How to learn more easily and effectively: 10 steps to the goal

Neuroplasticity – a unique gift with which we can achieve anything!

From a neuroscience perspective, the biological basis of learning lies in neuronal plasticity. This is the brain's remarkable ability to adapt and change in response to experiences. Change takes two forms: creating new neural connections or reconfiguring existing ones. Experience is transformed into networks of new electrical activity, which drives various forms of functional and structural change.

This means we can change our lives, behavior, attitudes, thinking patterns, and emotional reactivity to any stimuli. We can acquire new skills, build upon existing ones, and recover from brain injuries and strokes.

Thanks to neuroplasticity, we can do so many things—learn, create new worlds, forget traumas, bad habits, and pains, and free up space and resources for creativity and growth.

How to use neuroplasticity to learn better?

1. Warm-up and tuning

Study in the morning, protect this productive time, and use it to work on things that are truly important and valuable to you.

Be well-rested, fully hydrated, and fully motivated. Just before you actually start your study session, lovingly ask yourself a few questions:

– What do I want to achieve? Why do I want this? What drives me? What does my final goal look like?

Motivation inspired by love is extremely powerful and effective.

This "warm-up" in the form of a "preparatory" mental exercise stimulates the release of epinephrine, which boosts our alertness.

2. We need an adrenaline-activating event – a sense of urgency, a trigger for our alertness, drive, and motivation

In general, the brain loves to act on autopilot, out of habit; it loves to automate a maximum number of operations and save on volitional activities. It does this to minimize energy expenditure and optimize the body's functioning. And the brain on its own would find it very difficult to decide to "jump" out of the swamp of this "leisurely" mode unless we selectively and purposefully hint to it:

– Hey, my brain, listen to me right now! It's time for a change. Now! It's time for a concrete change. Is that clear?!

Examples of concrete change could be:

I must acquire a new motor skill – I'll learn to dance tango.

I must acquire a new emotional skill – not to react impulsively, to wait, to be stable and resilient to external stimuli.

I must acquire a new cognitive skill – I will learn Italian to read Umberto Eco in the original.

This mild stress-inducing imperative is absolutely necessary to get the process moving.

We repeat – the active presence of conscious attention is of critical importance. Why? Because we all suffer from living automatically, by inertia. And by habit. We are slaves to our habits. And to break out of this mechanistic chain, we need a trigger! We need a reasoned or deeply felt need for change. We need something that will abruptly break this mechanistic chain. And there is no need to wait for shattering, dramatic events in the form of diagnoses, divorces, or failed personal plans.

We can act proactively and preventively before catastrophic events and complications.

Under stress and in a state of high alertness, the brain begins to release epinephrine. Epinephrine is a hormone from the catecholamine group. It is chemically identical to adrenaline, but the difference between the two is that epinephrine is released in the brain, while adrenaline is secreted by the adrenal glands into the body. This surge of epinephrine keeps us on high alert.

This is a critically important moment: to be on high alert. To feel urgency. Heightened alertness and vigilance are very necessary. In this moment, all the scattered and diffuse power from the spotlight of our consciousness begins to slowly concentrate on a limited field. You don't wander; you focus on the specific task that stands before you and awaits.

Neuroplasticity is stimulated while a person is awake. Its real stabilization, however, happens during sleep! Sleep is extremely important for consolidating information.

3. We also need acetylcholine – for maintaining high concentration and laser focus

In addition to epinephrine, however, the process – improving or learning something new – also needs acetylcholine. It is what acts on the spotlight of attention and creates laser focus.

It is important to know and realize that we ourselves can controlledly release these two most important neurotransmitters for learning. And through them, we can create the necessary biochemical environment for optimal neuroplasticity.

We know that mental focus follows visual focus. To increase the concentration of acetylcholine, and consequently the level of focus on the task you need to perform, you can do this:

For 1 minute, focus and hold your visual attention on a specific small window – a point on the wall, a word in a book, or part of an object. You can blink if necessary. When our eyes are aimed at a specific target, we narrow our visual field to what is called "tunnel vision." The visual world shrinks to the limit of a point. This is exactly what activates a set of neurons in the brainstem and triggers the release of norepinephrine, epinephrine, and acetylcholine.

The more we maintain the cone of our mental attention directed at something strictly specific, the clearer, more intense, and deeper the power of our focus becomes. And accordingly, our efficiency.

The opposite also works – once we expand our visual field and look at the horizon, we activate a part of the nervous system associated with relaxation and calm. This switch – 60 seconds of laser focus on a point in front of you and then directing your gaze to the horizon – is the best physiological trick to feel instantly calmer, more relaxed, and harmonious.

4. Now it is time to move on to the real, current task.

Work in 90-minute sessions. It is not possible for the brain to work at maximum capacity the whole time. And don't expect that from it. But for the new knowledge to "stick" in us, one must maintain deep focus on concentrated work for at least (!) an hour. Most people cannot endure more than 270 minutes of intensive learning every day. But champions can!

5. Repetition matters. Specificity does too. Intensity too.

• Inducing plasticity requires enough repetition. Within these 90 minutes, generate enough repetitions because progress is linear only up to a certain point. Then comes an exponential leap; it is inevitable – quantitative accumulations cause qualitative changes. The most successful people are actually always a model of consistency.

• Inducing plasticity requires sufficient intensity.

• Inducing plasticity requires sufficient specificity.

• Inducing plasticity requires sufficient will and drive!

How important this change is to you, how inspired you are by it, how strongly you want it... all of this matters immensely. The thirst and love for the process must be significant enough to trigger neuronal plasticity in you. The unyielding determination to achieve your dream, as well as the belief that you are part of something truly important, modulate in a special way the power of the training process, the underlying neural circuits, and the consolidation of new memory traces. An apathetic and listless attitude – logically – does not help.

6. Expect and accept mistakes

Mistakes can be portals to incredible discoveries. And as Henry Ford says – the only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

Brain imaging studies reveal something curious in this direction – mistakes during any learning session are "great informative reports." They index the presence of some breakdown in the systems and increase the activity of the neural circuits that "guard" our alertness. Makes sense, right? Should the brain notice the things we do correctly? No. But when we make a mistake and feel "startled," attention increases instantly. Failure is information. And if a person doesn't give up, but continues to build on their skills, then in the fertile soil of their brain, mechanisms begin to be built that connect the adaptive correction of an already made mistake with a growth mindset and self-improvement. So... it is useful to be intrigued by our mistakes.

Data from computational modeling of such situations suggest that an error rate of up to 15% for a training session may be optimal. This is how one develops courage in the face of challenges. And up to 15% errors in a training session help the brain stay alert and develop a growth mindset orientation.

7. Insert super short intervals of small, random breaks

Studies show that if from time to time, while we are learning something, we give ourselves a 10-second pause during which we do nothing, just look at the horizon, the neurons in the hippocampus and cortex – the areas of the brain involved in learning and memory – continue to be engaged in the same circular patterns of neural activity that we just interrupted. With the difference that during the pause, all the information is downloaded like archived files 10 times faster – which means that during the pause we get a 10 times more powerful and compressed version of neural repetitions of what we were just doing before the stop.

Conclusion: randomly inserted 10-second breaks during learning help.

How often? A ratio of 1 break every 2 minutes of learning is good, but don't forget that it is desirable for the distribution to be random and not every 2 minutes.

8. Activate the brain's reward systems with surprising rewards

We have brain structures and a collection of neural pathways responsible for all positive sensations and states – joy, happiness, pleasure, euphoria, gratitude, connection, relaxation.

All these pleasant sensations have as a delivery vehicle underlying secreted neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, and neurohormones.

The brain reward system is a mechanism that allows humans to associate a certain situation with pleasure.

And when a person associates happiness and a pleasant feeling with a given action, they stimulate the learning process. Or addiction. The line is like walking on very thin ice.

For example, the reward system feasts when people have sex. Orgasm can be something fantastic. People experience pleasure from it and, as a result, seek it out.

Sex addicts, however, become obsessed. The idea of sex totally consumes their lives, they pursue the pleasures of the flesh incessantly, again and again, and their brain is overactive and pathologically excited, feverishly waiting for the next dose of "erotic narcosis."

The neural circuits that control reward systems are closely linked to the circuits that drive motivation and desire. The question of how often to reward ourselves or others to maintain a high level of motivation has the following correct answer – make the reward not on a schedule and not systematically, but randomly and periodically. As the dose is very important!

What is in a casino? Adrenaline and unpredictability; there is nothing certain there. The casino "cultivates" a love of risk. And so, gamblers develop an uncontrollable addiction. At first, it is toward winning, but then, as paradoxical as it sounds, the gambling addict begins to seek out the loss, because it... brings much more adrenaline. And until they see the zeros... they simply don't get up from the table.

Against this background, it is quite clear why predictable rewards quickly lose their power and motivational impact. With them, adrenaline does not fly into the heavens at all.

9. After training, take a deep rest without sleep

Two recent studies published in the last year show that shallow naps and/or so-called Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) improve the speed and depth of learning.

10. Prioritize quality sleep.

The real secret of neuroplasticity is encoded in quality sleep.

The trigger for the process – changing and learning something new – is pulled when we are awake, during conscious focus and high alertness.

But..

However, the stabilization of this change, meaning the actual rewiring and reconfiguration of the brain, happens during deep sleep.

Quality sleep is extremely important!

It is one of the best assistants for our growth and self-improvement.

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