0:00 I've been a learning coach for over a
0:01 decade. And in this video, I'll show you
0:02 how you can absorb textbooks like a
0:05 sponge. I'll teach you a four-part
0:07 method that allows you to learn,
0:09 remember, and use any new information in
0:12 a way that feels effortless. This method
0:14 works by overcoming a biological barrier
0:17 that's hardwired into our brain that
0:20 actually prevents it from absorbing new
0:22 information more quickly in the first
0:24 place. So, we need to address this
0:26 barrier first if we want to make any
0:27 progress. So what is this biological
0:30 barrier? Researchers have actually found
0:32 that there seems to be a limit on how
0:35 much new information your brain can
0:37 store at any given time. In learning
0:39 science, this process of taking
0:41 information and then storing it into our
0:43 memory is called encoding. If someone's
0:46 able to learn information like a sponge
0:48 and hold on to all of this information
0:51 in their memory, you're basically
0:53 saying, "This person has really good
0:55 encoding." Whenever we encode new
0:57 information, we think that your brain is
0:59 probably physically remodeling itself at
1:02 a microscopic level. And so, one theory
1:04 is that our brain has an inbuilt defense
1:06 mechanism that stops it from making too
1:09 many changes too quickly in case some of
1:12 those changes are harmful to us. After
1:14 all, the human brain did not adapt to
1:16 learn this much information in one go.
1:19 So that feeling you get when you're
1:20 reading something really dense and
1:22 really detailed and you feel overwhelmed
1:24 and you feel like that information is
1:26 just leaking out of your brain and you
1:28 cannot hold on to it. That's basically
1:30 you realizing the biological limit of
1:33 your brain. So while it is difficult to
1:36 increase the raw power of your brain,
1:39 there are some things that we can do
1:41 that help our brain process this new
1:44 information which makes encoding easier.
1:47 And doing these things is the trick to
1:50 faster encoding and absorbing
1:51 information like a sponge. And there are
1:53 three things that I want you to
1:55 remember. Your brain finds it easier to
1:57 encode information
1:59 when these three things are met. Number
2:03 one,
2:05 intention. Number two, relevance. And
2:09 number three, familiarity. When all
2:12 three of these conditions are met, your
2:14 brain is able to encode more easily and
2:16 more quickly. Intention just means
2:20 literally wanting and trying to
2:23 understand and remember something. This
2:24 is really obvious. Reading this book
2:26 without even intending or trying to
2:29 learn it means that it's going to be
2:30 less effective than trying to learn it.
2:32 The second one is relevance. Relevance
2:35 is how important we think this new
2:38 information is. And there are two ways
2:39 it can be relevant. It can be relevant
2:41 because it influences and impacts
2:43 something we already know or it
2:46 influences and impacts other new pieces
2:48 of information that we're learning. And
2:50 familiarity is about how similar what
2:53 you are learning now is with what you
2:55 already know. When you are intending to
2:57 learn something and it feels significant
3:00 and impactful to something else and it
3:02 is familiar to what you already know,
3:05 then this is easier for your brain to
3:07 store into your memory. You can remember
3:08 these three points with the pneumonic I
3:11 remember fast. But here's the problem.
3:15 Normally, when we're trying to learn
3:16 something, we only control our
3:19 intention. When we're struggling to
3:21 learn or remember something, we just try
3:23 to remember it harder. Whether something
3:26 is relevant or familiar is almost just
3:30 up to luck. Sometimes what we're
3:32 learning might seem more familiar and
3:34 may seem more relevant and sometimes it
3:37 doesn't. And especially when you're
3:38 reading from something like a thick
3:39 textbook, often the details are very
3:42 dense and it's hard to see how this is
3:44 relevant and most of it is new and
3:47 unfamiliar. And so because we are only
3:49 trying to increase our intention and we
3:51 rarely ever try to increase the
3:54 relevance or try to increase
3:55 familiarity, there is a hard limit on
3:58 how much we can encode and how quickly
4:00 we can do it. Now, you may ask, "But
4:02 Justin, how can we make something more
4:05 relevant and more familiar if we're
4:08 learning it for the first time and we
4:10 just don't see how it's relevant?" The
4:12 answer is by using this four-part
4:14 method. You can remember this method
4:16 with the acronym
4:18 L2R2. The first L is layman's. Now, if
4:22 you're not familiar, the word layman
4:24 means to describe something really
4:25 simply without using special
4:27 terminology. So if I said to you, active
4:30 learning involves higher intrinsic
4:32 cognitive load, that's hard to
4:35 understand unless you're already
4:36 familiar with this topic. The lay man's
4:39 explanation for it would be effective
4:42 learning means thinking harder. The
4:45 first part of this method is for any new
4:47 information you're learning, especially
4:49 if it's dense. And it doesn't just have
4:50 to be in a textbook. It could be reading
4:52 journal articles. It could be lecture
4:54 slides. Whatever you're trying to learn,
4:56 try to learn it in just layman's terms.
5:00 Simple language first. Remove all the
5:03 terminology. Anything that's tricky or
5:05 complicated to understand, rewrap it in
5:08 a way that you could explain it to an
5:10 average everyday person. Taking the time
5:13 to learn something in layman's terms
5:14 first dramatically improves your ability
5:17 to learn and understand this new topic.
5:20 Why does that work? This is because
5:21 learning it in layman's terms increases
5:24 our familiarity. We are not familiar
5:27 with all this new terminology and all
5:29 these dense new concepts. We don't know
5:32 what this new detail means and why we
5:35 need to learn it. But by turning it into
5:37 simple language and simple ideas that
5:40 we're already familiar with, it also
5:42 becomes easier to see how this can
5:44 influence and impact something else. In
5:48 other words, by making it more familiar,
5:50 it also makes it easier for us to see
5:53 how it is relevant. So, how can you do
5:55 this? When you first go to open up a new
5:57 chapter and you're reading through,
5:59 point out and look at the headings and
6:01 the bold words first. Scan and skim
6:05 through everything that you need to
6:06 learn and actually pick out what you
6:08 think are the most important key
6:10 concepts and write them out separately.
6:12 Then and this is really easy these days
6:15 just go to your favorite AI program and
6:18 say I am learning this topic here are
6:21 the key words that I will have to learn
6:23 about explain these to me in layman's
6:27 terms so it is simple for me to
6:29 understand this entire process can take
6:31 you less than 10 minutes and after 10
6:34 minutes this chapter will suddenly feel
6:37 very approachable and very familiar to
6:40 you. you will feel ready to go and learn
6:42 about each of these concepts because you
6:44 already understand how they work at a
6:46 simple level. Another tip is to use
6:47 something like Google images. For any
6:49 keywords that represent a process or a
6:52 cycle or a sequence of events or a
6:55 framework, type them into Google and
6:57 then go straight to Google images and
6:59 just look for images that seem simple to
7:02 understand. This is leveraging off of
7:04 our visual processing ability, which is
7:07 tens of thousands of times more
7:09 efficient than our reading ability.
7:11 Simply seeing an image of a concept
7:13 being explained can help us to
7:15 understand it much more efficiently than
7:17 even a really simply explained AI
7:20 generated summary. Now, one thing I
7:22 always try to do as much in layman's
7:24 terms as possible is teaching you about
7:27 learning science. And one place that you
7:28 can see me trying to do this is in my
7:30 free weekly newsletter where I share
7:33 tips and tricks and techniques like the
7:34 ones I'm sharing with you now, but to
7:37 your inbox every single week. I take the
7:39 things that I wish I had known that made
7:41 a difference to my learning efficiency
7:43 over the years, and I distill them into
7:45 these quick emails that you can read in
7:47 3 to 5 minutes in layman's terms, but
7:49 potentially saving you dozens of hours a
7:52 month through just efficiency. Again, if
7:54 you're interested, it's completely free.
7:55 The link's in the description to join.
7:56 But anyway, that was the first L,
7:58 learning it in layman's first. Once
8:00 you've done this, you should move on to
8:02 the second L. The second L stands for
8:06 layer. Layering your learning is one of
8:09 the most powerful methods you can use.
8:12 When you're covering really dense
8:14 information like in a textbook, like
8:16 reading a journal article, it's really
8:19 difficult to get all of that information
8:21 in in one go. Even when you have gone
8:24 through a layman's explanation of it, it
8:26 can be easily overwhelming, but only if
8:30 you learn it the way it tells you to.
8:33 Layering your learning is about you
8:35 taking control of how you think this
8:39 information will make sense for you and
8:42 your brain. And it's actually very
8:44 simple. All you do is when you're
8:46 reading through it, deliberately look
8:48 for the things that feel more relevant
8:52 or feel more familiar to you. Spend time
8:55 trying to learn and understand and
8:57 connect that information. And if you
8:59 read something that you can't see how
9:01 it's relevant, it's very detailed, it's
9:03 very unfamiliar, and you're struggling
9:05 to see how it connects with anything
9:07 else, just skip it and put a little
9:10 sticky note next to it. note it down
9:12 somewhere so you can come back to it
9:14 later. Go through your chapter or your
9:17 readings with this mindset, picking out
9:19 the parts that are relevant and then
9:22 building your knowledge first with what
9:24 is already relevant and familiar and
9:27 then go back to the parts that you
9:28 skipped. Now the magical thing happens
9:32 which is that those things that you
9:34 didn't see why they're irrelevant. They
9:36 were very unfamiliar. You didn't see how
9:38 they connected the first time around. It
9:40 might have taken you 15 minutes to
9:42 figure out that paragraph. When you look
9:45 at it now it's going to be much easier
9:48 because you have more information about
9:50 the topic. Now you're one step closer to
9:54 expertise than you were before. anything
9:57 complicated. It's just a lot of simple
10:00 things put together. If it feels
10:01 complicated, it just means you don't
10:04 know all the simple things yet. So
10:05 instead of trying to figure it out now,
10:07 just learn the simple things first and
10:08 come back to it. Layering your learning
10:10 massively increases how relevant what
10:14 you're learning is. And it ensures that
10:15 you're not wasting time right now on
10:18 something that you should just come back
10:20 to later. So that's the L2. And now we
10:22 move on to the R2 of this four-part
10:24 method. The first R stands for
10:29 relevance framing. Effective learning is
10:33 like solving a jigsaw puzzle. You're
10:35 getting new information from a lecture
10:38 or an article or a textbook, wherever,
10:40 and you're looking at this new
10:41 information, trying to see it, trying to
10:43 understand it, and asking yourself,
10:46 where does this fit in the big picture
10:48 of the jigsaw puzzle I'm building, aka
10:51 the knowledge I'm trying to build? When
10:52 you find the right place for it to fit,
10:55 it helps to complete the big picture.
10:57 When you find the wrong place, it means
10:59 that the picture becomes incomplete,
11:01 inaccurate, and if you don't know where
11:03 it fits and you're just trying to hold
11:04 on to it, that's the stuff that you
11:06 inevitably just forget. Now, the problem
11:08 is that, like I said before, most of the
11:10 time we're just thinking about
11:12 increasing our intention. We're not
11:14 actively thinking about how we can make
11:15 this new information, each new jigsaw
11:18 piece, more relevant and more familiar.
11:20 So, this is kind of like two people
11:22 solving a jigsaw puzzle. One person all
11:24 they do is pick up pieces out of the
11:26 board, look at it, and then just throw
11:28 it at this other person who desperately
11:30 has to see where this fits constantly.
11:33 And between the person whose job it is
11:35 just to pick pieces out of a box and
11:37 throw it at someone versus the person
11:39 who has to actually make the picture,
11:42 you can see who's got the harder job.
11:43 This is basically what happens when we
11:45 learn. we are just forcing all of this
11:47 dense information into our brain and
11:49 just hoping that this picture will be
11:52 formed. Relevance framing is stopping
11:56 that and it's about communicating
11:58 between these two people. It's about
12:01 saying okay what piece are you looking
12:04 for? What does the picture look like?
12:06 What kind of pieces with what kind of
12:08 edges should I hunt for? And then once
12:12 you know that you then go into the box,
12:15 you go into the textbook to look for
12:18 those pieces to look for that
12:20 information. So how do we actually
12:21 create these relevance frames? Well, one
12:23 very easy way is to just look at test
12:25 questions or end of chapter questions
12:28 before you start properly going through
12:30 all the content. You can do your
12:31 layman's explanation first. You can go
12:34 through and just pick out the parts that
12:35 are really obvious to you to begin with
12:38 if you want, but before you really sit
12:40 down to properly go through all the
12:42 little detail, just go through and test
12:44 yourself. Get a sense for how you're
12:47 going to need to use this knowledge in
12:49 professional or real world settings.
12:50 Think about how you are going to use
12:52 this knowledge in the real world. What
12:55 type of problems would it solve? How can
12:57 I apply this? Why is this important and
13:00 significant for me to know? And if
13:01 you're struggling with this, use chatbt,
13:04 use Google, ask it, why would I need to
13:06 know this? And once it's clear to you
13:09 why it is relevant, write it down. Put
13:12 it on a separate piece of paper while
13:13 you're studying so that as you're
13:15 reading through, you can constantly
13:17 check back to it to see, is this
13:20 relevant? And if so, how. It's the
13:22 equivalent of having the jigsaw puzzle
13:24 image next to you. So when you look at
13:26 each piece, you have an idea about where
13:28 it might fit. And this isn't something
13:30 that you just do once and it's done. You
13:32 can continue trying to create new
13:34 relevance frames with each layer that
13:37 you go through. So, as you get more and
13:39 more detailed, ask yourself, which parts
13:43 of what I'm learning still feel like it
13:45 doesn't quite make sense? Which parts
13:48 are harder for me to understand? Which
13:49 are the ones that feel less relevant and
13:52 less familiar? And ask yourself clear,
13:55 explicit questions about those. Don't
13:57 just say, "I generally feel less
14:00 comfortable with this part of the
14:01 topic." Ask yourself why you feel less
14:04 clear. What information are you missing?
14:07 It's looking at your half complete
14:09 jigsaw puzzle. Noticing that there's a
14:11 part that isn't complete instead of just
14:13 generally knowing that there's something
14:15 there. It's looking at it clearly and
14:16 saying, "Okay, what type of pieces
14:19 should I be looking for to fill that?"
14:21 that. And so relevance framing boosts
14:23 your ability to encode information
14:24 through obviously improving your
14:27 relevance. Now the final R of R2 is real
14:33 estate. And I've done this in blue
14:35 because this is actually something that
14:36 you do throughout the entire process of
14:40 L2R2. It's not something you just do at
14:42 the end. You should be applying this
14:44 throughout the entire process of
14:46 learning.
14:47 Real estate refers to your mental real
14:50 estate. Basically, your mental capacity
14:53 to hold on to information and to process
14:55 it. You only have so much mental
14:59 capacity. Like all humans, not just you.
15:02 The human brain can only handle so much
15:04 information. And we have to protect our
15:06 mental resources. If we start using our
15:10 precious mental resources to just try to
15:12 track on and remember every single idea
15:15 that we're learning through a textbook,
15:16 we're going to get very very quickly
15:18 overwhelmed. It doesn't matter how smart
15:19 you are, how experienced of a learner,
15:21 it's just a matter of time before you
15:23 feel overwhelmed. What you want to do is
15:25 make sure that your effort, your mental
15:27 effort, those cognitive resources are
15:30 used only for processing, understanding
15:34 the ideas and trying to fit it into the
15:36 big picture. You want the figuring out
15:39 the jigsaw puzzle part of your brain to
15:41 be very uninterrupted because the faster
15:44 they are solving the puzzle, the faster
15:47 you can learn. When they get stuck,
15:48 everything stops. And the easiest way to
15:51 protect that mental real estate and to
15:53 just let your brain focus on just
15:55 encoding that information is to think on
15:58 paper. Write your thoughts down,
16:00 document it, use your note-taking as a
16:03 cognitive offload. Do not try to hold on
16:05 to all the ideas of how you think things
16:08 are connected and where your gaps might
16:09 be mentally. Write it down. Look at your
16:13 notes. Use your notes to help you think
16:15 about it. Look at your notes and see
16:17 where there might be gaps and things
16:18 that you're missing. If you think these
16:21 two things influence each other, but
16:23 you're not sure, it doesn't matter. Just
16:24 write it down first. Don't bother your
16:28 brain capacity by trying to just hold on
16:31 to this idea. When you look at the notes
16:34 of an efficient learner who has their
16:36 processes tuned in, their notes should
16:39 be a reflection of their thinking
16:41 process. You should be able to see the
16:43 process of how ideas initially start
16:46 scattered and disorganized and how
16:48 slowly they start organizing together to
16:51 form a cohesive picture. And so
16:53 protecting your mental real estate
16:56 doesn't by itself increase the
16:58 familiarity or the relevance or your
17:00 intention, but it just makes all of this
17:03 stuff much much easier. So this is the
17:07 L2R2 fourpart method that you can use to
17:10 help your brain absorb information like
17:11 a sponge. And if you want some more tips
17:13 on how you can learn more effectively,
17:14 then you might be interested in this
17:15 video here.
17:19 I can never tell which side of the
17:21 screen it's I I should just memorize
17:23 this. Which side of the screen the video
17:24 play cards pop up on.
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