Learning to Learn Barbara Oakley - gouthamv03/notes GitHub Wiki

Key points

  • Focus - Pomodoro, Just Do It for 10 mins to avoid procrastination
  • Practice - Do it yourself
  • Retain - Analogies help. Spaced repetition, 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 1 month
  • Interleave - Solve problems that use different techniques. Find when to use a particular technique.
  • Test - Test yourself often and fail. Recalling is also a mini-test
  • Teach - Write or explain what you learnt. Vague parts are the ones you don't know

Thinking

  1. Use Focused and diffused modes
  2. Procrastination happens when we associate the new activity with pain. Persist for 10 mins and it goes away.
  3. Learn with metaphors, images, location -> mental palace works best by connecting thing, image, action, emotion
  4. Pomodoro technique - 25 mins of focus, 5 mins of relaxation with a reward
  5. Practice makes the neural patterns in our mind strong. Review periodically to make a concrete pattern for an idea
  6. Memory - working(RAM) and permanent(ROM). RAM dissipates the info quickly. Eg. Need to repeat to remember a phone number. ROM larger but we need to review often to know where to find a piece of information.
  7. Sleep well. Clear toxins in head.
  8. Exercise well. Create more neurons.

Forming chunks

Chunks are discrete pieces of knowledge that make up a certain technique/idea. Complex chunks include various pieces of information on how to perform some action

How to build chunks:

  1. Undivided attention. You are connecting new info to existing info - don't lose focus
  2. Understand the overall idea and then follow the different pieces being put together. Skim through headings, pictures to identify the key pieces. This identifies the big ideas and how they relate to each other
  3. Do it yourself to really understand. Grasping not same as really knowing. Practice solidifies the chunk
  4. Chunking --> Several ways (chunks) to solve a problem
  5. Context --> Big picture of which way to solve a problem
  6. Linking multiple chunks in different ways leads to innovation. Multiple chunks also allow you to apply ideas from one field to another - called Transfer.
  7. 2 ways of learning. Sequential reasoning that happens in focused mode; Intuitive reasoning that happens in diffused mode. Big leaps happen in the latter. Make sure to always verify intuitions with rational sequential reasoning
  8. Over-learning is repeating what you learnt beyond a point in the same session. Usually better to do it in the next session. After you have mastered something, try the related parts that are difficult. Doing just the mastered part is easy and gives an illusion of competence. Doing the difficult part makes the difference between good and great
  9. Extremely important to Interleave - once a pattern has been learnt, try problems that use a different pattern. Try/think of problems that can involve either technique or work between different problems across a material. This teaches when to use one technique over another and makes learning deep.
  10. Mini test yourself, with an actual test or with recall. Recalling at different place to where you learned a concept is also helpful
  11. Try to teach or write what you learnt. If some part comes off as vague, that's the part you don't understand. Try to understand it better, sometimes by checking references and related sources or taking to a friend/teacher.
  12. Come up with analogies, vivid examples. Eg. electricity to water.
  13. Mistakes are good. Make them quickly and learn from them!

Procrastination

Procrastination is a habit. Habits are ways for the human mind to run on auto-pilot. A habit has 4 phases:

  1. Cue - Some interrupt or situation that triggers a response
  2. Routine - Actions always taken on Cue
  3. Reward - Feeling good
  4. Belief - Cementing ideas that support the habit

Techniques to handle procrastination

  1. Focus on Process not Product. Eg. Plan to spend 20 mins on a problem. Don't worry about the outcome or the answer (which triggers the pain response). Break work into smaller units. Build a process that works. It makes the auto-pilot brain just follow along. Eg. Focus on doing the Pomodoro.
  2. Save your willpower! Find cues that trigger reactions and avoid those cues. Eg. Phone on silent, avoiding distractions during a pomodoro cycle. Reward yourself for the victories after a focussed session. The mind breaks into a new habit because it finds some psychological reward in doing it.
  3. Keep rules and checklists. Each night plan the actions for the next day. It lets the brain rest on the activities for the next day and follow them easily. It is as important to call out a quitting time, as it is to calling out a working time. Set reasonable goals and finish them. It is proven to be effective to do a hard task first thing in the morning, atleast for 1 pomodoro cycle.

Brainworks

  1. Left brain rigidly holds onto what it analytically calculated/knows, Right brain brings in big picture. Always step back and check your work to see if things make sense.
  2. Teammates can help cover your blind spots.
  3. Mindset during panic - fear/tension/stress can be re-painted by you as excitement. Just Breathe deeply and relax. Have a Plan B in case things don't go right or have perspective on what really matters.
  4. Change your thoughts to change your neurons. Think about and Practice the things you want to get better at.
  5. Don't bother with negative reactions from people. Persevere!