A Mind for Numbers Quotes

“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.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“Remember, habits are powerful because they create neurological cravings. It helps to add a new reward if you want to overcome your previous cravings. Only once your brain starts expecting the reward will the important rewiring take place that will allow you to create new habits.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“The trick to overwriting a habit is to look for the pressure point—your reaction to a cue. The only place you need to apply willpower is to change your reaction to the cue.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“Gary Noesner notes that we could all learn from the successes and failures of hostage negotiation.7 At the beginning of such situations, emotions run high. Efforts to speed matters along often lead to disaster. Staving off natural desires to react aggressively to emotional provocations allows time for the molecules of emotion to gradually dissipate. The resulting cooler heads save lives.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“Focused problem solving in math and science is often more effortful than focused-mode thinking involving language and people.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“Habit is an energy saver for us. It allows us to free our mind for other types of activities.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“The patient ability to keep working away, a little bit at a time, is important. This is why, if procrastination is an issue for you, it will be critical to learn some of the upcoming neural tricks to effectively address it.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“One of the most extraordinary stories of reframing is that of Roger Bannister, the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes. Bannister was a medical school student who couldn’t afford a trainer or a special runner’s diet. He didn’t even have time to run more than thirty minutes a day, squeezed in around his medical studies. Yet 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. On the morning he made world history, he got up, ate his usual breakfast, did his required hospital rounds, and then caught a bus to the track.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“It’s important to transform distant deadlines into daily ones. Attack them bit by bit. Big tasks need to be translated into smaller ones that show up on your daily task list. The only way to walk a journey of a thousand miles is to take one step at a time.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“Learning is often paradoxical. The very thing we need in order to learn impedes our ability to learn. We need to focus intently to be able to solve problems—yet that focus can also block us from accessing the fresh approach we may need. Success is important, but critically, so is failure. Persistence is key—but misplaced persistence causes needless frustration.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“Just focus on whatever section you are studying. You’ll find that once you put the first problem or concept in your library, whatever it is, then the second concept will go in a bit more easily. And the third more easily still. Not that all of this is a snap, but it does get easier.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“start early on your assignments and, unless you are really enjoying what you are doing, keep your working sessions short.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“It can take a lot of hard focused-mode work beforehand, but the sudden, unexpected solution that emerges from the diffuse mode can make it feel almost like the “aha!” mode.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“If you have a library of concepts and solutions internalized as chunked patterns, you can more easily skip to the right solution to a problem by listening to the whispers from your diffuse mode. Your diffuse mode can also help you connect two or more chunks together in new ways to solve unusual problems. There are two ways to solve problems—first, through sequential, step-by-step reasoning, and second, through more holistic intuition. Sequential thinking, where each small step leads deliberately toward the solution, involves the focused mode. Intuition, on the other hand, often seems to require a creative, diffuse mode linking of several seemingly different focused mode thoughts. Most difficult problems are solved through intuition, because they make a leap away from what you are familiar with.24 Keep in mind that the diffuse mode’s semi-random way of making connections means that the solutions it provides with should be carefully verified using the focused mode. Intuitive insights aren’t always correct!25”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“THE LAW OF SERENDIPITY Remember, Lady Luck favors the one who tries. So don’t feel overwhelmed with everything you need to learn about a new subject. Instead, focus on nailing down a few key ideas. You’ll be surprised at how much that simple framework can help.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“One of the first steps toward gaining expertise in math and science is to create conceptual chunks—mental leaps that unite separate bits of information through meaning. Once you chunk an idea or concept, you don’t need to remember all the little underlying details; you’ve got the main idea—the chunk—and that’s enough.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“Articulating your question is 80 percent of the battle.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“A Mind for Numbers is an excellent book about how to approach mathematics, science, or any realm where problem solving plays a prominent role.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“Habits can be good and bad. Habit, after all, is simply when our brain launches into a preprogrammed “zombie” mode. You will probably not be surprised to learn that chunking, that automatically connected neural pattern that arises from frequent practice, is intimately related to habit.1 Habit is an energy saver for us. It allows us to free our mind for other types of activities”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“whenever possible, you should blink, shift your attention, and then double-check your answers using a big-picture perspective, asking yourself, “Does this really make sense?”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“A curious peculiarity of our memory is that things are impressed better by active than by passive repetition. I mean that in learning by heart (for example), when we almost know the piece, it pays better to wait and recollect by an effort from within, than to look at the book again. If we recover the words in the former way, we shall probably know them the next time; if in the latter way, we shall very likely need the book once more.” —William James, writing in 189012”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“the learning process is all about working your way out of confusion.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“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.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“They say experience is the best teacher. Instead, it should be that failure is the best teacher. I’ve found that the best learners are the ones who cope best with failure and use it as a learning tool.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“Research has confirmed that a special place devoted just to working is particularly helpful.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“One of the single most important pieces of advice I can give you on dealing with procrastination is to ignore distractions!”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“What, after all, is mathematics but the poetry of the mind, and what is poetry but the mathematics of the heart?”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“The harder you push your brain to come up with something creative, the less creative your ideas will be.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“recalling material when you are outside your usual place of study helps you strengthen your grasp of the material by viewing it from a different perspective.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

“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.”
― Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science