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Do students today spend more time in front of a TV screen, (plus video games),
than your generation?
This question should raise other questions in your mind, not just offer a statistical
answer. Smart-Questions cause you to search (explore) for evidence, weigh the
proof, and examine the criteria used to answer the question. School questions are
really Dumb-Questions that only require recall from the past.
There are three Smart-Questions that successful people (the Vital-20%) ask, not
asked by the Trivial-80%. Why? How? and Which?
Questions
Why? questions make you look for cause-and-effect, and links between variables.
Speedlearners choose to search for meaning and answers that produce analysis.
Why did this happen? Why do events happen the way they do? Is it all based on
chance? Why not?
Each of these exploratory questions offers you knowledge before you make a
decision. Would you believe that 80% of college students in a scientific research
project remembered only 10% of what they had studied for an exam or listened
to in a class lecture? When you do not have a strategy to learn and remember,
your thinking and memory fail.
FistNoting
After testing over two-thousand students and executives, those who studied and
listened to lectures and presentations randomly, compared to those using FistNoting
skills, were at a major disadvantage. FistNoters learned and remembered up to 92%
of the meaning and details compared to up to 38% by random learners.
The answer to the generational question about TV and video game viewership today
compared to 25 years ago, up to 5 hours daily in 2006, verses up to 2 hours and 15
minutes in 1981. Are we better off or worse off?
Distractions
Dutch psychologist Harm Veling submitted his research on distractions and the
brain to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. Speedlearners are
interested because we are familiar with the research indicating that students and
executives DayDream up to 34% of their waking hours.
Veling has demonstrated in 2007 our brain can inhibit distractions. There are two-
kinds of distractions: internal such as self-talk and daydreaming, and external
interruptions by people, email and telephone requests for our attention.
If you examine the best 20% of a class of students or most productive company
executives on the fast-track, the results indicate strategies to strengthen their
attention and focus on their intentions (goals).
Veling research indicates that those who are more easily distracted produce worse
test results and greater loss of memory. We suggest that learning to suppress
distraction is a powerful learning tool.
How
The purpose of the closed eye and hand motion is to create sharp mental images,
and synchronize your left and right hemispheres. Call it in-sync practice. Exercise
this strategy to improve your ability to produce creative-imagery for learning and
memory.
Endwords
Consider this: school is about teaching and not learning. The Vital 20% succeed
because they engage in independent thinking leading to personal exploration. You
are capable of inventing solutions to your personal and career challenges.
The secret is to balance both hemispheres and not rely solely on your left-brain.
Intuition and imagination, mental imagery and your auditory sense are right-brain
skills. The How? of it requires Smart Questioning, a left-brain skill.
Teachers consistently ask recall questions to discover your progress. Those are
Dumb Questions because they do not lead to requiring inferences from what you
study. Smart Questions require exploration, comparisons and discovering
cause and effect, trial and error, and human programming.
Smart Questions require more effort than standard Dumb ones. It separates the
Vital 20% from the Trivial 80%. Google: Vilfredo Paredo; the 80/20 principle.
See ya,
copyright © 2007
H. Bernard Wechsler
www.speedlearning.org hbw@speedlearning.org
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