The Learning Formula
Have you ever attended a seminar only to forget all that was presented within a few days or a few weeks?
The Learning Formula course is part of the Placebo Talk learning session but I also make it available as a one-hour public talk. It presents information on why you learn and even why you fail to learn.
How do you spell relief?
Why Hook, 43, IHD.5 – REM
That mnemonic is the actual learning formula that I use and teach in my Placebo Talk course. It stands for the following:
If you have a strong enough why, it will hook you into learning, where you can learn four chunks of information, if you repeat it three times, and the repeats are completed immediately, in an hour, and in a day, and you fall into a rapid-eye-movement cycle during sleep.
Knowing the process of learning is the first step in solving your problem and it also gives you a blueprint to solve it.
There are all kinds of reasons why you forget training material. You may be over-stressed, have had a poor teacher, or just do not know how to create a habit from the self-help learning materialpresented.
I address all of these factors in the course.
The Learning Formula
In my Placebo Talk training program, before I teach people how they can change, I teach them how to learn. I use a brain-based learning method that I call the ‘learning formula’.
The learning formula is a representation of how information moves from short term, to working memory, to fixed working memory, to long term memory.
Here is the learning formula explanation: Why Hook, 43, IHD.5 - REM
As adults we need to know WHY the learning is important to us. If the ‘why’ is important enough to me, then it will HOOK me into learning, so I will want to learn. I call that the Why Hook.
At any given time, if unstressed, we can learn 4 chunks of information. In the learning formula (Why Hook, 43, IHD – REM), there are four chunks of information.
We can learn those four chunks of information if you REPEAT the information 3 TIMES.
IHD.5 stands for Immediate, Hour, and Day. To learn the repetition must be done Immediately, and then in an Hour and a half, and then in a Day and a half.
Within the day and a half, you need to go into REM stands for rapid eye movement component of the nightly sleep cycle. You need to get a good night's sleep in order to learn.
Failure to perform any of the steps in the process in the way that it is laid out can mean that there will be no long term of the material or information.