Joe McCullough - Accelerated Learning Techniques for Students: Learn More in Less Time

Success happens not by chance, but because you were given a chance and took advantage of it.

- Kevin Geary

Congratulations! The fact that you are reading this book means that you are a dedicated student who wants to be more successful in school and in life. Its said that 90% of success is just showing up, and thats exactly what you are doing right now. By reading this book, you are taking the first step toward academic mastery. I realize this is a bold claim, and yet I make it without any reservation whatsoever. The accelerated learning techniques presented in this book will allow you to learn more in less time. You will soon have the tools and the confidence to learn faster than ever before, and retain more of what you have learned. I hope youre as excited as I am!

From my experience, most high schools and colleges are not currently teaching the skills necessary to learn quickly and efficiently. To make matters worse, most teachers assume that you already know how to study effectively, and how to do well in their course. This is often not the case. Many students struggle not because they arent smart, but because they have never been taught the skills and techniques presented in this book. Most students have never really been taught how to learn.

This is unfortunate because learning how to learn is one of the most valuable skills you can have. This is especially true in todays rapidly changing technological society. We have entered the information age where knowledge is king. To be successful, you need to be a lifelong learner. The days of having one career for your entire life are long gone. It has been estimated that the average person will hold more than seven different jobs after graduating college many of them in completely different fields. Even if you are lucky enough to have the same career for your entire adult life, you will need to periodically upgrade your skills and knowledge in order to stay competitive. The faster and easier you can gain that knowledge, the more successful you will be.

Luckily, you are already an incredibly efficient learner. Consider all the things that you have learned outside of a formal classroom setting. You have learned how to walk, talk, swim, ride a bike, play various sports, drive a car, use a computer, cook a meal the list goes on and on. Every one of these tasks is challenging and difficult, yet you are most likely extremely proficient at each.

Almost everything you have learned was through informal exploration. You learned through fun, play, conversation, and interaction with others. Informal learning is natural and fun, just ask any child. The problem is that formal classroom learning doesn't come naturally for many people. To make matters worse, most teachers have an unconscious tendency to teach using their preferred learning style (more on this later). If their preferred learning style doesn't match yours, there is a good chance you will find learning from them to be challenging.

Research shows that the current teaching methods used at many formal learning institutions such as high schools and universities do not effectively take into account how the brain works. According to Dr. John Medina, author of Brain Rules, If you wanted to create an educational environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you would probably design something like a classroom. As a result, classroom learning (in its present incarnation) usually only works well for a small number of students. For many people, their experience with formal learning has caused them to question their ability to learn at all. In one revealing study, 82% of children entering the school system at age 5 or 6 had a positive view of their ability to learn. By the time these children reached 16 years old, that positive rating had dropped dramatically to 18%!

If you have previously questioned your learning abilities, this book will change your mind. As stated previously, you are already an incredibly efficient learner. In fact, your brain is a supercomputer. Unfortunately, you were not given the instruction manual on how to efficiently use this incredible computer. Well, here it is! The information presented in this book will help you unlock the amazing potential of your brain.

As you will notice, this book is written in a casual, almost conversational tone, rather than the academic tone common in many textbooks. This was done on purpose. Even though I was a dedicated and serious student, I often struggled to read textbooks because of their overly dry presentation. I dont want that to be the case with this book. The information presented within these pages can literally change your life, and I want to make sure that you read all of it! My goal is that you truly enjoy reading this book. You may even find yourself staying home on a Friday or Saturday night because you just cant put it down. Ok, I admit that might be a little far fetched, but I do hope that you have fun while learning how you learn best.

You may also notice that this book doesnt have a lot of filler in it. I have made every attempt to make sure that everything contained within this book is essential and relevant to the task at hand teaching you how to learn more efficiently. I know that you are busy, and I respect your time. Therefore, I made sure to keep this book short enough that you could read the entire thing in a few sittings. It wouldnt make a lot of sense to have a book about efficient learning strategies prattle on and on now would it?

As a final note, I wrote this book using the principles of accelerated learning. One of these principles is the frequent review of material that you want to commit to long-term memory. You will therefore see callouts like the one below interspersed throughout the book. These are used for key points that deserve special emphasis, so please pay attention to any callouts.

Another principle of accelerated learning is testing yourself to see how well you understand the material. At the end of each chapter is a brief Show You Know section with a few multiple-choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, or short-answer questions. These are designed to recall and test your understanding of the material presented in the chapter. Please do not skip these questions! Take the time to answer each one before you read the answers that follow. If you get them all correct, give yourself a pat on the back (literally I mean it), and move on to the next chapter. If you get one or more wrong, please take the time to review the relevant sections before moving on.