What to Learn

We shouldn't stop learning new things just because we are finished with university. Some things can be really useful in our daily lives and at work, like speed reading or memory techniques. And for some reason, most of us never learnt things like that in school. We share helpful advice every month in our Women in Business Newsletter.

Speed reading to get you through all the books you promised to read last year

There are plenty of online tutorials on how to train for this, but the gist is the keep your eyes centered and follow a pen or a finger downwards. You need to force yourself to read fast enough that the voice trying to read out loud in your head disappears. You need to reconcile with the fact that you will lose a few things, but that’s also the case when you read slowly as your brain will go wandering since it gets bored by your lack of speed.

The memory palace technique

A great memory isn’t just needed if you’re cramming for an exam, it can also be extremely helpful if you lead meetings, hold a talk at a conference or try to improve in a new language. This technique has many names, but they are all pretty much the same thing, and it’s what all the winners at international memory competitions use. It’s based on combining a visual memory with a space that is familiar to you. You pick a house or a route that you know well. In each room or land post, you visualise something you want to learn. For example, if you want to learn the word for Probably in German which is Wahrscheinlich, you can visualise a statistics professor (for probably) shining (schein) and licking (lich) a tank (wahr). When you want to remember something, you think about walking through each room and seeing what’s happening there. Try to only add one or a couple of things happening in each room as it otherwise can get chaotic.