Transcription
Most people assume that genius is something you're either born with or you're not. But after more than 13 years as an educator, having worked with students across all grade levels, socioeconomic backgrounds, and performance ranges, I've learned that this assumption is just wrong.
Over the years, one pattern has appeared again and again. People struggle not because they can't learn, but because they were never taught how to learn. In this video, I'm going to walk you through the top three learning methods I use with my students on a consistent basis and show you how to integrate them into your learning process so you can achieve [music] at the highest levels.
So, let's start with the first and most underestimated method. Method one, asking specific questions. One of the biggest obstacles I see among students and professionals alike is vague, unclear thinking. For instance, some of you have even asked me questions such as, "How do I improve my learning ability? How do I improve my memory? How can I improve my writing?"
Here's the problem with this, and it's probably the bottleneck in your learning process. If you ask general questions, you will only ever receive general answers. You see, those questions I just mentioned are so general that they can't possibly generate useful answers. Learning what, for what purpose, in what time frame, in what context, with what constraints?
And I see this constantly among my test prep students. They'll struggle with a problem for 10 minutes, get frustrated, and finally just choose an answer randomly. However, the real issue here is often not their understanding of the mechanics of the problem. Instead, the real issue is often simply that they never took the time to identify exactly what the question was asking. Once they slow down and define the task precisely, the solution often becomes obvious.
But what about you? Can you identify an area of your life in which something similar is happening to you? Well, this same thing happens with respect to writing essays, pursuing projects, and even engaging in career planning. People start moving forward and taking action without knowing what problem they're actually trying to solve.
And the philosopher Socrates embodied this habit of precision. [music] You see, Socrates was famous for walking into conversations and immediately noticing when the word in someone's claim had never been clarified. In Plato's dialogues, Socrates often lets someone make a bold statement. Justice is X. Courage is Y. Piety is Z. And then he does something that feels almost unfair. He asks them to define the word they're using as if they were writing a dictionary entry. And then he tests that definition against real cases.
In the Uifro, for example, he meets Uthifer outside the courthouse. Uthifer is there because he's prosecuting his own father and he's convinced this is a righteous act. Socrates seizes on the moment because Uthifer is claiming deep moral knowledge. So Socrates asks him for a definition of piety, not an example of a pious act. Euthifer offers one anyway. He essentially responds, "Well, what I'm doing right now is pious." Socrates however doesn't accept this and so he challenges Uthifer again and he keeps pressing Ethifro again and again and again until Uthifer comes to an important realization. He simply can't answer the question and he must instead accept that his reasoning is vague.
But you see if his reasoning was vague it means that he didn't fully understand his own position. And it's this same process you must follow if you want to learn anything at more than just a surface level. And it's the same issue I see all the time among my students. A student thinks they're stuck on the problem, but the actual problem is that the terms and the task simply weren't defined precisely enough. And if you don't know what success looks like, you can't move toward it.
But how can you integrate this method into your own learning process? Well, to practice this, try the following drill. Take any vague goal you have. Learning a subject, improving a skill, solving a problem, and force it into three constraints. First, specify exactly what you're trying to learn. Not psychology, but social psychology. conformity and persuasion or neuroscience action potentials and synaptic transmission. Second, define why you need it and in what context you'll use it. Third, decide what would count as evidence that you've improved. Evidence needs to be observable.
Some examples of this include, but are not limited to one, being able to explain the concept without notes. Two, being able to solve five specific problem types in a row. Three, being able to write a one-page argument that incorporates counterarguments and replies to those counterarguments. Or four, being able to teach it to someone else so that the person understands it. If you can't answer those three questions clearly, you're not ready to begin yet. And this one method alone eliminates a huge amount of wasted effort.
And so once your questions are precise, you can then unlock the second method, method two, summarization. Most people confuse familiarity with understanding. They read a book or watch a video and it totally makes sense in the moment, so they assume they've learned and absorbed it. However, when they try to explain it later, or worse yet, they try to apply it, they have no idea what to do.
I experienced this myself as a student in math classes when I was in high school. I would watch a teacher solve a problem on the board and it seemed to make sense in the moment. Okay, I got it, I would tell myself. But later when I tried to solve a similar problem alone, I didn't even know how to get started with the problem. In other words, I thought I had learned the concept, but the fact that I couldn't reproduce it on my own proved this to be false.
And so that's why after each problem I do with the student, I insist they teach the material back to me in their own words, step by step. And I don't let them off the hook. I interrogate them. At every step, I ask, "Why? How do you know that? What justifies this conclusion? give me the exact rule because if you can't summarize an idea clearly that means you don't own it yet."
A powerful historical example of this approach is the philosopher John Stewart Mill and historically speaking we have unusually direct insight into how he was trained. You see Mill didn't become an extraordinary thinker because he read a few famous books and had some inspiring insights. His intellectual development was engineered through a brutal consistent routine imposed by his father James Mill. From early childhood, Mill was pushed into intensive reading, Greek, Latin, history, logic, and then required to reproduce the material. His father didn't simply ask, "You get it now? Yes. Oh, that's good." But honestly, that's how most of us are taught in school. And it's no wonder so many otherwise talented and intelligent students fall through the cracks and come to believe they're stupid. But I have seen enough students go from zero to top performance that I know firsthand it's largely a matter of pedagogical methods, not the students themselves.
In his autobiography, Mill describes being made to take long walks with his father where the entire purpose was recitation and reconstruction. He would read a section of the book and later he had to give an account of it, what the author argued, how the argument was structured, what the key distinctions were, and what would follow if the author were right. He wasn't allowed to hide behind elegant phrases or the author's own language as many students do and maybe as you do too. Instead, he had to restate the ideas in his own words until the structure was clear enough to be remembered and used.
But this wasn't the end of it because it was at this point that the pressure increased. His father would question him, push him to clarify vague phrases, demand definitions, and force him to connect the reading to earlier ideas he had learned. And this all sounds pretty brutal, but you know what? To become a great thinker, you have to be pushed and stretched. You have to be temporarily overwhelmed. And so, it sounds simple, but this is exactly why summarization is not simply a nice to have skill. It's a skill that literally rewires your brain and makes you more intelligent.
But if it's so essential, how can you methodically build it? Well, one method is chunking. Instead of trying to summarize an entire passage or concept at once, you can break it into smaller, more manageable parts. Read one paragraph, write a one-s sentence summary of what it actually says, then move to the next. Only after you've summarized each chunk do you combine them into a larger understanding. This allows you to manage the information incrementally. And this is a method I teach to my own students all the time.
Another approach is to understand what a main idea actually is. You see, most of us are taught in school that the main idea is the central message of the text or something like that. But like what? Seriously, do you see how that definition is so subjective and open to interpretation? No wonder so many people struggle with this. Instead, we need a definition that is measurable. namely to understand a main idea as whatever words, phrases or themes are repeated the most. You see, when you group these repetitions together, the main idea emerges naturally and objectively. Repetitions are something you can actually count, not something you have to vaguely interpret.
To practice this, take a short passage and do what's called scanning. Scanning isn't reading, per se. It's simply the act of pouring your eyes through the text to try to catch which words, phrases, or themes keep popping up. Once you've got some idea of this, then read the passage in full. After you've read it, write a one to two sentence summary of the main idea. Then challenge yourself to compress that into a one-s sentence version. Keep practicing this way because this is ultimately how mere familiarity evolves into understanding.
And it's these sorts of methods as well as many others that I train and teach students on in my critical thinking academy which you can learn more about at the link in the pin comment below. All right. So once you can summarize accurately, you're ready for the third method. Method three, deep encoding.
Modern education often rewards pattern recognition more than understanding. And this is what I mean. Students often come to me for standardized test preparation for tests such as the SAT and ACT. And after having taught these tests for many years and helping countless students achieve top scores on these tests, I can tell you with full confidence, you can do really well on this test yet not really understand the material. And how is that possible? Allow me to explain.
So, let's start with the question, how do you actually succeed on any standardized test? The answer should be obvious yet unsettling. You simply learn the test. But what does this mean? Well, you see, there are only so many problem types on each test. And so, for each problem type, you simply learn how to recognize certain patterns in the wording, in the information you're given, and so on. And over time, in practice, a mediocre performer can become a top performer on these tests simply by learning how to match specific strategies to specific patterns in the question.
And so, you tell me, are the students learning the actual content or are they simply learning how to do well on this particular test? Well, it's the latter. And I'd be happy to debate anyone on this. And I've seen this problem occur outside of test prep. Also, I've seen students get A's in statistics who don't really understand what a statistical test actually is, or ace calculus without being able to explain what an integral represents.
And so, remember this because it's a key takeaway here. Performance and understanding are not the same thing. But how can you close this gap? Well, here are three evidence-based drills you can engage in to integrate deep encoding into your learning.
First, the explain why drill. After reading a concept or solving a problem, explain why it works in plain language without using the original wording. If you can't do this, your understanding is still surface level. Second, the evidence evaluation drill. For every claim, or answer you give, point to the exact word, phrase, or data point, or rule that justifies it. No evidence, no discrete principle or rule, no credit, even if the answer happens to be correct. Third, the counter example test. After settling on an explanation, ask yourself what would have to be true for it to be wrong. Then check whether the text, problem, or data allow for that possibility. This prevents you from latching on to the first plausible answer and teaches you to evaluate alternatives.
These drills are simple, but they're demanding. They slow you down at first, but you know that's the point. Deep encoding replaces automatic pattern matching with deliberate reason. Over time, this builds understanding that transfers across questions, [music] across subjects, and into real world decision-making.
If you want to keep leveling up your critical thinking to make a massive impact not only on your own life, but also on the lives of countless others, then be sure to watch this next.