The BE FAST Method🔗
B - Belief🔗
If you don't believe you can or if you believe you can't, you're right.
Avoid mental blocks by believing you can do better.
Simple imagination exercise involving a lateral hand stretch:
- stretch right hand to the back
- close eyes and imagine stretching the hand 2-3-4 times as farther as you did the first time
- open eyes and stretch again => you should go much further just by having altered your belief state
E - Exercise (as your body moves your brain grooves)🔗
Neural elasticity comes from a healthy body. An active lifestyle pays off.
A nice similitude between working out:
- breaking the muscles out of the comfort zone (by activating them)
- and then feeding them with the correct nutrients
and learning:
- breaking the current state to go into superior states: joy, peace, happiness, fascination, curiosity
- feeding the brain with new information
F - Forget (beginner's mindset)🔗
A common roadblock for learning is not adopting a beginner's mindset. If you think you already know something well enough you're less likely to pick up new information about the subject fast.
Your mind is like a parachute. It only works when it's open.
Forget what you already know about the subject.
Forget about anything that's not urgent and important. You can't multitask. If your brain is thinking about 4 different things, you're not fully present – so you won't learn.
Forget your limitations.
A - Active (learning is not a spectator's sport)🔗
Learning is more effective when you engage: ask better questions and take better notes.
You learn by creating information and being active in the process.
S - State (all learning is state dependent)🔗
Information combined with emotion becomes a long-term memory.
Therefore it is paramount to be in a superior mood when learning.
Fun fact: a lot of people don't remember what they learned in school because the umbrella emotion for most of them was boredom.
Improving state:
- change your posture or your body or breathing
- sit or stand the way you would if you were totally energized
- think about how you’ll benefit from the information
Instead of being clever during the class, aim to be bewildered by the new information.
T - Teach (when you teach something you get to learn it twice)🔗
Learn with the intention of teaching it to somebody else.
Pretend you had to give a presentation of what you've learned today:
- you'd ask better questions
- you'd take more detailed notes
- you'd pay closer attention