Peter Hollins

Super Learning

Elli Izo

The joy of this read comes from knowing what répertoire of deployable tactics it's now instilled into my headspace to work with moving forward. 

On top of debunking the most commonly adopted learning approaches (which I suspect come into play as second nature in many of our learning experiences today, however inefficient they are), Hollins put together an alternative playbook that is both neat and comprehensive. I particularly enjoyed the discussions built on the idea of organically working with time as a vehicle for strengthening retention and application of new knowledge - 'spaced repetition' or 'distributed practice', to be precise, reset my thoughts on how to coordinate focus blocks with the many daunting subjects I'm undertaking this year for my MAppFin. This framework, as I now understand, is to help us win our battles against the forgetting curve. Prior to stumbling across this read, and frustrated at how little of each piece of new knowledge I seem to retain and recall for assessment purpose, I did start experimenting with some stretched out study plans i.e. breaking what would otherwise be a 3-4 hour focus session a day into much smaller blocks spread evenly across 7-day periods, and had some wins. So there is much satisfaction found when the book reaffirms the merits of my trial run. Thank you, Hollins!
Inspired by this read, I'd now also like to start weaving Feynman's technique, interleaving, syntopical reading and the Cornell method for note-taking into my schedules to generate better learning outcomes in everything I wish to understand, for I couldn't agree more with Hollins on the many effects these strategies would bring alive.