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November 27 - November 28, 2022
my self-portrait as being technically, scientifically, and mathematically incapable was shaping my life.
You’ll be surprised at how spending a minute or two glancing ahead before you read in depth will help you organize your thoughts. You’re creating little neural hooks to hang your thinking on, making it easier to grasp the concepts.
highly attentive states and more relaxed resting state networks
Focused-mode thinking is essential for studying math and science. It involves a direct approach to solving problems using rational, sequential, analytical approaches. The focused mode is associated with the concentrating abilities of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, located right behind your forehead.
Diffuse-mode thinking is also essential for learning math and science. It allows us to suddenly gain a new insight on a problem we’ve been struggling with and is associated with “big-picture” perspectives. Diffuse-mode thinking is what happens when you relax your attention and just let your mind wander.
can think of it as being “diffused” throughout the brain.5 Diffuse-mode insights often flow from preliminary thinking that’s been done in the focused mode. (The diffuse mode must have clay to make bricks!)
So this means that thinking and learning is more complicated than simply switching between the focused and diffuse modes.
Related to these difficulties in math and science is another challenge. It’s called the Einstellung effect (pronounced EYE-nshtellung). In this phenomenon, an idea you already have in mind, or your simple initial thought, prevents a better idea or solution from being found.9
The practice of recall
This is precisely why one significant mistake students sometimes make in learning math and science is jumping into the water before they learn to swim.11 In other words, they blindly start working on homework without reading the textbook, attending lectures, viewing online lessons, or speaking with someone knowledgeable.
Attempting to recall the material you are trying to learn—retrieval practice—is far more effective than simply rereading the material.
“Intention to learn is helpful only if it leads to the use of good learning strategies.”12
Using recall—mental retrieval of the key ideas—rather than passive rereading
You don’t want to wait too long for the recall practice, so that you have to start the reinforcement of the concept from scratch every time.
MAKE YOUR KNOWLEDGE SECOND NATURE
"Learn the book"
Steven Johnson, in his brilliant book Where Good Ideas Come From,
a key difference between creative scientists and technically competent but nonimaginative ones is their breadth of interest.22)
Lady Luck favors the one who tries.23
But you can’t learn mathematics or science without also including a healthy dose of practice and repetition to help you build the chunks that will underpin your expertise.27
28 Students studied a scientific text and then practiced it by recalling as much of the information as they could. Then they restudied the text and recalled it (that is, tried to remember the key ideas) once more. The results? In the same amount of time, by simply practicing and recalling the material, students learned far more and at a much deeper level than they did using any other approach, including simply rereading the text a number of times or drawing concept maps that supposedly enriched the relationships in the materials under study.
the retrieval process itself enhances deep learning and helps us begin forming chunks.29
But if you try to build connections between chunks before the basic chunks are embedded in the brain, it doesn’t work as well.
asking themselves this question: How would I know how to do the problem this way if I saw it on a test mixed together with other problems and I didn’t know it was from this section of the text?
Students need to think of every homework problem in terms of test preparation and not as part of a task they are trying to complete.”
What is the difference between top-down and bottom-up approaches to learning? Is one approach preferable to the other?
Go back to
In a similar way, procrastinators put off just that one little thing. They do it again and again, gradually growing used to it. They can even look healthy. But the long-term effects?
1. The Cue: Recognize what launches you into your zombie, procrastination mode.
habits are powerful because they create neurological cravings.
If you find yourself avoiding certain tasks because they make you uncomfortable, there is a great way to reframe things: Learn to focus on process, not product.
Process means the flow of time and the habits and actions associated with that flow of time—as in, “I’m going to spend twenty minutes working.” Product is an outcome—for
To prevent procrastination, you want to avoid concentrating on product. Instead, your attention should be on building processes—habits—that coincidentally allow you to...
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Break Your Work into Bite-Sized Pieces—Then Work Intently, but Briefly
Multitasking is like constantly pulling up a plant. This kind of constant shifting of your attention means that new ideas and concepts have no chance to take root and flourish.
Practice ignoring distractions.
my mental trick is to create big chunks for different areas—thermo class, machine design, programming, et cetera. When I need to recall an individual project, I set my current focus aside and reference the desired chunk, which is like a link on my computer desktop.
Learning doesn’t progress logically so that each day just adds an additional neat packet to your knowledge shelf. Sometimes you hit a wall in constructing your understanding.
But I focused on finding something good in whatever teachers came my way, whether it was an excellent memory or simply an easy smile. This kind of positive attitude helped me appreciate my teachers and keep an open-minded approach toward my classes.
“This same attitude also helped me later in my career. Today, I always actively seek inspiration from the people I work with and for. Whenever I find my spirit bending low, I discover it is because I have stopped looking for people’s positive attributes. This means it is time for me to look within and make changes.
Another trick involves using meditation to help you learn to ignore distracting thoughts.3
A last important trick is to reframe your focus. One student, for example, is able to get himself up at four thirty each weekday morning, not by thinking about how tired he is when he wakes but about how good breakfast will be.
Bannister did not focus on all the reasons why he logically had no chance of reaching his goal. He instead refocused on accomplishing his goal in his own way.
Keep notes on when you don’t complete what you had intended to complete, what the cues are, and your zombie-mode habitual reaction to procrastination cues. By logging your reaction, you can apply the subtle pressure you need to change your response to your procrastination cues and gradually improve your working habits.
book The Now Habit, author Neil Fiore suggests keeping a detailed daily schedule of your activities for a week or two to get a handle on where your problem areas are for procrastination.8
It’s important to transform distant deadlines into daily ones. Attack them bit by bit.
only got a few minutes here, gotta figure out what I can!
“As educators, in our zeal to encourage students to form chunks rather than simply memorize isolated facts, we sometimes give the impression that memorization is unimportant. (‘Why should I memorize an equation that I can look up?’) But memorization of key facts is essential since it is these facts that form the seeds for the creative process of chunking! The important lesson is that we must continue jiggling and playing mentally with things we have memorized in order to form chunks.” —Forrest Newman, professor of astronomy and physics, Sacramento City College
The memory tricks used by both ancient and modern memory experts taps into these naturally supersized visuospatial memorization abilities.
In a related vein, some learners find that reading problems or formulas aloud helps them understand better. Just be wary of exercises like writing an equation out a hundred times by hand. The first few times may give you value, but after a while, it simply becomes a rote exercise—the time could be better spent elsewhere.
TALK TO YOURSELF
learning to process ideas visually in math and science is a powerful way to become a master of the material.13
One study of how actors memorize their scripts showed that they avoid verbatim memorization. Instead, they depend on an understanding of the characters’ needs and motivations in order to remember their lines.16
