In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.

The findings can help anyone, from a fourth grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.

For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.

Read the article on the NY Times website.

I find it interesting that a lot of the findings — such as varying study location, and varying what you study — parallel findings from animal training, as reported in Karen Pryor’s book Don’t Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Training.

What makes an expert?

To find good exemplars (examples of a skill or ability) to learn from, evaluate their results. Ask:

• How good are the person’s actual results? It doesn’t matter if Rowena thinks she is the world expert in good relationships; it matters whether she has good relationships. Judge only by results, not by what you, she, or other people think will work, does work, or should work.
• Does this exemplar get consistently great results? Someone who has excellent relationship skills will tend to have lots of good relationships: with their spouse, parents, children, friends, neighbors, etc. They’ll also have minimal problems with bad relationships, quarrels, firings, and people doing nasty things to them.
• Do the good results last? Millions of people with excellent strategies for shedding excess weight lack strategies to stay slender. Some people’s relationship skills work well for short-term acquaintances, but prevent deeper long-term relationships.
• Does this exemplar deal skillfully with problems? Some people can accomplish anything in favorable circumstances, but fall apart when things get rough. Pick an exemplar who can deal with problems, but doesn’t generate them.
• Does this exemplar skillfully avoid, defuse, or prevent problems? People who are great at fixing problems often have excellent strategies for generating problems to fix! People whose strategies work best may seem like they do almost nothing, because most issues get handled before they turn into problems.
• How well does this exemplar match you? Find someone whose skill matches your learning and thinking styles, your meta-programs — and if applicable, your values. If you have to turn into someone else to learn a skill, or adopt a learning method that works poorly for you, find another exemplar.
• Can I learn from multiple exemplars? NLP modelers consistently find that even excellent exemplars usually use half or less of the possible skills for getting a great result. By modeling 2 or 3 people, you will gain a much broader range of strategies that work. Once you have finished, repay each exemplar by teaching them the additional skills they don’t have.

Joy

• The town drunk
• A blind person
• The neighbor who has crashed their car into every trash can and sign pole in the neighborhood.

And yet most people learned at least one important life skill from someone that unqualified to teach it.

For instance, my parents taught me some excellent money management strategies. But they had zero business or entrepreneurial skills, and held business and businesspeople in contempt. So who do you think I learned my attitudes about business from? That’s right: my parents — people who were completely incompetent to teach anyone success in that area! Worse, I didn’t learn business skills from my entrepreneurial uncles.

Learning from incompetents

This problem isn’t just common; it’s almost universal. As children, most of us learned basic life skills, behaviors, values, and beliefs from whoever was around, whether or not these role models were competent in those areas.

Think about it. How many individuals have you met who learned:

• Relationship skills from people who had lousy relationships, or whose relationships didn’t last…
• Beliefs about wealth and money from role models who were poor or had money problems…
• Beliefs about work from people who felt unhappy at their jobs, or who hated work and working…
• Social skills from people who had few friends, many enemies, lousy friendships, or were shy, rude, or socially inept…
• Judgment and decision-making skills from role models who had serious judgment problems…
• Parenting skills from inept or inexperienced parents…
• …or how to be happy and successful from unhappy, unsuccessful people?

How well did that work?

Many times a person we learned from was competent in part of a skill (Uncle Ed was good at his job), but lacked competence in  other aspects of it (Uncle Ed lacked skills for liking his job, or picking jobs he liked).

“Course correction? We don’t need course correction!”

None of this would be much of a problem if we humans noticed when we had learned skills from incompetent teachers. Or if we noticed that our skills didn’t work, and then made corrections.

Instead, people cling to mistaken ideas of what’s “right” or “should” work, even when it doesn’t. For example,

• Millions of people are convinced their way of doing relationships in “right,” despite ongoing conflicts and repeated failures. The problems must be the other person’s fault — even if the other person has a much better track record of relationship success!
• I have known numerous chronically impoverished people who were totally convinced that their beliefs about money were correct. They even used their money problems as evidence that their money beliefs were correct! Counter-examples, including similar people who succeeded financially, didn’t disprove their beliefs. Instead, successful people “obviously” succeeded because of  luck, personal connections, or fewer problems with prejudice… and not because they have better strategies.
• Millions of people are convinced they are bad, wrong, flawed, and inadequate because they adopted other people’s negative judgments of them. Once someone believes such a judgment, they will tend to gather evidence to support it, rather than questioning the competence and judgment of the judges, or searching for counter-examples that disprove the belief.

Programmed for failure

“That didn’t work. Do it harder!” is one of the world’s most counterproductive strategies.

Before I learned NLP, I spent decades making myself miserable attempting to succeed with strategies that didn’t and couldn’t work. So did my friends. Even after our strategies failed repeatedly, we kept trying to do what hadn’t worked. In those days, our beliefs about what “should” work were more powerful than the abundant sensory evidence life gave us that our strategies really didn’t work.

Reprogramming for success

Getting people to question times they learned from non-experts often proves very empowering. Unuseful old beliefs and strategies often persist only because the person hasn’t questioned them.

I encourage people to question two main categories of experience:

1. Skills they learned from others, and
2. Judgments and beliefs that came from other people.

I find this particularly useful while or after the client does a process that gives them an overview of their life: timeline work, regression, or anything that creates a “big-picture” meta-position. Now the client can see their past as a whole, notice the patterns, and see the cumulative effects of bad decisions. From meta-position, the client can get to and fix problems easily, and has lots of motivation to do so.

I do this very simply, using hypnotic language. For instance:

You might notice that there were times in your past when you learned skills and beliefs from people who weren’t very good at something. You might have learned relationship skills from people who weren’t very good at relationships… or money skills from people who have money problems… or maybe some parenting skills from people who weren’t that great as parents. And sometimes the person you learned from was very good at part of the skill… but not so good at other parts of it.

Take a moment to notice the skills you learned from people who weren’t experts… and notice how you would have gotten different results if you learned from people who were really good at those skills. [At this point the client has taken skills they hadn't questioned until a moment ago, gotten meta-position on them, and imagined learning them better from another teacher. That's quite a shift in itself!] Perhaps you might want to fix and improve some of those skills now… and give your younger self access to the people you’ve met since then, who know how to do this better… [Here I pause until they have processed and give me a signal, such as saying, "Okay."]

And you might also notice some times where someone made negative judgments about you. A lot of times, especially when we’re kids, people take those judgments on as if they’re true. But you can notice now how the people who judged you probably weren’t world-class experts on human potential… And they certainly weren’t experts on your potential… because if they had been, they wouldn’t have made judgments that caused you problems later…

And even if some of their judgments were true then, a lot of things have changed since then, and you’ve changed, and those judgments probably aren’t true now. So instead of taking on those judgments as if they were true, now you can notice now how your life would have been different and better if you had gotten more useful evaluations from people who knew just what to say… people who would help you develop your skills and strengths, and have the best possible life… And perhaps you might want to change those negative judgments now, and give your younger self access to people who will help the younger you flourish… so you have the best life from now on…”

Some clients will benefit from having you walk them through changing one or more specific examples. Most people I have worked with didn’t need that. Of course I waited until late enough in the session that the NLP processes they did had put them into a fairly deep in trance before I made the suggestions.

Most clients also benefit from a verbal walk-through of how to pick good exemplars (people to learn skills from). I’ll discuss that in my next post.

Joy

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Science news related to NLP:

• Noninvasive technique to rewrite fear memories developed. It depends on (a) reactivating the memory of trauma, then (b) immediately retraining the brain — the very process used in NLP’s phobia and trauma cures. Surprise, surprise!
• In the brain, 7 is a magic number — the physiological origin of the 7-plus-or-minus-2 rule. AGE6UE4T8WVP