Learning how to learn(1)

Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to
help you master tough subjects.

Focused versus Diffuse Thinking
In essence, people have two fundamentally
different modes of thinking that we've
labeled focused and diffuse.

The focused mode (familiar pathways)
The focused mode is centered more in the
prefrontal cortex, and it often seems to involve
thinking about things you're somewhat familiar
with. To solve a multiplication or find a word
that rhymes with another one.

The diffuse mode (many neural
resting states).
But if you're trying to solve or figure out
something new, it often cries out for the more
broad ranging perspectives of the diffuse mode.

Access to modes
Creative thinkers throughout history,
whatever their discipline, have found ways
to access the diffuse mode, often more
directly and quickly. But we all access this
mode quite naturally when we do things like go
for a walk or take a shower or even just
drift off to sleep.

Working out
It’s often a good idea, once you've focused
directly on the situation, to let things settle
back, and take a bit more time.
That way, more neural processing can take
place,often below conscious awareness in the
diffuse mode.

Resolving
The thing is, it often takes time for
neural processing to take place, and time
as well to build the new neural structures
that allow us to learn something new.
This is why tackling procrastination is so
very important.

Procrastination
Procrastination is the practice of carrying out
less urgent tasks in preference to more urgent
ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place
of less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off
impending tasks to a later time, sometimes to
the "last minute" before the deadline.

Practice and repetition
The easiest way to tackle procrastination is to
use the Pomodoro Technique.
That brief 25 minute stretch of focused
concentration, followed by a bit of mental
relaxation. It's through practice and repetition
that we can help enhance and strengthen the
neural structures we're building as we're
learning something new

Memory
If you practiced and repeated something well
enough to get it into long term memory, you
can usually call it up later if you need it. It's
never a good idea to cram your learning by
repeating things many times all in one
day.There's no time for solid structures to grow.

Working memory and long term memory.
Memory is an important aspect of learning.
There are four slots in our working
memory.Things can fall out of those slots
unless we keep repeating them to hold them in
mind. In that sense, working memory is like a
not very good blackboard. Long term memory,
on the other hand, is like a storage warehouse.

Sleep
We've also learned of the importance of
sleep in washing away the toxins that develop
during our day's activities.
You want to avoid taking tests or doing
anything difficult with little sleep the night
before, because it's like trying to think with
poison on the brain.

Exercise
And just as importantly, exercise is surprisingly
valuable in helping improve both our memory
and our ability to learn.It's exactly what you
need, what our brain needs. It needs that
moment of pause of, of using your muscles
rather than your brain. We have new neurons
being born, and surviving in our hippocampus.

Chunking
Chunks are pieces of information,
neuroscientifically speaking, that are bound
together through use and often through
meaning. You can think of a chunk as a
scintillating network of neurons that compactly
synthesizes key ideas or actions.

How to form a chunk
The first step on chunking is simply to focus
your undivided attention on the information you
want to chunk. You're making new neural
patterns and connecting them with preexisting
patterns. If you're looking up every few minutes
to check or answer your phone messages it
means you're going to have more difficulty in
making a chunk.

How to form a chunk (II)
The second step in chunking is to understand
the basic idea you're trying to chunk.
Understanding is like a superglue that helps
hold the underlying memory traces together. It
creates broad encompassing traces that can
link to other memory traces.

How to form a chunk (III)
The third step to chunking is gaining context, so
you can see not just how, but also when to use
this chunk. Context means going beyond the
initial problem and seeing more broadly,
repeating and practicing with both related and
unrelated problems, so that you can see not
only when to use the chunk, but when not to
use it.

How to form a chunk (IV)
Ultimately, practice helps you broaden the
networks of neurons that are connected to your
chunk, ensuring it's not only firm, but also
accessible from many different paths. Chunks
are very important, but they don't necessarily
build flexibility, which is also important in
becoming an expert with the material.

Illusions of competence in learning
Learn to recognize when you're fooling yourself
about whether you're actually learning the
material. Test yourself frequently. Using little
mini-tests to see whether you're actually
learning the material, or whether you've been
fooling yourself, thinking you're learning when
you're actually not.

lllusion of competence (II)
Mistakes are a good thing to make when
you're learning. Avoid practicing only the easy
stuff, which can bring the illusion that you've
mastered the material.
Deliberately practice what you find more
difficult to gain full mastery of the material.

Einstellung
is when your initial thought, an idea you've
already had in mind, or a neural pattern you've
already developed well and strengthened,
prevents a better idea or solution from being
found.Or keeps you from being flexible enough
to accept new, better, or more appropriate
solutions.

Interleaving
Although practice and repetition is important in
helping build solid neural patterns to draw on,
it's interleaving that starts building flexibility and
creativity.
When you interleave within one subject or one
discipline, you begin to develop your creative
power within that discipline.

The Law of Serendipity
Lady Luck favors the one who tries.
Just pick one tiny thing out to learn, then
another. Just keep trying and you'll
be pleasantly surprised
at the results.

Procrastination and memory.Two
seemingly different ideas.
Building solid chunks of long term memory,
chunks that are easily accessible by your short
term memory, takes time.
It's not the kind of thing
you want to be putting off
until the last minute.

How procrastination happens (I)
We procrastinate about things that make us a
little bit uncomfortable.You think about
something you don't particularly
like and the pain centers of your brain
light up so you shift and narrow your focus of
attention to something more enjoyable.

How procrastination happens (II)
This causes you to feel better. At least
temporarily but sadly the long term effects of
habitual avoidance can be nasty.
When you put off your
studies it can become
even more painful
to think about studying it.

How procrastination happens (III)
You can choke on tests because you haven't
laid the firm neural foundations you need.
Procrastination can be a single monumentally
important keystone bad habit that influences
many important areas of your life. It shares
features with addiction.It offers temporary
excitement and relief from boring reality.

Trackling procrastination.
The reason that learning to avoid
procrastination is so important is that good
learning is a bit by bit activity. By putting the
same amount of time into your learning
but spacing that learning out by starting
earlier you'll learn better.

Trackling procrastination
If you're troubled by procrastination you may
even start telling yourself that procrastination is
an innate unchangeable characteristic. The
higher you go in your studies however the
more important it is to take control of
procrastination. Habits that worked in earlier
years can turn around and bite you.

Trackling procrastination. Key aspects.
- Keep a planner journal so you can easily
track when you reach your goals and observe
what does and doesn't work.
- Commit yourself to certain routines and
tasks each day.

Trackling procrastination. Keys
- Write your planned tasks out the night before
so your brain has time to dwell on your goals
and help ensure success.
- Arrange your work into a series of small
challenges.
- Make sure you get lots of rewards.Deliberately
delay rewards until you've finished.

Trackling procrastination. keys
- Try putting yourself in new surroundings
with few procrastination cues, such as the
quiet section of a library.
- Gain trust in your new system, so that when
it comes time to relax, you actually relax
without feelings of guilt or worry.
- Eat your “frogs” first every day.

How to become a better learner
1.-One of the best things you can do to not
only remember but more easily understand
concepts in many different fields, is to
create a metaphor or analogy for them.

2.- Change your thoughts, change your life.
One thing is becoming clear, we can make
significant changes in our brain by changing
how we think.
S.R. y Cajal felt the key to his own success was
his perseverance.What he called the virtue of
the less brilliant, coupled with his flexible ability
to change his mind and admit errors.

3.- Approaching material with a goal of learning it
on your own.
Often no matter how good your teacher and
textbook are, it's only when you sneak
off and look at other books or videos that
you begin to see what you learn through a single teacher,
or book, is a partial version of the full three dimensional
reality of the subject, which has links to still other
fascinating topics that of your choosing.

4.-Taking responsibility for your own learning.
Have a deep understanding, not only of how to
conduct your subject but also of how people
just interact with one another.
The greater your achievement, the more
other people will sometimes attack and demean
your efforts.

5.- People are often just as competitive as
they are cooperative.
We're often told that empathy is universally
beneficial.But it's not.
It's important to learn to switch on an
occasional cool dispassion that helps you to not
only focus on what you're trying to learn, but
also to learn to tune people out if you learn that
their interests lie in undercutting you.

6.-Take pride in who you are.
Especially, in the qualities that make you
different.
And use them as a secret talisman for
success.
Use your natural contrariness to defied
the always present prejudices from others
about what you can accomplish.

7.-The value of stepping back and
recheck.
Remember your brain is a team: The right
hemisphere serves as a sort of devil's advocate
to question the status quo and look for global
inconsistencies.While the left hemisphere
instead tries to cling tenaciously to the way
things were. When you step back and recheck,
you're allowing for more interaction between
the hemispheres.

The problem with the focus, sometimes.
The more left centered focus mode has
associated with a desire to cling to what you've
done. It provides for an analytical and upbeat
approach, but abundant research evidence
suggests there's a potential for rigidity,
dogmatism, and egocentricity.

8.-Trackling overconfidence.
Keep in mind that when you whiz through a
test question and you don't go back to check
your work, you're acting a little like person
who's refusing to use parts of your brain.You're
not stopping to take a mental breath and then
revisit what you've done with the bigger picture
in mind to see whether it makes sense.

9.-The first principle is that you must not
fool yourself.
And you are the easiest person to fool.
One of the best ways to catch your blind
spots and errors is to brainstorm and work with
others who are also smartly focused on the
topic.I t's sometimes just not enough to use
more of your own neural horsepower.
After all, everyone has blind spots.

10.- Do some of your studying with friends.
You can more easily catch where your thinking
has gone astray. Friends and teammates can
serve as sort of an ever questioning larger
scale diffuse mode outside your brain that can
catch what you missed, or what you just can't
see.And of course, explaining to friends helps
build your own understanding.

Final helpful hints for tests.
If you're a stressed out test taker, keep in mind
that the body puts out chemicals such as
cortisol when it's under stress.The story you tell
yourself about why you're stressed makes all
the difference.If you shift your thinking from,
this test has made me afraid, to this test has
got me excited to do my best.It can really
improve your performance.

Learning how to learn(1)

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