Answering Questions about Learning Faster

I've gotten some interesting email about my messages
challenging teachers, pastors, and church leaders to be
better learners.

Let me address some of the questions and statements that
might be of more general interest.

"I have a master's degree from seminary and read a lot.
I'm sure some people on your mailing list could use your
help, but I don't." -- Pastor A.W.

Great learners are simply people who know they have a lot
more to learn, and remain excited about learning.  If you
don't think I could help you learn faster and better (with
less stress, too), then you're exactly right.  If your mind
is closed to improvement, I won't be able to teach you, any
more than Jesus could open the minds of some of the
Pharisees.  May our Lord bless your pastoral ministry.

"Can you help me?  I have trouble reading the newspaper
sometimes.  I want to be better, so I can be a better
teacher."  -- B.P.

The Lord will, I'm sure, bless your ministry in His Name.
I do believe that everyone can see improvements in their
ability to learn and retain useful information for teaching
and pastoral ministry work.

You see, it's not important whether you can read 100 books
in a year.  It is important that you get better by learning
to learn faster. If you read 2 or 3 books a year, you can
readily push yourself to read 5 to 10 books (with less
stress, I might add!) and retain the information better.

"Is this just about memorization?  I use the Navigator's
method and it works for me." -- S.W.

I actually won't cover memorization explicitly in this
coaching. Enormous feats of memorization are possible (and
indeed have been routine -- young Jewish boys memorized the
Torah).  What I'll explain doesn't depend upon memorization
to be successful.

"Does this require special software?  I don't have a fancy
computer or any money to buy tools." -- W.A.

A lot of what I'll show you can be done without any special
tools at all.  (Our ancestors had less than you do!)  I will
tell you about optional software tools that can help, and
nearly all of them are free.

"I'd like to read more, but I don't have time."  -- J.J.

If you practice a little bit of what I'll show you, you can
read 2 to 4 times faster. And retain more.  I'm completely
serious.  Over the remaining years the Lord gives you,
wouldn't you like to be able to read more, remember it
better, and retain the valuable parts longer?  This will be
a huge benefit you'll enjoy with just a little bit of effort
on your part.

"Speed reading courses don't work for me."  -- A.S.

I'm cynical about speed-reading courses myself.  I read an
ad for one course and realized that if their claims were
true, I could read "Gone with the Wind" in 26 minutes.
Bleh.

What I'm going to be teaching you is a lot more than speed
reading.  It's about *learning* -- which is not just
reading, listening, or watching, but understanding the
material and making connections in your mind.  Faster
reading is possible and desirable, but it's an incomplete
picture of what you need.

"Are you suggesting that the way I learned to study was
wrong?  I went good schools." -- D.F.

My observation is that very few adults, even those who have
been to good schools, learned how to learn.  They rarely
were encouraged to figure out their personal strengths and
leverage them to the fullest.  And far too few people were
encouraged to remain curious throughout their who lives.

I'm less interested in criticizing schools or teachers --
and more interested in helping everyone become a superior
learner.  Wherever you are now with your learning skills,
I'm confident you can be much better.

"I prefer to listen to audios and watch videos instead of
reading.  Will your approach help me, or is it only about
reading?" -- U.G.

Most of what I will cover applies to any medium -- reading
text, listening to audios, or watching videos.

"Where did you learn what you're going to teach in this
course?" -- A.S.

I've been working on improving my learning skills since I
was in high school.  I've searched out many people who
clearly were effective learners and tapped into their ideas
about what helps them.  I've studied the neurobiology of the
learning process, as little as we understand it, and read
through many reports of psychological experiments on
comprehension and retention of information.  Plus I've
tried many personal experiments to practice and adapt and
improve myself.  It's an ongoing process for me.

Until now I have shared my learning with only a handful of
people who have asked for help.  Recently it's become plain
to me that the information could help many, many people in
the church.

"I read the Bible and nothing else.  Why would I?" -- C.K.

I don't advocate reading other information instead of the
Bible, and I certainly think we should generally be
investing more time with the Word of God than less.  But we
belong to the historic community of believers through the
centuries now, and can learn a lot from the writings of
those who have gone before us.  And we should also be
students of the best of the world around us, in order to
develop our skills and understanding, and be able to reach
that world effectively with the Gospel.  I fervently
believe that all truth is God's truth, and worth studying.
We develop discernment and wisdom as we learn.

So I do think you as a teacher should study and learn from
more information sources than the Bible, and evaluate
everything through the power of the HolySpirit. The
challenge then becomes how to learn effectively and
efficiently from the astounding amount of information
available to us!

Did I cover your concern area?  If I didn't, let me know in the comments.

The "Keys to Accelerated Learning" materials is almost
ready.  Watch for an announcement soon!