https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/

1. Intro

Can only be in one or the other

• Diffused
  • when writing, write in diffuse mode, edit in focused mode
    • to engage diffuse brain - before writing, mind-mapping/clustering - take a paper, hold landscape
    • when you write, you want to create new things, think of new relationships.
    • DON’T EDIT WHILE YOU WRITE: writeordie.com - good to break the habit of editing while writing
• Dali + Edison - diffuse mode to think about ideas, fall asleep, wake up and go into focused mode
• when you’re learning something difficult, your mind needs to go back and forth between the two different learning modes
• need to do a little work every day, gradually growing

Procrastination & Sleep

• Tackling procrastination is crucial as neural processing and the building of new neural structures take time.
• Pomodoro technique - set timer for 25 minutes, turn off all interruptions, and then focus. Then 5 minutes reward. Then start again.
• Learn something right before you sleep. You might dream about it, which will enhance learning

Abstract

• Build and strengthen abstract ideas through practice
• Practice makes permanent
  • When you first learn something like how to solve a problem, the connection is weak. But if you practice, you begin deepening that pattern. When you have a problem down cold, the pattern is like a dark firm pattern between neurons
  • When learning:
    • study hard by learning intently
    • then relax

Memory

• 2 major systems: Long term memory vs. working memory
  • Working memory - what you’re immediately and consciously processing in your mind (through prefrontal cortex) - mind can hold around 4 chunks
  • Long term memory - like a storage warehouse, stored around large parts of the brain. Immense, can hold billions of items. Where you store fundamental concepts and techniques.
• when you learn something new, use working memory. then practice. will then be stored into long term memory
• Spaced repetition - learn/repeat learning over several days

Learning

• Learn more by active engagement than passive listening
• Use exercise to get into diffuse mode
• Even in adulthood, new neurons are being formed in your hippocampus
  • connections between neurons can be strengthened by being in an active, social environment. alternatively, exercise will do this!
  • Being in a creative environment helps! Talk to people, explain ideas, can boost the creative process

Creativity - have to create something both new and useful

• zoom in and out of a problem to different levels of perspective
• Throughout history, creative thinkers from all disciplines have found ways to access the diffuse mode, often more directly and quickly. We naturally enter this mode when we engage in activities like walking, showering, or drifting off to sleep.

2. Chunking

Chunks are pieces of information that are neurologically bound together through use and meaning, forming a network of neurons that encapsulate key ideas or actions.

How to form a chunk

1. focused attention
2. understanding
3. practice

• Get a sense of the pattern you want to master for yourself
  • Focus your undivided attention on the thing you want to chunk
  • Understand the basic idea you’re trying to chunk (e.g. grasping the principle of supply and demand)
    • synthesize the gist, figure out the main idea
    • practice, explain for yourself
    • learn how to use the chunk
  • Context - gain context to see not just how but also when to use the chunk
    • repeat and practice with related and unrelated problems to see when to use the chunk and when not to. this will help you see how it fits into the bigger picture
    • Top down learning (big picture) and bottom up learning (chunking)
    • context is where top down learning and bottom up learning meet
  • learn the major or key concepts first
  • once you have this done, fill in the details
• Build a chunked library
• To figure something out, 2 ways:
  • through sequential, step-by-step reasoning
    • each small step leads deliberately to a solution: requires focused mode
  • holistic intuition: requires diffused mode
• serendipity

Recall

• After you read the material, look away and try to recall/practice what you’ve just read - you learn at a much deeper level than in other ways. the retrieval process itself helps deep learning.

Illusion of Competence

• Looking at a solution and thinking you understand it, this is not learning. you’ve done nothing to knit the concept into your neurocircuitry
• You must have information persisting in your memory in order to truly master it, do creative things with it
• With text/internet right in front of you, creates the illusion that you have learned it yourself. this is not true.
• Test yourself (like recall) on what you’re learning - this will prove whether you’ve really grasped an idea
• Learn in various different environments

Bigger Picture

• Dopamine - affects motivation. Released when we receive an unexpected reward.
• Serotonin - affects your social life.
• Emotions - highly affect learning, attention, and memory.
• Library of Chunk
• Overlearning
  • continuing to study after you’ve mastered something.
  • once you have a basic idea down,
• Deliberate practice - study the difficult stuff
• Einstellung (german for mindset) - need to unlearn erroneous older ideas
• an idea you already have in your mind, or a neural pattern you’ve already developed, may prevent a better idea or solution from being found
• Interleaving - once you have a basic idea, start interleaving with different types of problems or techniques. mix up your learning. e.g. look ahead to a later chapter.
• brain should get used to how to get used to an idea
• how is not enough, need also to know when to use it

Main Ideas

• Chunks - pieces of information that are bound together through use and often through meaning. They can be large and complex, but still take up only one slot in your working memory.
  • Best built with 1) focused attention, 2) understanding, and 3) practice. Recall the best way way to learn chunks.
  • Transfer - chunks you’ve learned in one area can be useful for learning chunks in another area
• Test yourself to see whether you’re really learning the material
• Recall is an effective way to test yourself and to learn
• Use deliberate practice (focus intently on the difficult parts of a problem) of what you find difficult to really learn/master

3. Procrastination and Memory

3.1 Procrastination

• Good learning is a bit by bit process. Space out your learning.
• Chunking is related to habit, which frees our mind for other activities. You don’t have to think in a focused manner, it saves energy.
• Habits/zombie mode
  • Cue - what might trigger you to go into zombie mode
  • Routine - what you do in reaction to the cue. E.g. zombie mode, the routine response when it sees the cue.
  • Reward - every habit continues because it rewards us - an immediate feeling of pleasure. find a way to reward good habits, like studying
  • The belief - to change a habit, you need to change your underlying belief
• If you find yourself avoiding tasks, focus on the process, not the product
  • “I’m going to spend 20 minutes writing” vs. “I’m going to write three pages”
• To override a habit, change your reaction to a cue. this is the only place you have to use willpower.
  • Cue: location, time, how you feel, or reactions.
  • Shut off your cues, e.g. your internet or phone
  • The key to rewiring is to have a plan. Pick a favorite spot, eliminate distractions, and savor victories when the plan works.
  • Create a new reward after a routine.
  • The better you get at something, the more enjoyable it becomes
  • Belief - most important part - believe that you can do it. Believe that your new system works. To do this, create a new community of encouraging, like-minded people.
• Write a weekly task list
  • Then each day, write a daily to do list
    • Write the to do task the day before.
    • Mix tasks up with your learning (can allow diffuse mode to set in!)
    • Plan your quitting time
    • Work on the most important and disliked task first
    • Law of serendipity - lady luck favors those who try

Summary

• Keep a planner journal
• Commit yourself to certain routines and tasks each day
• Savor the feelings of happiness of triumph
• Delay rewards until you finish the task
• Watch for procrastination cues
• Gain trust in your new system. Work hard when it’s time to work hard, relax and reward yourself when you’ve done your work.
• Eat your frogs first - do the hardest thing first thing in the day

3.2 Memory

• Images/visualizing help encapsulate concepts
• The more senses you can engage, the deeper you can encode an idea
• Memory should be memorable/surprising, and it should be repeated. Writing and saying what you’re learning can enhance learning
  • handwriting helps to more deeply encode what you’re trying to learn
• Long Term Memory
  • You need to practice and repeat in order to store in LTM
  • Practice should extend over several days
• Working memory
  • Only four slots in working memory
• Memory palace
  • Try to see, smell, feel, hear, things you are trying to remember
  • Imagine a familiar place and attach ideas to parts of the room
  • Create meaningful relationships between concepts and, e.g. associate numbers with noteworthy ages

4. Becoming a Better Learner

• Exercise is one of the best things you can do for your brain
• One of the best things you can do to understand a concept is to create a metaphor - the more visual, the better
  • metaphors useful for getting out of Einstellung
• Deliberate practice can help lift average brains to gifted
  • practice certain mental patterns, like practicing lifting weights
• Imposter syndrome - common and normal.
• Change your thoughts, change your life
  • Anyone can change their own brains
  • Look up work of Cajal, neuroscientist
• What you learn through a single book/teacher is a partial version of a full 3-D reality of the subject, which has links to other subjects
  • look at other books, video, writings, etc.
  • take responsibility for your own learning
• Empathy is good but also important to master dispassion, shut out people who may distract us from or not support our learning
  • take pride in who you are, defy present prejudices against others re what you can accomplish
• Hard start jump to easy technique
  • Tough problems need lots of time, and often require the diffuse mode. So approach the hard problems first, but quickly jump to the easy ones.
  • This loads the hard problem into your mind, then when you shift to an easy problem, your unconscious mind can be working on the hard problem
• You haven’t truly learned something until you teach it to others

Writing

• Stop trying to be impressive and just start trying to be clear
  • Once you are clear you’re going to be impressive
  • Read closely the people you admire, study what you admire
• Think physically, don’t just write about abstract ideas, write about things. Ladder of abstract ideas.
  • Look for physical correlates to your topic. Give the reader something to see
• When you are out of ideas or feel like you have too little to say, step back and go into brainstorm mode. Mindmap. Brainstorm wildly. Draw ideas, make lists, etc. Shift the focus. Stop focusing on saying something important, and say something clear instead. Talk to a friend. Write questions down for yourself. You don’t have to be an expert on what you’re writing about, you just have to be clear. Write down what puzzles you, write down what confuses you.

10 Rules of Study

10 Rules of Good Studying

1. Use recall. After you read a page, look away and recall the main ideas. Highlight very little, and never highlight anything you haven’t put in your mind first by recalling. Try recalling main ideas when you are walking to class or in a different room from where you originally learned it. An ability to recall—to generate the ideas from inside yourself—is one of the key indicators of good learning.
2. Test yourself. On everything. All the time. Flash cards are your friend.
3. Chunk your problems. Chunking is understanding and practicing with a problem solution so that it can all come to mind in a flash. After you solve a problem, rehearse it. Make sure you can solve it cold—every step. Pretend it’s a song and learn to play it over and over again in your mind, so the information combines into one smooth chunk you can pull up whenever you want.
4. Space your repetition. Spread out your learning in any subject a little every day, just like an athlete. Your brain is like a muscle—it can handle only a limited amount of exercise on one subject at a time.
5. Alternate different problem-solving techniques during your practice. Never practice too long at any one session using only one problem-solving technique—after a while, you are just mimicking what you did on the previous problem. Mix it up and work on different types of problems. This teaches you both how and when to use a technique. (Books generally are not set up this way, so you’ll need to do this on your own.) After every assignment and test, go over your errors, make sure you understand why you made them, and then rework your solutions. To study most effectively, handwrite (don’t type) a problem on one side of a flash card and the solution on the other. (Handwriting builds stronger neural structures in memory than typing.) You might also photograph the card if you want to load it into a study app on your smartphone. Quiz yourself randomly on different types of problems. Another way to do this is to randomly flip through your book, pick out a problem, and see whether you can solve it cold.
6. Take breaks. It is common to be unable to solve problems or figure out concepts in math or science the first time you encounter them. This is why a little study every day is much better than a lot of studying all at once. When you get frustrated with a math or science problem, take a break so that another part of your mind can take over and work in the background.
7. Use explanatory questioning and simple analogies. Whenever you are struggling with a concept, think to yourself, How can I explain this so that a ten-year-old could understand it? Using an analogy really helps, like saying that the flow of electricity is like the flow of water. Don’t just think your explanation—say it out loud or put it in writing. The additional effort of speaking and writing allows you to more deeply encode (that is, convert into neural memory structures) what you are learning.
8. Focus. Turn off all interrupting beeps and alarms on your phone and computer, and then turn on a timer for twenty-five minutes. Focus intently for those twenty-five minutes and try to work as diligently as you can. After the timer goes off, give yourself a small, fun reward. A few of these sessions in a day can really move your studies forward. Try to set up times and places where studying—not glancing at your computer or phone—is just something you naturally do.
9. Eat your frogs first. Do the hardest thing earliest in the day, when you are fresh.
10. Make a mental contrast. Imagine where you’ve come from and contrast that with the dream of where your studies will take you. Post a picture or words in your workspace to remind you of your dream. Look at that when you find your motivation lagging. This work will pay off both for you and those you love!

10 Rules of Bad Studying

Avoid these techniques—they can waste your time even while they fool you into thinking you’re learning!

1. Passive rereading— sitting passively and running your eyes back over a page. Unless you can prove that the material is moving into your brain by recalling the main ideas without looking at the page, rereading is a waste of time.
2. Letting highlights overwhelm you. Highlighting your text can fool your mind into thinking you are putting something in your brain, when all you’re really doing is moving your hand. A little highlighting here and there is okay—sometimes it can be helpful in flagging important points. But if you are using highlighting as a memory tool, make sure that what you mark is also going into your brain.
3. Merely glancing at a problem’s solution and thinking you know how to do it. This is one of the worst errors students make while studying. You need to be able to solve a problem step-by-step, without looking at the solution.
4. Waiting until the last minute to study. Would you cram at the last minute if you were practicing for a track meet? Your brain is like a muscle—it can handle only a limited amount of exercise on one subject at a time.
5. Repeatedly solving problems of the same type that you already know how to solve. If you just sit around solving similar problems during your practice, you’re not actually preparing for a test—it’s like preparing for a big basketball game by just practicing your dribbling.
6. Letting study sessions with friends turn into chat sessions. Checking your problem solving with friends, and quizzing one another on what you know, can make learning more enjoyable, expose flaws in your thinking, and deepen your learning. But if your joint study sessions turn to fun before the work is done, you’re wasting your time and should find another study group.
7. Neglecting to read the textbook before you start working problems. Would you dive into a pool before you knew how to swim? The textbook is your swimming instructor—it guides you toward the answers. You will flounder and waste your time if you don’t bother to read it. Before you begin to read, however, take a quick glance over the chapter or section to get a sense of what it’s about.
8. Not checking with your instructors or classmates to clear up points of confusion. Professors are used to lost students coming in for guidance—it’s our job to help you. The students we worry about are the ones who don’t come in. Don’t be one of those students.
9. Thinking you can learn deeply when you are being constantly distracted. Every tiny pull toward an instant message or conversation means you have less brain power to devote to learning. Every tug of interrupted attention pulls out tiny neural roots before they can grow.
10. Not getting enough sleep. Your brain pieces together problem-solving techniques when you sleep, and it also practices and repeats whatever you put in mind before you go to sleep. Prolonged fatigue allows toxins to build up in the brain that disrupt the neural connections you need to think quickly and well. If you don’t get a good sleep before a test, NOTHING ELSE YOU HAVE DONE WILL MATTER.