As we move through adulthood, it can become more and more difficult to see ourselves as learners. So long as we feel competent enough in our jobs and comfortable in what we know, we may think that learning has become irrelevant in our lives. Here at Cheetah Learning, we prefer to take the view that everyone is a lifelong learner — whether or not they see themselves this way.
Any time we encounter a new and unfamiliar situation, we engage in a learning process. We get our mental wheels turning by figuring out how to apply what we already know to understand the new situation, evaluate the unknowns of the situation, and hypothesize the best plan of action based on our analysis of these unknowns. In other words, any time we confront something new, we have to learn how to make sense of it.
For those of us who have well-established habits in our daily lives, or who have been in the same job for a long time, confronting new situations can be challenging — particularly when they upset our long-held views of how the world works. However, being "stuck" in your current level of knowledge and skills is not the only option. We at Cheetah believe that each of us is capable of changing how we learn in order to better adapt to new situations. In other words, we believe in learning how to learn faster.
In our years of helping adults quickly assimilate a large quantity of new information in preparing for the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam, we have discovered 3 benefits of learning how to learn faster, or accelerate our learning:
1. Learning faster allows us to make better decisions.
When we speed up our ability to make sense of and respond to new information and situations, we are able to make decisions based on more well-rounded and thoroughly-processed information. The accelerated learning technique of mind-mapping allows us to see connections across ideas, which improves our ability to take a wider range of variables into account when we make decisions.
2. Learning faster improves our discernment of new information.
In other words, accelerated learning gives us a more calibrated "BS meter." One accelerated learning technique that helps us with discernment is called "rapid synthesis" — this is where you learn to quickly identify the most important core elements of new information you encounter and integrate it with information from other sources. When we are able to quickly process and make sense of new information using rapid synthesis, we are less likely to fall victim to false information, poorly supported claims, or exaggeration. This skill is particularly important in today’s world of "fake news."
3. Learning faster improves our brain health and helps us age better.
There are 5 learning "speed bumps" that can actually age your brain:
• righteousness
• entitlement
• victim-ness
• insecurity
• anxiety
By replacing these with:
• curiosity
• gratitude
• choice
• confidence
• calm focus
you engage the parts of your brain that can actually improve as you age: increasing access to working memory and stimulating better instant recall. With accelerated learning, you will step out of your comfort zone more easily — a necessary step to stimulating the creativity needed to address immediate and far-reaching challenges.
Even if you feel that you’ve moved past the "learning" stage of your life, learning how to learn faster can help you further develop your current skillset and enrich your quality of life.
To read more about the benefits of accelerated learning and how Cheetah Learning incorporates this into their online and classroom courses, check out www.cheetahlearning.com. Cheetah Learning’s Fundamentals of Accelerated Learning course introduces students to the accelerated learning techniques of rapid synthesis, mind-mapping, instant recall, and more.
