5 Things to Do Daily to Get Better At Knowledge Bowl
The Goal
- Connect and build up as many concepts, or nodes, in your brain as possible
- Reinforce these nodes and reinforce the connections between them
- Build a deep understanding of concepts and ideas that can be carried on into long term memory
Number One: Read Nonfiction
Read at least ten pages of an all-purpose book per day. This can be an encyclopedia, a dictionary, or anything else that covers lots of things in the world. If you want to expand your worldview, aim for encyclopedias or the Big Book of Answers. If you want to expand your lexicon, look for dictionaries.
Number Two: Read Fiction
Read 50 pages of one of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die per day. You should finish approximately one a week. Eventually, things will start to go faster and you will be able to go through books that used to be boring if you read frequently enough. When you find out about something in a book that you don't understand or have never heard of, look it up on Wikipedia or Britannica and read the entire article.
Number Three: Quiz yourself
Play Protobowl, Knowledge Bowl Practice Online, or any other trivia game, like Jeopardy Online, whenever you can. Steps one and two are more essential, but playing at high school or college levels will introduce you to all sorts of new concepts and connect nodes in your brain faster than the other two steps can. Any time you run into a phrase you don't know, look it up on Wikipedia or Britannica and read the entire article.
Number Four: Ask others
When you don't know something, and you know someone who does, ask them about it. This will make a concrete experienced memory to go along with the fact. Rather than just reading it, you will remember talking to the person and listening to what they had to say, and any meaningful interactions that came after. These are valuable.
Number Five: Teach others
As frequently as possible, teach others about what you have learned. Not only does this show that you actually know and understand the concept you have learned about, it helps to reinforce whatever you have learned into long term memory. If you find that you can't actually explain what you have learned, reread whatever you read, as well as finding an additional source to reinforce the concept.