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Free Brain Training course

Free, right now

The first three chapters online, with a knowledge check after each chapter. Plus a PDF with a worksheet and cheat sheet.

You can read the lessons straight away. For the PDF, you leave your details.

Start with lesson 1

Prefer to have a trainer there with you?

The one-day Brain Training course: working smarter and more productively. You practise the techniques on your own material and your own working day, with a trainer who looks on to see where things go wrong.

€625,- excl. VAT

View the Brain Training course: working smarter and more productively All Personal effectiveness courses →

You hear a name and thirty seconds later it is gone. You read the same paragraph for the third time and nothing sticks. You are halfway through a calculation, a colleague asks something small, and afterwards you have to start again. That feels like a poor memory, but usually it is something else: your attention was elsewhere, or your working memory was full.

This free online course is the starter for our full Brain Training. In the first three chapters you will read how attention works and where it leaks away at your workplace, why you can only hold a handful of things at once and what to do about that, and how to memorise a list of ten points using the Roman Room method. Each chapter ends with a short knowledge check, so you notice straight away whether it sticks.

The full course goes on to cover cognitive fitness, the influence of sleep, exercise and stress, how a stimulus becomes a memory, processing speed, mind mapping, verbal and visual memorisation techniques, speed reading and your own brain plan. Would you like to practise those elements on your own material, with a trainer watching where things go wrong? Then take a look at the Brain Training course.

Brain Training
Start Download PDF

Chapters 1 to 3 in a single PDF, with a worksheet and cheat sheet.

Contents:

  • 0.-

    Introduction
    How this free course is structured and what you will learn in the three chapters.

  • 1.-

    Attention and concentration
    Why perception is the precondition for remembering, the five sources of distraction and working in blocks of attention.

  • 2.-

    Working memory
    The limit of a handful of units, displacement when you are interrupted and six ways to unburden your mind.

  • 3.-

    The Roman Room method
    A familiar room with ten fixed memory places, a fixed walking route and images that stick.

  • 4.-

    Cognitive fitness
    The six dimensions of cognitive fitness and how the load develops over a working day.

  • 5.-

    Neuroplasticity of the brain
    How connections form and disappear, and what that means for practising and repetition.

  • 6.-

    Lifestyle as brain fuel
    Exercise, nutrition, sleep and social engagement as preconditions for sharp thinking.

  • 7.-

    Lifelong learning
    New activities, goal-directed engagement, attention training and the limits of brain training.

  • 8.-

    Where memory is located
    Three memory systems, the sensory buffers and the gatekeeper that decides what gets through.

  • 9.-

    Long-term memory
    Implicit and explicit memory, the vast storage capacity and why you still forget.

  • 10.-

    From stimulus to memory
    Encoding, elaboration and more routes to the same memory, applied to your own material.

  • 11.-

    Processing speed
    The time between stimulus and response, metacognitive strategies and the role of stress.

  • 12.-

    Mind mapping as a thinking tool
    The mind map as a diagram, why it works and how to build one.

  • 13.-

    Mind mapping in your work
    Brainstorming, recording meetings, organising documents and keeping an overview of tasks and projects.

  • 14.-

    Verbal memorisation techniques
    The four-step model, chunking, mnemonics, the building technique and spaced repetition.

  • 15.-

    Visual memorisation techniques
    The link method, flashcards, mind maps as memory aids and loci in everyday practice.

  • 16.-

    Speed reading in seven steps
    Measuring your reading speed, scanning in advance and maintaining your comprehension at a higher pace.

  • 17.-

    Your personal brain plan
    Setting up your workspace, choosing techniques that suit your tasks and recording your action points.

The trainers who deliver this course

That is the difference with a pdf: there is someone standing in front of the class who answers your questions and thinks along with your own situation.

Rob Trainer in communication and leadership 8,6 from 346 evaluations Marjorie Personal development trainer 8,9 from 126 evaluations Garbrand Trainer in communication skills and leadership 7,8 from 85 evaluations Jeroen Trainer in communication and leadership 9,5 from 44 evaluations

What participants say about Learnit

4,6 105 reviews Springest 8,8/10 886 reviews
I found the 'Interview Techniques' course to be good. Nothing to fault. It was also good that Job called beforehand for a short preliminary discussion. You don't see that very often. A very worthwhile course. It also had a strong element of repetition. Plenty of variety, including between theory and practice. Learned a lot, and applied it straight away during the course. And I think these learnings will also help me further when conducting interviews.
Tjeerd J
We took the Outlook, Teams and OneNote course with Roy Nieuwenhuijzen. Good content, and a few days before the course he got in touch with me (coordinator of the course, head of the secretariat). Pleasant that you can fill in the day itself as needed. The booklet for reference is rather dated, but apparently there is little up-to-date material to be found.
Inge Brouwers
In May 2024 I took the WordPress course. As an IT enthusiast with broad but not necessarily deep knowledge, I wanted to know more about WordPress. How do you install everything and how do you start building a website. This course is extremely well suited to that. From the outset you learn in 3 days how to start a website and what to look out for. I now have a solid basis for getting to work with WordPress and I know my way around the various options. The course is recommended for anyone who wants to learn in three days what WordPress can do and how to apply it.
Igno Freriksen

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Our free courses and webinars

Your own motivation and commitment are essential if you want to master something new. You can get a long way with self-study. Learnit wants to contribute to this by offering valuable content such as free webinars and courses. This way you can get acquainted with new fields of learning. Once you have made a start, you may discover that there are also many advantages to taking a course at Learnit under the guidance of an experienced trainer.

  • You spend several days working dedicatedly on your learning objectives, which means you make progress more quickly
  • The trainer helps you over the bumps and spots your blind spot
  • the trainer can explore what your learning objectives are and show you the shortest learning route
  • You can practise real-life situations really well during the course
  • You get to know other participants with an interest in the same subject

In short, you achieve much more in less time.

The free courses are suitable for home study, as you can download them online as a PDF. The range of free courses consists of IT and Communication & Management courses. Would you like to learn more about these subjects, or is the subject you want to learn about not included? Then take a look at our courses.

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