The Importance of Knowing Your Learning Style

 Not everyone is gifted with photographic memory or logs through the rest of their day running on multiple shots of coffee. Therefore, I stand on a different area of the learning spectrum. I learned that it is difficult for me to care about a topic if it is forced on me on an assigned schedule as with all regular school classes. My interest and desire to learn more about a topic happens on my own time as I go through class material. I find areas that I would say, "hurt my brain" because I had never been exposed to the word or never grasped the concept.

This is where knowing your learning style comes in handy because those moments that "hurt my brain" allowed my mind and subconscious to slowly ruminate on the topic and come up with its own solutions otherwise it would stimulate my body to go full gear into an actual google search. I learn better with questions being thrown at me on a topic that's why I personally rely on flashcards specifically Anki.

Although, it may seem counter-intuitive that when I make a mistake on a flashcard that I constantly throw it at myself once again. However, this is part of the learning process because that flashcard you just aren't getting is a gap in your knowledge. This is when you need to begin doing research on the topic or when my brain will usually stimulate me to conduct the google search or create mnemonics.

Mnemonics or acronyms help me visually remember difficult topics or lists. As somewhat of an artist, I enjoy drawing out cartoons of my mnemonics because it helps me add some creativity to a difficult topic and allows my mind to spend more time grasping the topic in its entirety. Another benefit I've found in this is being able to make the topic more relatable by relating it to pop culture. My learning style consists of making cross-overs to form connections with difficult topics. I will then turn that into a question via flashcard method described above.

Resource: Notion

I personally never used Ever-Note and after having an old college account hacked by some person in Spain I felt that digital brains weren't for me. However, after Notion changed to a free trial I've found myself becoming more creative with it. The idea of a second brain is harked upon by numerous Youtubers so this peaked my interest to get my brain on that Google search mode once again. 

I've had the most joy creating templates for myself for Youtube videos, study motivation, podcasts, and even personal life and relationships. I'm still getting comfortable creating collections of information on the app but I'm not letting that hold me back from saying that this is a great way to have another part of your brain online for planning out ideas or analyzing your consistent thought patterns.

Although I am quite an advocate of meditation as you will discover from my last blog posts, I can also say that having a second brain is a great form of meditation because you are compartmentalizing your thoughts that consistently come up in your head so that you can stay focused on the task that truly matters which is getting the work in front of you done.

Learning Analogy

Similar to fashion, everyone is different. We all have our own style and once we find one that we admire and actually take the action to rock the look then we will start seeing peak changes in our learning abilities. The reason why many may fail at this is because they never examined their current style. They never looked at the outfits they wear daily and never questioned the look they just throw on the look without any effort and what is the result? No progress in becoming someone different in other words you ensure that a bland look or mind is placed on the daily.

Some people skip classes and for the people who skip because they can't sit for hours through a boring lecture, it's because they realized that they have a different learning style and they prioritize that. Forcing a class on yourself when your energy is drained is a sure-found way to not retain anything and your mind is just on the side of waiting for the class to just end already.

I hope you realize after reading this post how important knowing how you learn is essential to not just school but life. If you want to keep performing below average with your work then keep doing the same habits and routines you do on a daily basis choosing never to try anything new. If we stay in our box of comfort all day, we will never be able to figure out what is useless or what could possibly change our lives forever.

I hope you find something helpful here.