The Only Three Things Needed to Accentuate Learning? Other Study Techniques That I've Noticed

For the gazillionth time, I was wondering how I could make better use of my time studying my nursing material. And so, I asked myself, if I were reading, say, The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, how would I mine this book and get as much as I could out of it? We only retain about 10% of what we read, so how can I retain more? As I imagine, here’s how I would do it. Read the book based on understanding the content and not just speeding through; I would immerse myself in the content. Highlight the important parts, think through important parts of the book to ensure that I understand it and link together the parts of how ideas are related chronologically. For this last part, an example would be, if I were to talk about the topic with someone, what, how, and where would I start out with? To transfer this authentic learning process to my nursing curriculum, here's what I deduce from the process I naturally undertake when I read and want to learn something.

The Only Three Things that You Need to Accentuate Learning:

-Ask a question in everything that you read. This will help you find content that you have to do, more interesting, naturally. When you act because you find the material interesting, all the steps necessary to learn will manifest and be executed naturally.     

-Accept the fact that it will take time to think things through.

-Deduce the main points from each Power Point slide, article, book, or whatever, in an outline form- you can be as messy as you'd like- and then organize the outline by mind-mapping the already more watered-down jumble of extra information. Obviously for the mind-map, it should be relatively neat and organized; however, make sure you don't turn this into a neat freak obsession. It's not supposed to be a work of art, but an effective tool to help you learn. This way you are not just getting rid of excess information once, but twice, therefore making the information at the end, the only necessary parts needed for your learning- especially if the material you are watering-down is not something you have a genuine interest in.       

Well, these are the insight I reached by myself from thinking over the process of how I naturally learn when I indulge myself in a topic that I have genuine curiosity in. I'll be using these techniques and testing to see what kind of learning results I get.  

UPDATE ON TUESDAY; NOVEMBER 27th:
-write notes of Main Take-Aways (MTA's) of professor's powerpoints and study some everyday through reading, self-quizzing, and listening to the topic with voice recorder when you are relaxing to help your subconscious absorb the information in naturally. The powerpoint already trims out the excess information in textbooks and writing down the MTA's again trim out even more of the excess that made through first inspection.

-when you are on Caltrain or have free time, listen to class recordings of lectures like you did for C2C AM Interviews of Dr. Bruce Lipton

-use of mnemonics to help memorize lists of information such as a list of typical and atypical antipsychotics