Notes
Learning How To Learn
Week 1

Focused vs Diffuse Thinking

  • The course is based on science and studies.
  • There are focused and diffuse modes.
  • Less frustration when learning.
  • Thinking in focus mode is same as putting the bumper tight and close together.
focus mode capture
  • However sometimes the answer might be the green part, which we will never reach if the bumpers' position never changed.
  • Thinking in diffuse mode is same a putting the bumper looser.
capture mode capture
  • The key is to be able to switch back and forth between focused and diffuse mode.
  • Thinking in focused & diffuse mode gets better and better with constant practice, just like training muscles, based on the connections between neurons.
  • The correct way to sleep
  • How to take advantage to unconscious mind

Procrastination, Memory & Sleep

Procrastination Preview

  • If you are working on something, it means you are not working on other things at the same time.
  • Pomodoro method A red pomodoro on a wood surface Description automatically generated
  • 25 minutes a time.
  • no interruptions
  • give your best focus during that period of time
  • give yourself a small reward after the focused period
  • Professor Barbara Oakley was a anti-math student, until she needed to study Math really hard when she were 26, now she is a professor in engineering.

Practice Makes Permanent

  • The neurons connection grows when the same pattern is used more rapidly
  • Practice makes permanent
  • My personal thought is, will that become a habit? is that why professionals all have their blind spot?

Memory

  • Long term memory (I will use HDD as analogy)
  • Working memory/ Short term memory (RAM)
  • Recent research believes usual short term memory can only contains 4 chunks (not 7)at the same time.
  • Spaced repetition
  • To repeat the same route inside your brain by practicing for a certain times with

Sleeping

  • Staying awake will accumulate toxic inside our brain.
  • Sleeping can let the brain fluid to wash the toxic away.
  • Sleeping can reconstruct difficult thoughts and process them to be manageable after woken up.

Interview with Dr. Terrence Sejnowski

  • Learning by doing
  • Learning by osmosis(滲透) from people who are experts
  • To deal with boring lecture/ not interested topic
  • Waylay the instructor by asking question, interrupt the process and make it interesting
  • Active engagement >>>>> Passive listening
  • There are two levels when it come to Multi-tasking:
  • Actually working on more than one stuff consciously.
  • Go back and forth between multiple things with focused mind
  • Neuron science perspective:
  • Most of our neurons were birthed when we were birthed, its number starts decreasing and make connections ever since, meaning we almost cannot make new neurons in the rest of our lives.
  • However, inside hippocampus (the physically core part or our brain), can still make new neurons even in adulthood.
  • Studies found that hippocampus grow if one has an enriched environment, under stimulations (perhaps unique experience? like meeting new friends or new topics) and doing exercies
  • I think this just implies that we could increase our learning efficiency in many ways
  • Special techniques to help focus or learning
  • Be in an creative environment
  • Interact with other people that can give you feedback or bounces
  • Having young people around, keep yourself youthful
  • Success does not come by being smart
  • passionate and persistent is king
PrefaceWeek 2