Stop trying to jam material into your head using repetition

Rote memorization is like trying to meet your daily calorie count by eating spinach. It’s incredibly time-consuming and (although theoretically feasible) should not be your go-to strategy. 

If learning by stuffing your brain with facts is the most effective way you know, or the only way you know, let me fix that right now. Here are a ton of additional (and superior) ways to learn that are more fun and take advantage of your various intelligences:

  • Talk, read, or write about it
  • Draw, sketch, or visualize it
  • Dance it, build a model of it or do another hands-on activity
  • Sing it, find music that illustrates it, listen to music while learning
  • Relate it to a personal feeling or inner experience
  • Conceptualize, quantify or think critically about it
  • Work on it with one or more other people