The key to profound learning

Does this sound familiar at all? You have a goal in mind, some ambition that is really tickling you; learning a new skill like an instrument, a dance or a language?

Then you use the most rational part of your mind and figure out an ‘effort-in-result-out’ type of equation.

So you figure, for example, Cambridge university studies say that to level up in a language requires 200 guided instruction hours. That means if you do 2 hours a week, it’s only 100 weeks. Oh! Only….

The great thing is that if you understand the brain from the view of an animal, it gets much better. Our brain is basically a pattern recognition machine. To see a pattern, we need 3 or more things to compare, contrast and draw conclusions.

So if we approach learning like accumulating patterns, like compound interest investing, we have something which starts slowly, but after time it takes care of itself. Aligning with true pattern recognition works like this.

Memorizing phrases is a piece of the pie, without a doubt, but imagine accessing a language as a purely memory-based exercise, sounds exhausting. And the way our brains work, memory usually is the weakest link. Pattern recognition for president.

In a study done regarding problem solving, 2 groups of children were asked to get an object out of a bucket with some items, the solution was to make a hook out of the items. Group 1 was a group of 5 year olds, group 2 was a group of 8 year olds. Group 2 showed creativity and achieved the result in good time, group 1 could not. However, once the 5 year olds saw the solution, they could instantly replicate it and teach it to others.

Copy before create. It’s how our brain operates. Copy, find more examples, then it will happen naturally. This in my experience of 14 years as a language specialist has accelerated learning and meant that people's studies accumulate speed and proficiency instead of being a collector of vocabulary and grammar rules.

So the next time you want to learn something, a piece of language, a bar of music, a routine in dance; find 3 samples you can learn together, compare and contrast them, train and copy them, then be amazed at how your brain begins to subconsciously begins to process things and automatically spits them out for you to seem awesome to those around you!