A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)

by Barbara Oakley

We procrastinate about things that make us feel uncomfortable. But what makes us feel good temporarily isn’t necessarily good for us in the long run.

Everyone has different gifts. As the old saying goes, “When one door closes, another opens.” Keep your chin up and your eye on the open door.

Persistence is often more important than intelligence.

Taking responsibility for your own learning is one of the most important things you can do.

“My research team has found that if you write about your thoughts and feelings about an upcoming test immediately before you take the test, it can lessen the negative impact of pressure on performance. We think that writing helps to release negative thoughts from mind, making them less likely to pop up and distract you in the heat of the moment.

TEN RULES OF GOOD STUDYING 1. Use recall. After you read a page, look away and recall the main ideas. Highlight very little, and never highlight anything you haven’t put in your mind first by recalling. Try recalling main ideas when you are walking to class or in a different room from where you originally learned it. An ability to recall—to generate the ideas from inside yourself—is one of the key indicators of good learning. 2. Test yourself. On everything. All the time. Flash cards are your friend. 3. Chunk your problems. Chunking is understanding and practicing with a problem solution so that it can all come to mind in a flash. After you solve a problem, rehearse it. Make sure you can solve it cold—every step. Pretend it’s a song and learn to play it over and over again in your mind, so the information combines into one smooth chunk you can pull up whenever you want. 4. Space your repetition. Spread out your learning in any subject a little every day, just like an athlete. Your brain is like a muscle—it can handle only a limited amount of exercise on one subject at a time. 5. Alternate different problem-solving techniques during your practice. Never practice too long at any one session using only one problem-solving technique—after a while, you are just mimicking what you did on the previous problem. Mix it up and work on different types of problems. This teaches you both how and when to use a technique. (Books generally are not set up this way, so you’ll need to do thi...