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www.Studylessremembermore.com 2

Study Less, Remember More!B Y : D ARRENMC NELIS

WEBSITE: WWW.STUDY LESSREMEMEBERMORE.COM EMAIL: [email protected] F ACEBOOK /S TUDY LESSREMEMBERMORE


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Study Less Remember More 3

W ARNING: DO NOT READ THIS UNLESS YO

ARE LOOKING FOR IMMEDIATE RESULT!If you learn and use the techniques and the information thatI am about to show you, you will avoid:

Feeling frustrated, anxious, scared and angry whentrying to study

Having information overload and a weak attention span Spending unnecessary hours studying and cramming Resorting to outdated study skills Being unable to read material quickly and effectively

And if you learn and use the techniques and the informationthat I am about to show you, you will:

Double your reading speed Increase your memory and attention span Understand what taxes your memory and how to

prevent zit Reduce study time and remember more Learn while you sleep Find out which is mightier to learn on, the paper or thescreen Use uncommon methods to easily increase your memory Increase your overall mental health and ability


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A BOUT THEBOOK The idea of this book is to make youawarenot to change your behaviorin any way when it comes tostudying. Making you aware of what is really going on will promote behavior change on your own termsand time. This is for those who want the least amount of effort and

maximum results. Thanks for all your help in this; it was neversupposed to turn into a book, it just happened! I am not agenius, I am not an expert, so this is not professional advice Iam giving; this comes from someone who hates studying and who failed college twice. All my failures let me view studyingin a different light and I hope to shed this light on anyone who wants to make their learning experience more enjoyableand easier in life.

Always look for the real answer behind things and neverstop, because shedding old beliefs is key to a happy andfulfilled life.

All the best, Darren Mc Nelis

Author: Darren Mc Nelis


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CONTENTS About the Book .................................................................... 4 Contents .............................................................................. 5

Speed Reading ............................................................................ 7 Prologue ............................................................................ 10

Speed Reading Lesson 1 ........................................................... 13 Learning to Learn Memory ...................................................... 15

Short-Term and Long-Term Memory ............................... 17 A Swimming Pool and a Teaspoon ................................... 18 How to Overflow a Teaspoon ............................................ 19 Overview ............................................................................ 21

Speed Reading Lesson 2 ........................................................... 22 Sleep More, Study Less? ........................................................... 24

Sleep Cycle ......................................................................... 26 Napping My Way to a Degree ........................................... 29 Overview ............................................................................ 31

Speed Reading Lesson 3 ........................................................... 32 Music and Study ....................................................................... 36

Music Helps Me Study ...................................................... 37

Learn While I Sleep? ......................................................... 38

Putting It into Action ....................................................... 40 Overview ............................................................................ 41

Speed Reading Lesson 4 ........................................................... 42 Screen vs. Paper ........................................................................ 46

It's Brainwaves the Screen Craves .................................... 48

Software that Helps with Learning ................................... 50 Overview ............................................................................ 50


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www.Studylessremembermore.com 6Extras ........................................................................................ 51

How Nature Makes You Smarter ...................................... 52 Are Bilingual People Smarter? .......................................... 53

Bibliography ............................................................................. 54


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SPEEDREADING

Are you a fast reader? Has that question ever crossed your mind? The average reading speed is 150-250 words perminute (wpm). What I am going to show you in the lessonsthat follow each chapter is going to increase your readingspeed up to 250-400 words per minute (wpm). When youthink about it, thats a massive jump. I am promising that I will double your reading speed. That means doubling the

speed at which you can get through material. But before wedo that, we have to look at the bad habits we all have when itcomes to reading and how to correct them very easily in ashort space of time. They are:

RegressionThis is when you re-read material (e.g., going overthe same sentence of a paragraph again). Mustpeople do this 33% of the time when reading.

FixationFixation is what your eye does when it looks at each word on a sentence separately (our eyes can look at3-5 words at a time).

Sub-vocalizationThis is a tricky one because its something we all do.This is when we say each word in our heads as welook at it. Its a form of reassurance we used as kidsto make sure we were saying the word correctly.Must words we have seen a million times; we dontneed to say them in our heads as we read.

Now that we know what our bad habits are, lets see what your reading speed is. All you have to do is read thefollowing chapter, Prologue, for one minute at your normal


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Study Less Remember More 9speed. Dont try and go faster; I just want you to go at yournormal pace. When your minute is up, count the lines back and multiply them by the average words in a sentence. There

is an average of 12-13 words in my sentences, so if you read10 lines thats 10 x 13, or 130 wpm.

This is a great way to see how much you will improve inthe following chapters.

60 seconds

Lines X

AverageWords on Line

Average No. L X A =WPM

WPM


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PROLOGUE Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and

the sculptor. Dr. Alexis Carrel


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PROLOGUE Did I? I dont remember that, I said. But you must

remember what you said in class to the teacher. It was sofunny, he said as my friends laughed, remembering amemory that was mine but somehow was nowhere in my head to be recalled. I always thought it was natural for menot to have a strong memory. Id walk into a room lookingfor something and walk out only to realize I never happenedto check for what I was looking for. If there were a poster boy for someone who forgets where he put his keys, his phoneand his wallet, I would be him!

To make things worse, I suffered from slight dyslexia, mostly with my spelling. Even some of the simplest words would slip from my memory. Trying to take an Irish test

while spelling phonetically is a bad idea; its probably why Ifailed the subject. I had a great childhood and have greatmemories, but trying to remember them is like trying toremember a dream after you awake. What was wrong withme? I never asked that question because I didnt know better. What I knew was playing video games for half a day and watching hours of T.V. When we got our first family PC,it became hours of that too. If you ask me what my favoriteTV shows were when I was 9 or 10, I can tell you straight off, but ask me what year of school I was in and it might take mea while. To try and read a book was like trying to read aChinese newspaper.

I would read five words and I would start to feel sleepy.My attention span was more scattered than the sunny days we get in Ireland. Sometimes I would be playing video


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www.Studylessremembermore.com 12games, listening to music, downloading on my laptop,surfing MSN and texting on my phone all at onceand tothink I thought I was productive. I use to give my brain

working memory overload all the time, in addition to thefact that my brain was wired to be scattered, making itimpossible for me to focus on anything for a given length of time. I am a true child of the digital age, but being born intothis age has left me with many defects.

A lot of us have these defects and most of dont realize it.

Efficient studying and learning is something that can only bedone in a distraction-free environment. As years go by,distractions are becoming so normal that even now I betmost of you reading this may have checked your phone,replied to a Facebook message, listened to your iPod or hadthe television on. Distractions have become the new normal.Most people dont have the ability to be alone withthemselves in silence without feeling anxious. These new technologies that we interact with on a daily basis do, though we might not like to admit it, rewire our brains on aneurological level. The mediums through which we receiveour information also change the way in which our braininterprets it. So lets discuss in the next chapter two things we need to understand before we can approach studying:memory and attention .

_____lines x 12-13 average words per line = _______wpm


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Speed Reading Lesson 1No matter how busy you may think youare, you must find time for reading, or

surrender yourself to self-chosenignorance. Confucius


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SPEEDREADINGLESSON1

I hope youre not too caught up on your reading speed. As I said before, the average is 150-250 wpm. Anywherearound that and youre normal! So lets start with our firstspeed-reading lesson. All you need is a pen/pencil or yourfinger. All you have to do from now on is read and let either your pen or your finger guide your eyes as you go from line toline. Its like starting school all over again, and it kind of is

because the average person reaches their maximum readingspeed at the age of 12. This does not mean your reading is ata 12-year-olds level, but thats around the age at which youform most of your vocabulary. The rate at which we talk isnearly the same as the rate we read. This is because of sub-

vocalization .

I bet you that when you counted back over the lines youread when calculating your reading speed, you used yourfinger or pen to count back. Why? Well, its natural for oureyes to be attracted to movement, so for your first lesson all you have to do is use your pen/finger to guide your eyesalong the sentence. The great thing about this is that we cancontrol the pace of our reading with our finger/pen. Thisincreases the speed, but what it also does is stop us fromfixating on each word, giving our eyes a natural flow to follow when reading, which decreases eye strain also. So practicethis in the next chapter.


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Learning to Learn

MemoryMemory is a complicated thing, arelative to truth, but not its twin.

Barbara Kingsolver


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LEARNING TOLEARNMEMORY

There are hundreds and thousands of books on thesubject of memory, but all we want to know is: how do we getinformation in to our long-term memory in the easiest way?So we just need an overview of the process. What is memory? Are there different types of memory?

There are two types of memory which we are concerned

with: short-term memory and long-term memory . Weare also concerned withsensory input (information inputfrom the five senses).

Sensoryinput

Shortterm

LongTerm


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SHORT-TERM ANDLONG-TERMMEMORY

We hold our immediate impressions, thoughts andsensations as short-term memories. They tend to last only afew seconds. One particular type of short-term memory that we are concerned with is working memory . It plays aninstrumental role in the transfer of information into long-term memory and hence in the creation of our personal storeof knowledge. Working memory forms, in a very real sense,

the contents of our consciousness at any given moment. Weare conscious of what is in working memory and notconscious of anything else. If working memory is the brainsnotepad, then it can be said that long-term memory is likethe brains filing system.

Whats in our long-term memory is mostly outside of our consciousness. When we think about something, we bring the contents of our long-term memory out of that filingsystem into our working memory. It was once thought thatlong-term memory was a huge place where all facts, eventsand expressions were stored, and that it played little part inour ability to problem solve or in our cognitive processes. Butexperts now have come to realize that long-term memory isactually key to our understanding. It not only storesimpressions, facts and events but also complex concepts.

The brain organizes different bits of information intochunks and patterns of knowledge, giving us depth of thought.


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A SWIMMINGPOOL AND A TEASPOON

The rate at which we learn depends on the transferencefrom working memory to long-term memory. The problem with our working memory is that it can only hold so much,unlike long-term memory, which is vast and some say infinite. In the groundbreaking 1956 paper The MagicalNumber Seven, Plus or Minus Two, psychologist GeorgeMiller came to the conclusion that working memory can hold

about seven elements of information. This is now seen as anoverstatement. It is now thought that we can hold only fourpieces of information, even fewer at a given time. The thingsthat we hold in our working memory will in time quickly vanish, unless we refresh the information by rehearsal.

Imagine trying to fill a swimming pool with a teaspoon.Thats the challenge we are up against when we try transferring information from working memory to long-termmemory.

Working Memory

Studying

Facebook

Tex ng


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HOW TOO VERFLOW A TEASPOON

By regulating and pacing the rate at which we fill theteaspoon, we can get the most information into ourswimming pool (our working memory). The objective is notto fill the swimming poolthat would be impossible. Thegoal is to not waste the water we put in the teaspoon in theprocess. So getting the most information into our workingmemory is not the objective; rather, the goal is getting the

information from our working memory into our long-termmemory without wasting or overloading our workingmemory. The medium which we use plays a important way role in that.

When we read a book, the information tap provides asteady flow which we can control by the pace of our reading. When our full concentration is on one thingfor example,the text of what we are studyingmost if not all of theinformation goes into our long-term memory spoonful by spoonful and reinforces the concept which we are trying tolearn. The Internet and other electronic mediums give us thechoice of many information taps all blasting at once. Have you ever turned a tap on at full blast and tried to put a spoonunder it? Its not a pretty sight; you will spray watereverywhere and still have no water in the spoon when youtake it out.

We are only able to catch little bits of informationfrom different sources that go into our working memory, andlater to our long-term memory. We cannot hold a continuousstream of information like we would get from reading a page

or a book from start to finish. Our working memory is like amemory stick which can only hold a certain amount of data.


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www.Studylessremembermore.com 20These data are ourcognitive load . When the data limit isexceeded on the memory stick (our working memory), wecannot retain the information which we are receiving. This

stops us from making the connections and references in ourmind with the information already in our working memory.Our ability to learn suffers and our understanding is shallow.

Our attention span depends on our working memory. When we get distracted from the constant flow of information happening all around usfrom the Internet to

our mobile phones to the environment which we live inwehave to keep reminding ourselves what it is we have toconcentrate on. When our cognitive load is high, thisamplifies the distractions we experience and overtaxes our working memory, which makes the distractions we face moredistracting. There are two main factors that cause our working memory to overload:extraneous problem-solving and divided attention . Unfortunately these arethe two effects the Internet and other electronic media haveon our brain.

WorkingMemory

100%Capacity

Emails20%

Tex ng40%

Study40%


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CHALLENGENO. 1

Ever go a day without your mobile phone or theInternet?Most people would never give it a second thought, becausethey are so built into our way of life. The first time I went twodays without my mobile phone, it honestly felt like I had withdrawal symptoms. I constantly had to force myself tokeep from turning on that phone to see if any divine

messages from a higher power texted me this weeks lottonumbers. It really gave me insight into the addiction I had totechnology. Do you think you could go a day or week with outany Internet or mobile phone?

O VERVIEW There are different types of memory Your working memory has a limit The medium you use to study massively affects how the

information is received by the brain Distractions fill up your working memory The Internet and other electronic mediums increase

working memory overload, thus destroying our ability toretain our attention and concentration


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Speed Reading Lesson 2Think before you speak. Read before you

think. Fran Lebowitz


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SPEEDREADINGLESSON2 As I was saying in the first Speed Reading Lesson, we tend toread each word in every sentence. This is something that wehave always done since we were children. In this lesson we will be reading three words at a time in our heads. Youshould only spend a fraction of a second on each group of words. The idea is to take three words in and move on. This will help you absorb greater chunks of words while reading.Dont forget to keep using your pen/finger for this.

M ALCOLMS PRISONSTUDIESP ART1(Excerpted from The Autobiography of Malcolm X )

Born in Omaha in 1925, Malcolm was the sonof a Baptist preacher. He grew up in

Lansing, Michigan, but after the early death of hisfather in 1931, he was sent to a foster home,then reform school, and eventually moved in with

his half-sister in Boston in 1941. After leavingschool early, he made his way to the big apple of

New York City. While there, he worked as a waiterin Harlem. He then soon got involved with

its underworld. He began selling marijuana, became addicted to cocaine, turned to

burglary and was caught by police he was sentencedin 1946

to ten years imprisonment. After he gottransferred from Charlestown Prison to Norfolk Prison Colony,

he accepted the religion of Islam and whiletrying to write to the leader of the Nation of Islam,leader Elijah Muhammad, he stated that:


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Sleep More, Study Less?I count it as a certainty that in paradise,

everyone naps. Tom Hodgkinson


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SLEEPMORE, STUDY LESS

Ever hear your teachers or your parents say you shouldget a good nights sleep before your test? Were you also toldnot to cram? Well, I was told that, but it didnt stop me orfriends I know who would stay up all night before a test andcram. But now that we have an overview of working memory, we will discuss how that memory is consolidated, cleared andmade ready for more information: sleep! Brilliant, right?

Your brain while you sleep goes through all you have learned,done and seen in your day. All of this will be sorted throughand stored. This happens in two stages:

REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement/dream sleep) Deep sleep (occurs after REM sleep)

Imaging a filing cabinet and, on the floor beside it, tonsof papers scattered everywhere. The papers represent your whole days intake of data and information. DuringREM (Rapid Eye Movement sleep), your brain sorts through thesepapers, puts them in order and refreshes your workingmemory, giving you a clean slate to go learn again. For bettermemory consolidation and retention,deep sleep , the stageafter REM sleep, is needed. You go through blocks of 90-minute sleep cycles every night.


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THESLEEPC YCLE

A sleep cycle lasts an average of 90 minutes: 65 minutesof normal, or non-REM (rapid eye movement), sleep; 20minutes of REM sleep (in which we dream); and a final 5minutes of non-REM sleep.

OKnow what do you need to know all this for? In

Sleep, dreams, and memory consolidation: The role of thestress hormone cortisol Jessica D. Payne and Lynn Nadeldiscuss the effects of sleep on memory.

One important clue is the variety of types of memories we take in.

72%

22%

6%

90-Min Sleep Cycle

Deep Sleep

REM Sleep

Deep Sleep


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Episodic: the memory of autobiographical events(times, places, associated emotions and other contextual

knowledge) Procedural: the memory for how to do things, from

tying shoes to flying an airplane to reading

Learning appears to be best consolidated during specificstages of sleep. REM sleep may be preferentially important

for the consolidation of procedural memories and some typesof emotional memory, whereasnon-REM , especially Slow Wave Sleep (deep sleep), appears to be critical forexplicit, episodic memory consolidation. According to Payneand Nadel, This role for SWS appears to apply both to verbal tasks and spatial tasks. and paired-associatedlearning tasks. They tested both episodic and proceduralmemory after retention intervals defined over early sleep which is dominated by SWS and late sleep which isdominated by REM. Subjects were trained to recall a wordlist (episodic) and a mirror-tracing task (procedural) and were retested after 3-hour retention intervals, during eitherearly or late nocturnal sleep. Recall of paired associates(Recalling of the Word list or fact based memorys) improvedsignificantly more after a 3-hour sleep period rich in SWSthan after a 3-hour sleep period rich in REM or after a 3-hour period of wake. Mirror tracing, on the other hand,improved significantly more after a 3-h sleep period rich inREM than after 3 h spent either in SWS or awake. The factthat memories only undergo effective consolidation early inthe night, when NREM (SWS) is particularly

So how do we put all this together to help you study better? Its easy! You regulate your learning with sleep. I am


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www.Studylessremembermore.com 28not saying you sleep all daythat would be unproductive. What I am trying to say is that you should be getting a goodnights sleep, but you should also be taking a nap during your

day. If we know now how easy it is to overload our workingmemory, and that sleep filters all the information from yourday, then a nap after you have learned something (or if youfeel you have bombarded your brain all day) is the best way to start fresh for more learning.

Learning

Nap

BeOerMemory

Reten on


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N APPINGM Y W AY TO A DEGREE

Lets quickly look at a study done on the power of napsnot only for memory retention but also to clear your workingmemory, which is mostly in yourhippocampus . A study by Matthew Walker, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley (Daytime naps, motor memory consolidation and regionally specific sleep spindles)reportedthe following. The study involved 39 healthy young adults

who were placed into either a nap or no-nap group. At noon,all the participants performed a learning task intended toexercise the hippocampus, a region of the brain that helpsstore fact-based memories. Both groups performed atcomparable levels on this test.

Then at 2 p.m., the nap group took a 90-minute nap while the no-nap group stayed awake. Later that day, at 6p.m., participants performed a new round of learningexercises. Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. In contrast, those who napped didmarkedly better and actually improved in their capacity tolearn. Other scientists say naps are natural. Humans are bi-phasic sleepers, which means we're meant to sleep in bouts,not long stretches.

The new findings reinforce the researchers' hypothesis.Sleep is needed to clear the brain's short-term memory storage and make room for new information, concludes Walker. Previous research has shown that Fact-basedmemories are temporarily stored in the hippocampus before being sent to the brain's prefrontal cortex, which may have

more storage space.


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www.Studylessremembermore.com 30"It's as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is

full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you're not going to receive any more mail. It's just going to

bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder," Walker says.

Applying this to your day should be a must. I have cometo a stage were I will feel bad if I dont fit some sort of nap in,even if its for 10 minutes. Think of it like Walker put it in theabove paragraph: clearing your full e-mail inbox. Since I

started to nap, my learning has increased dramatically andmy memory is so much better than it was. So what I propose you do is the following: try to fit a power nap (20-30minutes) in after studying or at least at some point during your day.

I am not going to give you a routine to follow. I think people will find a routine that will suit themselves. I dont want you to change your whole view of life here; I just want you to be aware of it and change will naturally come.

Power Nap

Study

Power Nap

Informa onverload


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CHALLENGENO. 2

I had people tell me that I am able to fall asleep in undera minute. How do I do it? I dont know! Partly I have trainedmy brain that when I am in a bed its time to sleep. Mostpeople will do everything on their bed (Yes, I know yougiggled at that!). All I do (most of the time) is sleep. How quickly do you think you can fall asleep? Why not try to time your self for 10 minutes and see if you can fall asleep. Dont

worry if you cant; it will quickly become normal after a few times.

O VERVIEW A sleep cycle last 90 minutes Sleep refreshes the brain

Sleep consolidates information into memory Take a nap after studying or at least once per day Length of sleep affects learning, forEpisodic (the

memory of autobiographical events times, places,associated emotions and other contextual knowledge)sleep rich in SWS is needed while forProcedural (hememory for how to do things, from tying shoes to flying

an airplane to reading) sleep rich in REM sleep (DreamSleep) is needed Always remember: your working memory has a limit


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Speed Reading Lesson 3Let us read, and let us dance; these twoamusements will never do any harm to

the world. Voltaire


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SPEEDREADINGLESSON3

Lets work on one of our final lessons on speed-reading.This has to do with sub-vocalization. This is the hardest oneto change, but what we can do is prevent it from happening when we use our pen/finger to read. The faster we go with it,the faster our eyes have to read, making it harder for us tosay the words in our heads. So on the next test, what I want you to doand I really want you to do itis to read using

your pen/finger for one minute, then go back on the samematerial and read for 50 seconds and see can you get past your mark of where you finished last. If you do, I want you tostart from the beginning and keep going until time runs out.

Then I want you to read for 35 seconds and see if youcan get past your mark. After you have done this, I want youto read through the page normally using your pen/finger at apace that feels right. What you will find is that your speedincreases and you can take things in at a higher rate. Why? Well, have you ever been on a motorway going, lets say, 120mph, then decelerated to 40 mph to get off the motorway? Itmight seem really slow, because your mind is used to goingat 120 mph. So if youre reading at 500 wpm, dropping itdown to 350 wpm wont seem fast to you at all. Another greatthing about using your finger/pen while reading is that it willstop you from going back over your material (regression). What I should point out here is that most people who read aline once and dont understand it should read the next line,as it might help you understand the first line. On the nextpage there is an article with which youll start your next test.


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www.Studylessremembermore.com 34The following is an excerpt from The Mind Has NoFirewall by Timothy L. Thomas:

"It is completely clear that the state which is first to create such weapons will achieve incomparable superiority." -- Major I. Chernishev, Russianarmy[1]

The human body, much like a computer, contains myriad dataprocessors. They include, but are not limited to, the chemical-electricalactivity of the brain, heart, and peripheral nervous system, the signalssent from the cortex region of the brain to other parts of our body, thetiny hair cells in the inner ear that process auditory signals, and thelight-sensitive retina and cornea of the eye that process visualactivity.[2] We are on the threshold of an era in which these dataprocessors of the human body may be manipulated or debilitated.Examples of unplanned attacks on the body's data-processing capability are well-documented. Strobe lights have been known to cause epilepticseizures. Not long ago in Japan, children watching television cartoons were subjected to pulsating lights that caused seizures in some and madeothers very sick.

Defending friendly and targeting adversary data-processing capabilitiesof the body appears to be an area of weakness in the US approach toinformation warfare theory, a theory oriented heavily toward systemsdata-processing and designed to attain information dominance on the battlefield. Or so it would appear from information in the open,unclassified press. This US shortcoming may be a serious one, since thecapabilities to alter the data- processing systems of the body already exist. A recent edition of U.S. News and World Report highlightedseveral of these "wonder weapons" (acoustics, microwaves, lasers) andnoted that scientists are "searching the electromagnetic and sonic

spectrums for wavelengths that can affect human behavior."[3] A recentRussian military article offered a slightly different slant to the problem,declaring that "humanity stands on the brink of a psychotronic war" with the mind and body as the focus. That article discussed Russian andinternational attempts to control the psycho-physical condition of manand his decision-making processes by the use of VHF-generators,"noiseless cassettes," and other technologies.

An entirely new arsenal of weapons, based on devices designed tointroduce subliminal messages or to alter the body's psychological anddata-processing capabilities, might be used to incapacitate individuals.These weapons aim to control or alter the psyche, or to attack the


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Study Less Remember More 35 various sensory and data-processing systems of the human organism. In both cases, the goal is to confuse or destroy the signals that normally keep the body in equilibrium.

This article examines energy-based weapons, psychotronic weapons, andother developments designed to alter the ability of the human body toprocess stimuli. One consequence of this assessment is that the way wecommonly use the term "information warfare" falls short when theindividual soldier, not his equipment, becomes the target of attack.

You might have noticed while you were getting faster andfaster your retention was going down, its only when youdropped down in speed it went back up the great thing as Isaid before is when your mind gets used to reading at 500 wpm, when you drop down in speed to 400-350 wpm yourretention goes up. Even do if you first started to read at thatspeed your retention would not be good, this helps you findthat happy medium

SpeedGoes Up

Reten onGoes Down


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Music and StudyMusic is the mediator between the

spiritual and the sensual life.

Ludwig van Beethoven


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MUSICHELPSMESTUDY

For 90% of people, music is a huge part of their lives. Italways has been since the beginning of its rich history. Eventhe philosopher Plato said 2,000 years ago in his book The Republic that music can influence peoples emotion. Music isa powerful tool that can be used for good or bad. Music issuch a major part of our lives today that most people will goall day and night without having a single second of silence.

Most people already know that music is used forrelaxation, but it also can be used for studying. Although, forthe most part, instrumental music is the only kind thatshould be used when in the process of studying. You mightthink, Why cant I listen to my favorite MC Hammer track while studying? Well, you can if you want to remember the whole U Cant Touch This song; be my guest. Can youhonestly say that you could read a book with MC Hammerplaying and your friends talking to you at the same time, while being able to comprehend the whole of what you arestudying? If so, please call me!

Why cant you? Its simple. Knowing what weve learnedabout how the brain receives information, you already know its a bad idea to be doing two things at once. You should do your own research on multi-tasking; you will find itdecreases your productivity. What we will learn here in thischapter is how to use music to not only relax and concentrate your mind while studying, but how that same music willactually help you to re-learn your material while you sleep. YES! Thats what I said: learn while you sleep. But its more

like re-learning, which you will read about shortly.


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LEARNWHILEI SLEEP?

In a report in Volume 315 of Science Odor Cues DuringSlow-Wave Sleep Prompt Declarative Memory Consolidation Author Bjrn Rasch did a test using odors while the test subjects were learning a card sequence. They would emit the odor on and off while the subject waslearning and would release the same odor while they wereasleep. The odor was released only during Slow Wave Sleep

(SWS), which happens roughly three hours into sleep. They found that the brain would reconsolidate the same memoriesthat were learned for better retention.

You can see where this is going. The reason they usedthe odor is because it was the one thing that would not wakethem during sleep, but music played at a light volume duringsleep can do the same. I put this to the test. I was studying alanguage and mid-study I had a relaxing track playing. That very night I had the track on my iPod (you can use anotherMP3 player or phone, too). I set it to go off three hours intomy sleep on a low enough volume so as not to wake me. While I was asleep, in some of my dreams the same sequenceof words I was learning was being said back to me in my dream. Not only thatas I woke, my retention of what Ilearned increased. I did notice after a few days that my recollection of what I was learning was lasting a lot longer. Idid all of this while sleeping.

If you look to the next page, you will notice a diagramfrom Sciences sleep study. You will notice that Exp.1 showsthe test in which the odor was used during learning and

SWS. The recall of the card locations was dramatically increased compared to the other tests. The results of this test


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Study Less Remember More 39are the exact same when you substitute some lightinstrumental music for the odor!

Figure 1 Vol 315 Sciencemag.org


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PUTTINGIT INTO A CTION Here is a short list of what to do so you can get the most

out of what youre learning: Get relaxation or mediation music for your phone/Mp3

player Chose one of those tracks for a specific thing youre

studying (e.g., track 1 for Maths, track 2 for SocialScience, etc.)

When you go to sleep that night, set an alarm for threehours into sleep on your phone or iPod with the alarm being the track which you studied with. Make sure the volume is set low as not to wake you. I would test thisout first.

Remember to mix up the tracks after a while; your brain will get use to the sound coming on at that time,

and it will not be as effective.

Study with musicfor topic

Alarm 3 hours intosleep

Light alarm goesoff with samemusic playing

SWS, reac va ngmemory

BeOer reten on


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EXTRAS Check out www.StudylessRemembermore.com for a

great video on how music reanimated an old mans memory in a care home in America (Its a must watch!) and muchmore.

O VERVIEW Music with words doesnot promote better study Relaxation music helps with study, relaxation andattention Music can be used to reactivate memories already

learned Choosing a track to study for specific subjects is key Using a device that can play music and that has alarm

functions can be used to reactivate the hippocampusduring Slow Wave Sleep

This can be used to help retain information learnedeffortlessly!


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Speed ReadingI hate reading, but I hate not to read.


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SPEEDREADING

This is the final lesson. I hope you have been using whatI taught you in the last three lessons and that you are using your pen/finger while reading this (Unless on a screenthen you better print it out! Just kidding.). I hope you have seenan improvement. But to really make it apparent, lets doanother speed-reading test, this time using what you havelearned so far. On the next page, begin reading and do the

following, just like during the first test:1. Start timer for 60 seconds2. Read with pen/finger3. Stop after 60 seconds4. Count the lines back from were you stopped.5. Multiply the lines by words per line (average of 12-13

words per line)

So if you read 10 lines, 10 lines x 12 words is 120 lines,making your reading speed 120 words per minute.


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M ALCOLMS PRISONSTUDIESP ART2 I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to expresswhat I wanted to convey in the letters that I wrote [] In the Street, I

had been the most articulate hustler out there I had commanded attention when I said something. But now, trying to write in simple English, I not only wasnt articulate, I wasnt even functional. Howwould I sound writing in slang, the way I would say it, something suchas Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat, Elijah Muhammad

Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television,or those who read something Ive said, will think I went to school farbeyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prisonstudies.

[] Every book I picked up had few sentences which didnt contain anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might aswell have been in Chinese. When I just skipped those words, of course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said.[] I saw that thebest thing I could do was to get hold of a dictionaryto study, to learnsome words. I was lucky enough to reason also that I should improvemy penmanship. It was sad. I couldnt even write in a straight line. It was both ideas together that moved me to request a dictionary alongwith some tablets and pencils [...] I spent two days just rifflinguncertainly through the dictionarys pages. Id never realized so manywords existed!

[] In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied intomy tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks. [] Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything Id written on the tablet. Over and over aloud, to myself, I read my ownhandwriting.

[] I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin tounderstand what the book was saying. Anyone who read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I wasnot reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldnt havegotten me out of books with a wedge. [] [With] my reading of books,months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

- (The Autobiography of Malcolm X , 1965)


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Study Less Remember More 45 After Malcolm was released from prison, he changed his

name to Malcolm X and became one of the most outspoken,controversial Civil Rights leaders and one of the greatest

speechmakers of the 20th

Century. He was later gunneddown and murdered in 1965.

Lines________ x 12-13 words per line = ______ wpm

I am sure you have seen an increase in your readingspeed, but, like everything, reading is something that needs

to be practiced. I hope you will have a future look into speedreading as it will massively help in your life. Dont forget tocheck out the website www.Studylessremebermore.com formore information.


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Screen vs. PaperI find television very educating. Every timesomebody turns on the set, I go into the other

room and read a book. Groucho Marx


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SCREEN VS. P APER

Now this is a touch and go subject. Firstly, more andmore courses are becoming computerized, which meansmore time looking at a screen. But you have to rememberthat when youre reading off a screen, youre looking at 50frames per second and now with HD, hundreds moreflashing pictures a second. Its not something that is staticlike a book or a piece of paper. Most people know now that

looking at a screen for too long can seriously damage yoursight over a longer period of time.

Not only that, but your brain is interacting with thatinformation in a different way than if it was reading the sameinformation on paper. As was said before, the medium in which information is taken in can drastically affect how the brain interprets the information.

In a U.K. study from the University of Leicester,Computer- versus paper-based tasks: Are they equivalent? Author Kate Garland suggests that reading from a screen isslower and less accurate than reading from paper. Whilethere is no difference in performance when the samematerial is presented in both formats, they found that there were advantages to learning from paper-based rather thancomputer-based tools.

Participants in the study needed repeated exposure andrehearsal of on-screen material in order to grasp the sameinformation. Paper readers were also better able to apply the knowledge in the material from books, says Garland.


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www.Studylessremembermore.com 48People recall information through episodic memory or

remembering, which involves consciously identifying thecontext in which they learned something, and semantic

memory orknowing, which doesnt require context. In thelong term, knowing knowledge is better because importantfacts are recalled faster and more easily, Garland says. Herfindings suggest that the shift fromremember to know happened more when participants read paper than whenthey read screens.

ITS BRAINWAVES THESCREENCRAVES If I were to tell you that the brain works on different

frequency waves, would you believe me? Well, its true. Our brain gives off waves depending on what our brain is doing.Brainwaves are measured in cycles per second (or hertzHz is the abbreviation). We also talk about the "frequency" of brain wave activity.

The lower the number of hertz, the slower the brainactivity or the slower the frequency of the activity. In hisstudy An Electromechanical Animal, Dialectica, WilliamGrey Walter at the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol, along with others in the 1930s and 40s, identified severaldifferent types of brainwaves.

Traditionally, these fall into four types: Delta waves (below 4 Hz) occur during sleep Theta waves (4-7 Hz) are associated with sleep, deep

relaxation (like hypnotic relaxation), and visualization Alpha waves (8-13 Hz) occur when we are relaxed and

calm


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Study Less Remember More 49 Beta waves (13-38 Hz) occur when we are actively

thinking, problem solving, etc.

And what type of brain wave activity do screens promote? Alpha !

In an experiment in 1969, Herbert Krugman in hisreport (Passive Learning From Television) monitored aperson through many trials and found that in less than oneminute of television viewing, the person's brainwaves

switched from beta waves (brainwaves associated withactive, logical thought) to primarily alpha waves. When thesubject stopped watching television and began reading amagazine, the brainwaves reverted to beta waves.

One thing this indicates is that most parts of the brain(parts responsible for logical thought) tune out duringtelevision viewing. The impact of television viewing on oneperson's brain state is obviously not enough to conclude thatthe same consequences apply to everyone; however, researchinvolving many others, completed in the years followingKrugman's experiment, has repeatedly shown that watchingtelevision produces brainwaves in the low alpha range.

What is the difference between a TV and a monitorscreen? Nothing at all; they work the same way! Judging by all this, you can see why taking a few minutes of your timeand a few cents from your pocket to get your material printedout is not only an easier way to learn information, but alsoadding your improved speed reading to it will help doublethe rate at which information is going in and being retained.


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SOFTWARETHATHELPS WITHLEARNING There are thousands of software programs out there thatclaim to promote better learning. But to be honest, thecomputer is a bad medium in the first place. So what I haverecommended is software to help deal with that problem.

Evernote Clearly: http://evernote.com/clearly/Clearly makes blog posts, articles and webpages clean andeasy to read.

AccelaReader: http://accelareader.com/ All youve got to do is copy and paste text that you would liketo read in this textbox then just click the 'Read!' button. The AccelaReader will help you read faster by flashing words at you like a video. This is a great website!

O VERVIEW

Screen work promotes a different type of learning even if its the same material being learned

Learning from paper is proving to be the better medium Monitor screens change the brainwaves of a person

within minutes Always give your mind and brain a rest from screen

work There is software that helps make screens lessdistracting and better to read and study off of


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Extras


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HOWN ATUREM AKES Y OUSMARTER A team of University of Michigan researchers, in the

study (The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting With Nature)led by psychologist Marc Berman, recruited some three dozenpeople and subjected them to a rigorous and mentally fatiguing series of tests designed to measure the capacity of their working memory and their ability to exert top-downcontrol over their attention. The subjects were divided intotwo groups. Half of them spent about an hour walkingthrough a secluded woodland park, and the other half spentan equal amount of time walking along busy downtownstreets. Both groups then took the tests a second time.Spending time in the park, the researchers found,significantly improved peoples performance on thecognitive tests, indicating a substantial increase in

attentiveness. Walking in the city, by contrast, led to noimprovement in test results.

The researchers then conducted a similar experiment with another set of people. Rather than taking walks betweenthe rounds of testing, these subjects simply looked atphotographs of either calm rural scenes or busy urban ones.The results were the same. The people who looked at picturesof nature scenes were able to exert substantially strongercontrol over their attention, while those who looked at city scenes showed no improvement in their attentiveness. Insum, concluded the researchers, simple and brief interactions with nature can produce marked increases incognitive control. Spending time in the natural world seemsto be of vital importance to effective cognitive

functioning.


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A REBILINGUALPEOPLESMARTER?I always wanted to know another language other than

English and after reading these studies, it made me go outand learn another.

In a 2004 study by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok andMichelle Martin-Rhee titled (The development of two typesof inhibitory control in monolingual and bilingual children) they asked bilingual and monolingual preschoolers to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screeninto two digital binsone marked with a blue square and theother marked with a red circle.

In the first task, the children had to sort the shapes by color, placing blue circles in the bin marked with the bluesquare and red squares in the bin marked with the red circle.

Both groups did this with comparable ease. Next, thechildren were asked to sort by shape, which was morechallenging because it required placing the images in a binmarked with a conflicting color. The bilinguals were quickerat performing this task.

The collective evidence from a number of such studies

suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brainsso-called executive function a command system that directsthe attention processes that we use for planning, solvingproblems and performing various other mentally demandingtasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing toanother and holding information in mind like rememberinga sequence of directions while driving.


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www.Studylessremembermore.com 54In a 2009 study led by Agnes Kovacs of the International

School for Advanced Studies (Cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants), 7-month-old babies exposed to two

languages from birth were compared with peers raised withone language. In an initial set of trials, the infants werepresented with an audio cue and then shown a puppet on oneside of a screen. Both infant groups learned to look at thatside of the screen in anticipation of the puppet. But in a laterset of trials, when the puppet began appearing on theopposite side of the screen, the babies exposed to a bilingual

environment quickly learned to switch their anticipatory gaze in the new direction while the other babies did not.

Bilingualisms effects also extend into the twilight years.In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals,scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of theUniversity of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism measured through acomparative evaluation of proficiency in each language were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia andother symptoms of Alzheimers disease: the higher thedegree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.


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BIBLIOGRAPHY Berman, M. (2008).The Cognitive Benefits of InteractingWith Nature. University of Michigan , Psychology.Bjrn Rasch1, C. B. (2007). Odor Cues During Slow-WaveSleep Prompt Declarative Memory Consolidation. Science , 31.Kate Garland. (2008).Computer- versus paper-based tasks: Are they equivalent? University of Leicester, Psychology.L., H. K. (1969). Passive Learning From Television. Public

Opinion Quarterly.Malcolm X, A. H. (1965). The Autobiography of Malcolm X.In A. H. Malcolm X,The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Martin-Rhee, E. B. (2004).The development of two types of inhibitory control in monolingual and bilingual children. York University, psychology.Mehler, . M. (2009 ).Cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants. International School for Advanced Studies.Nadel, J. D. (n.d.). Sleep, dreams, and memoryconsolidation: The role of the stress hormone cortisol .Retrieved from Learnmem.cshlp.org : www.Learnmem.cshlp.orgSweller, J. (1999).The Magical Number 7, Plus or MinusTwo. Princeton University, Department of Psychology.Camberwell, Australia: Australian Council for EducationResearch. Walker, M. P. (2007, Oct.). Daytime naps, motor memory consolidation and regionally specific sleep spindles.Current Biology . Walter, W. G. An Electromechanical Animal, Dialectica. Burden Neurological Institute.


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