In these strange times of ours, many people find themselves in a position where they constantly
need to learn a large quantity of material.
But how can you remember what you read?
And moreover, in such a way that you can apply it to your everyday work?
Here are five games that can help you with that.
When we learn new things, some of the information is transferred directly into our long term memory
Others is stored in a more intermediate sort of memory.
To get it from there to our long term memory, we need to actively move it.
And one possibility to do this is by active recall.
That means we actively activate or recall this information that is in our intermediate
memory.
And by doing this repeatedly, we tell our brain “Hey you!
This information is important.
Move this to the long term memory, please!”
The most popular method to do this, which you will find mentioned again and again in
other videos, is the so called spaced repetition technique.
In the spaced repetition technique you take a an index card and on one side of the index
card you write down the name or the concept you want to remember.
On the other side, you write down the exact definition of that name or concept or an example.
And then you take these index cards, you see the concept, from memory you’re reproducing
the definition on the other side.
And so the more and more often you do this, more and more of the index cards will wander to
the back of your index box until you say “Now I know them.
Now, they’re in my long term memory and I can immid or completely remove them from
the index cards.”
While this is a very popular method, it has two main disadvantages.
One very obvious and one much more subtle.
The obvious one is: it’s a drag.
Who wants to go through the index cards again and again and again and always recall the
same information?
You need either a lot of self-discipline or a lot of external motivation to keep going.
The more subtle drawback of this method is another one.
On this index card you write down exactly one way of the definition.
And you’re trying to recall this definition word by word.
So in effect what you’re doing is rote memorisation.
On first sight there seems to be nothing wrong with that.
But research in the 1990s has shown: if you memorise something by heart, you can repeat
what you memorised, but you don’t understand it very well.
If somebody were to ask you questions or if you need to apply this in a real world context,
you will have problems.
Now the question is: can we have a system that gives us the benefit of active recall,
but on the other hand avoids the two main drawbacks of the spaced repetition technique?
And yes, there are not only one, but there are several of these techniques.
We know them usually not from a learning context, but from a context of play.
The first game is called the categories game.
In the categories game you have three to five categories on the top and then you select
a letter of the alphabet at random.
Whatever the letter is, everybody then tries to find a word for each category that starts
with the letter.
The first person to find a word for each category shouts “Stop!” and everybody needs to
stop writing.
The great thing about this game is that you keep the information that you have learned
on the top of your mind.
If it’s on the top of your mind that means that your subconscious will always look out
for new information about the topic you’re learning.
And if you look again after some time, you’ve learned much more about the topic.
The second game is called categories plus.
On the surface it looks very similar to the categories game, but it works in a fundamentally
different way.
In categories plus you also have three to five categories on the top, but you have an
additional three to five categories on the side instead of the letters.
Now the aim of the game is to go through the categories on the top and on the side and
find words that match both categories.
So this gives you a very good opportunity to think deeply about a topic in the sense
that you need to understand what categories have in common.
And you need to be able to take a word and understand its components, understand how
it relates in the wider context.
The next game on our list is twenty questions.
This is a game that many people know.
One player thinks of a person or a thing and the other player or players need to ask ques
yes or no questions that lead them closer to the answer.
So that they can guess what the other player had in mind within twenty questions.
The great thing about this game is that you need to think very analytically about the
topic, because you only have a very limited number of questions.
So each question need to exclude a large number of possibilities.
And this makes it very well suited to think through a topic in a deeper way.
Both for the people who ask questions, because they need to think what questions can they
ask and from the answer they get they need to think which possibilities does that exclude,
but also for the person that answers the questions, because they need to answer questions they
might have never even thought of otherwise.
The next game in our list is the grouping game.
This is basically categorisation as a game.
You take a list of, say, ten words, every player gets the same ten words, and every
player tries to fit all the words into two to five categories.
Afterwards the players compare.
Very rarely will there be two players who have chosen the same grouping for the ten
words.
This opens your mind to the possibility that there is more than one correct solution.
Everybody sees it from a different angle.
And if you take all of that together, if you compare it, if you discuss it, you have a
much more holistic view on the topic than you would have if you just look at it yourself.
And at the same time you’ve gone much deeper, because not only do you need to understand
the concept in order to put it into one group or the other, but you also need to think very
logically to see which of the characteristics belong together.
And he last game are actually three games, all of which have a game mechanic which is
very close to one another.
Charade, Pictionary, Taboo.
In each of the three games you have a word, a concept that the other players need to guess.
And you need to give them clues so that they’re able to guess without asking questions.
For charade you’re acting it out, Pictionary you’re drawing, taboo you’re giving verbal
clues.
But in any case you need to give the clues in such a way that they’re very close to
the essence of the concept.
Because the closer they are to the essence of the concept, the easier it is for the other
players to guess the word and so you can go through more words in a short period of time.
These were five games that make active recall much more pleasurable than it usually is.
If you recall the words that way, not only do you have the benefit of the recall.
But in addition, you don’t fall into the trap that you know something, but cannot apply
it in any other context.
Because all of those games, they force you to look at what you learned in a deeper and
in a different way.
And if you found this video useful, then please give it a thumbs up.
And subscribe for more videos for how to think deeply and creatively.
And I see you in my next video.