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El Método de Estudio del Top 1% de Harvard (Es Muy Injusto) — Transcript

by InvernovAH - Álvaro H. Jarque · 3,150 words · 485 segments · language es · Watch on YouTube

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0:00The study method of Harvard's brightest
0:02geniuses is within your reach. It is
0:04the 5 Rs method, because your problem
0:06isn't that you aren't smart, it's that
0:08you don't know how to unlock your full
0:10potential. But that is going to change.
0:12I learned it myself during my second
0:13year of Industrial Engineering. I
0:15researched professors like William
0:17Perry, director of Harvard's Bureau of
0:18Study Counsel, and Eric Mazur, a
0:20physics professor at the university.
0:22And today I am sharing my findings so
0:24you understand why you are wasting your
0:26capacity, the mistakes you make, and
0:28finally, I will give you the solution:
0:30the five Rs method for you to apply
0:32right away. I am Álvaro. Let’s begin
0:35. In 1959, a Harvard psychologist
0:43conducted an experiment with 15
0:45freshmen, the best in the country,
0:47admitted from thousands of applicants,
0:49and discovered something the university
0:51itself would take decades to grasp. Why
0:56did some brilliant students with the
0:57same intelligence and the same study
0:59hours as their peers get worse results
1:01or very different outcomes? His name
1:04was William Perry. He directed
1:06Harvard's Bureau of Study Counsel and
1:08that was his biggest question. To find
1:11out, he gave them a 30-page chapter
1:13from a history book. He explained to
1:16the students that after 20 minutes they
1:18would be asked to identify the
1:19important details of the text and would
1:21have to write a short essay about it.
1:24When the time for the test came, the
1:26entire class answered very well on
1:27detail-oriented questions, like what
1:29date, what name, or what specific fact
1:31appeared in the text. But when Perry
1:35asked them to explain in a few
1:36sentences what the chapter was really
1:38about, what its central idea was,
1:40almost no one could do it. Out of the
1:421,500, only 15 were able to summarize
1:45the underlying theme of the chapter.
1:47Why? Almost none of them had noticed
1:50the paragraph in the text explicitly
1:52marked as a summary, nor the titles and
1:54subtitles that pointed out the
1:55structure of the argument. Most tried
1:58to absorb every sentence, but no one
2:00had explained to them that reading
2:02every word is not the same as
2:03understanding what the text was about.
2:06Perry described it as a massive amount
2:08of wasted effort. The most important
2:11thing is what it reveals about the myth
2:13of intelligence. These, as you can see,
2:16were not just any students; they were
2:18pupils with the best academic records
2:20on the planet, admitted to the most
2:21selective university in the world. And
2:25even so, 99%of them studied poorly. It
2:29was a problem of method, and that is
2:31exactly the starting point for
2:32everything that follows. In the early
2:4290s, a Harvard physics professor named
2:44Eric Mazur was convinced he was very
2:46good at his job, but another physicist
2:47showed him a much harsher and crueler
2:49reality: his students weren't actually
2:51learning. David Hestenes had created a
2:56test to measure whether a student truly
2:58understood the physics concept of force
3:00. It was simple. Conceptual questions
3:03answerable in minutes without difficult
3:05or complex mathematical operations or
3:07anything of the sort. Mazur gave it to
3:10his own Harvard students and was
3:11horrified by the results. They had
3:14learned to execute the procedure
3:16without understanding the concept
3:17behind it. Mazur spent weeks trying to
3:20fix it. How? Well, by explaining better
3:22, in more detail, with more diagrams,
3:24making everything a little clearer, but
3:26it was useless. However, one day he did
3:28something almost out of surrender. He
3:31stopped talking and asked the students
3:33to discuss it among themselves for a
3:34few minutes. It worked like a charm. In
3:38an instant, the class's understanding
3:40improved more remarkably than with half
3:41an hour of his own explanation. Mazur
3:44understood why. A peer who has just
3:47learned something still remembers
3:48exactly what they found complicated. A
3:52professor who has mastered the concept
3:54for 20 years can no longer recall what
3:56is confusing because it's already
3:57obvious to them; explaining it to
3:59someone else or having someone explain
4:01it to you, having just learned it,
4:03reveals much more than a perfect
4:04lecture. From then on, he developed a
4:08method called Peer Instruction,
4:10published in 1997, which has been
4:12adopted in universities around the
4:14world with measured and documented
4:15results. Classes using this system show
4:19improvements in understanding far
4:21superior to traditional classes, even
4:23at Harvard itself. And here are the
4:26three errors that this discovery brings
4:27to light. Error number one: studying
4:30without questions and waiting too long
4:32to explain. They are actually two in
4:34one. Mazur's students believed they
4:37understood things because they could
4:38follow a lecture and solve a textbook
4:40exercise, but those are completely
4:42different things. Understanding is only
4:45revealed when you try to explain it in
4:47your own words, without relying on what
4:49you just read or heard. If you never
4:52put yourself to the test by explaining
4:54it, you can carry a misunderstanding
4:55for months or even a lifetime without
4:57realizing it. You might even think, "
4:59When I understand it well, I will
5:01explain it." But it works the other way
5:03around. You explain it to realize if
5:05you understand it, so try explaining it
5:07out loud in simple words, as if you
5:09were telling it to someone who knows
5:11nothing. This is called the Feynman
5:13technique; that's where everything
5:15becomes clear. Where you hesitate,
5:17where you use vague words, where you
5:19skip steps. Ultimately, it helps you
5:21find your weak point. And the
5:23associated error you find even before
5:25you start explaining is starting to
5:27study without having asked yourself
5:28some questions beforehand. You open the
5:32book and simply read as if your brain
5:34were a magic sponge. But the brain
5:37doesn't work like that. The brain
5:39remembers what it is looking for better
5:40. That is why one of the most powerful
5:43ways to study is to start with
5:44questions. Uh, what problem does this
5:46topic solve? Why does it matter? What
5:49idea repeats itself? What could they
5:51ask me? Regarding this, when you ask
5:54questions, the brain changes mode; it
5:56stops receiving information passively
5:58and starts hunting for answers. And an
6:02answer that you seek, you remember much
6:04better than a sentence you read without
6:05any kind of intention. Error two,
6:08studying isolated topics. The very
6:11format of peer instruction forces
6:12students to defend their answer to
6:14someone who thinks differently, and in
6:16that way, two ways of understanding the
6:18same problem are compared. Studying a
6:21topic completely in isolation, without
6:23comparing or contrasting it with other
6:25similar concepts, does not train that
6:26ability to distinguish when an idea
6:28applies and when it does not. And that
6:31is precisely the skill needed outside
6:33the classroom, where no one tells you
6:35in advance which concept to use to
6:37solve each problem. On an exam, in a
6:40conversation, in a real problem, you
6:42need to distinguish this. You need to
6:45know when to use that idea and when not
6:46to see the differences. That is why
6:48mixing topics can be so powerful. Study
6:51that requires no effort creates a weak
6:53memory. And if everything seems easy
6:55while you study, in reality, you aren't
6:57learning. Error number three, more is
7:00not better. The third error is thinking
7:03that studying more hours is always
7:04better, but concentration has limits.
7:07If you have seen my videos, you will
7:09understand. You can sit for 8 hours and
7:11have actually studied for two. Focus is
7:14not measured by hours; it is measured
7:16by the intensity of the study. That is
7:18why it makes more sense to work in deep
7:20cycles. I like 90-minute blocks without
7:23a phone, without interruptions, with a
7:25concrete goal, and then you stop, you
7:27rest. Productivity always depends on
7:30quality and not on quantity. Now you
7:33know why you fail: you confuse
7:34familiarity with learning, and you
7:36already know what specific errors
7:38produce it. Studying without questions,
7:41studying isolated topics, relying on
7:43quantity of hours over quality. But
7:46there is a solution, a method with five
7:48parts each solving the problems I just
7:50mentioned: the 5 Rs method, which
7:52I’ll tell you about right now. Learn
8:02from the end, not from the beginning.
8:05In 1870, the new dean of Harvard Law
8:07School, Christopher Columbus Langdell,
8:09did something his own faculty
8:11considered almost insane. Up until then
8:15, studying law consisted of listening
8:17to the professor recite entire
8:18treatises from memory and copying legal
8:20rules that were already fully digested.
8:23Langdell decided to eliminate that
8:25custom at the root. Instead, he gave
8:29students real court cases—complete
8:31rulings, without summaries or prior
8:33interpretation—and asked them to
8:34deduce for themselves the legal
8:36principle behind each verdict. The
8:40reaction was brutal. Students
8:42complained that Langdell wasn't
8:43teaching anything. The school's
8:47enrollment dropped from 165 to 117
8:49students in just three years. What
8:53Langdell had understood, without
8:54calling it that, was the first step of
8:56this method. Before studying, you must
8:59know what you will be asked to do with
9:01that information. His students studied
9:05knowing that later they would have to
9:06reason through a real case, defend a
9:08position, or apply a principle to a
9:10situation they had never seen before.
9:14The method withstood the criticism,
9:15which is why it is used today in
9:17practically every law and business
9:19school in the world, including Harvard
9:21150 years later. Applied to you, before
9:25opening any book or notes, ask yourself
9:26what you will be asked to do with that
9:28information. Solve a problem? Explain a
9:31concept out loud? Compare two theories,
9:34make a decision, apply it to a specific
9:37step, or answer exam questions? Once
9:41you are clear on the type of answer you
9:42will need to give, study backward from
9:44there. If this is what I have to be
9:47able to do, what do I need to
9:49understand first? What concepts support
9:52that answer? What examples will I need?
9:56What typical errors should I avoid?
9:59This makes studying much more precise.
10:02You start reading with a very clear
10:04direction, and when there is direction,
10:06anxiety drops because you know exactly
10:08why you are learning everything you
10:09read. I already told you what happens
10:15when you skip this step, using William
10:17Perry's experiment at Harvard. Students
10:21read an entire chapter word for word,
10:23and only 15 were able to explain what
10:25it was actually about. That is the key
10:28to reduction. Before you start, you
10:31must have an overview of the structure,
10:33titles, sections, and so on. Then you
10:36look for ideas that repeat throughout
10:38the topic, which in principle, if you
10:40removed them, would make everything
10:42else lose its meaning. That is the
10:45essential 20%, the skeleton. And from
10:48there, every new detail has a place
10:50where you can put it. This step also
10:53reduces study anxiety because you
10:54understand that not everything carries
10:56the same weight, that it comes in
10:58layers, and that you don't have to
10:59learn every tiny detail. But
11:01furthermore, this way the details are
11:03learned much more easily. Sometime in
11:09the 1940s, a graduate student was
11:11preparing for an oral exam that would
11:13decide if he could continue his
11:14scientific career. Instead of reviewing
11:17his class notes, he went alone to an
11:19empty room at MIT. He opened a
11:23completely blank notebook and wrote a
11:25title on the first page that would
11:26surprise anyone. Notebook of things I
11:29don't know. His name was Richard
11:32Feynman. Years later, he would win the
11:35Nobel Prize in Physics, and instead of
11:37reviewing what he already mastered, he
11:39spent weeks taking apart, piece by
11:40piece, every area of physics he knew.
11:44He was specifically looking for the
11:45gaps and contradictions in his own
11:47understanding. He didn't write down
11:49what he knew. He used the notebook to
11:52locate exactly what he didn't know
11:54before anyone asked him about it in the
11:55exam. From there comes what is known
11:58today as the Feynman technique, which I
11:59mentioned to you earlier. If you cannot
12:01explain something in simple words as if
12:03you were telling it to someone with no
12:05prior knowledge of the topic, it means
12:06you don't truly understand it yet.
12:09Applied to your studies, the third step
12:10consists of closing the book soon. You
12:13read a part of the topic, boom, you
12:14close the book and start explaining it.
12:16At first, it will go poorly, but that's
12:18okay because it's the first time you're
12:20doing it. Then you open the material,
12:23correct what you missed, and try again.
12:26This is a cycle, and the cycle of
12:28closing, recalling, and correcting is
12:29much more powerful than reading the
12:31same paragraph 10 times in a row,
12:33because it trains exactly what you will
12:35need on the day of the exam: pulling
12:36the information out of your head when
12:38you no longer have the book in front of
12:40you. And if you can also explain it out
12:43loud to another person or a recorder,
12:45even better. Explaining forces you to
12:48organize your ideas, to choose your
12:50words well, and every time you get
12:52stuck explaining something, you find
12:54exactly where you need to go back and
12:55study. Do you know what the forgetting
13:00curve is? You lose memory strongly in
13:03the first hours after learning
13:04something, and after that, the decline
13:06becomes much slower. Most of what you
13:10forget, you forget almost immediately
13:11after studying it if you don't do
13:13anything to prevent it. But Ebbinghaus,
13:15a German psychologist, found the
13:17solution. Every time you retrieve
13:20information just before forgetting it
13:22entirely, that information is anchored
13:24much more firmly than before, and the
13:25next time you forget takes a little
13:27longer. A study published in the
13:31journal Science in 2008, over a century
13:33later, confirmed that combining active
13:35recall with spaced repetition produces
13:37much better long-term retention than
13:39passively rereading material. That is
13:42why this fourth step consists of
13:44spacing out your reviews. How? Restudy
13:47the same topic the next day, after 3
13:49days, on the seventh day, and on the
13:5221st day. It doesn't have to be exact,
13:55down to the millimeter, it doesn't have
13:57to be, but the idea is that each time
13:59you can space it out more because the
14:01forgetting curve flattens, as you
14:02anchor the memories more firmly in your
14:04head. And for each review to truly work
14:07, it has to be active. Again, how?
14:10First, you try to remember without
14:11looking, then you check what you got
14:13right and what you didn't, and finally,
14:15you correct what went wrong—that is,
14:17you return to the famous technique. to
14:21connect with something that is very
14:23important to me, in study, in work, and
14:24in the rest of the areas of your life.
14:26The problem isn't that you don't know
14:28what to do, because in reality, you do
14:30know. The problem is that you don't
14:32have a system to do it and people to
14:34accompany you on the journey. I don't
14:37know if this has ever happened to you,
14:39but there are days when you surely get
14:41home at night and feel like you've done
14:431,000 things, you've been busy, you've
14:44jumped from one task to another, but
14:46the important tasks haven't moved
14:48forward. And let's not even talk about
14:50the goals for the year, which right now
14:52you might not even remember exactly
14:53what they were. It has happened to me
14:56too, that feeling of lack of control,
14:59of lack of clarity, of trying apps,
15:01trying methods, trying systems, and
15:03nothing works. And that is why,
15:05together with the guys from "Tengo un
15:08plan," Juan and Sergio, we have
15:09prepared a 21-day productivity
15:11challenge. It is the first time we are
15:13sharing something like this, and what
15:15better partnership than "Tengo un plan"
15:16and me to accompany you in this process
15:18. It will be practical, it will be for
15:20you to commit, because productivity is
15:22about doing, about installing systems,
15:24templates, and habits that you can
15:26apply in your real life. We will be
15:29there. The challenge starts on
15:31September 7th, meaning back to school,
15:33back to work, a new season for everyone
15:35, and for 21 days we will work so you
15:37can save time every day. The idea is to
15:40build a much clearer way to work, to
15:42get organized, and to recover hours of
15:44freedom. During the challenge, there
15:47will be a live stream every week with
15:49Juan, Sergio, and me. We have prepared
15:52four different profiles so that the
15:53advice is truly specific to your
15:55situation: for entrepreneurs, business
15:57owners, employees, people who
15:58procrastinate, and people who are
16:00overwhelmed, who feel they could earn
16:02more money or have more freedom with
16:04good organization. It is aimed at you,
16:08and we will also hold Focus Group-style
16:10work sessions to work together in
16:11company. So, if you feel you work a lot
16:15but don't make progress, that you
16:16procrastinate, that you don't have time
16:18for your hobbies, your friends, your
16:20projects, or even to earn more money,
16:22you have all the information in the
16:23link in the video description. And now,
16:26let's return to the last R of the
16:27method, which is radical performance.
16:33Twice a year, since the 80s, Bill Gates
16:35, the founder of Microsoft, disappears
16:37for an entire week. By the way, he is a
16:40Harvard alumnus. Bill moves to an
16:43isolated cabin in the Pacific Northwest
16:45, with no phone, no visitors, and
16:47absolutely no interruptions, except for
16:49someone who drops off two meals a day.
16:53For 7 days, he reads up to 100
16:55technical documents, sometimes
16:57dedicating up to 18 hours a day, and
16:59writes his own reflections on each page
17:01. At the end of the week, he writes a
17:04summary of everything he has thought
17:06about. Well, during one of those weeks
17:09in 1995, he introduced the famous
17:11Internet Tidal Wave memo, which led
17:13Microsoft to develop its own browser.
17:16The goal every time he did it was zero
17:18distractions, maximum focus. And this
17:22is what you could schedule every week
17:24without needing to disappear, or simply
17:26block out 90-minute study sessions with
17:28no phone, no open tabs, and a single
17:29concrete goal for that block. One or
17:32several specific questions you want to
17:34answer. For example, I am going to
17:36understand why this theory fails in
17:38such a specific case. If you don't
17:40respect this, your brain starts to
17:42simulate work: it reads but doesn't
17:44process, it looks but doesn't retain,
17:45it underlines but doesn't understand
17:47anything it underlines. So it's not
17:50about studying more hours; it's that
17:52during the hours you do study, your
17:54mind is solely on that, with full focus
17:56and attention. And if your problem is
17:59that you don't know how to create a
18:01system that gives you time to think, to
18:03create, that frees you mentally, I'll
18:04leave you this video, which is a
18:06step-by-step guide so you can achieve
18:08it starting today. See you on the other
18:10side. Best wishes and until next time.
18:15Oh.

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