The following is a review and summarisation of the course Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects.
This course originally came to my attention after watching one of Daniel Bourke’s impressive videos on his process of self education for Artificial Intelligence. At the time I brushed off the topic thinking that anything other than the ‘pure’ content of what I was trying to learn would be wasting my time.
How wrong I was.
Meta-learning (learning about learning) has improved my retention, expectations of self and efficiency in my ability to grasp and absorb new concepts. Ultimately the most important concept that stuck with me was:
It is ok to not understand the topic at hand completely.
This shift in perception alone has allowed me to move forward with my learning at a much greater rate.
So what exactly did the course contain?
Mechanisms 🔗
Retrieval (Spaced Repetition) 🔗
In order to conserve energy the brain prioritises removing information that is not necessary. For something to “stick” it must be considered important by the brain. This may be because:
- A traumatic event occurred around the time that this information was acquired.
- The information is repeatedly required over some duration of time.
Since we can’t (and probably shouldn’t) rely on the first instance to remember most things, let us focus on number 2.
For me this translates in to the concept of “just get wet”, which is to say that we need to expose ourselves repeatedly to the stimulus/requirement/task over some period of time so that our brain can receive the signal that this piece of information is important.
In practical terms for me this means Flash Cards and Daily Habit.
Flash cards are a great way of isolating some single piece of knowledge that you may have issue with and prompt your brain (you) to retrieve that information. I use the Zorbi app on my phone and add a card for whenever I become aware of some piece of knowledge that I am struggling to retain or that I feel I will have issue with (days of the week in a foreign language for example). Flash cards are a highly granular way of focusing on where your specific gaps in knowledge are.
Habit is the other mechanism here by which we can ensure we “get wet” repeatedly. The building of a habit requires the following:
- Trigger - The cue by which you start the action. This could be your alarm going off at some particular time or putting your shoes on to go for a run.
- Action - This is the habit itself, the action we want to repeat.
- Reward - There must be some expectation of reward after the action has been completed. This will cause craving prior to the action even starting.
Chunking 🔗
This a process that I found myself doing naturally in the past. However, formalisation through this course has given it an increased importance in my approach and how I think of concepts as they are presented.
The long and short of it is that most concepts related to a topic can be grouped together. As new information is presented we can think back to the rough “grouping” of previous information and consider how this fits in to the over all picture.
This not only helps with retrieval (by giving us a ‘handle’ with which to pull up information) but also allows us to see the bigger picture and how how this new information fits in to the knowledge landscape
A personal example of this for me is in the sport of jiu jitsu. There are only so many positions in which a person and their opponent can be engaged. By chunking information in to these positions it turns what would otherwise be a sea of disjointed techniques in to a map of grouped concepts and ideas related to each possible configuration of positions.
Process Focus 🔗
Psychologically it can be detrimental to set a goal related to accomplishment and then not be able to achieve it. For example, setting the goal of “completing my entire homework assignment” would mean that if our estimation of effort and time was wrong (which it may be for many reasons) we either:
a.) Take much longer than the time alloted to complete the task, thereby stealing time from other areas of our life
b.) Don’t complete the task thereby setting an expectation of not completing our promises accompanied by the associated feeling of failure.
A better approach here is to set process driven goals. For example: “study for 45 minutes non-stop”.
These kinds of goals are more certain of being accomplished as there are no unknown variables in the way of their accomplishment.
Memory Palaces (Location Indexing) 🔗
I have added this method however I have not used this technique. The premise being that the human brain is weird to associate information in 3 dimensional space more easily (from having to navigate the real world).
To take advantage of this we can associate information with real-world (or even imaginary) places in our minds. For example the formulas related to a specific branch of mathematics (calculus for example) might be stored in the mental representation of the living room of my old house that I grew up in. This is actually a combination of chunking and memory palaces.
Visualisation 🔗
The brain is often not aware of the difference between real world action and perceived action. Therefore, If you can convince your sense (or mind) that some movement or action is/has occurred then your mind will react in a similar way.
What this means is that we can visualise or repeat actions and events in our minds in order to strengthen the pathways that determine the automatic response. This is excellent for physical movements that need to be associated with cues. Again I’ll take jiu jitsu as an example here but it could be for surfing or any other sport.
When an opponent makes some movement we need to respond with some appropriate reaction. By rehearsing this action/response cycle in our head we can strengthen the mental pathways that make us perform the movement in reality when it occurs.
Social 🔗
It’s clear that interaction with people as we learn increases our retention and springs about new ideas. A study group or class gives the following benefits:
- Accountability - if you are required to have studied before the class in order to participate then you will feel an obligation to be prepared
- New ideas - discussion with others will bring up new possibilities as the combination of your knowledge and theirs creates new options
- Teaching - by having to explain topics that you understand better than other you will strengthen your own understanding and find holes in your own knowledge. Additionally you may learn from others doing the same to you.
Feynman Technique This is one of my favourite methods. After you have completed some section in a workbook or a lecture. Pretend that you are required to explain the concepts and the topic to a someone who has no knowledge of the subject. chat-gpt is an excellent tool for this. I often use the following prompt:
“I am going to use the Feynman Technique to solidify my knowledge of <topic>.
I would like you to take the role of an inquisitive student without any knowledge
of <topic> and I will endeavour to explain to you the core concepts and ideas
around <topic>. Please ask questions that get to the core concepts of <topic>
and for clarification of details that were not explained clearly”
Traps 🔗
Procrastination 🔗
My understanding of the reasoning behind procrastination is that it is the psyches attempt to avoid pain. i.e there is an associated “mental” pain in regards to the struggle or effort involved in learning a new topic and the psyche shies way from this pain.
My trick to overcome this is to find or associate some reward with every habit or action and then focus on this before partaking in the action.
For example, the feeling after a workout can be imagined prior to the workout and can often get you started. (This is a similar mechanism to visualisation mentioned earlier)
Illusions of Competence 🔗
Another protective mechanism of the mind is to pretend that the knowledge that we have is adequate and that we already understand the topic at hand. This is a short term avoidance of pain that leads to a longer term (and often more intense) form of pain.
One of the best mechanisms for avoiding this is the Feynman Technique mentioned earlier that clearly exposes gaps in knowledge and understanding.
Einstellung 🔗
Similar to the above, Einstellung is phenomena whereby the mind, in an effort to improve efficiency, will take the path most worn. This means that all of us have a strong tendency to answer and solve problems by the means in which we have learnt them previously, missing out on novel or more efficient methods, including understanding.
To solve this we must practice mindfulness and awareness.
Conclusion 🔗
This is by no means a comprehensive summary of the course, however in an effort to solidify my own understanding (and practice retrieval) I have extracted here the concepts that I considered important and powerful when “learning how to learn”.