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August 1 - August 10, 2020
Brains are amazing. They’re the most sophisticated gadgets in the universe. They change their structure depending on what you do with them.
Sometimes we need to lose concentration so we can think more clearly. Zoning out occasionally (not all the time) can be useful when you’re learning or problem solving.
Focused Mode
When you’re using your focused mode, it means that you’re paying attention.
When you are trying to learn something new, you must first focus intently on it in order to “turn on” those parts of the brain and get the learning process started.
Diffuse Mode
Diffuse mode is when your mind is relaxed and free. You’re thinking about nothing in particular. You’re in diffuse mode when you’re daydreaming or doodling just for fun.
In diffuse mode, you’re not thinking about anything in particular.
The diffuse mode helps you make imaginative connections between ideas. Creativity often seems to pop out of using the diffuse mode.
turns out that your brain has to go back and forth between focused and diffuse modes in order to learn effectively.
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But it seems that the best ways to give your diffuse mode a chance to work out a difficult problem are through activities like sleeping, exercising, or going for a ride in a vehicle.
To be a successful problem solver, focus first. We get stuck in problem solving when we don’t first prepare our brain by focusing on the basics. Don’t just dive into problem solving without studying the explanations first. You need to lay some basic trails on the focused pinball table.
Take breaks to get new problem-solving perspectives. We can also get stuck on a difficult problem even when we’ve prepared properly.
Procrastination means putting things off until later. It is a problem for many students (and adults!) and gets in the way of good learning.
As you will learn later, time and practice work together to help you cement new ideas into your brain.
When you even just think about something you don’t like, it activates a pain center of the brain called the insular cortex. This can lead to procrastination.
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the idea of multitasking is a mistake. Your focus can only be on one thing at a time. When you switch your attention, you waste mental energy, and you will perform worse.
Pulling the key idea from your own
mind, instead of just reading or rereading it on the page, is the critical idea behind active recall.
The Three Key Steps to Powerful Reading Picture walk Read with care
Use active recall
Metaphors allow you to connect what you already know to the new concept you’re learning. This helps you learn faster.
Guang found that neurons do change. And the big change happens after we learn something and then go to sleep.
The more you learn, practice, and sleep, the more you grow new dendritic spines and synaptic links. Stronger links plus more links.
Recall is one of the most effective ways to boost your learning.
Some people need more practice and repetition to get a concept than others. That’s perfectly okay!
“You don’t get good at something unless you practice. That’s for anything in the world
Your memory is a lot better for pictures than it is for abstract facts.
Turn whatever you’re memorizing into a picture that you can visualize in your mind’s eye.
If you add movement to your picture, it makes the image even stickier. A gorilla is one thing. A goril...
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Find a way to relate the information to things you already know. Find an anchor. This allows you to put the pictures into your brain in places where you can easily retrieve them.
Focus and memorization reinforce each other.
Make up metaphors for the information you’re trying to remember.
A great way to learn something is to explain what you are trying to learn to an object. A rubber ducky, for example,
The rubber ducky technique is so effective that it is used by computer programmers.
Information is stored in memory as two types—facts and pictures. Pictures are much easier to
five memory tips are: Focus on what you’re trying to remember. Practice remembering. Turn what you are trying to remember into a picture. Store the picture by connecting it to things you already know. Use active recall to make the idea stick.
Memory palaces are useful, because they use your amazing visuospatial powers. Practice using your memory, and it will get easier and easier.
Five other ways to help you
remember are to: Use a song. Make up metaphors. Take good notes, preferably handwritten. Imagine you are the thing you’re trying to understand and remember. Share your ideas. Teach them to someone else.
But just understanding a concept does not create a set of brain-links. You must practice a new concept to create the set of brain-links. Understanding and practice go together. The more you practice, the more you understand what you are learning.
practice with programs like Smartick and Kumon can help build stronger sets of brain-links that reinforce understanding in a deep way.
Cognitive load is the amount of mental effort being used in the working memory. It’s harder to move more stuff into working memory if you already have a lot going on there.)
When you’re learning anything new, your working memory can only hold so much in mind at once. This is why it’s so important to make strong, well-practiced sets of brain-links.
A set of brain-links is a pathway of connected neurons in your long-term “locker” memory that is built through practice. A set of brain-links helps your working memory to process information more quickly.
Brains are different. They’re much slower, and they work by doing lots of smaller things all at once. They’re like a team of billions of tiny computers working together. Each neuron is a tiny “computer.”
during sleep, information you’ve learned is transferred from the neurons in the hippocampus into the neurons of your cerebral cortex, which is the outer layer of the brain.
Your cerebral cortex is the home of your long-term memory (locker). So sleep not only helps build new synaptic connections, it also clears out the hippocampus to make room for new learning.
New neurons are born in the hippocampus every day.
If you don’t learn anything new, the new neurons in your hippocampus will disappear not long after they are born.
