Whatever you have learnt in the past few years may have become obsolete due to expanding knowledge, changing technology and shifting business paradigms. If you are not able to adapt and change as necessary you will find yourself out of the game. So not just learning but accelerated learning is the need for today.

Before we get into the actual ways to accelerate learning let us first have a look at some interesting statistics. Whatever we learn, we retain 20% of what we read, 30% of what we listen, 40% of what we see, 50% of what we say, 60% of what we do and 90% of what we read, listen, see, say and do.

Here are the 5 practical ways to accelerate your learning:

1. Read

Read books, ask yourself in the past one year, how many have I purchased and read to increase my knowledge and add value. You could also read ebooks, there are lots to download from the internet, you could copy this on your ebook reader or ipad and carry it with you when you travel, whenever you get time, read. Speed reading is one skill you should learn, this will increase your reading speed two, three and even 5 times, normally we read at an average speed of 250 words per minute. The basic funda behind speed reading is: increasing eye span, which means widen your eye span to take more number of words at one go/ stop vocalizing, it means stops saying words aloud, it slows you down, read in your mind / avoid head movement / reduce the number of stops in a sentence.

2. Listen

Listen: Whatever you want to learn, take the content and copy it on a mp3 player or cell phone or ipad, you can even copy it on your usb pendrive and insert it into your car’s music system. If you travel a lot by car, convert you car into a place of learning. Keep listening to this material over and over and over again.

3. See

See, whatever you want to learn turn it into a visual. Mindmap is one way to do it. I am using a mindmap for this very presentation. Some key points to keep in mind regarding mind maps, start with a central image in the centre of the page, then make branches of the key points, find further associations for the key points, use colour, use images and when the mindmap is ready, take a mental snapshot of it, it will accelerate your learning.

4. Say

Say to yourself: mentally rehearse and repeat the material to yourself over and over, record on an audio recorder, find out the mistakes and then make the necessary corrections.

5. Do

Do: Apply what you have learnt, notice what’s working and what’s not working, keep changing your approach till you achieve what you want.

Those are the five simple ways to accelerate your learning. Let us summarize them: They are Read / Listen / See / Say /Do/ If you apply these five to anything you want to learn, your learning will accelerate.

I am Rajiv Kumar Luv. My passion in life is to make a difference in the lives of people so that they achieve their personal as well as professional best. I am absolutely committed to specially helping youngsters become leaders in their chosen fields. In the past 28 years, I have trained over 100,000 people from all walks of life. Through my two-day program “Leadership Through Personality Development” I help the youth plan their career, build confidence, make better decisions, manage time and develop their employability skills to meet today’s real-life challenges. You can learn more about me and the work I do by visiting: http://www.thepersonalityboss.com