Benzing Web Design Marketing » Human Development

Remember Anything 30 Minutes Per Day

Rusty — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:08:07 +0000

We all have our own perception of time. We count hours but discount how they are spread out. It’s called binge learning and you’ll probably forget everything.

If your like me, there are times when you get excited about learning something new that you spend a day or two non-stop on getting it mastered, only to get tired of it and move on to something else. When mastery is the goal, spending an exorbitant amount of time in one sitting will more than likely burn you out. For example when we work out at the gym we are not expecting to loose 20 pounds of fat or gain 10 pounds of muscle in a single work-out, likewise for learning and remembering information. Our bodies need time to heal; our muscles need time to grow. And the same goes for that muscle we call our brain. When trying to develop a new skill, the important thing to remember isn’t how much you do; it’s how often you do it.

Say your trying to memorize your HTML tags for a quiz your taking in web design class. You’d probably go with one of two familiar strategies. The first approach is spaced presentation and it just means spreading out the studying over time. The other is massed presentation (i.e. cramming) which helps keep the words in your short-term memory, and is actually more effective if you have an exam the next day – just as working out right before you hit the beach makes a noticeable, but temporary, difference. In psychology, this is known as the spacing effect, and it explains why you can’t seem to remember anything you learned in college. I doubt it was the gallons of beer drinking and frat parties…

There is a third approach and is probably one of the more interesting ways to remember. Developed by a man named Paul Pimsleur. Which you have probably heard his name on learning a new language audio books. Pimsleur dedicated his life to understanding and improving language learning process. He observed that the first time you learned a new word, you’d forget it almost immediately. But if you reviewed it again as you were about to forget it, each subsequent review would exponentially increase the staying power of the word. So if you could only remember the word for 5 seconds at first, coming back to it after those 5 seconds would boost your retention time to 25 seconds, then 2 minutes, 10 minutes and so on. At this rate, the tenth review wouldn’t have to take place until about four months after the first.

cramming vs. spaced presentation

The instant you learn something new your mind begins the process of forgetting it. That means cramming works if you need to remember it in a few hours and don’t plan on using it again. Spaced repetition is ideal for long-term retention, but is more time consuming. But graduated interval recall (Pimsleur’s method) relies on fewer, well timed repitions to make sure the word never fades away drastically. See the diagram below for an example.

Although there are factors that affect the schedule of learning and remembering like the difficult of the word and the background of the speaker, but even a rough time-line would be invaluable for teachers who sometimes need to review old material. This provides a maximum retention with minimum repetition. Now don’t make mistakes, the goal is not to avoid studying every day; it’s to make the repetition manageable so new material can be introduced daily. The most important factor is staying interested and excited about what your learning.

Pimsleur shows us that memory isn’t linear; that even if you spend the same total amount of time studying, the time you spend in between significantly affects what your brain does with the information. Learning is the space between the doing.

Creating a Daily Practice

When software developer Brad Isaac asked Jerry Seinfeld, who in those days was still a touring comic, what his secret was, he advised Isaac to pick up one of those wall calendars that had the entire year on a single page. To Seinfeld, becoming a better comedian meant writing every day, so each day Jerry worked on his writing, he would put a big red X in the box for that day. Pretty soon, there’d be a chain of red X’s and not breaking the chain became his own motivation.

There will definitely be moments when your caught up in the mental resistance that keeps you and I from getting started, we seem to forget how enjoyable the act of doing really is. When you’ve finally started and engaged into your work, you start thinking how much fun it really is. What I love about Seinfeld’s calendar is that it let’s you visually channel your stubbornness and redirect it from being lazy to not missing your mark. Setup goals and keep to them.

If you reading this and find it interesting I would like to test your abilities by picking one long-term goal and commit to it right now. Make a conscious decision to pursue what used to be “I want” or “I should”. Now is the time to start learning that new language or finally learning WordPress (you know who you are). Your going to accomplish this goal by limiting the amount of time you spend on it to no more than 30 minutes a day. You will learn more by working with your long-term memory rather than against it. if you have trouble finding 30 minutes start with 15. Keep doing it over time, you’ll be surprised at how much you’re able to accomplish.

Benzing Web Design Marketing

Have An Efficient Plan For The Holidays

Rusty — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:39:33 +0000

Have An Efficient Plan For The Holidays

Realizing the holidays are on my back, it made me think how efficient we can be to make our seasonal holidays better. I did some research and found a few things we can do to improve holiday efficiency.

So let’s begin…

The Turkey Dinner Calculator – Folks, do not eat Thanksgiving without calculating your dinner. This is a super efficient calculator that can tell you what time to defrost the turkey to how many pounds of turkey you actually need. It’s pretty cool!

Kraft Foods Desktop Widget – Yet another tool to help you eat. The Kraft Widget sets up the Dinner Bell to provide daily reminders, search and view Kraft recipes without having to launch your internet browser, and get continually updated fresh facts, tasty tips and how-to-videos about your favorite in-season produce.

The Food Channel Widget – Being a food lover myself this is a must have for any recipe hunter or food devastator. Now you can get the hottest food trends delivered daily to your web site straight from The Food Channel. It’s Free!

The Food Dictionary – Do you know what a dacquoise is? or what is actually in ranchero sauce? Now the world’s in your hands for dictionary terms on food. Bam!

Halmark E-Cards – Parents! now is your chance to actually save money and have a better chance at the kids retaining them. Think about all the $50 dollar bills you will be saving on those birthday cards.

Make Your Gloves Work With Any Touchscreen Device – This is a super cool way to improve your efficiency by keeping your hands warm and still working on your iPhone.

The Institute of Food Technologist – If you are an avid food enthusiast then perhaps you should join the Institute of Food Technologist. They work with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and have research in Food Nanoscience. This of course is a very brief description of their vast knowledge in food technology.

As to end this post I hope these few places of interest make your holidays an efficient one. Happy Thanksgiving from Benzing Technologies!

Benzing Web Design Marketing

5 Tips to Enhancing Your Intelligence

Rusty — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:22:34 +0000

5 Tips to Enhancing Your Intelligence

Technology is degrading our intelligence. By this I mean technology is taking away from our learning capabilities. But I am learning so much with technology you say, not exactly. We developed technology to make our life simpler not more difficult which in turn without learning new ways to stimulate our minds is degrading our intelligence. Yes there are ways that technology can improve our mental capabilities but Facebook and Twitter aren’t cutting it. I am the type of person who has always been intrigued with technology and ways to improve myself overall.

Your brain is very similar to a muscle. Like muscles, your brain also needs the right kind of exercise and nutrition. The more you use your brain correctly, the more you will enhance your ability to focus and think sharply. On the contrary, if you feed your brain the wrong nutrition you can harm its functioning and thinking capabilities.

Listed below are 5 tips to improve your thought processes.

1. Avoid Watching Television : This is perhaps one of the toughest tips to convince anyone. Many people including myself love to sit in front of the TV. Watching TV is not at all that productive. It neither enhances your mental capability nor recharges your brain. It is very similar to having all energy drained out of your brain without reaping the benefits of exercise. Sure there are some educational channels but are you really retaining that information?

2. Work Out : This improves your psychological well-being as well as reducing depression, anxiety, stress, and helps loose weight which makes you feel better overall. Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you feeling happier and more relaxed than you were before you worked out.

3. Read books that stimulate thought : This doesn’t mean you have to read novels. Read a book that your interested in and will learn something from. This way you will have a better chance at retaining that knowledge and increasing your intelligence.

4. Sleep Early, Rise Early : This was a hard one for me to learn being that I was always such a night owl. But now I normally goto sleep around 11 – 12 pm and rise around 7 – 8 am giving myself between 6-8 hours of sleep. Now the amount of sleep required varies with age. Test yourself for a few nights and find out how many hours of sleep makes you feel rested and not over tired or deprived. A restful sleep will improve your ability to focus and waking up early in the morning enhances your productivity and keeps you alert throughout the day.

5. Find Time to Introspect : Find time for yourself. This is very important and I take this tip very seriously every day. This not only helps improve my productivity but enhances my personal development. Find time where you can be alone and think about things. This will help organize your thoughts and can prioritize your tasks and duties. You will be able to make clear cut decisions and focus on the most important ones. All said and done, I am not advising that you do yoga or chant some mantra. Any technique that allows you to sit alone and think is good. Personally, I prefer talking a long walk alone. Experiment and try out new methods to find out which one suits you the best.

There are many other ways to help improve your intelligence but these 5 tips will get you on the right track. I could also recommend making friends with people who think around your thoughts or setting a time everyday to stop using technology (cellphones, email, etc.). Traveling is also another good way to introduce education into your mind and no I am not talking about going to Africa and staying in a Holiday Inn. Explore your avenues and remember to just think!

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