YouTube Transcript:
How to ABSORB Textbooks So Fast It Feels ILLEGAL
Skip watching entire videos - get the full transcript, search for keywords, and copy with one click.
Share:
Video Transcript
View:
I've been a learning coach for over a
decade. And in this video, I'll show you
how you can absorb textbooks like a
sponge. I'll teach you a four-part
method that allows you to learn,
remember, and use any new information in
a way that feels effortless. This method
works by overcoming a biological barrier
that's hardwired into our brain that
actually prevents it from absorbing new
information more quickly in the first
place. So, we need to address this
barrier first if we want to make any
progress. So what is this biological
barrier? Researchers have actually found
that there seems to be a limit on how
much new information your brain can
store at any given time. In learning
science, this process of taking
information and then storing it into our
memory is called encoding. If someone's
able to learn information like a sponge
and hold on to all of this information
in their memory, you're basically
saying, "This person has really good
encoding." Whenever we encode new
information, we think that your brain is
probably physically remodeling itself at
a microscopic level. And so, one theory
is that our brain has an inbuilt defense
mechanism that stops it from making too
many changes too quickly in case some of
those changes are harmful to us. After
all, the human brain did not adapt to
learn this much information in one go.
So that feeling you get when you're
reading something really dense and
really detailed and you feel overwhelmed
and you feel like that information is
just leaking out of your brain and you
cannot hold on to it. That's basically
you realizing the biological limit of
your brain. So while it is difficult to
increase the raw power of your brain,
there are some things that we can do
that help our brain process this new
information which makes encoding easier.
And doing these things is the trick to
faster encoding and absorbing
information like a sponge. And there are
three things that I want you to
remember. Your brain finds it easier to
encode information
when these three things are met. Number
one,
intention. Number two, relevance. And
number three, familiarity. When all
three of these conditions are met, your
brain is able to encode more easily and
more quickly. Intention just means
literally wanting and trying to
understand and remember something. This
is really obvious. Reading this book
without even intending or trying to
learn it means that it's going to be
less effective than trying to learn it.
The second one is relevance. Relevance
is how important we think this new
information is. And there are two ways
it can be relevant. It can be relevant
because it influences and impacts
something we already know or it
influences and impacts other new pieces
of information that we're learning. And
familiarity is about how similar what
you are learning now is with what you
already know. When you are intending to
learn something and it feels significant
and impactful to something else and it
is familiar to what you already know,
then this is easier for your brain to
store into your memory. You can remember
these three points with the pneumonic I
remember fast. But here's the problem.
Normally, when we're trying to learn
something, we only control our
intention. When we're struggling to
learn or remember something, we just try
to remember it harder. Whether something
is relevant or familiar is almost just
up to luck. Sometimes what we're
learning might seem more familiar and
may seem more relevant and sometimes it
doesn't. And especially when you're
reading from something like a thick
textbook, often the details are very
dense and it's hard to see how this is
relevant and most of it is new and
unfamiliar. And so because we are only
trying to increase our intention and we
rarely ever try to increase the
relevance or try to increase
familiarity, there is a hard limit on
how much we can encode and how quickly
we can do it. Now, you may ask, "But
Justin, how can we make something more
relevant and more familiar if we're
learning it for the first time and we
just don't see how it's relevant?" The
answer is by using this four-part
method. You can remember this method
with the acronym
L2R2. The first L is layman's. Now, if
you're not familiar, the word layman
means to describe something really
simply without using special
terminology. So if I said to you, active
learning involves higher intrinsic
cognitive load, that's hard to
understand unless you're already
familiar with this topic. The lay man's
explanation for it would be effective
learning means thinking harder. The
first part of this method is for any new
information you're learning, especially
if it's dense. And it doesn't just have
to be in a textbook. It could be reading
journal articles. It could be lecture
slides. Whatever you're trying to learn,
try to learn it in just layman's terms.
Simple language first. Remove all the
terminology. Anything that's tricky or
complicated to understand, rewrap it in
a way that you could explain it to an
average everyday person. Taking the time
to learn something in layman's terms
first dramatically improves your ability
to learn and understand this new topic.
Why does that work? This is because
learning it in layman's terms increases
our familiarity. We are not familiar
with all this new terminology and all
these dense new concepts. We don't know
what this new detail means and why we
need to learn it. But by turning it into
simple language and simple ideas that
we're already familiar with, it also
becomes easier to see how this can
influence and impact something else. In
other words, by making it more familiar,
it also makes it easier for us to see
how it is relevant. So, how can you do
this? When you first go to open up a new
chapter and you're reading through,
point out and look at the headings and
the bold words first. Scan and skim
through everything that you need to
learn and actually pick out what you
think are the most important key
concepts and write them out separately.
Then and this is really easy these days
just go to your favorite AI program and
say I am learning this topic here are
the key words that I will have to learn
about explain these to me in layman's
terms so it is simple for me to
understand this entire process can take
you less than 10 minutes and after 10
minutes this chapter will suddenly feel
very approachable and very familiar to
you. you will feel ready to go and learn
about each of these concepts because you
already understand how they work at a
simple level. Another tip is to use
something like Google images. For any
keywords that represent a process or a
cycle or a sequence of events or a
framework, type them into Google and
then go straight to Google images and
just look for images that seem simple to
understand. This is leveraging off of
our visual processing ability, which is
tens of thousands of times more
efficient than our reading ability.
Simply seeing an image of a concept
being explained can help us to
understand it much more efficiently than
even a really simply explained AI
generated summary. Now, one thing I
always try to do as much in layman's
terms as possible is teaching you about
learning science. And one place that you
can see me trying to do this is in my
free weekly newsletter where I share
tips and tricks and techniques like the
ones I'm sharing with you now, but to
your inbox every single week. I take the
things that I wish I had known that made
a difference to my learning efficiency
over the years, and I distill them into
these quick emails that you can read in
3 to 5 minutes in layman's terms, but
potentially saving you dozens of hours a
month through just efficiency. Again, if
you're interested, it's completely free.
The link's in the description to join.
But anyway, that was the first L,
learning it in layman's first. Once
you've done this, you should move on to
the second L. The second L stands for
layer. Layering your learning is one of
the most powerful methods you can use.
When you're covering really dense
information like in a textbook, like
reading a journal article, it's really
difficult to get all of that information
in in one go. Even when you have gone
through a layman's explanation of it, it
can be easily overwhelming, but only if
you learn it the way it tells you to.
Layering your learning is about you
taking control of how you think this
information will make sense for you and
your brain. And it's actually very
simple. All you do is when you're
reading through it, deliberately look
for the things that feel more relevant
or feel more familiar to you. Spend time
trying to learn and understand and
connect that information. And if you
read something that you can't see how
it's relevant, it's very detailed, it's
very unfamiliar, and you're struggling
to see how it connects with anything
else, just skip it and put a little
sticky note next to it. note it down
somewhere so you can come back to it
later. Go through your chapter or your
readings with this mindset, picking out
the parts that are relevant and then
building your knowledge first with what
is already relevant and familiar and
then go back to the parts that you
skipped. Now the magical thing happens
which is that those things that you
didn't see why they're irrelevant. They
were very unfamiliar. You didn't see how
they connected the first time around. It
might have taken you 15 minutes to
figure out that paragraph. When you look
at it now it's going to be much easier
because you have more information about
the topic. Now you're one step closer to
expertise than you were before. anything
complicated. It's just a lot of simple
things put together. If it feels
complicated, it just means you don't
know all the simple things yet. So
instead of trying to figure it out now,
just learn the simple things first and
come back to it. Layering your learning
massively increases how relevant what
you're learning is. And it ensures that
you're not wasting time right now on
something that you should just come back
to later. So that's the L2. And now we
move on to the R2 of this four-part
method. The first R stands for
relevance framing. Effective learning is
like solving a jigsaw puzzle. You're
getting new information from a lecture
or an article or a textbook, wherever,
and you're looking at this new
information, trying to see it, trying to
understand it, and asking yourself,
where does this fit in the big picture
of the jigsaw puzzle I'm building, aka
the knowledge I'm trying to build? When
you find the right place for it to fit,
it helps to complete the big picture.
When you find the wrong place, it means
that the picture becomes incomplete,
inaccurate, and if you don't know where
it fits and you're just trying to hold
on to it, that's the stuff that you
inevitably just forget. Now, the problem
is that, like I said before, most of the
time we're just thinking about
increasing our intention. We're not
actively thinking about how we can make
this new information, each new jigsaw
piece, more relevant and more familiar.
So, this is kind of like two people
solving a jigsaw puzzle. One person all
they do is pick up pieces out of the
board, look at it, and then just throw
it at this other person who desperately
has to see where this fits constantly.
And between the person whose job it is
just to pick pieces out of a box and
throw it at someone versus the person
who has to actually make the picture,
you can see who's got the harder job.
This is basically what happens when we
learn. we are just forcing all of this
dense information into our brain and
just hoping that this picture will be
formed. Relevance framing is stopping
that and it's about communicating
between these two people. It's about
saying okay what piece are you looking
for? What does the picture look like?
What kind of pieces with what kind of
edges should I hunt for? And then once
you know that you then go into the box,
you go into the textbook to look for
those pieces to look for that
information. So how do we actually
create these relevance frames? Well, one
very easy way is to just look at test
questions or end of chapter questions
before you start properly going through
all the content. You can do your
layman's explanation first. You can go
through and just pick out the parts that
are really obvious to you to begin with
if you want, but before you really sit
down to properly go through all the
little detail, just go through and test
yourself. Get a sense for how you're
going to need to use this knowledge in
professional or real world settings.
Think about how you are going to use
this knowledge in the real world. What
type of problems would it solve? How can
I apply this? Why is this important and
significant for me to know? And if
you're struggling with this, use chatbt,
use Google, ask it, why would I need to
know this? And once it's clear to you
why it is relevant, write it down. Put
it on a separate piece of paper while
you're studying so that as you're
reading through, you can constantly
check back to it to see, is this
relevant? And if so, how. It's the
equivalent of having the jigsaw puzzle
image next to you. So when you look at
each piece, you have an idea about where
it might fit. And this isn't something
that you just do once and it's done. You
can continue trying to create new
relevance frames with each layer that
you go through. So, as you get more and
more detailed, ask yourself, which parts
of what I'm learning still feel like it
doesn't quite make sense? Which parts
are harder for me to understand? Which
are the ones that feel less relevant and
less familiar? And ask yourself clear,
explicit questions about those. Don't
just say, "I generally feel less
comfortable with this part of the
topic." Ask yourself why you feel less
clear. What information are you missing?
It's looking at your half complete
jigsaw puzzle. Noticing that there's a
part that isn't complete instead of just
generally knowing that there's something
there. It's looking at it clearly and
saying, "Okay, what type of pieces
should I be looking for to fill that?"
that. And so relevance framing boosts
your ability to encode information
through obviously improving your
relevance. Now the final R of R2 is real
estate. And I've done this in blue
because this is actually something that
you do throughout the entire process of
L2R2. It's not something you just do at
the end. You should be applying this
throughout the entire process of
learning.
Real estate refers to your mental real
estate. Basically, your mental capacity
to hold on to information and to process
it. You only have so much mental
capacity. Like all humans, not just you.
The human brain can only handle so much
information. And we have to protect our
mental resources. If we start using our
precious mental resources to just try to
track on and remember every single idea
that we're learning through a textbook,
we're going to get very very quickly
overwhelmed. It doesn't matter how smart
you are, how experienced of a learner,
it's just a matter of time before you
feel overwhelmed. What you want to do is
make sure that your effort, your mental
effort, those cognitive resources are
used only for processing, understanding
the ideas and trying to fit it into the
big picture. You want the figuring out
the jigsaw puzzle part of your brain to
be very uninterrupted because the faster
they are solving the puzzle, the faster
you can learn. When they get stuck,
everything stops. And the easiest way to
protect that mental real estate and to
just let your brain focus on just
encoding that information is to think on
paper. Write your thoughts down,
document it, use your note-taking as a
cognitive offload. Do not try to hold on
to all the ideas of how you think things
are connected and where your gaps might
be mentally. Write it down. Look at your
notes. Use your notes to help you think
about it. Look at your notes and see
where there might be gaps and things
that you're missing. If you think these
two things influence each other, but
you're not sure, it doesn't matter. Just
write it down first. Don't bother your
brain capacity by trying to just hold on
to this idea. When you look at the notes
of an efficient learner who has their
processes tuned in, their notes should
be a reflection of their thinking
process. You should be able to see the
process of how ideas initially start
scattered and disorganized and how
slowly they start organizing together to
form a cohesive picture. And so
protecting your mental real estate
doesn't by itself increase the
familiarity or the relevance or your
intention, but it just makes all of this
stuff much much easier. So this is the
L2R2 fourpart method that you can use to
help your brain absorb information like
a sponge. And if you want some more tips
on how you can learn more effectively,
then you might be interested in this
video here.
I can never tell which side of the
screen it's I I should just memorize
this. Which side of the screen the video
play cards pop up on.
Click on any text or timestamp to jump to that moment in the video
Share:
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
One-Click Copy125+ LanguagesSearch ContentJump to Timestamps
Paste YouTube URL
Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript
Transcript Extraction Form
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
Get Our Chrome Extension
Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.
Works with YouTube, Coursera, Udemy and more educational platforms
Get Instant Transcripts: Just Edit the Domain in Your Address Bar!
YouTube
←
→
↻
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc
YoutubeToText
←
→
↻
https://youtubetotext.net/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc