Thursday, January 3, 2013

Learn Faster by Doing Something Else


Crystalised intelligence (Gc) is one of the componenets of our General Intelligence (G). It representes our accumulated knowledge and expereince, and so tends to gradually increase over our lifetime

One of the key limiting factors on how much Gc you can acquire is how fast you learn. Suprisingly and flying in the face of common sense, it seems the fastest way to learn something new isn't to try and learn it!

If you want to learn how to skate, take a tennis ball and chase it around a parking lot while having skates strapped to your feet. Don't spend more than a couple of minutes trying to consciously learn how to stand, roll forward, brake, or fall. Just chase the ball. 

The key here is that by doing something OTHER than learning how to skate, something that requires skating. Your medulla oblongata will do the job of absorbing the new skill far faster if it's allowed to do it without micromanagement from your conscious mind.