How to Think 3x Faster in 7 Days (from a Top 1% Med Student)
Summary
TLDRIn this informative video, Salim, a med student, shares strategies to enhance thinking and learning efficiency using a modified Bloom's Taxonomy. He introduces six levels of thinking, from basic recall to advanced application, and emphasizes actionable steps to climb each level. Techniques like active recall, spaced repetition, deeper descriptions, and teaching others are discussed. Salim also highlights the importance of applying knowledge in diverse scenarios and having a mentor to guide through the higher levels of critical thinking and creativity, ultimately aiming to help viewers reach their full potential.
Takeaways
- 📚 Salim, a med student, shares his method for mastering thousands of medical topics efficiently.
- 🧠 The script outlines six levels of thinking from beginner to genius, based on a modified Bloom’s Taxonomy.
- 🔑 Level 1 focuses on recalling facts and concepts, with active recall and spaced repetition as key techniques.
- 📝 Level 2 emphasizes understanding by creating deeper descriptions and simplifying explanations for others.
- 🤔 Level 3 is about applying knowledge to new situations, with practical application and a 1:2:1 learning to application ratio.
- 🔍 Levels 4 and 5 involve analyzing and evaluating information, which can enhance general productivity and academic performance.
- 📝 AI tools like ChatGPT can be used to practice higher levels of thinking by generating and marking essay questions.
- 💡 The Create stage, Level 6, encourages original thought and application, often seen in academic research or personal development.
- 👨🏫 Having a mentor can significantly speed up the process of reaching higher levels of thinking by providing guidance and experience.
- 🚀 Overcoming the fear of taking action is crucial for actualizing potential and achieving goals, as discussed in another video by Salim.
- 🔄 The script suggests a systematic approach to learning and thinking that can be adapted to various areas of life for personal and academic success.
Q & A
What is the main purpose of the video script?
-The main purpose of the video script is to guide viewers through six levels of thinking, from beginner to genius, using a modified Bloom's Taxonomy, with the aim of increasing the speed of thinking and learning.
Who is the speaker in the video script?
-The speaker in the video script is Salim, a medical student who has had to learn thousands of topics across various degrees and prefers not to spend all day studying.
What are the two key techniques mentioned for memorizing information effectively?
-The two key techniques mentioned for memorizing information effectively are active recall and spaced repetition.
What is active recall and how is it used in learning?
-Active recall is a learning technique where you create questions on a topic and test yourself on those questions, forcing your brain to actively retrieve information instead of passively reading.
What is spaced repetition and how does it enhance memory?
-Spaced repetition is a learning technique where you review material at increasing intervals over time, which helps to enhance long-term memory retention.
What tool does Salim recommend for implementing active recall and spaced repetition?
-Salim recommends using flashcard software like Anki for implementing active recall and spaced repetition.
What is the second stage of Bloom's Taxonomy according to the script, and how can it be improved?
-The second stage of Bloom's Taxonomy is understanding. It can be improved by creating deeper descriptions and explanations, and by teaching the learned material to someone else in simple terms.
Why is it important to apply knowledge to different scenarios?
-Applying knowledge to different scenarios is important because it helps to improve the ability to think critically and solve problems, which is necessary for higher levels of education and general productivity.
What is the '1:2:1 ratio' mentioned in the script and how does it work?
-The '1:2:1 ratio' is a system where for every hour spent learning, you spend two hours applying what you've learned, and then an additional hour delving deeper into the parts where you struggled, helping to cement understanding and improve thinking speed.
What are the 'Analyze' and 'Evaluate' stages of Bloom's Taxonomy and how can they be practiced?
-The 'Analyze' and 'Evaluate' stages of Bloom's Taxonomy involve making connections and critiquing different ideas. They can be practiced by using AI software to generate essay-style questions and marking your answers, as well as reflecting on and comparing different methods or systems for personal productivity.
What is the highest level of Bloom's Taxonomy and how can one reach it?
-The highest level of Bloom's Taxonomy is the 'Create' stage, which involves doing something that hasn't been done before. To reach this level, one can have a mentor for guidance, learn from the experiences of others, and apply the insights gained to create new ideas or solutions.
What common problem does the script mention that prevents people from taking action?
-The script mentions that a common problem that prevents people from taking action is a fear of taking action itself, which can be overcome by understanding and addressing this fear.
Outlines
📚 Mastering Learning Techniques for Rapid Progress
In this paragraph, Salim, a medical student, introduces his journey to efficiently navigate through the extensive curriculum of medical school. He emphasizes the importance of not just memorizing facts but also understanding and applying them to new situations. Salim outlines the first three levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, starting with 'remembering' through active recall and spaced repetition techniques, such as using flashcard software like Anki. He then moves on to 'understanding' by creating deeper descriptions and explanations, suggesting the 'teach someone else' method to solidify comprehension. Lastly, he discusses the 'applying' level, advocating for diverse practical application and a 1:2:1 ratio of learning to application to reinforce knowledge and improve thinking speed.
🤓 Advancing to Higher Levels of Thinking and Productivity
This paragraph delves into the advanced stages of Bloom's Taxonomy, focusing on 'analyzing' and 'evaluating' information to make connections and critique ideas, which is crucial for high academic performance and personal productivity. Salim suggests using AI software like ChatGPT to generate essay questions that require higher-order thinking. He also touches on the benefits of this approach for general productivity, such as improving time management by evaluating different methods and selecting the most effective one. The paragraph concludes with the 'creating' stage, where Salim discusses the importance of mentorship in guiding one's journey through all six levels of thinking, both academically and personally, and overcoming the fear of taking action to reach one's full potential.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Active Recall
💡Spaced Repetition
💡Bloom's Taxonomy
💡Understanding
💡Applying Knowledge
💡Diverse Practical Component
💡1:2:1 Ratio
💡Analyze
💡Evaluate
💡Create
💡Mentor
Highlights
Salim, a med student, introduces a method to learn thousands of topics efficiently across different educational levels.
Six levels of thinking from beginner to genius are outlined using a modified Bloom’s Taxonomy.
The importance of active recall and spaced repetition for memorizing facts, especially useful for med students.
Flashcard software like Anki is recommended for implementing spaced repetition effectively.
Creating deeper descriptions by asking 'why' multiple times to assess understanding of a topic.
The adage 'If you can't explain it to a 6-year old, you don't understand it yourself' is used to emphasize the importance of clear explanations.
Practical application of knowledge through diverse scenarios to improve thinking and learning efficiency.
A 1:2:1 ratio strategy for learning, applying, and revisiting difficult topics to enhance understanding.
The challenge of applying knowledge to different scenarios as a key aspect of the 'Apply' stage of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Using AI software like ChatGPT to generate essay questions for higher-level thinking practice.
The significance of making connections and critiquing ideas in the 'Analyze' and 'Evaluate' stages of thinking.
Mentorship as a crucial factor in reaching the highest level of thinking and achieving academic and personal success.
Overcoming the fear of taking action as a common barrier to reaching one's potential.
The role of a mentor in providing guidance, avoiding common mistakes, and learning efficient methods.
The concept of using the speaker's life advice and strategies as a form of mentorship for personal and academic growth.
The video's offer to help viewers overcome their fear of taking action through additional resources.
Transcripts
Imagine, if you could get through all of your work in just a few hours,
instead of being like everyone else spending all day studying and never making any progress.
I’m Salim, I’m a med student, and I’ve had to learn thousands of topics across med school,
my undergrad, and my postgraduate degree - and I never wanted to spend all day thinking and
studying as most people did, because I had other things I wanted to spend time on too.
So I’ll go through the 6 levels of thinking from beginner to
genius using a modified Bloom’s Taxonomy with actionable steps at
each stage - so that you can massively increase how fast you think and learn
And most people are stuck at level 3, so stick around until the end to
see how you can get to level 6, which is how the top 0.1% think.
So at the bottom of the pyramid is something we’ve spent a lot of time on,
so I think it’s safe to keep it short.
And that’s knowing how to recall facts and basic concepts - so knowing how to remember things.
I’ve had to learn thousands of random facts at med school so this is something I’ve had
to master - and the best way to remember is by using active recall and spaced repetition.
Skip ahead if you already know what they are, but for those that don’t know - active recall is when
you take a topic, make questions on that topic, and test yourself on those questions - so you
force your brain to actively retrieve information, instead of just passively reading things.
And spaced repetition is just doing these questions at increasing intervals over time.
The best way I’ve found to do this is by using flashcard software like Anki - I
have a brief guide linked in the description box below, so check it out after the video.
But the problem is, just being able to memorize or remember isn’t enough for exams or higher
levels of education, so to get a deeper level of thinking, you need to know how
to understand what you learn - and this is what the second stage of Bloom’s Taxonomy is about.
And there’s a few ways to improve how well you can understand something
you’re learning so that you can think faster.
The first is to create deeper descriptions.
When you’re thinking about something you’re trying to understand,
write down exactly what you know about the topic - for each part of what you wrote down,
create a deeper description of it to assess your understanding by asking ‘why’.
Doing this successfully about 2 or 3 times is usually enough to show that you fully understand
something, and as you do this, you’ll get faster at thinking when it comes to learning new things.
The second way to understand better so that you think faster is by creating explanations - there’s
the saying that “if you can’t explain it to a 6-year old, you don’t understand it yourself”.
So, if you can teach someone you know about something you’ve learnt in simple terms,
then it means you have a good understanding.
But I’m not going to tell you to find a 6 year old, because instead, you should use a friend.
Have your friend learn one topic, and you learn another, and teach each other the
topics and see if you’ve both done a good job at explaining by repeating it back.
So after you practise understanding, you’ll grasp new concepts quicker too, but the problem a lot
of people have is that even though they understand things, they find it difficult to answer questions
which have different scenarios - and thinking to Apply is what the third stage is about.
This is being able to use the information you’ve gathered and apply it to new situations,
which is necessary for getting a high grade at university,
or even for improving general productivity, such as thinking of ways to manage your time better.
And there’s a few ways to improve your ability to apply your knowledge,
with the second way being the best thing to do.
But the first thing everybody should do to improve their thinking to effectively
apply what they learn is to have a diverse practical component to what you’re learning.
So if you’re learning a subject, that’s doing practise questions that increase
in difficulty so that you get used to applying the concepts you learn into different scenarios.
People fall into the trap of staying comfortable, and stick with doing the same simple questions
because it makes them feel good - but that won’t help you get the higher grade
or help you think faster; you need to practise applying knowledge into a range of scenarios.
But an even better thing to do to reach the top of level 3, is to create a system to streamline how
you apply knowledge, so that you can think fast, faster - and this involves using a 1:2:1 ratio.
For every hour you spend learning something,
spend two times as much time applying what you’ve learnt.
And after you apply what you learn, go over the specific parts where you struggled,
and spend an equivalent amount of time going deper into the topic - usually this involves working on
your level 1 and 2 more before going more into the practical application of the knowledge.
So for example, if I spent an hour on neurology, I’d then spend 2 hours going through questions,
and then for anything I found difficult, I’d go into that topic for another hour - then repeat
the 2 hours of going through questions again until I’m fully confident in them.
This system makes you think faster because you go through gaps in your knowledge
and cement your understanding through a systematic approach.
And that cuts out the problem people have of being unsure of what to do next or how
to improve - helping you go from level 1 to 3 of thinking for any topic in a fraction of the time.
So level 3 is where most people end up, but the next two levels pair up well together and is
where it begins to get more advanced - and these are known as the Analyze and Evaluate stages.
These levels are harder because it’s not just about extracting what you know and applying it to
a given scenario - it’s about making connections and critiquing different ideas, which you might
commonly see in essay-based questions where you compare and contrast topics or information.
But on a wider scale, these levels of thinking can improve your general productivity too,
because you can think about how to personalize certain methods or systems
for your own workflow - but first I’ll start with the academic application of this stage.
A very simple way to practise developing these levels of thinking
is to use AI software like ChatGPT - using it to generate essay-style
questions for you on topics you want to have higher levels of thinking for.
For example, if you’re learning about neurology and specifically strokes,
you can put this into ChatGPT and ask it to make an essay question based on
levels 4 and 5 of Bloom’s Taxonomy, and have it mark your answer after.
You can also be quite vague with what you want by copying this prompt,
and it’ll give you different topics that requires you to critically think and build connections.
This works well to deepen your knowledge of a topic, and by repeating this over time,
you’ll adapt and see yourself thinking faster even for complex topics - and
that’s because you become better at connecting multiple concepts.
And it’s the top learners that master this to get the highest grades.
And I said these levels of thinking are good for improving general productivity
too - for example, if you’re trying to improve your time management and
saw my video on time management but also other people’s videos,
you can analyze and evaluate which methods work best for your specific workflow.
And that could be by starting at level 3 and applying those methods, then thinking
through level 4 and 5 where you reflect on how each method improved your productivity
based on how much you got done with each one - then picking the one that worked best for you.
And now, to have the highest level of thinking, you need to do something that’s
not been done before, which is why this is the Create stage of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
But there’s also a wider stage for this, which I’ll get to later.
But first as an example, this could be at university where
you’re aiming to work on a publication.
This isn’t easy to do and needs you to think faster,
because there’s a lot more moving parts involved, from carrying out primary
research, doing secondary research, analyzing the results, and more.
But there are ways to maximize how fast you get to this stage,
which also means how fast you climb up all 6 stages.
And the best way to do this, is by having a mentor to guide you.
There’s a reason why people who are highly successful still have coaches - they effectively
have a second brain that’s a step ahead and has more experience that they can learn from them,
because they’ll learn to avoid common mistakes and know the most efficient methods to reach the top.
So for you, this could be having a teacher or professor give you guidance on how to
go about working on research so you have a good starting point,
and someone who you can go to for direction when you feel lost.
And I said that there’s a wider stage for this,
and to me this is what people including myself are for.
Using me as a mentor based on what I advise and show in my videos is
a way for you to create a life where you reach your potential,
not just in your academic life, but also in your personal life.
And if you can adopt the way of thinking that I’ve applied in my life to reach my goals,
then that’s going to help you reach this higher level of thinking too.
But even if you have what it takes to get through all six levels of thinking,
you might find it difficult to take action.
And it’s not because you’re lazy or that you’re a procrastinator - a more common problem people
have that they don’t even realise, is that they have a fear of taking action,
which stops them from reaching their potential.
So in this video here, I talk about how I overcame my fear of taking action which helped me get to
where I am today - and you can overcome this fear, by watching the video to take the right steps.
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