Learning How To Learn – Science Of Achievement
March 22, 2007 by Ryan Merlin · Leave a Comment
I just found this fantastic article over at the Passionate Users Blog.
Dubbed the “Crash course” in learning, this article is fairly long. But it’s a must read for anyone that wants to learn better, write better, think clearer, communicate better…hell, just straight up achieve whatever goals you set for yourself. This is the science of mind, personality and human achievement.
Do yourself a favor:
- Read it!
- Use it!
- Then teach it to someone else! (most important)
Learning Spanish Effectively – Day 14
March 14, 2007 by Ryan Merlin · Leave a Comment
I’m definitely off to a slower start on my learning Spanish project than I’d really like. In fact the truth is that the first week is probably the most important and I slacked. But, I have also been lining up some really kick ass tools and ides that have really been coming together.
As usual, I’m so much more interested in the structure of HOW to learn than just diving in trying to do as much as I can. I’ll find the best of the best when it comes to learning smarter and more effective vs learning harder. And now that I’m certified in NLP (Neuro-Linguistics Programming) I know so many incredibly powerful tools that I’ve already started to integrate and experiment with. Including motivation, directing attention, induction to create the learning state/flow state, language patterns, memory creation and access, eye patterns, and more. There’s so much on this and I’ll talk more about it later.
ALL LEARNING, ALL BEHAVIOR, ALL CHANGE IS UNCONSCIOUS.
So how does one access their unconscious mind? And how can one use that for the most effective and powerful learning and growth? Glad, you asked. Because that’s my mission.
Having said that, I want to illustrate what I’ve done so far:
There’s a few important concepts that I always try to keep in mind as I’m designing my strategies and ideas for learning in the most effective ways. It’s amazing to see some of these come from my 4 hour sleep project.
- Learning, training, growth is much more effective when it’s not forced. Because if one has to force it, it means there’s a mental process that is distracting, ie. worried about something else, fear of failure, frustration from other areas of life, etc. which seriously limits focus, attention and resources in learning.
- Create the mind/body state – The Learning State/Flow State – where I’m totally open and receptive (removing resistance) to pushing my limits and venturing into the discomfort zone for growth. What I’ve found is that most people don’t do this or don’t know, but this is so incredibly powerful.
- Have a goal
- Integrate it in fun, meaningful and interesting ways.
- Make it unconscious – like I said above. I’ve already started to catch myself saying words and phrases in spanish automatically without trying, or sining some Spanish tunes in my head. Now that’s cool!!!
I’ve also lined up some really great resources for me in my project
- My Housemate Carol is actually from Spain and have hired her as a tutor.
- Spanish audio lessons that I ripped to my iPod from the library (Definitely do this)
- Course book – Complete Spanish Grammer (sounds fun I know, but is actually the most effective one that Carol and I found)
- Spanish music – that I like and can even workout to, ie. raggaeton. – Powerful unconscious learning!
- Local Spanish speaking group here in Boulder – This is awesome and I highly recommend it!
Some of the best things that have worked so far, has to do with working to create an ongoing experience of immersion into the new language. But there’s a catch. Simply going for more exposure is not necessarily better, and can actually be a turn off. When I think about some of my friends who have traveled to foreign countries for only a month and had a quantum leap in their fluency in that language, my first thought is that getting immersed in all angles is the best possible way.
But I would argue that you only really learn when it’s important to you. Which means that you have to start with the purpose or intention (or necessity) of accepting the challenge. So, even if someone is living in a Spanish speaking country they’ll still only learn when they need to/really want to. It’s just that it becomes more of a necessity in order to live there, ultimately providing continuous opportunities. But I know just as many people (if not more) that traveled somewhere with no intention of learning the language, and so they didn’t. No matter how long they were there. Don’t you?
So the trick is to create immersion into specific areas that really resonate with me and where I would be more motivated to accept the challenge of learning & growing. So far, I’ve already scored with some creative ways to combine normal activities to be more of an immersion into Spanish.
- Movies? Watch the Spanish version of good movies that I want to watch (also a perfect opportunity to engage the mind/body & stretch after workouts, double whammy)
- Watch the news in Spanish, which helps because I’m interested in the topics, it’s relevent, and usually better spoken than some of the normal crap on TV.
- Listen to Spanish lessons on my iPod everywhere I can, driving, biking, running, working out.
- Listen to Spanish News Radio in my car, just like TV above.
- Talk with others. If you don’t know any find some, even easier now with the internet.
This is such a blast. Much more to come.
About my Learning Spanish Effectively Program.
Learn Spanish – Mind Tools
March 13, 2007 by Ryan Merlin · 1 Comment
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Right now I’m in search mode for the best of the best when it come to tool and techniques for learning a new language for my current project. Here are a few tools from Mind Tools which is always a good site to start with. Using the Tools: Foreign languages are the ideal subject area for the use of memory techniques. Learning vocabulary is often a matter of associating a meaningless collection of syllables with a word in your own language. Traditionally people have associated these words by repetition – by saying the word in their own language and the foreign language time and time and time and time again. You can improve on this tedious way of learning by using three good techniques: |
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1. Using Mnemonics to link words For example, in learning English/French vocabulary:
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This technique was formalized by Dr. Michael Gruneberg, and is known as the ‘LinkWord’ technique. He has produced language books (an example is German by Association) in many language pairs to help students acquire the basic vocabulary needed to get by in the language (usually about 1000 words). It is claimed that using this technique this basic vocabulary can be learned in just 10 hours.
2. The Town Language Mnemonic
This is a very elegant, effective mnemonic that fuses a sophisticated variant of the Roman Room system with the system described above
This depends on the fact that the basic vocabulary of a language relates to everyday things: things that you can usually find in a city, town or village. To use the technique, choose a town that you are very familiar with. Use objects within that place as the cues to recall the images that link to foreign words.
Nouns in the town:
Nouns should be associated to the most relevant locations: for example, the image coding the foreign word for book could be associated with a book on a shelf in the library. You could associate the word for bread with an image of a loaf in a baker’s shop. Words for vegetables could be associated with parts of a display outside a greengrocer’s. Perhaps there is a farm just outside the town that allows all the animal name associations to be made.
Adjectives in the park:
Adjectives can be associated with a garden or park within the town: words such as green, smelly, bright, small, cold, etc. can be easily related to objects in a park. Perhaps there is a pond there, or a small wood, or perhaps people with different characteristics are walking around.
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Verbs in the sports center:
Remembering Genders |
Many Languages, many towns
Another elegant spin-off of the technique comes when learning several languages: normally this can cause confusion. With the town mnemonic, all you need do is choose a different city, town or village for each language to be learned. Ideally this might be in the relevant country. Practically, however, you might just decide to use a local town with the appropriate foreign flavor.
3. The hundred most common words
Tony Buzan, in his book ‘Using your Memory’, points out that just 100 words comprise 50% of all words used in conversation in a language. Learning this core 100 words gets you a long way towards being able to speak in that language, albeit at a basic level. The 100 basic words used in conversation are shown below:
| 1. A,an | 2. After | 3. Again | 4. All | 5. Almost |
| 6. Also | 7. Always | 8. And | 9. Because | 10. Before |
| 11. Big | 12. But | 13. (I) can | 14. (I) come | 15. Either/or |
| 16. (I) find | 17. First | 18. For | 19. Friend | 20. From |
| 21. (I) go | 22. Good | 23. Good-bye | 24. Happy | 25. (I) have |
| 26. He | 27. Hello | 28. Here | 29. How | 30. I |
| 31. (I) am | 32. If | 33. In | 34. (I) know | 35. Last |
| 36. (I) like | 37. Little | 38. (I) love | 39. (I) make | 40. Many |
| 41. One | 42. More | 43. Most | 44. Much | 45. My |
| 46. New | 47. No | 48. Not | 49. Now | 50. Of |
| 51. Often | 52. On | 53. One | 54. Only | 55. Or |
| 56. Other | 57. Our | 58. Out | 59. Over | 60. People |
| 61. Place | 62. Please | 63. Same | 64. (I) see | 65. She |
| 66. So | 67. Some | 68. Sometimes | 69. Still | 70. Such |
| 71. (I) tell | 72. Thank you | 73. That | 74. The | 75. Their |
| 76. Them | 77. Then | 78. There is | 79. They | 80. Thing |
| 81. (I) think | 82. This | 83. Time | 84. To | 85. Under |
| 86. Up | 87. Us | 88. (I) use | 89. Very | 90. We |
| 91. What | 92. When | 93. Where | 94. Which | 95. Who |
| 96. Why | 97. With | 98. Yes | 99. You | 100. Your |
(Extract reproduced from Use Your Memory by Tony Buzan with the permission of BBC Worldwide Limited, © Tony Buzan)
Summary
The three approaches to learning foreign languages shown here can be very effective. They help to point out:
- the most important words to learn
- show how to link words in your own language to words in a foreign language, and
- show how to structure recall of the language through use of the town mnemonic.
4 Hours Sleep Project – 1 Month – Final
March 8, 2007 by Ryan Merlin · 2 Comments
The final result of training myself to sleep 4 hours like Dean Karnazes has been so much better than I could have ever expected. After really sticking to the training through February and testing the progress every Friday night, I’ve taken the last few days to start to zero in on the new ideal sleep time. I’m excited to report that I’ve been really happy with right about 5 hours at night from midnight to 5 am. Then usually one 20-35 minute nap again before starting work or in the afternoon. The naps are the best part! I almost always wake up feeling totally juiced!
It continues to amaze me how much less is necessary when the quality is that much better.
I seem to have just as much energy as I ever had, if not more. Especially with training, working out, and in general. The human body’s ability to adapt is unbelievable, and usually ignored and accepted as is. For me, what works and what’s good, usually isn’t good enough and I want to improve it.
On that note, I’ve already started my next self-training experiment. For this month I’m shifting my focus, attention and energy into immersing myself into learning Spanish. I can stumble through understanding and (barely) speaking it right now. And it’s my intention to accelerate that process as much I possibly can through this month by finding the best of the best when it comes to learning, developing, and engaging myself in the process of being fluent in Spanish. Hey, with 3.5 extra hours every day now, I’ll even have more time to work with.
More on this later and my initial strategies and thoughts.
About my 4 Hour Sleep Project
4 Hours Sleep Project – Day 28
March 1, 2007 by Ryan Merlin · Leave a Comment
I originally started this experiment with the idea of trying it out for one month to experiment. Trying to give up all pre-conceived beliefs, standards, “research”, opinions, etc. And with the last few days approaching, I’m looking back at just how well the basic approach worked. Actually, I really want to continue to experiment with it using different strategies and technologies to keep improving.
For example I’ve really been trying to use the Neuro-Programmer program for sleeping and have even used it for meditation a couple times. I still don’t know if I’m completely sold on it yet. But I will tell you this, I took a nap today after a good strength workout and put on a track that is for “accelerated regeneration & Human Growth Hormone” and ended up taking only a 17 min nap feeling just as good as I do with a typical 30 – 40 min nap. Now that’s cool.
What do you think about the effects of specific sound waves on the brain and inducing specific states? I’m not completely sold but I do know the huge impact that sound has on physiology while you’re awake, just think music. You can change your mental state and physiology radically by just changing songs or radio stations. In other words, I feel like I have a lot more experimenting to go with the neuro programmer. I’m also trying to approach the company to sponsor this project and even carry it over in to performance areas such as when my racing season starts again, maybe even training who knows?
I also want to continue to work with the environment of where and when I sleep. For example, by far the hardest time of the day is between 4am and 6am, but once the sun comes up it’s totally different. So I’ve really been creative on how to maximize the 4-6am time. Instead of just reading, I’ll read while engaging my physiology at the same time such as a medicine ball or physical therapy balance board. Which, by the way, has actually helped me read better and retain more, Definitely worth checking out. Or starting out the morning with some tasks that are particularly inspiring and motiving for me. It’s all about momentum and having a purpose. Once the momentum is there, it’s fantastic. It’s definitely given me tons of reason to take a lot of action in towards my dream goals!
It continues to amuse me as so many people respond to my experiment automatically with aversion and the knee jerk reply “that’s crazy”. And then I get to have fun challenging their automatically programmed beliefs asking, “Have you ever considered that you could sleep less, have more time to live, and still feel just as energetic?” …..ummmm No. There’s only one way to know for sure.
About my 4 Hour Sleep Project
Floyd Landis – Train The Hardest & The Most To Win
February 25, 2007 by Ryan Merlin · Leave a Comment
After reading the article on Dean Karnazes that inspired me to experiment with 4 hour sleep training and the limits of human performance and training, I also found an incredible article on Floyd Landis. This is before the doping scandal, but paints an amazing picture of what it takes to race on that level. Sounds like he knows how to direct his energy, attention, and power in a distorted yet almost unbelievable direction. One can, almost feel his ability to overcome limits and pain.
From Outside Magazine
“Everybody wants to say, ‘I couldn’t win because of this or that,’ ” he says. “To my way of thinking, it doesn’t matter if your goddamn head fell off or your legs exploded. If you didn’t make it, you didn’t make it. One excuse is as good as another.”
Landis takes a sip and leans forward in his chair. “There’s only one rule: The guy who trains the hardest, the most, wins. Period. Because you won’t die. Even though you feel like you’ll die, you don’t actually die. Like when you’re training, you can always do one more. Always. As tired as you might think you are, you can always, always do one more.”
Z-Man rouses, concerned. “I hope some 16-year-old doesn’t read this and then go kill himself on the bike,” he says.
“That was what I did,” Landis says, not missing a beat. “I read something like that, and I trained like that, and, yeah, I was pretty damn depressed for a while. Then it got better.”
So there’s no such thing as overtraining?
“If you overtrained, it means that you didn’t train hard enough to handle that level of training,” Landis says, his fingertip rapping the table for emphasis. “So you weren’t overtrained; you were actually undertrained to begin with. So there’s the rule again: The guy who trains the hardest, the most, wins.”
“I saw firsthand what Lance did, and it was superhuman,” he continues. “I saw how his system worked. It’s not necessary for me to be like Lance in every way. But there are some things that I want to take from that and use.”
For instance?
“His boldness at taking charge of things. His willingness to say, This is what I want, and I’m going to take it. It’s very hard to compete against that.”
4 Hour Sleep Training – Week 3
February 25, 2007 by Ryan Merlin · Leave a Comment
Ok, next AHA!
Don’t all of a sudden go back to sleeping a normal 8 hour night.
Last night was was the 3rd week. And I actually woke up after 5:45 hours of sleep which was perfect. At that point I felt juiced and fantastic. But against my better judgment I figured that I would sleep in a bit more because I had a full intense training seminar today and tomorrow and worried about not having enough juju. Big mistake. After all of a sudden going back to sleep a “normal” 8 hour night, I woke up feeling like I over slept for 10 or 12 hours. Have you ever slept in way too much and tried to wake up feeling like a zombie? That’s pretty much where I was.
Despite the unexpected reverse lesson learned, it is another incredibly inspiring example of the ability of the human mind and body to adapt. I know 100% that I could sleep for 5-6 hours every night right now and still be juiced (maybe even more than normal like I’ve talked about earlier).
As with everything else, it’s part art and part science. Part internal and part external. Anything is possible, isn’t it? One just has to figure out the processes, strategies and tools. It’s the study of human excellence and human performance. Anyone can do what I’ve done in any area of their life, you just have to have a goal and know the rules of the game. What’s fun for me is that I’m still discovering the rules of this game. There’s still so much to experiment with, for example, the natural light alarm clock that I was talking with a good friend Rob about. Fortunately it ain’t over yet.