Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens

by Barbara Oakley

It also opens doors for the great new careers that are emerging with modern-day changes.

The working world of the future needs creative people who have many different talents. We’re here to help you develop the many talents, and the creativity, that lie within you!

By the way, the South Pole Station is where I met my husband, Phil. Here he is after just ten minutes at minus seventy degrees in a wild wind. I had to go to the end of the earth to meet that man! If I hadn’t learned how to learn math and science, I never would have met him.

Instead, when you start a new chapter, go on a “picture walk”* through it. Scan it. Look briefly at all the pictures, captions, and diagrams, but also at the section headings, bold words, and summary, and even questions at the end of the chapter, if the book has them.

Surprise! 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.

Getting Stuck There are two ways you can get stuck when you’re trying to solve a math or science problem. Or when you’re trying to learn something new, like how to play a chord on the guitar or perform a specific move in soccer. The first way you can get stuck happens when you don’t catch the initial explanation. Unfortunately, with this kind of “stuck,” going into diffuse mode won’t be much use. You haven’t “loaded” anything into your focused mode.

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Use These Diffuse Mode Tools as Rewards After Focused Mode Work General Diffuse Mode Activators Play a sport like soccer or basketball Jog, walk, or swim Dance Enjoy being a passenger in a car or bus Ride a bike Draw or paint Take a bath or shower Listen to music, especially without words Play songs you know well on a musical instrument Meditate or pray Sleep (the ultimate diffuse mode!) The following diffuse mode activators are best used briefly as rewards. These activities may pull you into a more focused mode than the preceding activities. It can sometimes be a good idea to set a timer, or they can eat up too much time. Play video games Talk to friends Help someone with a simple task Read a book Message friends Go see a movie (if you have the time!) Watch TV

Procrastination is the enemy of high-quality learning. But many students still do it. I want to show you how to beat it.

So this is my number one top tip to become a good learner. Just get going. Don’t put work off until later.

Studying and texting in the same time frame is a bad habit. It’s your bad “study while texting” zombie. To defeat it, you can instead train

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

Can you tell that we like to use metaphors? A metaphor is a comparison between two things.* One thing is something you are familiar with, like an ocean wave. The other thing is something you may not be familiar with, like an electrical wave. Metaphors allow you to connect what you already know to the new concept you’re learning. This helps you learn faster.

You are a critical part of the learning process. It’s important for you to take responsibility for creating your understanding.

Focused mode: We use the term focused mode to mean that certain parts of your brain go to work when you pay close attention to something. When you are focusing, the active parts of your brain are mostly different from those parts that are active in the diffuse mode. (Instead of “focused mode,” neuroscientists use the heavy-duty term “activation of task positive networks.”)

Here’s the strange thing, though. Dendritic spines are sort of like lie detectors. The new spines and their synapses only begin the growing process if you’re really focusing on the new information you want to learn. You can’t kid them. Dendritic spines can tell whether you’ve been playing video games or texting your friends instead of studying. In fact, even if new dendritic spines and synapses form, they can easily fade away and disappear if you don’t practice them. Use it or lose it.

You’re helping your octopus to hold on. Maybe just until you can write it down. (In fact, writing things down is one way to help the octopus hold on!)

it can hold only about four things at one time.

Psychologists talk about four “slots” in working memory. But I think it’s a better metaphor to think of octopus arms instead.

“Walk dog, clean room, tease brother, do homework.”

Basically, Nelson tells himself corny visual jokes that help him remember. You’ll be amazed by how easy it is to remember things when you have a goofy way of remembering them. And it’s fun making them up!

The technique has been around for 2,500 years. A famous Roman writer named Cicero used it to recall his speeches.

Learning Tip: The Rubber Ducky Method A great way to learn something is to explain what you are trying to learn to an object. A rubber ducky, for example, is a really good listener. Explain what you are learning to the ducky or whatever object you choose. This can help you understand difficult and complex ideas. The rubber ducky technique is so effective that it is used by computer programmers. Line by line, they explain to the rubber duck what their code is supposed to be doing. In this way, they can discover where problems are in their code.4

Understanding and practice go together. The more you practice, the more you understand what you are learning.3

Chess masters, emergency room doctors, fighter pilots, and many other experts often shut down their conscious thinking and instead rely on their well-developed library of brain-links.5

(Psst! Can you make new brain-links if you’re not paying close attention? Maybe. If it’s super-easy material. But it’ll take you a lot longer to make the links.)

The techniques we described to improve your math and science skills are very similar to what you can do to improve your writing!

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learning a musical instrument is healthy for your brain in many ways. It can help you learn countless other skills more easily.

Cut colored construction paper into strips to make a set of paper brain-links. Each strip will be a loop in the set of links. You can use colors to indicate categories or types of tasks if you’d like, or just alternate colors in a fun pattern.

Cognitive load: Cognitive load means how much mental effort is being used in the working memory. If you have too big a cognitive load because you are being presented with too many new ideas at once, you can’t take in new information very easily.

Deliberate practice: Deliberate practice means focusing on the material that’s most difficult for you. The opposite is “lazy learning”—repeatedly practicing what’s easiest. Fact memory: We use the term fact to indicate a category of memory that is more abstract. Facts can be harder to store in long-term memory than pictures. (Psychologists call these types of long-term memories that are common knowledge, such as the names of colors and other basic facts acquired over a lifetime, “semantic” memory.) Interleaving: Interleaving means practicing different aspects of what you are trying to learn so you understand the differences between the techniques. Chapter 4 in your algebra textbook may introduce you to one set of problem-solving techniques, while chapter 5 introduces you to a different set of problem-solving techniques. Interleaving means alternating between chapter 4– and chapter 5–type problems so you can see when to use the two different techniques.

What does “ceiling you” think of your learning today? Are you an effective learner yet? Remember your built-in lie detectors—your dendritic spines!

When your attentional octopus is helping you understand material, it also picks up other random stuff. If you study geometry in the library, for example, your octopus is working with you to understand the topic. But it also picks up a little of the feel, smell, and look of the library at the same time. A little library flavoring rubs onto the links.

So whenever you’re learning anything, try to take advantage of all your senses. Don’t think of yourself as having a preferred learning style. Think of yourself as an “all-inclusive” learner. If you imagine hearing a famous person from history speaking to you, or you visualize a chemical, that counts as multisensory learning, which is the most effective kind. For everyone.

Sleep—It’s Even More Important Than You Think! Here’s one for your learning journal. Did you get enough sleep? This will shock you, but just being awake creates nasty toxic products in your brain. The longer you’re awake, the more the toxins build up. What an awful thought! It’s not as bad as it sounds. Once you go to sleep, your brain cells shrink, and the poisonous toxins are washed away through the gaps.3 When you wake up, the poisons have gone. Just like a computer can be rebooted to clear away errors, your brain is rebooted when you wake up from a good night’s sleep. This is your overnight upgrade!

sleep opportunity

Sleep is the best thing you can do to retune yourself each day and keep yourself healthy. Teens and younger people often need even more than eight hours per night. To help yourself get a good sleep, after dusk rolls around, avoid anything that emits blue light, like iPads, computer screens, and smartphones. You can also download blue-light-blocking apps.

Not sleeping enough can have long-term consequences that are similar to eating arsenic. Lack of sleep allows toxic products to build up all over your body, makes you more prone to getting sick, to getting cancer, and to all sorts of mental problems. Lack of sleep also stops the growth of new neurons and synapses, making it far harder for you to learn.

And another thing. If you do a little bit of focused work just before going to sleep, you’re more likely to dream about it. And dreaming about your studies can help you on your tests. It sticks better.

Make sleep a high priority. Don’t work late the night before a test. It’s harder to do well. One Pomodoro with a fresh brain is worth three with a tired one!

Cal Newport, for example, had a firm 5:00 P.M. quitting time throughout his college studies. He ended up getting his doctorate (that’s the most advanced kind of university degree) in computer science from MIT.

Deep work

Even if gaming is your absolute passion, you now know that exercise and taking breaks can help you perform better. So can opening your mind to other, very different, types of learning.

poor working memory can be especially creative! This creativity is particularly noticeable in people who have attentional “disorders” (we think the term should be “advantages”) like ADHD.3 People with poor working memory and focus sometimes have to work harder than others to make brain-links. But the trade-off is that it can be easier for them to be more creative. They see elegant shortcuts and have ideas that others miss. The trade-off can be worth it!

Hiker Brains Versus Race Car Brains

Now You Try! Write It Down Physiotherapists (“FIZZ-ee-o-THER-a-pists”) help treat people’s physical problems by using movement. Spanish physiotherapist Elena Benito says, “As a physiotherapist, I know that the hand has many connections in our brain. Each handwritten letter sends extraordinary amounts of information back and forth between our brain and our hand.”

Elena Benito knows how important movement can be in helping us to understand something difficult we are trying to learn. Elena advises: “When you don’t understand some item you are studying, maybe a mathematical formula, or a really long sentence . . . just write it down, once, twice . . . Sometimes this helps you make sense of it. Writing it down can help you jump mental barriers and install the information deeply in another place in our brains where it is processed differently.” Next time you encounter something you find difficult to understand, try Elena’s trick. Write it down!

Test Preparation Checklist* Answer “Yes” only if you usually do these things: ______Yes ______No 1. Did you get a reasonable night’s sleep before the test? (If your answer is “No,” then your answers to the rest of the questions may not matter.) ______Yes ______No 2. Did you review your notes from class not long after you took them? Did you use active recall during your review to see if you could easily pull to mind the key ideas? ______Yes ______No 3. Did you study a little bit on most days instead of waiting until the last minute and cramming right before the test? ______Yes ______No 4. Did you focus carefully during your study sessions, doing your best to avoid distractions except when you were taking a break? ______Yes ______No 5. Did you study in different locations? ______Yes ______No 6. Did you read your textbook or class worksheets carefully? (Just fishing around for the answer to what you’re working on doesn’t count.) While you were reading, did you avoid too much underlining and highlighting your textbook? Did you make brief notes about the book’s key ideas and then

look away to see if you could recall them? ______Yes ______No 7. If your studies involved working problems, did you actively work and rework key examples by yourself, so you turned them into sets of brain-links and could rapidly call the solution to mind? ______Yes ______No 8. Did you discuss homework problems with classmates, or at least check your solutions with others? ______Yes ______No 9. Did you actively work every homework problem yourself? ______Yes ______No 10. Did you talk to your teachers, or to other students who could help, when you were having trouble with your understanding? ______Yes ______No 11. Did you spend most of your study time focusing on the material you found harder? That is, did you do deliberate practice? ______Yes ______No 12. Did you interleave your studies? In other words, did you practice when to use different techniques? ______Yes ______No 13. Did you explain key ideas to yourself, and perhaps to others, using funny metaphors and images? ______Yes ______No 14. Did you take occasional breaks from your studies that included some physical activity? ______Yes ______No TOTAL: The more “Yes” responses you recorded, the better your preparation for the test. If you recorded three or more “No” responses, think seriously about making some changes in how you prepare for the next test.

The Best Stress? Test Stress! Research has shown that the more you practice active recall in the weeks before a test, the less that stress will bother you when you take the test.3 So if tests stress you out, it’s especially important for you to practice recall in your studies. Let’s face it, though: It’s easy to get stressed when you sit down to take a test. Your palms get sweaty, your heart races, and you get an anxious feeling in the stomach. This happens because your body releases chemicals when you are under stress. Surprisingly, these stressful feelings can help you do better on the test.4 When you might notice anxious feelings, try to shift your perspective. Instead of thinking, “This test makes me nervous,” try to think, “This test has got me excited to do my best!”5 When you get nervous, you tend to breathe from the top of your chest.*6 This “shallow” breathing doesn’t give you enough oxygen. You begin to feel panic that has nothing to do with the test. You just aren’t getting enough oxygen! If you tend to get nervous before a test, it can help for you to practice deep breathing. To do deep breathing, put one hand on your belly. It should move out when you breathe in, just like the picture shows. Try to imagine your breath also expanding your back, as if you had sails. Practice deep breathing in the days before a test, so you get used to it. Just stand sideways in front of a mirror to try it out for thirty seconds or so. Shallow breathing is at the top of your ches...

“Does this answer make sense?” If you’ve just calculated that you need ten billion gallons of water to fill your classroom’s aquarium, something’s wrong!