Looking for easy, actionable learning hacks that actually work?

At Thrive it’s our passion to encourage teams and individuals to learn, so in this blog, we’ll show you how you can become a "better" learner.

We’d all love to wave a magic wand and miraculously become better at learning, equipped with the ability to remember and recall absolutely everything we’re taught at a moment’s notice. But your brain is a slippery, tricky little thing, and part of becoming a good learner is wrangling it into better habits.

Although this can be an involved process, we’ve compiled a list of our favourite low-effort, high-reward learning hacks to help make it easier, quicker and more enjoyable.

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1. Write your notes by hand

I know, sorry.

I really hate to be the bearer of annoying news, but despite the fact that it’s a lot quicker and more convenient to type your notes, scientific research has actually found in favour of hand-writing them.

The logic behind this is fascinating, and makes a lot of sense when you start exploring it: It all has to do with the physical shape and sensation of the letters being created with a pen, vs. the static experience of typing on a keyboard.

In the words of Audrey van der Meer from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology for The New Scientist:

“When you type on the keyboard, you only make very simple finger movements towards the keys and they’re exactly the same movements for every letter you want to write.”

But when writing by hand, you’re forced to “make detailed motions that are unique to each letter.”

This theory was tested by an experiment that monitored students’ brain activity while they took notes.

“When students wrote the words by hand, the sensors picked up widespread connectivity across many brain regions. Typing, however, led to minimal activity, if any, in the same areas. Handwriting activated connection patterns spanning visual regions, regions that receive and process sensory information and the motor cortex. The latter handles body movement and sensorimotor integration, which helps the brain use environmental inputs to inform a person’s next action.”

This is pretty compelling evidence to suggest that you should be writing your notes instead of typing them – and you don’t have to eschew all modern technology in favour of an “old fashioned” notebook and pen. It’s all about that letter choreography, so a tablet and stylus will also do the trick.
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2. Take learning off the page

This hack probably sounds a little strange sitting next to a section that extols the virtues of writing by hand – but this next step is about transforming learning from a two-dimensional experience into a three-dimensional one, by taking it off the page and into the real world.

“Taking learning off the page” makes it much more likely that what you need to know will sink in, and stay there. So what are some ways you can put this into practice?
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Learn something, teach something

One of the most effective ways to help yourself learn something is by teaching it to someone else. The phenomenon, dubbed “The Protégé Effect", consists of taking the knowledge you have and deconstructing it into more manageable parts for someone else.

Have you ever heard of the concept – or visited the subreddit – “Explain Like I’m Five”? It’s exactly what it sounds like: Simplifying involved, complicated concepts until even a five year old (or Michael Scott) can understand them. Doing this adds another, secondary level to your own understanding.

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So with that in mind, create “teachable moments”, however contrived. If an opportunity to teach someone else what you know doesn’t organically present itself, manufacture one. Explain it to a friend or colleague like they’re five, use analogies and metaphors, employ visual aids… whatever helps get the information across (and therefore, get through for you as well.)

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Discuss!

Similar to the above point, discussing your chosen subject matter with someone else who also knows about it is another effective way to learn. It’s a slightly different strategy than teaching someone else – you’re not passing on the knowledge, but rather exchanging ideas with another person in the know. This could look like:
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A healthy debate:

Maybe your conversation partner has a different perspective on the topic. They might know something you don’t, or vice versa. Either way, by engaging in a debate you both challenge your own perspectives (thereby broadening them) and potentially introduce yourselves* to new ideas.
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Roundtable:

Even better than just talking to just one person, gathering a makeshift panel of experts makes for a much more well-rounded conversation. Identify Subject Matter Experts (or even Subject Matter Enthusiasts) in your circle, draw up a list of questions or discussion points, and sit down to discuss your topic in detail.
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Workshops:

Workshops are effective for a few reasons: They encourage active participation in the subject matter, involve group activities that allow collaborative and experiential learning, and help you gain problem-solving skills.

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3. Mind map

Mind mapping is an especially effective technique if you are a particularly visual person who finds it helpful to physically illustrate concepts, because it combines words and images to create associations in your head. Even beyond this, it makes the overall process of learning more enjoyable by infusing it with fun and creativity.

And this hack, like all our learning hacks in this blog, is of course backed up by data. A meta-analysis published in the Asia Pacific Education Review examined the impact of mind mapping-based instruction on student cognitive learning outcomes. The results found that mind mapping-based instruction had a more positive influence on students’ cognitive learning outcomes than traditional instruction.

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4. Listen to music

Music is perhaps the closest we humans can feasibly get to creating magic – an art form that moves you physically and emotionally, that keeps you company, that transports you to different cultures and points of view. Despite being so otherworldly, music is a standard part of most people’s everyday routine. You listen to it on your commute, while you’re doing the dishes, while you’re exercising… and now, while you learn?

Listening to music while learning – or reviewing something you’ve already learned – is proven to be an effective way to retain the information. There are a few reasons for this:

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Music boosts your mood:

It’s hard to learn and be creative when you feel unmotivated and uninspired. Music is proven to reduce stress and increase a positive mindset, which sets the stage perfectly for learning.
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Music activates almost all of the brain:

According to Harvard Medical School, music has been shown to activate more than your auditory cortex. A variety of memory regions and the motor system are also activated while you listen to music, strengthening brain pathways that might otherwise be weakened when they are not used. Additionally according to this 2019 study, music can activate reward centres in the brain, providing you with more motivation to learn.

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Depending on the individual, music can help you concentrate:

Research suggests that listening to music while learning or studying can help you focus, and allow your brain to intake new ideas while easily making associations it may not have previously made. Classical music is particularly helpful for this given its lack of distracting lyrics, and – according to Stanford University – its ability to “activate regions of the brain associated with attention and visualisation.”

Whether you combine your learning with some Chopin, teach someone else what you know, or retrain those handwriting muscles that may have been lying dormant since secondary school, we hope our learning hacks have helped you.

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