I strongly believe that learning to study is an essential part of education. It’s strange how through school and college we’re never actually taught how to study easier and more effectively. These are my recommendations of the best non-fiction books that can forever change your understanding of learning methods and living a more productive life.
▽ Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner ▽
Written by an opera singer who taught himself several languages and developed a system of fun and easy language learning. It’s useful not only for beginners but for intermediate learners as well, combining interesting and unique methods that you just need to follow and implement in your study routine. I can boldly say that this guy changed my perception of how a language should be learnt and gave me so much motivation and appreciation towards my target language. He also has a very useful website and a youtube channel. Reading this book should be your number one task when you decide to start learning a language.
▽ Essentialism by Greg McKeown ▽
This is one of those self-help books that really help. The author invites us to become an essentialist - a person, who can prioritize tasks and abandon anything that doesn’t lead you to a better life. It was the first book I read on my way to self-improvement and in the end I was left with hundreds of notes and highlighted parts that still inspire me today.
▽ The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg ▽
This book is all about habits and it’s truly fascinating. Science has never been so fun and engaging, it combines description of laboratory experiments with real life cases, and it never seems difficult to understand. We become more acquainted with how our brain works, and in result gain knowledge of the way to get rid of bad habits and replace them with good ones.
▽ Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown ▽
This book may become truly revealing for anyone who’s only been studying using the same (the authors use the word “intuitive”) techniques: rereading, going the easy way, polishing one exercise before moving to the other, avoiding mistakes, etc. In fact, studies show that the natural methods aren’t the most effective ones, and the book explains which techniques should be used if you want to keep your newly gained knowledge in the long-term memory, rather than in the short-term one.
There are also books that I haven’t read yet, but heard a lot about:
> Mindset by Carol Dweck (how the kind of a mindset you have can dictate if you succeed in life)
> The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin (one of the must-read in the genre)
> Getting Things Done by David Allen (aka the most well-known and effective organization system)
> The Defining Decade by Meg Jay (watch a Ted Talk the author gives on the importance of working at your goals in your 20’s)
> How to Study by George Fillmore Swain (recommended by @babyincollege)