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Science-backed methods to keep in mind when you're learning new things
Practice chunking
A memory chunk is a solid connection in your mind that relates various bits and pieces of information.
Focus on the concept you want to form a chunk of. Write down the basic ideas of what the concept is all about. Build up from these fundamentals to finally create a chunk.
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Just start, break the initial barrier
Every task has a certain Activation Energy (AE), where you initiate certain steps in order to start a task.
Reducing the Activation Energy of new habits you want to form will make it is easier to get started.
If you want to exercise, have your shoes and weights ready the previous night.
Learn, Practice, Recall — Repeat
While reviewing material, recall it instead of just reading it passively. Try and recall in a different setting than where you studied it.
Take it easy
Whenever you face a problem, take a break. Sleep. Clean your room. Do anything except work on the problem.
This takes your brain into its “diffuse mode” — this mode works on the things you have been focusing on in the background. Come back to the problem later.
Understand your procrastination
A procrastinator is a person who has a HABIT of getting distracted by things.
Break this habit by eliminating distractions. Another option is the Cue-Routine where you take notice what you do in response to certain distracting cues ,and then make sure to resist it.
Set an ending time for tasks
Parkinson’s second law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
Setting a micro deadline for daily tasks holds your brain accountable to the tick of the clock.
Use visual and spatial memories
The #1 thing you need to do to correctly memorize concepts is understand them. To successfully understand something, visualizing it is key.
Use metaphors and stories
Metaphors will help you understand and recall more easily.
You take something obvious from your memory, and see how it is related to the new concept you are trying to learn.
Learn what you want
People learn when they are self-motivated, not when someone comes in front of them for four hours a week, and tells something to them.
Start learning what you want, since that is what actually matters — that is what you must care about.
Intersection of skills
Transfer learning is the ability to take what you learn in one domain and apply it to a new skill.
Learn to apply old skills to new skills and vice versa.
Sleep
Lack of sleep affects memory and recall.
Sleep helps your brain get into the diffuse mode and thus gets creative ideas about your ongoing projects cooking.
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Learning how to learn
Learning how to learn is a meta-skill. It is a critical skill for everyone who needs to pick up and master new concepts frequently.
Understanding what is learning and how our memory works wil...
Learning skills
Learning how to learn is critical for everyone. Most of us have to deal with a changing world and to learn how to manage tons of new information.
However, most of our learning methods are outdated and far from optimal. It may even be giving us an illusion of learning, like re-reading and highlighting that don't provide proper feedback to show what you haven't learned.
Focused and Diffuse Mode
Focused and diffuse modes provide two models for how we develop, elaborate, deepen and broaden connections. Both methods are important.
- The focused mode of learning is about bringing related concepts together into a unit, called a chunk.
- The diffuse mode operates through a wider net of connecting general ideas across different fields. We use this diffuse mode while we sleep, exercise or daydream.
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Bring it back from memory
Retrieval is so effective is that it strengthens the neural pathways associated with a given concept.
When you're attempting to recall an idea, method, or technique from memory, you're retrieving. Flash cards are a great example: They force you to recall an idea from memory, unlike a technique like highlighting where you're not burning anything into your brain.
Connect new ideas
... to what you already know.
When you try to put a new idea into your own words, you're elaborating.
For example, if you're in physics class and trying to understand heat transfer, try to tie the concept into your real-life experiences, say, by imagining how a warm cup of coffee disperses heat into your hands.
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Aphantasia: Image Not Found
Aphantasia is a phenomenon in which an individual cannot conjure an image of a face or thing in their minds. There is no inner ‘mind’s eye’ in these people and the mental imagery i...
Discovery of Aphantasia
Aphantasia was first described in the early 1800s by Francis Galton in a paper on mental imagery. It was not until 2015 that the phenomenon was further studied and the term was coined.
One of the major studies was with a patient who had undergone a minor surgery in 2005 and later could no longer generate visual images within the ‘mind’s eye’. The details of the study were published in 2010, which led to many others coming up with similar symptoms.
Binocular Rivalry
This was a technique used by the researchers to help test the image forming inside the brain of the individuals.
The experiment led to the finding that a recent viewing of an image had no correlation with the imagining of the image.
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