01 September 2022 / 3-Min Read / Translate↗
Nobody likes to waste their time, especially when we live in a world of TikTok videos, sound bites and instant messaging. Everything is about “short and to the point” and I do support that ideal. However, learning is not about making EVERYTHING as short and simple as possible. I am a great believer in teaching the WHY as well as the WHAT. For example, knowing why you should have a certain swing means that knowledge is given context.
Repeating something you have already watched, read or listened to seems like a waste of time. But learning isn’t about “the time” you spend doing something, it’s about how much you absorbed. How much you can actually remember. And one way of measuring that is to imagine you have to report what you “learnt” to somebody else. I used inverted commas because watching a video does NOT mean you learnt it.
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Another reason it’s very useful to watch, read or listen to things again is that over time you become more receptive to different ideas with the video. Let me give you a real example. When you first watch my video about how to hold the racket, the only thing that is important is the position of your hand and fingers. The rest is beyond you, in the sense that you might have just started playing.
As you play for a little longer, and come back to the video, the part about not flicking your wrist and rotating your forearm is what is important now because you have mastered the basics of the grip. And finally after a few more months, the why we use the grip and forearm in that way becomes apparent as you begin to master getting the balls out of the corner.
And while I don’t want to say my videos are just as detailed as cinema movies, there will be things that you missed the first time you watch it. It’s the same with articles and podcasts. There’s a YouTube video about videography production that I rewatch every six months or so, because I seem to get something new from it each time.
Unless the video, article or podcast is very short, the chances are you will benefit from reviewing the content more than once. Ask yourself whether you are able to accurately summarise the content to another person. If not, then perhaps rewatch, reread or listen to it again, to ensure you are extracting the most amount of information, guidance and knowledge from it.