The Ultimate Guide to Learning Faster (The Layering Method)

what if I told you you can learn 10x faster and this is what I did in med school and I was able to finish 100 hours of content in just 10 hours uh while still achieving a perfect GPA and the secret is this it's not what you study instead it's the order in which you study and this is called the layering method this is an approach taught by Dr Justin s who's a world leaning expert in learning and actually having the opportunity to work alongside him personally I'm going to show you what a learning expert

uses on the day-to-day to learn any subject at rapid speeds and also this is what I use to consult Learners as a senior learning coach myself and at the end of this video I'll provide a live demonstration of this layering method so you'll know exactly how to learn faster using this so the layering method is all about saying that rather than studying a subject in a straight line from start to finish we should pass over the information multiple times with each layer being more and more detailed than the last so we can gradually build our

understanding and there are typically four layers of information when it comes to learning any subject layer one is like the trunk of the tree it refers to the most broadest most foundational pieces of knowledge in a topic and so you can think of this as the key titles in your textbook and for example in this video I'm going to be talking about studying plant biochemistry so this could be things like photosynthesis cellular respiration photorespiration and ATP synthesis Layer Two are the branches and this layer covers the main Concepts so for instance the main stages of

photosynthesis which are the light dependent reactions the Calvin cycle and typically we're looking at this main idea of electron flow which I'll talk about later Layer Three is like the leaves and this now represents the details so examples of this could be the reactants the products of photosynthesis you're looking at your carbon dioxide water glucose oxygen molecules rabisco maybe things like that and layer four is like the random fruits on the tree and so these are now looking at some of those more arbitrary or smaller details for example it could be the name of a

specific molecule like glycer alide 3 phosphate so just like how we would build a house we want to start off with the foundations and then finally we'll do the internal decorations and details at the very end and with studying we want to start with understanding layer one information first followed by layers 2 3 and four and that is what the top Learners do to speed learn anything but the problem is this our Tech T books our class notes they are structured in a way where all of the layers of information are mixed together which makes

it far more difficult for us to pick up on these things ourselves for example our textbook might look something like this you can see there's a little bit of layer one knowledge here a bit of layer 2 and then a lot of layer four and if we don't rearrange the order ourselves we end up wasting hours and hours and we're just trying to understand just what is going on an example for me is that a lot of the time when I was studying maths in high school I would always end up working on the hardest

questions of let's say chapter 1.4 and then I would get completely stuck and waste time there trying to figure it out only for me to realize that the very next concept on chapter 1.5 actually explained everything that I needed to know to solve those hardest questions of 1.4 and lots of time was wasted and this happens all of the time when you learn specifically in order of the uh textbook or how it's presented to you rather than in these layers essentially you spend a lot of time doing things that you don't need to do now

what the layering method allows us to achieve is it allows us to turn something that has all these scattered layers of information into a more structured and organized understanding inside of our brain which is truly what matters the most and one of the best ways to physically represent this layering process is by making a mind map and this is where you have your layer one information you know brunching out into layer 2 then layer three and then layer four and the arbitrary detail that are there at the very end that just need to be memorized

for the details we want to memorize we just want to use flash cards for that by the way so to show you exactly what I'm talking about I'm going to show you a live demo of me making a mind map using the layering method next up but speaking of mind maps I often get asked the question about how do I deal with the fact that writing on an iPad it feels like a glass and it's quite weird in comparison to writing on paper and that's definitely the case and so to answer this question actually ever

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on my iPad how I use the layering method for an actual subject let's say I have 6 weeks to study biochemistry and more specifically photosynthesis and respiration so step number one is to review the learning objectives and other resources such as my textbooks to gauge all of the key Concepts that I'm going to need to learn and this is called the pre-study or priming phase and the purpose here is to simply just get a list of the key ideas for the topic that you need to study and for example here is what I came up

with and you don't need to worry about having every single detail we can always go back and fill in additional details later on and stick around till the end because I'll also show you how to use this to specifically cram for exams step number two is to label each keyword as layer one two or three or four information and you might wonder how am I supposed to know this if I don't know the content well for any of the keywords that you don't know quickly Google them or ask chat GPT to get a rough idea

of what they refer to and you can use your intuition here right Concepts like photosynthesis are very Broad and so now we're going to have those as are layer one and then the products of photosynthesis like glucose or oxygen would be more so like the important details like layer three now the biggest mistake students make here is that they think they need to have a perfect mind map from the start but the learning doesn't actually come from the Mind map itself it comes from the process of making the Mind map an adjust adjusting it as

you learn more and this is not only possible but it is actually an expected part of this entire process so let's go through the list that we had from just before and now we're going to go ahead and label each keyword with what layer we think it should be so I've got a list of keywords here now that we were looking at before and following the criteria that I have for layer 1 2 3 and four I'm going to start just roughly thinking about where I think these are going to sit and I can always

change my mind later on which I will definitely be doing as I go ahead and mindmap this together so very quickly I will say things like uh for GP g3p we've got a a number four there NE DH I mean it seems like it's going to be pretty important cuz I've seen it many times on this uh textbook uh CO2 is probably going to be a three Calvin cycle looks like a two uh C3 C4 cam comes up in the learning objectives all the time um light dependent reactions it's like oh maybe that's a one

or two photo system one and two maybe it's two or three photo respiration definitely a one or two it sounds like a big concept photosynthesis is a one phids it might be pretty important to understanding photo synthesis we got ATP synthesis is a one or two oxygen again it's an important detail rabisco again is this a how important of a detail is it maybe it's even a concept uh that's that's at that level in chlorophyll itself it's like okay um yeah pretty important but definitely not a concept so I am basing this off of my

very brief understanding of knowing what these words are so far just from my intuition before even learning very deep kind of biochemistry about photosynthesis but many of the words that you're going to see for any topic you're going to have a pretty good guess at what it is and if not just check out on chat GPT what it is as well and you'll have a pretty good crack at this so again these are my first guesses and they are allowed to be guesses and so we finally get to step number three which is now just

mapping out these layers on a visual mind map and we want to constantly L ask ourselves how does this concept relate to the next or how does this layer relate to the next and essentially what we should notice is that it branches out from these foundational Concepts in the center going out to some of the smaller and smaller details so let's go through the live demonstration itself now so we've got all of the big layers here and as I continue to learn I'm going to go to the material I'm going to learn more about like

what is photorespiration and photosynthesis and as I kind of look into it I'll verify do I really think this is going to be one of my layer one items and in this case I'm definitely going to say that photosynthesis is so we'll put that down first so I'm going to scroll out here and we're going to put down uh photo synthesis and apologize for my handwriting here now as I was learning about photosynthesis everyone's talking about it being an opposite of cellular respiration and it isn't something that is on my original keyword list here but

it is so intertwined and so important based on just my quick investigation that I'm going to have it as part of my backbone for this mind map I would say that it is a layer 1 detail at this point and I know that these are basically opposites so I'm going to draw that like so now looking at one of my other one and twos here I see ATP synthesis and one thing that I began to understand is that actually both of these processors use ATP synthesis as a key part of how they operate so I'm

actually going to keep that up there as well for cellular respiration it makes a little bit more sense because you like the whole goal of that is that you turn glucose into ATP but actually from a little bit of a deeper investigation here into here I actually learned that um photosynthesis has to create ATP halfway through the process to actually get the end result being glucose as well okay so the next one that I see here is around that uh light dependent reactions and the Calvin cycle I mean I know that these two things here

are key parts of uh you got the light dependent reactions and you got the Calvin cycle uh which are key parts of photosynthesis but as I kind of went into that line of thinking I was trying to understand like how would I group um light dependent reactions and Calvin cycle together right because there's a lot of things I could say about photosynthesis really these are the stages of photosynthesis so I could put this underneath the category of stage I definitely could do that but I want to always make sure that when I'm doing this mind

mapping process I'm thinking a little bit more critically about truly how is uh light dependent reactions and Calvin cycle related and I think that's a little bit more than just the stages if I try and really think about what is its function and what is its importance which is a key thing to think about when you're doing this and what I came down to by learning a little bit more about these light dependent reactions in Calvin cycle asking why is it important and how they relate to each other I actually understood that the best title

that I could go with here is actually electron flow now it gets a little bit messy sometimes here so I'm going to try and rejig this and make this better so when I clean it up a little bit it's looking something a little bit like this now I actually added this little feature here because that uh helps me remember that ATP synthesis is kind of like this um uh between cellat respiration and photosynthesis the same thing is occurring but just on different sides of the this electrochemical gradient with the this being internal and external with

either the chlorophyll or or the um mitochondria now one of the things I also noticed is that I'm as I'm diving into this I I see that actually this stuff over here relates with the original stuff over here and actually I can relate that the uh light dependent reaction is where this ATP synthesis is occurring another thing I'm just constantly rejigging it a little bit here in terms of the sizing I want the key ideas the layers to stand out in terms of which layer that they are on so layer one needs to be the

biggest needs to stand out there and then layer two and three and four can be smaller so if I come back to my list now I'm looking at my layer 2 details I want to learn and get deeper into that asking myself again why a C3 C4 cam important how does that relate to the other stuff that is here and what I realized is that when I ask how that stuff relates to photosynthesis and he actually found out that it's all to do with this concept and actually key kind of like enzyme kind of known

as rabisco and actually C3 C4 and cam all have to do specifically with changes with how rabisco is working and functioning and if I have a little bit more time I'd actually dive into that and think about again is there a better uh kind of Chunk that I could use that instead of just calling it rabisco but I know that they are very interl and so that's why I'm putting it there I'm thinking now about like my photo respiration I've kind of forgotten about that one um as I think about how it relates to particularly

the these ideas in the backbone which I'm thinking it would relate to I actually found out that uh photosynthesis and a costly thing of it is that it has to have some uh respiration occurring as well and that is actually specifically uh this idea of photorespiration and so I think it's probably going to be a layer 2 detail maybe not a layer one but I'm going to leave it there for now and I can always again change this as I continue to learn more how are we going we're looking pretty good let's add some ticks

into here okay so now I'm looking at some of those threes those fours I see here a photo system one and two um I know that these are definitely part of how the light dependent reactions work so I could oh on a a smaller kind of level um I could add in the photo system one and two so this is ultimately what it might look like in the end and in in creating this video I was actually uh studying on a live stream on YouTube and I created this and talked through this more but what

I'm going to go through is just talk about some of the key features that you're seeing here so that when you're doing this you know exactly how to uh put this together on your own mindmap so first things first is that I created that layer one as you saw before and that is the cellular respiration the photosynthesis your ATP synthes is there kind of as well and you got a little bit of the photo respiration I am saying that based on my understanding of the topic I would like to organize it saying these are the

key major fundamental pieces to understanding how this topic works so that is layer one as I go into thinking about now my Layer Two I've kind of got here rubisco electron flow and uh photorespiration so these are what I think are the important Concepts that are not as important as the fundamentals of cellular respiration and photosynthesis from there you can kind of see my layer three details forming and then the layer four is kind of all throughout there's all these little things that are all throughout parts of this mind map that kind of are filling

in between the gaps and to reiterate through this process I am thinking about okay I think this keyword fits into this layer let's go ahead and validate that and ask myself the two questions why is this important and how does this relate to the other ideas that are on this mind map so far then I will put it down see if it makes sense and if it does it sticks if it doesn't then I move it and put it somewhere else so that is the process of Mind mapping and and this is how you go

through it and you'll get better at this as you practice this the other part that I want to touch on here is some of the smaller details that you can see that are on here beyond what I've just said so you can see here I'm using a little bit of color making a little bit more playful with some drawings to help me understand exactly how light absorption relates to electron flow and the phids and so I am putting down diagrams and drawings here that make sense most to me this may not make sense to you

but I'm always thinking about how can I best represent this through drawings to also emphasize some of these parts so I'll tell you what this means for me the light absorption and I have a little bit of a physics background it is telling me that this is hitting into some of the thids okay inside of the chlorophyll and that allows these light dependent reactions to occur and this diagram here is a physics diagram that that makes a lot of sense to me in that it's talking about how when the light hits that provides energy right

and that energy is transferred to the electron and that allows it to jump to a higher level uh energy State and when that occurs this is occurring in photos system 2 and actually this electron that is being pushed up it allows photos system one for the electron again to just go up to another higher level so you kind of had like the stepbystep process where it's G the electrons have gone up two levels ultimately what this means is that there's a lot of potential energy now stored in this electron that is being moved up to

the higher levels that can now be used for the reactions required to create the glucose in the end in reality the light dependent reactions are not actually a part of uh doing all of the hard stuff with the glucose it's actually about creating some more of those intermediate uh kind of reac that are required so in terms of needing the oxygen and then also having it so that the nadp becomes an nadp h and so I add a little bit of details here to just help me kind of like really break things down so um

for me the whole reaction it's pretty crazy but really it's all this is that H2O goes to oxygen and that's because of the energy that is transferred to uh the nadp plus uh to the nbh and I've also left a quick note for myself here as a very layer four detail is that it can be cyclic it through this process or non- cylic through this process as well and then finally you can see in this layer four uh I just added this small detail of glucose plus oxygen is actually what's occurring when we're doing this

photosynthesis step and actually the glucose comes from two g3ps connecting together through some other reaction pathway so I understand this is some pretty heavy biochemistry that you learn in your second year of University I wanted to start with this topic because it's something that people tell me all the time it's a memorization heavy topic and therefore you know all of us would need to be on flash cards but that's just not the case if you actually go ahead and you spend the time to dive deep and understand why a lot of these things work and

how they actually relate to one and each other rather than just taking things as it is you'll actually find that you can place this on a mind map and actually have it make very intuitive sense as you heard me before when I was talking about these electron levels that is all depicted in just this drawing here right that is enough of a reminder for me for that entire process and I don't need to write this down into words and actually lose all that detail it becomes just way too much two caveats with this mind map

again I didn't uh Branch out on this part I didn't Branch out from this part and I would try and refine these in my future stages to really think about okay well how are they actually related to these other parts of my mind map so that I can find a better way of connecting it together rather than just drawing a straight line so to summarize learning is this very recursive process we're asking oursel time and time again where do I think this fits in terms of the layers and then I go ahead I learn more

about it by trying to answer the question of why is this keyword important and how does it relate to the other keywords on my mind map so far I place it down and I see how it connects and really you can go through this process of refinement endlessly but you will naturally notice a point where it's like okay I think I've got enough here I understand this and as a bonus point if you want to learn something really fast or cram what you need to do is actually focus on layer one and then work outward

and and just focus much more on the layers 1 2 and three and less so on the arbitrary details you can just cram that in the very last hours and minutes and just load that into your brain just to forget it right after your exam but the layers 1 2 and 3 take a little bit more time to understand and properly get so you need to spend more time there really trying to process it for every topic there are thousands of details or leaves but again these are usually only going to hang on a few

branches and if you learn those branches this is just going to make it much easier those details just come far more naturally to you rather than remembering again glycer alide 3 phosphate and now that you're able to understand the layering method you'll also be able to study much faster and create much better mind maps and this is truly just one of the most powerful study techniques out there which is why I talk about it so much so if you want an even more detailed guide on how to make the perfect mind map then this next

video is going to be an absolute gold mine for you take care