How to learn: The PURE method
Most of the time we think learning is just consuming content and taking tons of notes. After that, we try to memorize the notes we took by reading them over and over again. But deep down we know learning like this isn’t right.
And it isn’t. Learning is not only about consuming content and taking notes. And, memorizing is not understanding.
Learning has different phases to it and we have to engage with them. These phases help us make our learning more intentional and effective.
The phases are summarized inside the P.U.R.E. method: priming, understanding, resting and experiencing.
priming
Priming is the first phase we have to engage in before we start studying, learning, and building experience. Priming helps you get an idea of what you will learn, it helps you build a rough simple structure as a simple framework for your understanding.
Priming is done by pre-studying.
Priming is not learning or taking notes in fine detail. It is the opposite.
Priming is mainly done by skimming material, breaking big concepts down into a few smaller concepts, or categorizing fine fragments of information into groups. Additionally, try to understand the relation and connection between the few concepts you ended up with. We don’t only want to have a list of topics we want to learn. We want to have a simple rough understanding of it.
Priming is a cognitive as well as expressive phase. Think and muddle through the concepts in your head. Try to make sense of them. But also feel free to create a simple structure by taking a few notes — a few is the key here.
You can create a simple 1D structure of concepts (SOC) by taking a few notes in a list-like fashion; either with pen and paper or an app like Notion. Or you can create a simple 2D network of concepts (NOC) either with pen and paper to create a mind map or with an app like Obsidian by utilising its graph feature.
The idea in this phase is that details can overwhelm us and we can get lost in them. Priming tries to solve this problem by allowing us to have a rough and simple structure first. This way we have a first framework we can reference and put all the details in.
understanding
After we successfully primed ourselves, it is time to dive a bit deeper into the concepts and take time to understand them in more detail. After pre-studying to prime, it is time to understand by studying.
There are multiple levels of understanding. It is important that you don’t understand concepts or insights in isolation. Try to understand them in relation to other concepts or to previous insights. The connections and relations are important for keeping the concepts together. It will allow you to retrieve and derive them more easily.
Consume the material you have in finer detail. Ask questions and try to explain them in your own words. Take a minute and try to recall what you just read. Chunk and categorize the details further to make the information flow more frictionlessly in your mind. Engage in the mental work of understanding and embrace the frustration and confusion that comes along while figuring things out.
Regarding taking notes, there are two types of note-taking that might work best: Question-note-taking (QNT) and delayed-note-taking (DNT).
With question-note-taking, you consume the material and instead of taking notes you write down questions. Questions without the answers. Either at the end of the material or after some time that feels right, you take time and try to answer the questions you wrote down. If something seems unclear, wrong, or is straight up missing, go back to the material and find out what you got wrong.
Delayed-note-taking is basically the same as question-note-taking. The difference is that you don’t write down any questions. You just consume the material, try to hold the information in your mind, and after some time you take notes, but delayed and without looking at the materials. It supports keeping the information in your mind and finding a way to make it simpler and easier to retrieve.
Both methods take advantage of recalling information.
Take the time and engage with the phase of understanding. If you truly understand concepts, it will be easier for you to remember them, retrieve them, and recall them.
resting
Each learning session should be followed by a session of rest. Priming, understanding, focusing, and taking time to think and muddle through concepts is difficult. Recharge your energy with a session of rest.
Additionally, during a focused learning session the respective neurons and neural circuits get only highlighted by your brain. The actual changes of strengthening and weakening neural connections, and thus learning, happen during rest.
Resting doesn’t mean spending hours on social media, watching YouTube or playing games. Sure, doing these things is fun and you should do them to relax. But it is not the actual rest your brain needs.
Instead, you can do things like taking a nap, laying down, meditation, or “motion-rich-thought-less” activities.
You can even incorporate micro-rests during your learning session. Just pause for a short while — like approx. 30 seconds — and continue afterwards with your learning. You can even do this a few times while learning.
experiencing
The final phase in learning is building experience by practising. Priming your brain and understanding a concept is important but understanding it once and putting it aside is not that valuable. We have to practice. We have to build experience.
Building experience does not mean rereading your notes, rewatching lectures, or taking more and more notes.
Building experience can take on different styles depending on what you are learning and why you are learning it.
Building experience can happen through applying your new understanding to new problems or slightly different problems than presented in the material.
You can build experience, test your understanding, and discover gaps in your understanding through active recall and self-quizzing.
If you want to make it more personal and build a new skill, you can even plan and work on a personal project. A personal project is a great way to make learning purposeful. You can apply what you learn. You learn through practice. And, you naturally discover new questions or problems to solve and learn about.
how to use P.U.R.E
The phases P. U. E can be combined or done individually in a learning session. You can for example spend a whole learning session only priming. Or you can take time for priming and understanding in one learning session. You can even spend multiple learning sessions only building experience after successfully priming and understanding. It is totally up to you and what you want to learn.
But only make sure you are really using the different phases and ideally in the order of priming, understanding, and experiencing. Don’t skip them.
You can also split up a big learning goal and concept into smaller concepts. This way you don’t have to prime everything first but you can learn the first concept through priming, understanding, and building experience and move to the next afterwards.
One phase you should incorporate in every learning session or at least at the end of it is resting. It is important to take a bit of time and rest after a focused and intense learning session.
P.U.R.E is only a simple and rough structure which you can use and adjust to your own personal style.
