To Achieve Peak Performance —
Being able to learn faster and retain more information longer is no longer a luxury — it’s a mandatory requirement to stay viable in a highly competitive employment market. But we have distraction factors today that make learning new skills more difficult than 200 years ago — adding a double whammy to this issue.
At Cheetah Learning have technologies and techniques that make accelerated learning a real viable skill you can quickly master. With accelerated learning skills, you can quickly become a Certified Accelerated Learner, a leader in the areas you wish to focus your attention.
Practice these 10 tips to begin experiencing the importance of taking care of both your mind and your body in order to achieve peak learning and peak performance.
TIP #1
Peak Performing Mind
Experience firsthand the importance of taking care of your body to get your mind into a state of peak performance.
If you start to feel sluggish, anxious or feel you just can’t absorb information as well as you’d like, take a minute to reflect on how you’ve been taking care of your body. Take a brisk 15-minute walk, drink a large glass of water, take a quick 10-minute power nap or meditate for 10 minutes by simply focusing on your breath, and have a high protein snack. Avoid reaching for a sugary or caffeinated drink or high carbohydrate snack as these can put you first into a higher anxiety state followed by a low energy crash. When you make the effort to keep your brain in a state of peak performance, you will be rewarded with an ability to learn and absorb new information that can keep you at the top of your game.
TIP #2
Create Learning Schedules
Practice the art and science of creating schedules to speed up your learning.
While we all know that learning can happen all day long, when you make a distinct effort to rapidly absorb new information or improve a skill, it helps to make a schedule to stay the course with your learning goals. Your brain loves consistency so when you take the short amount of time to create a schedule for your learning efforts, you increase the odds that you will follow through with your learning goal. There is a natural tendency to take the allocated time to complete a task — learning something new is no different.
Give it a try. Identify a book or body of knowledge you want to learn more about or some skill you would like to practice more. (For example, I have re-learned how to play the bass clarinet after a 37-year break.) Spend the next 5 minutes to create and commit to a schedule of when you will make the time to absorb the new material or practice the skills you’d like to improve.
TIP #3
Improve Your Support Network
Learn how to create a supportive network of friends, family, co-workers, with professional guidance, to make sure you stay the course to achieve your significant learning goals.
We all get to choose who we include in our inner circle. Take a minute to reflect how supportive you are of your inner circle.
Do you know their goals?
Do you know the challenges they may be facing to achieve their goals?
How have you helped them with going for what is important to them in their life?
What more could you be doing to support their learning efforts you are not currently doing?
In life, we generally get what we give. To create a more supportive network for achieving your important life goals, be the supportive friend, relative, co-worker, or mentor in helping others achieve their learning goals.
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Play to Your Learning Strengths
Learn how to best leverage your innate learning strengths to learn faster.
Being able to learn faster using your innate strengths is like a muscle – it gets stronger, more resilient to stress, and more capable of serving you when you do the right type of strength training for that muscle. In what ways are you exercising your learning strengths in your day to day life? For example, one of my learning strengths is in sharing what I am learning with others. I challenge myself to do this in a variety of ways in my job leading Cheetah Learning. The more I find various ways to share what I’m learning with others, the more I learn, the more I can learn.
Find at least three ways today you can do strength training with your innate learning strengths. Brainstorm all the ways you can exercise this learning strength throughout the course of your day to day life.
Not sure of your learning strengths? Become a Certified Accelerated Learner.
TIP #5
Mind Mapping
Get extensive practice with using mind mapping to accelerate your learning.
Mind mapping helps you learn faster for multiple reasons. The top 3 reasons are:
1. To make linkages to what you already know
2. To help you remember important information by where it is located on your mind map
3. It forces you to quickly grasp the gist of what it is you are studying and capture it in an organized map.
You can also use mind mapping to guide you in anything new you’d like to learn. Start by making a mind map brainstorming your thoughts about your new topic.
Below is a mind map I recently created from brainstorming all the places I could go to meet people to create better support networks. Give it a try next time there is an area you want to learn more about. For me, I usually work on these brainstorming mind maps over several days as I get more insights the more I think about the topic.
Learn how to do better on your exams with less time studying.
For many people, preparing for exams is one of the most stressful things they do in life. When you are stressed, your limbic flight or fight brain is activated. This makes it harder for you to remember and retain information critical to you passing your exam. The key to retaining more information faster and longer is to remain in a state of relaxed and calm focus. This state is where you can fully engage your pre-frontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for executive functioning, learning, memory, and making good decisions. This is the exact part of your brain you need working in top condition to do well on exams.
TIP #7
Stake Your Claim on Your Learning Goals
Learn how to develop easy to implement project plans for achieving any learning goal you want to pursue.
Your brain loves consistency. When you take the time to think through what is involved in mastering a new skill, there is a much greater chance you will follow through with what is required to achieve your learning goals. Make a commitment to your learning goals by creating a simple project plan on how you will achieve them.
Reply to this email to get a quick project plan template you can use for any learning goal you want to achieve.
For example, a few years back, I wanted to master the skill to safely ride a motorcycle to reduce my risks of being seriously injured. Creating a project plan for this helped me schedule a motorcycle safety class, learn the type of motorcycle to get for a first-time rider, and find the time and location to practice. Going through a simple project plan template for this specific goal can literally save your hide.
TIP #8
Learning Reflections
Learn how to reflect on what you experienced as a way to speed up your learning.
You can easily use your daily experiences to enhance your abilities to learn faster by taking time to reflect on what you have learned. At the end of the day, ask yourself:
1. What happened today that was unique, memorable or even magical?
2. How did I feel?
3. What did I learn?
4. What am I going to different in the future based on what I’ve learned with this?
For Example:
1. I’m learning how to create specific content for our future Cheetah students based on how they engage with our email correspondence.
2. At first, I was intimidated as it seemed like an awful lot of work, but as I got into it, I found it was very rewarding to be able to help our future Cheetah Students learn more about accelerating their learning.
3. I learned how to make an automated email flow to help our future Cheetah students.
4. I am going to be creating more long-term automated content to help future Cheetah students learn faster.
TIP #9
Teach What You Want to Learn
Many of our students report to us that they have taught the accelerated learning techniques they experienced to others. This is FANTASTIC — as teaching is the highest form of learning.
Think about something you want to learn. Find a way to teach it to others. You don’t have to wait until you are an expert — you can learn along with the person with whom you’re sharing your new insights.
For example:
I’m relatively new to the whole digital marketing world. But routinely I talk with entrepreneurs and teach them what I have learned on how to engage with others in new and creative ways using new digital marketing tools.
TIP #10
Cultivate Open-Minded Curiosity
Experience how to increase your natural curiosity and intrinsic motivation for learning.
You don’t know what you don’t know until you know you don’t know it. But once you become aware of what you don’t know, then you become naturally inclined to learn more.
You can increase this natural inclination to want to learn more by approaching all situations with an attitude of open-minded curiosity. When you do this, you are acknowledging that you may not know everything there is to know, and you open yourself up to more opportunities to learn.
Give this a try over the next day — even in situations in which you are very familiar. Ask yourself What is there for me to learn here?
To learn more about these practices, and to learn more about becoming a Certified Accelerated Learner, please visit https://www.cheetahlearning.com/wp/certified-accelerated-learner/.
