Learning Strategies

We live in such a visual world, that I cannot help but be occasionally reminded that I do not. Today’s reminder took the form of a language learning game. The premise, (clever, really!) was to associate images with the new words that were being learned. It took me an appalling amount of time to realize I could correctly determine the word by looking at the picture (I’d been guessing based on prior knowledge). I had not even paused to consider the possibility that the pictures above the text were relevant!

The world around me is streamlined into shapes and positions, stored in my mind in an audio data file or a physical map. I remember things not as pictures but as strings of audio descriptors. A personal description for me is never a picture- it is always a string of words.

So it seemed logical to think that the best thing I can do is to give myself more words- after all, I can hardly give myself more neurons in the appropriate quadrant. So, now as I find myself searching through software, I’m making a point to look for the more audio oriented.

Time is of limited supply, to all of us, and thus it’s a natural thing to value efficiency. Knowing the ways we learn (and don’t learn) can be very valuable in terms of determining a most efficient way to learn something. Once, a visual method might have been perfect. These days, I’ll choose something else. How do you learn best? What strategies are the most effective for teaching yourself?

Time is money- no, really.

Time is a currency. We spend time to buy money, spend money to buy time. And, given that it is a currency, it ought to be budgeted like one. Exchange rate is deeply personal and tends to vary, of course.

The first step to budgeting seems to be tracking spending, then, allocating funds according to value. The good news is that you already know how much time you have to work with. Twenty four hours, sixty minutes per hour.

The next step for me, was to streamline. What costs the most time? How can the costs be cut? And, if they can’t be cut, can you get a two for one deal? For me, audio books are a two for one deal; Same time spent reading as spent on chores such as dishes. Not my favorite way to read, of course, but, two for the price of one deals don’t always get you exactly what you want. Redesigning space for greater efficiency is also another strategy to try to reduce time spending on necessary tasks.

Time is money. How are you spending yours?