readers effectively, I hope that this refresh me help you to merge the contents dots on learning that I proposed in recent years.
If you met recently effectively, I hope you will test as soon as practical strategies suggested in individual posts.
Once you have obtained the first concrete results and want to move to the next level, within my hand less studied, studied best I have collected the most advanced learning strategies, storage, and organization of the study, to help you give twice as many exams in half the time.
