Use Chunking to Make Sense Out of LinkedIn Chaos

I’m glad you’re here. Our goal today is to make sense of all that LinkedIn chaos you created after reading my last article: How to Rapidly Master LinkedIn (http://www.jillkonrath.com/sales-blog…). But first, a quick story.

For many years, I worked as a consultant, helping companies to jumpstart sales of their new products and services. In just three months, I had to learn about their offering, customer, sales process and more. Then, I created a special training program, playbooks and PPTs on “how to sell this new stuff.” There were some years that I did this a dozen times.

Because of my work, I had to master rapid learning skills or I’d drown. I always scanned first. And, since it was ALL new to me, I knew I’d never remember it. So, I wrote it all down. I couldn’t trust my already overloaded brain.

And, when you do this, what you end up with is a mess – just what I instructed you to do in the previous video. Then, in order for me to makes sense of this chaos, I started looking for things that went together. It really helped.

Years later, I learned that I’d actually stumbled onto the recommended process for rapid learning: Start out by taking a quick scan of what you need to learn, dump it out of your brain, and then Chunk it.

What is Chunking?

Chunking is the phase of rapid learning where you group similar things together, so you end up with a mind map or graphic that looks like this one I did for learning LinkedIn.

Why is It Important to Do?

1. Organize information: Recent neuroscience research shows that your brain has a lousy filing system. If you don’t create mental folders for everything, it’ll strew valuable tidbits all over the place, making them difficult to recall. So, before we dig into anything, we tell our brain that this information goes in this particular folder.

2. Focus on one thing at a time: Another reason to create Chunks is because it’s more efficient for your brain to focus on only one area of learning at a time. If it has to bounce around from topic to topic, it gets a bit messed up. But if you group things in an orderly manner – like these folders, you can really slash your time to proficiency.

Please note also, that this mind map has FOUR categories. Brain research shows that any more, is too much. So we keep creating chunks of stuff we need to learn and when we get more than four – we create new chunks.

This ultimately represents everything you need to know about LinkedIn to really master it. Now, you have your task laid out in front of you. We’ve defined the playing field.

But where to start? In the next video, we’ll take a look at the crucial next step in rapid learning.

Koka Sexton

The leader in social selling methodology and ranked #1 in Forbes for social selling. Bringing the science of social selling to the business world and delivering ROI on social media.