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Some secrets about memory

28.11.2014 by Admin

Memory: We all know what’s it’s like to memorize things either for an exam, for a meeting or simply your shopping list – not that easy for most of us. Why is memory so important but sometimes tricky to handle? Learning how to memorize is surprisingly not something we are thought even though there are numerous scientific publications available about our memory. Somehow we miss out to learn which memory techniques exist and how they work. Of course, everybody has a different learning style, which we will look into at a later time, but some let’s look at some useful techniques for memory you can implement immediately for your learning.

Joshua Foer refers in his Ted Talk “Feats of memory anyone can do”. Let’s have a closer look what winners of the US Memory Championship like Joshua do differently in mastering the memory place, a technique that helps them succeed.

Memory can be trained

All those champions claim to have average memories to start off but they train themselves to using a set of ancient techniques from Cicero or medieval scholars who used those to memorize speeches or books. Back in the days it was a common practice to train your brain through day-to-day activities whereas today we are outsourcing our memory through technology making and thereby the need to remember disappear. Ask yourself….how many phone numbers do you remember by hard? Exactly! So, let’s look at how your memory can be trained.

Baker/Baker paradox

 Two people are told the same word Baker but in different contexts. One person is told “ Remember there is a guy called Baker” and the second person is told “Remember there is a Baker”. Guess who will remember the memorized word “Baker” later on, if asked? Exactly, the second person who is give a context, namely that his job is a Baker is more likely to remember the word than the person who is purely told his name is Baker. Why that? The name Baker doesn’t mean anything whereas the word Baker has an association for us, it’s the person who smells well, makes our bread, delicious dessert. This technique is tacking information that is lacking in context, significance or meaning and transforms it into context that’s meaningful to our mind.

 Memory Palace

This technique goes back to a poet who was about to deliver his poem for entertainment during ancient Greek times at a banquette. The moment he walks out to start his poem, the palace collapses and kills everybody inside and everybody is killed. Later on, the poet tries to remember the people inside to take their relatives to the places their beloved ones were sitting at the time of the collapse. By closing his eyes he can see with his minds eye where each person was sitting purely using his visual memory. Even though we are bad at remembering names, phone numbers or shopping lists, we have a great visual and spacious memory. The idea is to create pictures behind your minds eye and fill it with images you can remember. The crazier, weirder, the more bizarre the imagines will be, the more unforgettable and the more memorable the image will be. Joshua gives a great example of how he “memorized” his Ted Talk through visual reminders structuring those topic by topic.

To use visual aids in your studies, check out the concept of mind-maps, which is based on both principles above – creating context and visualisation. The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain’s Untapped Potential by Tony Buzan will tell you all about the science and application of the mind-maps.

What do you do to improve you memory?

Filed Under: NEWS Tagged With: education, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, learning, memory, online learning, tips

Wondering how to make more time in your life?

18.11.2014 by Admin

More time: I wish there were more hours in the day. Have you heard yourself saying that one? Sometimes we all wished we could just make the time stop so that we can catch up on everything that there is still to be done. Overscheduling ourselves by putting too much on our to do list is a possible reason how we end up with just too much to do. But then others add things to our to do list, maybe our tutor, our boss, our family or friends. That’s trickier to handle then since we seem to have lees influence on that. Wondering how to make more time in your life? Since lacking time is an issue for many of us, we’d love to share some high impact tips with you.

Plan ahead

Make a calendar of the upcoming days, week’s months. Put everything you have to do with all your commitments, travels, events, studies, sports etc. in your calendar. Like this you get an overview of “how much is on your plate” for the upcoming future. Take a look; do you like the look and feel of your agenda? Does it feel powerful and promotes a “can do” attitude? Or is your calendar stuffed full of things that it makes you want to run away or just throw it away because you don’t know how you will ever manage to actually make all that happen? If the second question resonates more with you then you have to start planning ahead. Before you say yes to anything that should go on you calendar, look at it first. Will there be enough time for you to squeeze in that extra assignment or meeting next Wednesday or will it put you under pressure and stress? Planning ahead will make you more successful in managing your time and also influencing how others impact your time. It’s you who says “yes, I can” or “no, we have to do it another day”. Pick the one that’s right for who you are and want to be.

Be realistic

That takes us to your own judgment of how much can be achieved in one day, week, and month. Be honest to you. Things hardly ever work out as we plan, but if we can project ourselves forward, assuming that something will come our way, we may become more proactive than reactive with our time. An emergency or something important gets dumped onto our to do list, just a bad day, anything really are real and happen to everybody. Cramping your days, weeks and months won’t leave space for such matters. Of course they’re often not really foreseeable, but let’s be realistic they do happen, more then we believe. Make sure to plan your days that there is actively some time to dedicate to those instances. And let’s face it, if planned ahead and you know what you are doing and where you are heading, then even if you end up with a “free slot” in your calendar, then you always have the option to pick up a task that is planned for the following day and just get it out of the way earlier. Our tendency is anyways more to be in a “catching up attitude” rather than “proactively being ahead”. And most importantly, do also not forget to “schedule” time off; it doesn’t happen if you don’t plan on it.

Planning ahead and being realistic are the first tips for you to implement. Try them out and let us know how it works for you in making more time! Make sure to read more tips on how to make more time in our next blog post.

Filed Under: NEWS Tagged With: education, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, learning, Nobel Academy, online education, online learning, tips, work-life balance

How to achieve your goals more efficiently – part two?

16.11.2014 by Admin

Goals: In our previous post on how to achieve your goals more efficiently we shared with you some valuable tips to set you up for success. This included setting SMART objectives, defining your actions and resources as well as foreseeing the obstacles. With our agendas so busy nowadays living up to multiple roles in our life, it’s not always easy to stay on track with your goals. There are many distractions in our life that may prevent you from achieving your goals. Therefore, we would like to give you two more tips on your way that we believe are essential for your success on how to achieve your goals.

4. Keep your motivation going

Most people are very excited when they have an idea or a goal and think that it would be nice to achieve it. They put many days (or maybe just hours) at the beginning into creating an action plan, activating their network or investing many hours into studying the material for an exam. And guess what….a week later, the very same actions that seemed so exciting just a week earlier suddenly become a burden. How come? Well, for most of us anything that is new seems exciting. The first steps towards every goal are mostly very exciting and “easy”. Then things become harder, maybe a routine kicks in or we come across something that we can’t master because it is too big of a challenge. There are many reasons why our motivation may suffer but we must know how to get our motivation back. Let’s look how we can get inspired again:

  • Look back how much you have achieved. How does it feel?
  • Get some support if you can’t master something because it is too difficult. Friends, classmates, colleagues, family, tutors, online communities….all of them are there to help you….just ask
  • Start a blog on your goal and write on your progress; some people find that sharing with others creates a sense of responsibility that help them going
  • Are you challenged enough or too much? May this is dragging you down? Adjust your expectations, either raise them if it’s too easy or make it easier if you struggle because you expect too much.
  • Eliminate complexity, think about ways how you can bring it back to basics
  • Redefine your goals/actions….maybe an update to your plan will bring some fresh insights
  • Go out and talk over a coffee with a friend, colleague, classmate about your goal…talk about what’s great about it and why you struggle
  • Make your purpose obvious to you. Why do you want to achieve this goal again? Why is it important to you? What’s the purpose?
  • Get online, browse Blogs, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook etc. for posts around your goal; get some inspiration from others
  • Read industry news on your goal; check out others who have achieved a similar goal. If it is a professional goal, go on their LinkedIn profile, where are they now after having achieved a similar goal? Is this where you want to be?
  • Visualize what’s its like to have achieved your goal. What will be in place? Which doors will open to you? How will you feel? How will your life be different? Dream, just dream and feel it.

5. Am I there yet?

Last but not least, celebrate and make yourself aware when you are getting closer to your goal or even when you have achieved it. Take that time! We often forget about enjoying the accomplishment of our goals or even the major milestones towards those goals. Indulging and being proud of having completed your degree for instance, like in the case of our students, is a major step for your personal and professional life. If you make it a positive experience and acknowledge yourself for having achieved it, then you are likely to pick up the next goal soon and turn it into reality.

And remember, “the difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do”. Choosing the right goals, taking the actions that lead to them and enjoying the accomplishment of those will make you the person you want to be. Do you already know who you want to be?

Source quote: Rebloggy.com

Filed Under: NEWS Tagged With: business education, education, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, learning, Nobel Academy, online education, online learning, tips, work-life balance

Work-Life Balance and further education

30.10.2014 by Admin

Work-Life Balance: We have recently posted an interesting article on Work-Life Balance and better ways to thing about it. Inspired by Shana Lebowitz, the writer of that article, we have some more aspects to share on the work-life balance topic, especially in relation to education.

Many of our students happen to be very busy people, they may either be pursuing several degrees at a time, they be working whilst pursuing their degree or they may have a family or a spouse who also require their attention. We all have multiple roles to fulfill in our life and work-life balance seems often too unattainable. We are very clear that many of our students fall in the so-called millennial category where flexibility, family and friends are often prioritized to career. Quality of life is a major factor and therefore we aim at making further education as relevant and flexible as possible.

With the popularity of MOOC’s and a latest trend of competency-based education, there is no surprise that millennial are using those sources to a vast extend. They’re both flexible in terms of timing and location as well as accessible from multiple devices.

Nobel International Fraternity Academy is a leading institution offering undergraduate and postgraduate education. Because it is important to us that our students perform well across all areas of their life, our online platform incorporates both the flexibility and accessibility factor. You can choose to view your course lecture whilst at home on the sofa, during your lunch break at the office or whilst waiting for you dinner to cook. In addition, the courses are run under QCF (Qualifications Credit Framework), a new way of recognising skills and qualifications. It does this by awarding credit for units (small steps of learning) and enables learners to gain qualifications at their own pace along flexible routes.This ties in with the competency-based education where the employer and the student are clear on the competencies that the student can perform. So, what has all this to do with work-life balance?

To insure work-life balance you have to make the right choices in the first place. What do you put on your plate and where do you say no? When choosing further education, make sure it is aligned with your needs and your goals. You want to be sure you can tackle the study program in the time spam provided whilst living your professional and personal life.

Filed Under: NEWS Tagged With: BTEC, business education, education, learning, Nobel Academy, Nobel International Academy, online education, tips, work-life balance

Productivity – Are you always being productive?

27.10.2014 by Admin

Productivity: In today’s every day life we are constantly bombarded with information. Our smartphones, tablets, laptops, blogs, news feeds and many others are ways of keeping us constantly busy and engaged. But does being active and busy mean being productive? Probably not…..

Productivity is the way of doing things in a smart manner in an optimized time manner; many tools and apps can support us in that. Productivity is also about choosing what’s important and has to be done and what is rather a distraction. I was recently at a conference where someone approached me and said “I really like what you said about getting things done”. In my little speech I was indeed talking about doing things and getting things done as two different pairs of shoes. I am sure many of you have met people who are so seemingly busy but don’t seem to get a lot done. You have also probably met people who seem at ease but are very productive. Those see the core of productivity as getting things done and delivering results.

Let me give you a concrete example. You have signed up for an online course and as part of your graduation you have to pass an assignment. Now, to pass that successfully you need the technical knowledge, some research and critical thinking in that area to be able to produce your assignment. A productive person has a clear study plan in which he identifies the study schedule, the individual topics, the relevant readings leading to mind-maps of each study session. He will then schedule a review of the past mind-map during the next session to utilize the memory curve and memorize the contents of the previous sessions. He will then review the previous week’s mind maps, ideally from his memory since he will have memorized them by now. Now, let’s look at someone with low productivity. The person will sit down at random time, do some readings and maybe take some notes and repeat that over the course of a couple of weeks. The unproductive person will go back to the notes from the first session at some point and find that he doesn’t remember much. There we have it….productivity and getting results don’t come without one another.

Spending time on things is just spending time whereas structuring your approach, finding the most productive way around will safe your time and boost your productivity. How do you boost your productivity?

Filed Under: NEWS Tagged With: A levels, BTEC, Higher Nationals, HNC, HND, learning, Nobel Academy, Nobel International Academy, Nobel International Fraternity Academy, online education, online learning, tips

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