Model 1 (1-6)
1. Focus VS Diffuse Modes
Focusing intently in ONE season to figure something out can be the worst approach possible.
Learning something difficult takes time.It also needs your mind to go back and forth between the two learning modes.
Do a little work everyday, gradually allowing yourself to grow a little bit, everyday.
You are not the same person you were after a night’s sleep or even a nap.
2. Procrastination
Solution: Pomodoro
3. Practices makes permanent by building strong neural structures.
When you are learning, what you want to do is study something. Study it hard by focusing intently. Then take a break or at least change your focus to something different for a while. This allows your brain work away in the background and help you out with your conceptual understanding.
4. Long term memory VS Working memory
Use working memory to handle something new. To move working memory into long term memory, time and practices are needed.
Techniques for this process: spaced repetition. (艾宾浩斯遗忘曲线）
5. Sleep helps your brain to keep itself clean and healthy. Also it helps your brain tidied up ideas and concepts you are thinking about and learning.
It erases the less important parts of memories and simultaneously strengthens areas that you need or want to remember.
Dreaming about what you are studying can substantially enhance your ability to understand it and consolidate your memories into easier to grasp chunks.
6. Exercise is valuable in helping both improve memory and ability to learn.
Module 2(7- 11)
7. Chunk
Your brain would not work right when you are angry, stressed, or afraid.
The best programs for learning language, incorporate structured practice that includes repetition and route focus mode learning of the language along with more diffuse-like free speech with native speakers. The goal is to embed the basic words and patterns so you can speak as freely and creatively in your new language as you do in your native language.
One of the first steps toward gaining expertise in academic topics is to create conceptual chunks, mental leaps that unite scattered bits of information through meaning.
Chunking helps your brain run more efficiently.
8. Form a chunk
Step 1: Focus your undivided attention on the information you want to chunk. Stop any background sounds.
Step 2: Understand the basic idea you are trying to chunk. Example: understanding a concept, seeing the connection between the basic elements, grasp the economic principle of supply and demand, comprehending the essence of a type of math problem.
Just understand how a problem was solved for example, does not necessarily create a chunk that you can easily call to mind later. Just because you see it or even you understand it , it doesn’t mean that you can actually do it. Only doing it yourself helps create the neural patterns that underlie true mastery.
Pay attention to what's going on around youwhen you're using the map, and soon you'll find yourself able to get there onyour own. You'll even be able to figure out new ways of getting there.
Step3: Gaining context to see not just how but also when to use this chunk. This helps you see how your newly formed chunk fits into the bigger picture. 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.
“Picture walk”. Learn the major concepts or points first, these are often the key parts of a good instructor or on book chapters, outline, flow charts, tables, or concept maps.
Summary: of how to build a chunk: Built with focused attention, understand of the basic idea, and practice to help you gain mastery and a sense of the big picture context.
9 Recall:
After you've read the material, simply look away, and see what you can recall from the material you've just read.
The thought, concept mapping, drawing diagrams that show the relationship between the concepts would be the best.
But if you're trying to build connections between chunks, before the basic chunks are embedded in the brain, it doesn't work as well.
Using recall, mental retrieval of the key ideas, rather than passive rereading, will make your study time more focused and effective.
Merely glancing at a solution and thinking you truly know it yourself is one of the most common illusions of competence in learning.
Highlighting and underlining must be done very carefully. If you do mark up the text, try to look for main ideas before making any marks. And try to keep your underlining or highlighting to a minimum. One sentence or less per paragraph.
Words or notes in a margin that synthesize key concepts are a very good idea.
A super helpful way to make sure you're learning and not fooling yourself with illusions of competence, is to test yourself on whatever you're learning.
If you make a mistake in what you are doing, it's actually a very good thing. You want to try not to repeat you mistakes, of course, but mistakes are very valuable to make in your little self-tests before high stakes real tests. Because they allow you to make repairs and you're thinking flaws bit by bit mistakes help correct your thinking, so that you can learn better and do better.
Recalling material when you are outside your usual place of study can also help you strengthen your grasp of the material. By recalling and thinking about the material when you are in various physical environment, you become independent of the cues from any one given location. That helps you avoid the problem of the test room being different from where you originally learned the material.
10. The Value of a Library of Chunks
Combine chunks in new and original ways underlies a lot of historical innovation.
Extended week-long reading periods：Hold many and varied ideas in mind during one time. It is helpful to generate their own innovative thinking by allowing fresh in mind not yet forgotten ideas to network amongst themselves.
Solve problems: Sequential thinking and intuition(diffuse mode).
Most difficult problems and concepts are grasped through intuition.
Lady luck favors the one who tries. Just focus on whatever section you are studying. You will find that once you put that first problem or concept in your mental library, whatever it is, then the second concept will go in a little more easily. And the third more easily still.
11. Overlearning, Chocking, Einstellung, and Interleaving
Overlearning: Continue to study or practice after you have mastered what you can in the session.
Using a subsequent study session to repeat what you are trying to learn is just fine and often valuable.
Deliberate practice: You want to balance your studies and gain full mastery of the material by deliberately focusing on what you find more difficult.
Einstellung: your initial simple idea may preent a better idea or solution from being found.
You have to unlearn your erroneous older ideas or approaches even while you are learnin new one.
Understanding how to obtain real solutions is important in learning and in life.
Interleaving: practice jumping back and forth between problems or situations that require different techniques or strategies.
Module 3 (12-
12. Introduction to Procrastination and Memory
13. Tackling procrastination: It’s easier, and more valuable, than you think
Tool to help with procrastination: Pomodoro
You shouldn't waste willpower on fending off procrastination except when absolutely necessary.
Habits that worked in earlier years can turn around and bite you.
You should be making the decisions, not your well-meaning but unthinking zombies, your habits.
14. Zombies everywhere: Digging deeper to understand the habit of procrastination
Habits have four parts:
1.The cue 2.The routine 3.The reward 4.The belief
Habit: You don’t have to think in a focusedmanner about what you are doing while you are performing the habit. It saves energy.
Finding ways to reward good study habits isimportant for escaping procrastination.
Habits have power because of your belief inthem.
15. Surf’s up! Process versus product
First, when it comes to learning ingeneral, you should realize that it's perfectly normal to start with a fewnegative feelings about beginning a learning session. Even when it's a subjectyou ordinary like, it's how you handle those feelings that matters.
Researchers have found thatnon-procrastinators put their negative thinking aside saying things to themselveslike: quit wasting time and just get on with it, once you get going, you'llfeel better about it. If you find yourself avoiding certain tasks because theymake you feel uncomfortable, you should know there's another helpful way tore-frame things. And that's to learn to focus on process not product.
Process means, the flow of time and thehabits and actions associated with that flow of time.
Product is an outcome, for example, ahomework assignment that you need to finish. To prevent procrastination youwant to avoid concentrating on product. Instead, your attention should be onbuilding processes. Processes relate to simple habits, habits thatcoincidentally allow you to do the unpleasant tasks that need to be done.
The whole point instead, is that you calmlyput forth your best effort for a short period.
For you, one of the easiest ways to focuson process is to focus on doing a Pomodoro, a 25 minute timed work session, noton completing a task. The essential idea here is that the zombie habitual partof your brain likes processes because it can march mindlessly along.
By focusing on process rather than product,you allow yourself to back away from judging yourself, am I getting closer tofinishing? And instead you allow yourself to relax into the flow of the work.The key is when a distraction arises, which it inevitably will, you want totrain yourself to just let it flow by.
16. Harnessing your zombies to help you
The trick to overriding a habit is to lookto change your reaction to a cue. The only place you need to apply willpower is to change your reaction to thecue.
You can prevent the most damaging cues byshutting off your cell phone or keeping yourself away from the internet andother distractions for brief periods of time, as when you're doing a pomodoro.
The key to re-wiring is to have a plan.Developing a new ritual can be helpful. example: leave phone, settle into a quietplace. The productive effects of simply sitting in a favorite chair at the propertime with all Internet access disconnected.
Don't try to change everything at once. ThePomodoro technique can be especially helpful in shifting your reaction to thecues.
Remember that habits are powerful becausethey create neurological cravings. It helps to add a new reward if you want toovercome your previous cravings. Only once your brain starts expecting thatreward will the important rewiring take place that will allow you to create newhabits. Many people find that setting a reward at a specific time, gives asolid, mini deadline that can help spur work. Don't feel bad if you find youhave trouble getting into a flow state at first. Also remember that the betteryou get at something, the more enjoyable it can become.
The most important part of changing yourprocrastination habit is the belief that you can do it. You may find that whenthe going gets stressful. You long to fall back into old, more comfortablehabits. Belief that your new system works is what can get you through. Developingand encouraging culture with like-minded friends can help us remember thevalues that in moments of weakness we tend to forget.
17. Juggling life and learning
Once a week write a brief weekly list of key tasks in a planner journal.
Then each day on another page of your planner journal, write a list of the tasks that you can reasonably work on or accomplish. Try to write this daily task list the evening before.
Mixing other tasks up with your learning seems to make everything more enjoyable and keeps you from prolonged and unhealthy bouts of sitting.
Make notes in your planner journal about what works and what doesn't.
Planning your quitting time is as important as planning your working time.
Time after time, those who are committed to maintaining healthy leisure time along with their hard work, outperform those who doggedly pursue an endless treadmill.
Try to work on a most important and most disliked task first. At least just one Pomodoro, as soon as you wake up.
Lady Luck favors the one who tries.
Planning well is part of trying. Keep your eye on your learning goal, and try not to get too unsettled by occasional roadblocks.
18. Summing up procrastination:
Keep a planner journal
Commit yourself to certain routines and tasks each day
Delay rewards until you finish the task
Watch for procrastination cues
Gain trust in your new system
Have backup plans for when you still procrastinate
Eat your frogs first
19. Diving Deeper into Memory
Repetition is important. It helps get that memorable item firmly lodged into long-term memory.
Remember to repeat not a bunch of times in one day but sporadically over several days.
Writing and saying what you're trying to learn seems to enhance retention.
Remember that sleep is when your mind repeats patterns and pieces together solutions.
Briefly repeat what you want to remember over several days. Perhaps for a few minutes each morning or each evening.
Tool: Anki
20. What is a Long Term Memory?
It is more effective to space learning over time, rather than mass learning all at once.This is why tackling procrastination is important. It helps you build better memories because you start earlier.
Creating meaningful groups and the memory palace technique.
It's much easier to remember numbers by associating them with memorable events.
The memory palace technique is a particularly powerful way of grouping things you want to remember.
In other words, you'd imagine yourself walking through a place you know well, coupled with shockingly memorable images of what you want to remember.
21. How to Become a Better Learner
The best gift that you can give your brain isPhysical Exercise.
One of the best studied critical periods inthe brain is when binocular depth perception or stereopsis matures during the firsttwo years of life.
22. Renaissance learning and unlocking yourpotential
Learning doesn’t progress logically, sothat each day just adds an additional neat package to your knowledge shelf.
Things that made sense before can suddenlyseem confusing.
This type of knowledge collapse seems tooccur when your mind is restructuring its understanding building a more solidfoundation.
This is a natural phenomenon, that meansthat your mind is wrestling deeply with the material.
You’ll find that when you emerge from theseperiods of temporary frustration, your knowledge base will take a surprising leapforward.
23. Create a lively visual metaphor or analogy
One of the best things you can do to not only remember, but understand concepts, is to create a metaphor or analogy for them; the more visual the better.
A metaphor is just a way of realizing that one thing is somehow similar to another.
It's often helpful to pretend that you are the ocncept you are trying to understand.
In science, all models are just metaphors which means they break down at some point.
Metaphor and models are often vitally important in giving a physical understanding of the central idea behind the process or concept you are trying to understand. Metaphors and analogies are useful for getting people out of Einstellung, that is ,being blocked by thinking about a problem in the wrong way.
24. No need for genius envy – the imposter syndrome
Once you understand why you do something in math and science, you don't have to keep re-explaining the how to yourself every time you do it.
The greater understanding results from the fact that your mind constructed the patterns of meaning, rather than simply accepting what someone else has told you.
Remember, people learn by trying to make sense out of the information they perceive.
They rarely learn anything complex simply by having someone else tell it to them.
Many other experts often have to make complex decisions rapidly.
They shut down their conscious system and isntead rely on their well-trained intuition, drawing on their deeply ingrained repertoire of chunks.
At some point self-consciously understanding why you do what you do, just slows you down and interrupts the flow resulting in worse decisions.
If you're one of those people who can't hold a lot in mind at once, you lose focus and start daydreaming in lectures and have to get to some place quiet to focus so you can use your working memory to its maximum, well welcome to the clan of the creative.
Practice, particularly deliberate practice on the toughest aspects of the material that can help lift average brains into the realm of those with more natural gifts.
Everyone has different gifts, as the old saying goes, when one door closes, another opens.
25. Change your thoughts, change your life
Practice appears to strengthen and reinforce connections between different brain regions, creating highways between the brain's control centers and the centers that store knowledge.
W can make significant changes in our brain by changing how we think.
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.
Approaching material with a goal of learning it on your own, can give you a unique path to mastery. 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 are of your choosing. Taking responsibility for your own learning is one of the most important things you can do.
The greater your achievement, the more other people will sometimes attack and demean your efforts. On the other hand, if you flunk a test, you also may encounter critics who throw more barbs, saying you don't have what it takes.
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 tune people out if you discover that their interests lie in undercutting you. Such undercutting is all too common, as people are often just as competitive as they are cooperative. When you're a young person, mastering such dispassion can be difficult. We're naturally excited about what we're working on, and we like to believe that everyone can be reasoned with and then, almost everyone is naturally good hearted towards us.
You can take pride in aiming for success. Because of the very things that make other people say you can't do it. 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 defy the always present prejudices from others about what you can accomplish.
26 The value of teamwork
27 A test checklist
28 Hard start jump to easy
29 Final helpful hints for tests
Reference Link:
Brains and behavior: brainfacts.org
Reference Reading: