Reduce complexity: Chunking

- Let's test your memory. Try repeating these letters back to me. Are you ready? H J R V J D F E G H. How many could you remember? The letters were H J R V J D F E G H. I'm guessing you recalled somewhere around six or seven. That's because you can only hold so many things in your short-term memory at once. It's about six for letters and seven for numbers. Let's try again with some different letters. Are you ready? B A T D E S K C A R. How did you do this time? The letters were B A T D E S K C A R. Whether you did better with the second list depends on one critical thing. That thing is whether you noticed the pattern. If you did, this was likely very easy. You just remembered the words, bat, desk, car and spelled them back to me. Breaking things down into meaningful units like this is called chunking and it's a great way to improve your learning. Researchers gave a similar test to a person using numbers instead of letters. On his first try, he recalled around seven numbers. He was an ordinary guy like you and me. Also like you and me, he had interests, hobbies, and skills before beginning the training. He was a long distance runner and started chunking the random digits into race times and was eventually able to recall 80 digits. What skills and knowledge do you have that you can apply to the new things you are learning? Let's try another test. I'm going to show you an image of a chessboard. You'll have to think fast because you'll only have five seconds to learn the position of the pieces. Are you ready? Take a look. Okay, here's a blank chessboard. Where were all the pieces? How many of them did you remember? Well, it depends on how much chess experience you have. When researchers gave a test like this to a person with very little chess experience, they were only able to recall four pieces. However, when a master chess player was tested, they recalled 16. That's four times more. Are master chess players just people with outstanding memories? Those results are impressive, but no. But the master player did have something that the beginner didn't, and that thing was experience. Experience allowed him to organize the information quickly into meaningful chunks. Once you have the framework for something, it's easier to build on. When researchers placed the pieces randomly in a way that wasn't possible during an actual game, the benefit of the master's expertise went away. Chunking is a powerful way to learn new skills. To really see the benefits of chunking in your work, consider these helpful tips. First, the more you know, the more you'll be able to chunk together. So keep learning. Keep doing things like watching online courses. Second, look for how the things you're learning relate. Remember, the runner didn't originally notice the patterns. He only recalled seven digits at first, but once he started looking, he saw patterns everywhere. And finally, give yourself time to notice how things relate. If you are multitasking, not paying attention, or rushing through something, you won't notice how they relate. Maybe you're up-skilling for your job or re-skilling to find a different job. Maybe thinking about learning these new skills feels like trying to recall those random letters or recalling the chess pieces. It just feels impossible. But ask yourself this question. What do you already know? How can you, like the runner and master chess player, use what you already know to break things down into chunks of information? What pieces can you pull from your existing knowledge to improve your learning? So go ahead, give chunking a try.