Improvement pill here a study was
conducted in 2014 at Princeton University where they separated a class
into two groups the researchers had each group take notes for a class in two
different ways the first group was told to take notes by hand
you know the old-school method with a pen and paper which was met with a lot
of groans and complaints because well it requires a lot of effort it's
time-consuming and it cramps up your hands the second group was told to take
notes by typing it out on their laptop or phone or whatever device which was a
far more efficient way of note-taking in fact the second group on average ended
up with twice the amount of notes after each class compared with the pen and
paper group now the purpose of this study was to figure out what method of
taking notes would allow you to remember more of what was being taught so at the
end of the semester the researchers looked at the overall test scores for
all of the students in this class and to their surprise the kids who took notes
by hand using the old-school pen and paper method scored twice as well as the
kids who used their laptops that's a lot and at first the researchers thought
okay maybe having this group take notes by hand somehow prompted them to study a
bit more outside of class so they conducted this study two more times one
time they tested each group immediately after class so they had no time to study
and the second time they gave a surprise test to each group only a week after
they took notes and both times the kids who took notes by hand
squirt about twice as well as the kids who typed out their notes what they
discovered in this experiment is what I like to call the effort principle
essentially the more effort you put into recording a piece of information the
better you will retain it and I believe that this is a concept has a lot of
value in the world of self improvement see one of the biggest issues with self
improvement is the fact that there's so much information out there there are
hundreds of thousands of books videos and podcasts but it doesn't matter how
much time you spend consuming this information because if you're not
remembering any of it and internalizing the lessons there's no point now I know
I know I'm someone who advocates listening to audiobooks a lot I tell you
guys to do it all the time but to be honest I don't think just listening to
audiobooks is ideal it's too easy it doesn't require that much effort in fact
back in the day I would often find myself listening to an entire book and
just one or two week later barely remembering any of the key
concepts so today I want to show you a sort of note-taking mini habit that I
created over the years that has allowed me to retain most of the key lessons
from the books that I listen to quick little side tangent if you are
interested in building habits we do have a new program the habit builder
challenge that teaches you exactly how to do that we sold out all of the seats
in just a week and the program has been extremely successful so far so if you
want to gain access to this program the next time we run it all you have to do
is click on the link in the description box below to sign up for the waiting
list now back to the topic at hand the note-taking mini habit is essentially
this see I carried these little water proof notebooks with me they are a bit
smaller than my phone which makes them very easy to carry around and whenever
I'm listening to a book and I come across in a ha moment basically a moment
where the gears in your head click and something just makes a whole lot of
sense to you something that you know is a game changer that you should really
remember when that happens I will put in some effort to record that lesson down
for example a couple of weeks ago I was listening to can't hurt me by David
Goggins at the gym and I came across in a ha moment when he talked about what he
likes to call the cookie jar method the moment I heard about this method I
thought to myself wow this is some powerful stuff I need to remember this
so I put down my weights I paused the audio book I pulled out my little
notebook and pen and I wrote down cookie jar method and I proceeded to write a
short little summary about what it was and after doing that I rewinded the
audio by a couple of minutes just so I could listen to that part again if you
take a look at this incident I'm putting in maybe 10 20 times more effort into
digesting this one piece of information as compared to if I just listen to it on
the audiobook and because of that that lesson has stuck with me ever since and
to top it all off when I really really want a lesson to stick with me I'll
actually go out of my way and put in even more effort by bringing it up in a
conversation soon after I have some friends that are interested in
self-improvement and when we're just hanging out I'll talk about some of the
new concepts I've come across recently the moment you reach what you've learned
you're putting in additional effort which will cause you to retain the
information even more this episode's brought to you by you guessed it audible
now that you know about the effort principle you still have to read books
and orders to find powerful lessons that are even worth remembering this is where
audible comes in audible allows you to find powerful lessons in places where
you normally be able to pull out a physical book I
listen to the audio books when I'm commuting on long flights when I'm
eating by myself and when I'm working out go to www.youtube.com packed with
powerful lessons that we should all remember so definitely check that out
besides that guys stay tuned