Do a “personal Podcast” While You Study
Memory is a tricky thing. Scientists have figured out how many pieces of information you can store in your short-term memory (about seven, although there are great workarounds for remembering more ), but if you really want to remember something, you need to go through it a bunch of times before it gets stuck. deep in your brain.
Whether you’re studying for a test at school or a presentation at work, you probably feel like you don’t have time to watch content over and over again , but you do if you’re doing a personal podcast.
How to make a “podcast” to help you learn
The next time you want to really remember the details of what you’re learning, open up the voice memo feature on your phone because you’re about to make yourself a little study podcast. Obviously, you could just read your notes aloud into a microphone; this is the easiest option, and a good one. (If you can memorize the speech, just say it in its entirety.) However, you have others. You can record separate “episodes” for each mini-topic you study, which will help you organize your thinking and provide an easy way to focus if you need to brush up on a specific area. really nice to listen to others, so make it useful for your own learning style. The U.S. Army suggests asking yourself repeated questions, pausing to give yourself time to answer, and then going ahead and pointing out the correct answer for the record. On Reddit, users suggest reading excerpts from textbooks into a microphone, or playing the role of a professor and “teaching” on the go .
The most important part comes after you have recorded your personal podcast: you have to listen to it. You should listen to this a lot . Play it through your car speakers or train headphones to make your trip productive. Play it at the grocery store when you’re running errands around the house and when you’re relaxing at night. Fall asleep listening to this.
Why it works
Picking up material from your personal podcast is an example of rote learning, the process by which we memorize something through repetition. But it also has other benefits. For example, even as you take notes and decide what to include in a mini podcast, you are learning—you are making decisions about which concepts are most important, how they fit together, and how you can present your craft. of them to others. Reading is good, but you remember information better when you process it in different ways. Organizing your notes, speaking them out loud, and listening to them read to you will all help you process and remember the content more carefully. Each of these is usually used on its own as a standalone learning method, so imagine how effective they will be together.