How to Retain Your Learnings

Experiment

Developing the 3 pillars of my personal growth requires a holistic effort. Development refers to learning about ways to optimize my health, professional development and foster healthier relationships. 

Development could come through many ways such as Books, videos, courses, podcasts and mentors (there are a million but these are my personal preferences). However, learning a lot means very little if it is accompanied with a low retention rate. At my peak, when I was going through a book a week, I realized this fundamental flaw. I was reading, watching a tonne of videos and absorbing so much information like a sponge, but could only vaguely remember what I would’ve read 6 months ago. 

So, I came up with my Growth Journal. In its essence it was just a spreadsheet (Google Sheets). However, its meaning was way more for me. I created 3 different spreadsheet in accordance of my personal growth philosophy: Health, Wealth and Love. Under each, I created further subcategories. (For ex. Sales, Strategy, and Marketing under Wealth).

​Every-time I read a book on sales, took a video course or tested an important insight, I journalized my learnings (actionable golden  nuggets) as bullet points in these sub categories with more detailed explanation of what each point meant written as notes under each point.

Another insight that I quickly came to was that not all information was created equal. Hence, I created a weight system. This column allowed me to rank the information I would note down in order of importance and rank the information accordingly.  

Results

-Every time I need to write a sales pitch, write a speech, develop a marketing plan or an HR framework, I have a list dedicated to each task with hundreds of actionable tips and best practices that I would have documented throughout the years across multiple sources 
- Before I embark on a task, I can read the list on my growth journal, prime my brain with the best practices and take on those tasks with greater insight, refreshed memory and a primed brain that will yield a higher performance.
- If I ever need to refresh my memory on  health tips, relation tips, diet best practices or any of the many Health Wealth Love related research categories I have, I can do so by reading my bullet points instead of sorting through hundreds of books, videos, or courses. 
- Whenever I learn a new piece of insight, I can further grow these lists by going on my phone and adding the notes into the app, whenever and wherever I am

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