Accelerated Learning

Accelerated learning, what is it and why are you reading about it? It’s pretty self-explanatory really. Accelerated learning is learning that occurs faster than traditional methods generally allow.

Learning in the 20th century meant going to class, doing as you’re told, speaking only when spoken to and trying to rote learn endless piles of information on every topic imaginable. No wonder it’s hard to learn anything this way. Our brains are not equipped to absorb information like this.

The problem is that this is the way learning still occurs. Most institutions employ these same methods. We are learning to function in a world we are no longer in. these days if you only speak when spoken to you are out the door, things will not happen. You’ve got to make it happen, build it, work in teams etc.

Because we live in the 21st century we need to learn in a way that is congruent with today’s demands. This requires content-free, timeless tools and strategies. The reason being that the world and society is changing so rapidly that it would be impossible to keep up with all the specifics like your times tables.

That’s where accelerated learning applies. Life is fast-paced, it is constantly changing and evolving. This is happening faster than ever before. If you simply want to keep up you need to learn and develop much more rapidly, and that’s just for keeping up. To actually excel you need accelerated learning and skill acquisition strategies. If you try and rote learn the way you were taught in school you will most certainly be left behind.

What is Accelerated Learning?

Learning occurs when you link an unknown to a known. There are a certain number of things that you already know, hopefully. Anything new that you learn needs to be linked to one or more of these things in order to understand it, that’s why metaphors and practical examples work so well. This is the fastest way to to learn the bare basics of something with enough information to start going to deeper layers. It’s like if I provide you with a metaphor that explains how a muscle contracts, you will understand it straight away, provided that the metaphor is using an example you can relate to. On the other hand if I were to explain it to you in straight scientific facts you would look at me like I was speaking alien. When there is nothing to relate it to there is no way for your brain to comprehend it.

To look at learning in a broader sense, it is the process of acquiring skills and/or information for practical use.

Learning is constant, it never ceases. In order to have any new experiences you must first learn information or a new skill.

What is Accelerated Learning?

Accelerated learning is simply learning something at a more rapid rate than normal. In order for accelerated learning to occur there must be strategies in place that allow the brain to more rapidly take in, store and access information.

There have been many technologies claiming to teach accelerated learning, things such as NLP, mind-mapping, phonetics and many others. In order to make a judgement on the most effective tools you must first understand how the brain takes in and utilises the information that comes in.

The human brain is bombarded with information all the time. That’s why it has in-built mechanisms that filter out anything considered irrelevant. How does it determine relevance? Through conditioning, values, beliefs etc. It’s our years of experience and our current thinking patterns and focus that determines what the brain filters out and what it actually allows into conscious awareness.

Out of all the information your brain receives only 5-9 chunks of it actually make it through the filters. That translates to about 134 bits of information on average. That’s out of a possible 2 million. That’s one hell of a lot of input that doesn’t make it through.

After reading the above paragraph, hopefully you now understand that we are limited in learning by the amount of information we can uptake at one time. The 5-9 chunks of information are fixed, you can’t fit more chunks in, otherwise you would literally go insane through information overload. However you can fit more information into each chunk. The 134 bits is just an average estimate. That 134 can be increased by making each chunk a richer, denser information source.

Accelerated learning strategies work best when they appeal to the brain’s ability to take in, store and utilise information. NLP and other hypnosis based technologies do this. The key is fitting more information into each of those chunks so that it doesn’t really feel like there is any more information coming in at all.

Lets use driving as an example. When you first begin learning to drive you are taught a bunch of individual tasks. You have to consciously think about steering, accelerating, braking, changing gears etc. Each one of these tasks occupies its own chunk.

As you learn to drive and get more advanced you are gradually capable of doing many of these things without thinking about them. This is because the chunks become larger and what used to occupy a whole chunk is now condensed so that more chunks of information can be squeezed into the same chunk for unconscious access. So it makes sense that the more you can fit into each chunk the more your brain is capable of doing at any one time.

More Input, Same Timeframe

The larger the chunk of information that you are taking in the more you are using the capability of your brain. The following are a few simple guidelines for increasing the amount of information occupying each chunk. This is accelerated learning at its simplest.

• Think like a kid: Kids have fun as they learn. Kids don’t think about the optimal learning strategy, they just learn stuff that interests them. As soon as they lose interest or stop having fun they cease to learn. This is not that their brain is any less capable, it simply means they are naturally not using their full potential because their unconscious strategy has been violated.

• Think abstract, not details: Those who obsess over all the details learn more slowly than people who see something as a whole. Aim to understand the abstract or acquire the whole skill at once. Forget about being in control of all the details, see the big picture.

• Accelerated learning, and all learning for that matter is about taking in information and storing it unconsciously, appeal to that need: If something has to be sorted through and thought about before execution then you haven’t really learned it. Learn and forget, that’s the tip. Once you have learned to do something it is stored unconsciously, you don’t have to dwell and think about it, when it’s used it will be immediately accessible.

• People learn best when they learn fast: Lucky for you since you’re reading about accelerated learning. What I mean is that learning must be intensive, not spread thin. In order to take in the most amount of information you need to overload the conscious part of your brain so that the unconscious portion can go about taking in and storing it in the right places. Total immersion is the key here.

Accelerated learning is simply about getting the brain to take in more information, store it and access it rapidly for later use. There are many tools to use and some may be complex and as a result appear like they work better. KEEP IT SIMPLE! The guidelines above are rather broad and loose but they are the basic strategies I personally use to teach people the science of learning more effectively.

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