Questions To Help You Process Learning

Have you ever taken in a huge amount of information and felt overwhelmed and thought to yourself, I am never going to remember all of this?  I think I can safely say that anyone reading this article has been there!  Oftentimes what happens is there’s so much information we just close the notes and a few days later most of the learning is forgotten.

The brain needs time to process learning. I always like to have a little ‘settle’ time to reflect upon what I have learnt. This ensures that – one, I don’t forget it, and – two, I fully absorb the learning.

Lately I have been doing a huge amount of learning which is fantastic, but I have found I now need time to process, reflect and fully absorb all of it.

While I was absorbing and going back over what I had learnt, I came up with three questions that I think you may find useful while reflecting on any learning.

The first question I asked myself was – Where does this learning fit in the overall scheme of my business?  I took a meta view of it. By categorizing it, I immediately knew where it ranked in order of importance in my business.  So, for example, the latest piece of learning I categorized under ‘Motivational Sales Training.’  Although to be honest it was much more than that.  And because it was much more than that, I have given it priority in terms of implementation of certain actions.

The second question I asked myself was ‘What are the top three actions I need to implement from this learning?   Then I scheduled a date in my diary to do that and I made it measurable so I will know when I have achieved it.

The third question I asked myself was ‘What next?’   What has the learning provided in the way of momentum for my future ambition?  In this case, I had learnt so much I knew I needed to watch some parts of the recordings again, but I also needed to do a brainstorming session (which I do using Mind Maps.)

To be honest if you don’t ask yourself any questions at all, but just take time to reflect on the learning, that’s a pretty good start in my book.  It is a great investment of time.  I am also taking it that you understand why you have done the learning in the first place, otherwise quite frankly you may as well have not bothered.

If you find yourself constantly reacting to work priorities and being stuck in “urgent and what may seem like important tasks,” then taking a couple of hours reflection a week is essential.   Why?  It provides clarity, it brings a renewed sense of motivation and it reminds you why you are doing what you are doing – or not doing as the case may be!

As a bonus here are another two questions – one of which I was reminded of this week.  What would it take to……? and What if I did…X..?   And If they don’t stimulate some mind-bending answers, then I don’t know what to do with you!