4 simple ways to use the Explanation Effect and 10x your learning in less than 10 minutes per day

Today I am going to teach you 4 simple ways to teach others in less than 10 minutes per day. This will 10x your learning.

If we want to Transform Nations, it’s of critical importance that we learn. Learning at the core is transformation. When you learn, you change your mindset, your thoughts and your feelings and you become a better person. You transform.

Most people fail in learning, because they have never learned how to learn. Most of their learning happened during their childhood, teenage and college years and now they are stuck in their jobs and don’t learn much.

You can only grow if you know how to learn and make learning a habit.

These are your take aways from todays newsletter:

1. You learn how we learn
2. You learn why learning is not the same as absorbing information
3. You learn the best way of learning
4. You learn what happens in our brains when we teach others
5. 4 simple steps you can do in less than 10 minutes per day to start teaching

Let’s dive in.

How do we learn?

Most of the people think that learning is equal to absorbing information. Actually, it is NOT.

Michael Simmons said:

Looking at text and expecting to learn is not far off from looking at food and expecting to get its nutrients. We need to digest our life experiences just like we digest our food.

Learning happens when we take in information and start to process it in our brains. From there we need to apply what we learned and put it into action. If we receive feedback from that, we are learning. This is called the Learning Loop.

Credit: Michael Simmons

For example, when I am reading a book, I highlight sentences. I sometimes stop and re-read a sentence. I think about it for a minute. I make some notes. Sometimes I even write down an action step in Trello. From there I start to do this action step, I evaluate and I learn.

No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.

Peter Drucker

One of the best ways of learning is teaching. This is called the Explanation Effect.

Learning Pyramid

Research has shown that when we teach others, we retain 90% of what we teach. Teaching is done in many, many ways. It doesn’t have to be teaching in a formal way.

You teach (external):

• When you explain something to a colleague
• When you share a story to your kids
• When you share with a friend a lesson you learned from a book you read

But also (internal):

• When you write in your journal or mind mapping
• When you are thinking out loud or talking to yourself

What happens when we teach?

1. When we teach ourselves or others we need to go over the material again. This helps us to gain a better understanding of the topic.
2. We need to explain the topic in words others understand. This means we need to think about the topic. This helps our brain to retain more.
3. When we are preparing to teach and go over the material, it reveals gaps in our knowledge.
4. When we teach, we not only learn a lot, but we also build relationships with other people.
5. Teaching allows us to receive feedback from others and learn.
6. Teaching makes us accountable to apply action steps in our life.

A few examples

For my Virtual Assistant I have created several Trello cards with checklists and videos of the tasks that needs to be done. To record the video’s and checklists well, I had to go over the processes over and over. I learned the flaws in the process while I was preparing the videos and made the process better. Additionally, after I had explained the task to her, I asked her to explain the task to me in her own words. This helped her understand the task better.

In our business trainings in Africa and Asia, people can only graduate when they teach back one of the sessions that we have taught. They teach back to a group. This group listens, asks questions, corrects and helps the teacher understand the lessons even better.

In our bible studies in our churches, we always challenge people with this question: With whom will you share this story? This encourages people to go through the story again and learn more about it.

4 simple ways you can 10x your learning by teaching others

1. Start a journal and write in it every day for 5 minutes. Every time you read something, or think about something that is new to you, write it down in your journal. You are teaching to yourself.
2. Start writing and publish on the web. It’s very easy to start a blog, or post on LinkedIn and Twitter. Start small with some thoughts or quotes. In this process, you learn a lot and your build relationships with others.
3. Ask your family at the dinner table: What did you learn today? And let them share.
4. Ask your friends on a weekly basis: What did you learn this week?

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