Have you ever felt like you aren’t learning things as quickly as you’d like? While some of us are fast learners, many of us aren’t. Depending on our natural aptitude, our passions, and the quality of our mentors, we learn some things quicker than we do others. I am not a slower than average learner, but I’m not a whiz either. For people like us, helpful tips on how to optimize our learning efficiency are always welcome.

That is why I decided to try out this Learning How to Learn course on Coursera. This course is created by the University of California, San Diego and taught by Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski. It is divided into four sessions of learning and graded assignments each taking about two hours. 

This post summarizes some of the course’s insights on efficient learning, recall, and performance applicable across a variety of disciplines. While suited for students in math and science, these insights apply to anything that requires learning and practice to master. 

 

On Focused and Diffused Modes of Learning

The visual analogy of a pinball machine helps us to visualize how the two main modes of thinking, focused and diffused, work. The focused mode is like when the rubber bumpers on the pinball machine are close to one another. When a thought, i.e., the pinball, bounces in the machine, it hits many bumpers along the way. Using a learned thought pattern that requires focused practice is likened to when the ball hits several of these bumpers in a specific way. As it does so, we are able to execute that learned thought pattern and solve the equation or parse the grammar of a foreign language.  

However, the closeness of the bumpers in the focused mode prevents us from getting to parts of the pinball machine that allow us to create new thought patterns and connect them to older ones. For this, there is another mode of thinking, the diffused mode. The diffused mode is like when the bumpers are spread out farther apart so that the pinball can move in a freer fashion. This freedom allows us to take the big picture view of what we are intending to learn but haven’t fully understood yet.

We cannot be in both modes at the same time, but both are essential for optimal learning. Many productive persons throughout history, like Thomas Edison, have synergized their diffused and focused learning modes to significant effect. Edison would hold ball bearings in his hand and let his mind wander in the diffused mode. When he was about to fall asleep, the ball would drop and the clang would jolt him awake. After that, he would channel his diffused insights into his focused mode and continue his work.

The takeaway is to not underestimate the value of the diffused mode. This can be achieved by taking regular breaks to relax after working hard on a problem to let our minds wander and passively consolidate the information it has absorbed so that it can work toward a solution for us to discover in our next focused session. Things that do not require high cognitive loads like walking, cycling, swimming, and driving can help facilitate that.

 

On Memories, Memory Types, and the Value of Sleep

There are two memory types: working memory, and long-term memory. Working memory is what is being consciously processed in our minds, like when we repeat someone’s mobile number in our heads before writing it down. We can only hold on to 4 chunks of information in our working memory before they dissipate. Long-term memory is like a storage warehouse. It requires deliberate practice via spaced repetition to move chunks of information from our working memory to our long-term memory efficiently.

To move information from our working memory to our long-term memory, i.e., the essence of learning, use spaced repetition. Spaced repetition is a technique which involves extending our practice sessions over time rather than in one learning session. By extending each session even further from the previous one, whatever we are learning will solidify harder and longer in our long-term memory.

Long-term memories are stored in synapses, structures that allow neurons to pass electrical signals to each other. Not only the strength of the synapses but the pattern of their connectivity, remain dynamic well into adulthood. Synapses form on dendrites (the electrochemical receivers on the neuron) most after learning AND after sleep.

In addition, sleep shrinks our brain cells, allowing toxic products in our brain, created when we’re awake, to be washed away. Lack of sleep is associated with headaches, depression, heart disease, diabetes, and premature death. Sleep is also the ultimate diffused mode. Our brains rehearse our learning and figures out difficult problems for us. The takeaway is to use spaced repetition and to not skimp on sleep, even if we may be tempted to do so to get more learning done before an exam or work assessment. It may be a clever idea to do the work we’d most like to recall right before sleeping. Tips on how to get better sleep can be found here.

On Battling Procrastination

Brain areas associated with pain are activated when we look at something we don’t want to do. We then create procrastinating habits which are exacerbated by defeating beliefs like “I can never will myself to work hard in the mornings.” However, we realize that this discomfort disappears soon after we start doing the thing we are dreading. So, procrastination can be dealt with by somehow getting ourselves past our false beliefs and that initial discomfort. 

To change this, alter our focus from product to process. Process refers to the habits and actions that are associated with the flow of time taken to learn something. Product refers to the desired outcome of that flow. Focusing on product tends to demoralize us, triggering mental pain. Or they might create unrealistic expectations on how quickly they can be achieved and tempt us to put off our learning for later. Rather, we should focus on habit-friendly processes so that we can get into the work almost automatically without worrying too much about the end goal.

One way to facilitate this is to use the Pomodoro technique. This technique refers to timing ourselves to work for 25 minutes without distraction. Once the 25 minutes are over, we reward ourselves with something like a stretch or a cup of coffee before getting into the next round. The expectation of reward taps into our dopamine system and keeps us motivated. This routine helps us to get to work more easily and lowers the chances that we will slip into procrastination before or during our work session.

Focusing is important for learning since it provides sturdier neural scaffolding for our thought patterns than if our learning was done in a distracted state. More time studying does not amount to more material learned. Learning must be done the right way, that is, with focused attention followed by bouts of diffused wandering.  

Pay attention to cues which lead to our procrastinating and remove them. As mentioned, set timed rewards as substitutes for the desire to procrastinate. Change defeating thought patterns and adopt a can-do attitude.  

 

On the Value of Exercise

Exercise benefits all our vital organs, including our brain. It helps new neurons created in the learning process survive.

 

On Test-taking

Don’t get hung up on a tricky question. Move on to other questions and the right procedure/answer might pop into your brain later. More deliberately, hack your focused and diffused modes by beginning with the tough questions, and then jumping to the easy ones quickly. This allows your diffuse mode to work part-time on the tough questions in the background while you are working on the easier ones.   

Use the educator Richard Felder’s test-taking checklist to ascertain if you have truly prepared for a test. Reconceptualise stress into excitement. Breathe in and out deeply to reduce anxiety before starting the exam. If a lot is riding on the exam, like your desired career, think of a career plan B to relax your mind, reduce fear, and perform better. Leave time to double check everything.   

 

On the Value of Chunks

Chunks unite bits of information through meaning so that we can better make sense of them by themselves and in their larger context. We create chunks by focusing our working memory on connecting disparate bits of information from our learning agenda. Through focused practice and repetition, these strengthened chunks allow us to retrieve detailed information embedded within the chunk and perform the relevant actions smoothly and effectively. 

Chunking lightens the cognitive load required to retrieve a skill that was previously learned. At some point, the best chunks don’t require much conscious effort anymore. Think, for example, of the world-class pianist who can play a whole a concerto without consciously figuring out what note to play next.

The first step to chunking is to focus our attention when learning something so that our working memory is fully engaged. The second is to try applying the chunk to solve a problem. Understanding something and being able to apply it are two different things. Recall when we understood a teacher’s explanation for a math proof but later tried and could not prove it ourselves?

The third is to gain context on what we are learning so that we can connect the chunk with other chunk’s we’ve acquired in our learning through the diffused mode and strengthen our skillset. These connections, sometimes between very different domains, like physics and business administration, offer the chance to cross-fertilize ideas and allow us to come up with novel solutions to problems. The larger our chunk library, the greater our capacity to solve difficult and surprising challenges we face at work or elsewhere.

 

On the Illusion of Competence

Having read something, we think that we have absorbed it. However, this is usually not the case. We succumb to the illusion of competence. We are not able to effectively recall or apply the things we’ve learned. To prevent this, regularly attempt to recall the material. Test yourselves. This has been shown to be far more effective at creating chunks than drawing concepts maps, highlighting, or re-reading a text umpteen times. If you make notes, write them in your own words and make them as succinct as possible.

If possible, also try to recall the material outside of your usual place of study. This makes us immune to dependency on the physical cues of the environment we like to study at. This improves our chance of recalling the chunks we have created, for example, when our examination hall is at a novel location.   

 

On Overlearning, Interleaving, and Einstellung

Overlearning can be good in situations which require automaticity, like delivering a public speech or performing a dance routine. It can, however, also be a waste of time. Recalling the value of spaced repetition, hammering away at something we’re already good at is not going to improve our ability to recall it in the future. Instead, we should move up to something harder and focus on that instead.

Once you have the basic chunk down in your repertoire, start interleaving by using it to solve various kinds of problems. For example, in language acquisition, after learning a grammar, start interleaving by recalling different grammatical configurations and apply them in varied speaking contexts. This builds flexibility and creativity in our thinking and eventually allows us to apply insights from one discipline to another. One such combination, economics and ethics, created Effective Altruism, a movement committed to producing sustainable evidence-based solutions to abject poverty and acting on them.

In addition, interleaving helps prevent Einstellung, i.e., getting stuck in one mode of thinking and becoming unable to process or integrate new ideas from outside sources. Einstellung is very common. It is part of the reason why academic disciplines tend not to touch or cross-fertilize. The other is the publish-or-die environment which channels the respective researchers’ focus on their tightly focused discipline. It is also what motivated the physicist Max Planck to comment that science progresses one funeral at a time, i.e., when established scientists are replaced by a generation who are not as enamored with, or whose reputations are not tied to, older scientific norms.         

 

On Harnessing Visual and Spatial Memory Systems

They are very powerful because we inherited them from our ancestors who relied primarily on these systems during the Pleistocene epoch. We can harness them by tying visual/spatial cues to the things we are trying to learn. By doing so, we can fast-track information from our working memories to our long-term memories. The Memory Palace technique harnesses such visual/spatial cues.

By using a layout of a familiar geographical location, we can imprint data onto familiar spaces as we take a mental “walk” around the location and recall the information we are trying to learn visually. Memory champions, people who can memorize the entire order of a shuffled deck of cards in under a minute, use variations of this technique, so it is certainly useful, at least at the chunk forming stage.

Use this in conjunction with flash cards, mnemonics (auditory associations), spaced repetition, and analogies to further optimize learning strength and speed.

 

Additional Tips/Information From the Course

 

• Learning is better facilitated with active engagement rather than passive listening. In a lecture setting, try to ask questions and participate in discussions more.
• Multitasking, i.e., being mentally engaged in several different things simultaneously, is impossible. We just switch our attentions very quickly. Some are better at switching than others. If it doesn’t work for us, don’t do it.
• Environment matters. Put ourselves in enriching environments. If we’re trying to learn how to juggle, learning from YouTube is good, but immersing ourselves in a community of jugglers is even better (and we can always do both). An enriching environment allows us to correct our mistakes quickly and help us to see things from a fresh perspective.
• Speed-reading is not a thing. Focus on understanding and recall rather than speed.
• Find out more about our brains that are related to learning here. 
• Check out this website that helps UK children and adults improve their numeracy skills.
• Writing coach Daphne Gray-Grant tells us not to edit while we are writing. This takes us out of our flow and can affect the quality of our prose. Edit only after much of the draft has been written.  
• Penning daily to-do lists help free up additional working memory to facilitate learning.
• Do the hardest stuff in the morning. That is when we are most cognitively able.
• Check out this evidence-based list on what kind of music best suits work. You may want to take this with a grain of salt, since white noise or no music is, by my anecdotal lights, superior.
• Many of us get bouts of imposter syndrome. Don’t get demoralized by this.
• The better we get at learning, the more likely others will attack, demean, or undermine our efforts. This is normal and we should not be discouraged by it. Adopt a habit of cool dispassion when dealing with these individuals and keep having faith in ourselves.
• Brainstorm and work with others who are smartly focused on the same topic, but don’t get caught up in chit-chat.  

 

Additional Tips from Outside Sources 

• Don’t be disheartened if you are not a fast learner. There is value to being a slow learner. Speedy thinkers tend to miss nuances in learning and are not good at listening to others. By contrast, slow thinkers do more intellectual exploring, learn more deeply, are more easily able to change their minds. In many career and research contexts, slow thinkers achieve distinct advantages over fast ones. Read Martin Seligman’s Flourish (2011) for more on the value of learning slowly.  
• Don’t be discouraged when you progress slowly through a new set of skills. You may find unexpected connections between the skills you already possess and the ones you are trying to learn. Use that to your advantage.
• Focused thinking is well facilitated by a quiet environment. Diffused thinking is well facilitated by an environment with lots of ambient noise, like a coffee shop.     
• There are upsides to having a poor working memory. Ideas flow more frequently through what would have otherwise been fully occupied memory slots. This enables you to be more creative and more able to move beyond past mistakes.  
• The efficacy of learning styles, like visual, audio, etc. are not well established. It is better to use all the senses for learning whenever possible.
• The most successful working and research teams aren’t successful because they are highest in raw ability. They are successful because they operate in a psychologically safe environment. Collective empathy allows everyone in the team to be comfortable taking risks to advance their shared goals.   
• “Follow your passion” is bad advice. The ones who advise this to you do not have to live with the consequences of your decision. Move forward at the intersection between your current/potential abilities and a sustainable career trajectory.
• Imposter syndrome, mentioned above, isn’t necessarily all bad. If you can reframe your negative thoughts in a more positive direction, you’ll do better than people who are overconfident.  This is because overconfidence is a good predictor of failure.  
• Find the time to read books that are outside your expertise. Regular reading correlates with the brain’s longevity.

 

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