Learning How to Learn Summary

Cheatsheet Content

### Week 1: Interview with Benny Lewis - **Benny Lewis's Background:** Started with no language gift, had speech therapy, and a degree in electronic engineering. Began learning languages at 21 after moving to Spain. - **Language Learning Approach:** Discovered that learning languages isn't hard with the right method. Emphasizes stopping excuses (too old, no time, shy). - **Latest Adventure:** Trying to make America multilingual through a 7,000-mile road trip. - **Wrong Reasons for Learning:** - Showing off or wanting to appear smart. - Aiming for grades (e.g., A or B for university entrance) without genuine interest. - **Motivating Factors:** - Passion for the language itself and its culture. - Inherent fascination with the language. - Spending time speaking with other human beings. - **Children's Advantage:** Children are less perfectionist and okay with making mistakes. They stumble, play games, and live the language. Adults often fear mistakes and get stuck in grammar books. - **Overcoming Fear of Mistakes:** Learn from children; be okay with making mistakes. People are generally patient and understanding. - **Self-Fulfilling Prophecies:** Believing you can't learn (e.g., "too old") becomes a reality, leading to minimal effort and no progress. Henry Ford quote: "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right." - **Learning Despite Challenges:** Successful learners overcome obstacles (e.g., lack of money, time, family responsibilities, disabilities). They find ways around setbacks. - **Virtual Immersion:** Use resources like Skype conversation practice, streamed radio, or virtual immersion environments if travel isn't possible. - **Dealing with Past Failures:** It's normal to feel like giving up. Even experienced learners face problems and plateaus. - **Experiment with Techniques:** If one method isn't working, try another. Don't assume you're a bad learner; the system might be wrong for you. - **"Mini-Mission Brain Melting" (Pomodoro Technique):** - Work hard for a few days, then take a day off. - Repeat for four weeks, then take a full weekend off. This prevents burnout and brain saturation. - **Rote Rehearsal vs. Mnemonics:** - Rote repetition (e.g., saying "tisch" 1000 times) works for recognition but not for active recall (asymmetrical). - Mnemonics "glue" words to memory (e.g., imagining a table made of tissues for "tisch"). - Use websites like memorise.com for mnemonics. - Spaced repetition (e.g., Anki app) helps review words just before you forget them, making learning more efficient. - **Creative Mnemonics:** Use visual and imaginative tricks, like something falling or rising for tonal languages. ### The Importance of Sleep in Learning - **Brain Cleansing:** Being awake creates toxic products. During sleep, brain cells shrink, increasing space between them to wash out toxins, keeping the brain clean and healthy. - **Impact of Sleep Deprivation:** Taking tests while sleep-deprived means operating with toxins, leading to unclear thinking. Chronic sleep deprivation is linked to headaches, depression, heart disease, diabetes, and reduced lifespan. - **Memory and Learning Process:** Sleep helps the brain organize ideas, erase less important memories, and strengthen important ones. It rehearses tough neural patterns. - **Problem Solving:** Sleep allows the conscious pre-frontal cortex to deactivate, enabling other brain areas to connect and find neural solutions to learning tasks. - **Diffuse Mode and Dreams:** Focused mode work before a nap or sleep increases the chance of dreaming about the material, which consolidates memories into easier-to-grasp chunks. ### Introduction to Memory - **Long-Term Memory:** Stores childhood memories, languages, or equations. Accessible when you need to hold a few ideas in mind. - **Working Memory:** Consciously processes immediate information, centered in the prefrontal cortex. Holds about four chunks of information (previously thought to be seven). - **Chunking:** Automatically grouping memory items to make working memory seem larger. - **Repetition:** Needed to prevent "metabolic vampires" from dissipating memories from working memory. - **Short-Term vs. Long-Term Memory:** - **Short-term memory:** Like an inefficient mental blackboard. Requires repetition to stay. - **Long-term memory:** Like a storage warehouse, distributed across brain regions. Requires revisiting memories a few times to ensure later retrieval. Can store billions of items, but needs practice to find information. - **Spaced Repetition:** Effective for moving information from working to long-term memory. Involves repeating material (e.g., vocabulary, problem-solving techniques) over several days. - **Building Neural Structures:** Repeated practice over several days allows "mortar to dry," forming and strengthening synaptic connections, much like building a brick wall. ### Practice Makes Permanent - **Barbara Oakley's Journey:** Started with a dislike for math and science, excelled in languages. Began studying math/science at 26 after military service. - **Learning Tricks:** Succeeded by gradually figuring out tricks, not being a "natural." - **Abstract Concepts:** Math and science are abstract (no physical objects like a "cow" to point to). This makes practice crucial for building concrete neural thought patterns. - **Neural Patterns:** When you first understand a problem, the neural pattern is weak (like a faint image). Repeated practice deepens the pattern (darker image), making it firm and automatic. - **Study Strategy:** Study intently (focused mode), then take a break or change focus (diffuse mode) to allow conceptual understanding to develop and neural "mortar" to dry. - **Cramming vs. Spaced Practice:** Cramming leads to jumbled, confused knowledge. Brief, focused periods (e.g., Pomodoro) help build neural patterns for challenging material. ### A Procrastination Preview - **Procrastination Trigger:** Tasks you dislike activate brain areas associated with pain. The brain seeks to stop this by switching attention to something else, providing temporary happiness. - **Neuro-Discomfort:** This discomfort disappears shortly after starting a task. - **Pomodoro Technique:** - Set a timer for 25 minutes. - Turn off interruptions. - Focus intently. - Reward yourself afterward (e.g., web surfing, coffee, stretching). - **Benefits:** Very effective, like an intense mental workout followed by relaxation. Helps get going and is applicable even for students with attention issues. ### What is Learning? - **Brain's Complexity:** The brain is a 3-pound organ consuming 10 times more energy by weight than the rest of the body. It's the most complex device known. - **Unconscious Processes:** Most "heavy lifting" is done below conscious awareness. Influences include thought, memory, emotions, and motivation. - **Brain Imaging:** Techniques like fMRI show activity maps, with blue areas active during interaction and red-orange during resting states (default mode network). - **Synaptic Turnover:** Brain connectivity is dynamic; synapses constantly form and disappear. This raises the puzzle of how memories remain stable. - **Sleep's Impact:** You are not the same person after sleep; it's like a brain "upgrade." Shakespeare's Macbeth describes sleep as "sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care." - **Course Focus:** How to use the unconscious mind and sleep to learn and solve problems more easily. ### Using the Focused & Diffuse Modes - **Salvador Dalí's Technique:** Relaxed in a chair, holding a key. As he drifted to sleep, the key would drop, waking him to gather diffuse mode ideas before re-entering focused mode. - **Thomas Edison's Technique:** Similar to Dalí, held ball bearings. When he fell asleep, they'd drop, waking him to apply diffuse mode insights to focused problem-solving. - **Alternating Modes:** The mind needs to switch between focused (direct, rational problem-solving) and diffuse (broader connections, creativity) modes for effective learning. - **Neuro-Structure:** Building neuro-scaffolds requires consistent, daily effort, like building muscle strength with weights. - **Summary:** - Analogies are powerful learning techniques. - Focused and diffuse thinking modes help in different ways. - Difficult learning takes time, requiring alternation between thinking modes. ### Introduction to the Course Structure - **Dr. Sejnowski:** Brains have amazing abilities but no instruction manual. Goal is to help students understand how they learn to become better learners. Insights from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and leading instructors. - **Dr. Oakley:** Course aims to reframe thinking about learning, reduce frustration, and increase understanding. Different approach, no in-depth background needed. Apply ideas to any subject. - **Expert Tips:** Experts from various disciplines share tips for effective learning. - **Key Takeaways:** Learn how you fool yourself about knowing material, new ways to focus, embed material deeply, condense ideas, master practical approaches, and prevent procrastination. - **Outcome:** Learn more effectively, with less frustration, enriching both learning and life.