“Learning How To Learn” (LHTL), an online course freely available on Coursera, teaches techniques for becoming a better learner and thinker. Given by Dr Barbara Oakley (McMaster University) and Dr Terrence Sejnowski (University of California San Diego), the course covers the latest on how the brain works and suggests practices to make the best it.
Many of these practices are covered in numerous popular self-improvement books and you may be familiar with some of them, but it was great to have them collected in a single place, including explanations on why they work. Here are some that resonated the most with me.
Focused & Diffuse Modes
Keeping focused on a single task for hours ends up working against you. The brain needs time away to form new connections and get a sense of the big picture. Going against that flow will likely hinder your progress and leave you exhausted at the end of the day.
The evidence suggests that the brain works in either of two modes, which the instructors call “focused” and “diffuse”. In focused mode you concentrate on your task at hand, while in the diffuse mode you let go and give your mind a break; this is the kind of thinking you do when you are not consciously thinking, like when you go for a walk or take a shower. If you have ever enjoyed flashes of insights that came during such activities, it was probably diffuse mode at work.
I couldn’t help drawing obvious parallels with the rich vs linear modes of thinking described by Betty Edwards in “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain“, and also neatly summarized by Andy Hunt in “Pragmatic Thinking and Learning“. It is obviously the explanation for techniques used by unusually creative people like Thomas Edison or Salvador Dali, who would take a nap and figured out tricks to wake up just at the onset of dreams; whatever they were thinking at that moment was probably the output of the diffuse mode. I believe Andy Hunt called that technique an “onar”, a portmanteau of oniric (which pertains to dreams) and sonar.
Deliberate practice
You might be familiar with the idea that it takes roughly 10’000 hours of practice to become a world-class expert at anything. Malcolm Gladwell is generally credited with popularizing this idea in his book “Outliers“, but later research has qualified this idea. As pointed out by Geoff Colvin in “Talent Is Overrated“, by Anders Ericsson in “Peak“, and by many others, any random kind of practice is not enough. Merely repeating the same skill over and over won’t do; one needs to be intentional, even deliberate about one’s practice. Hence the name Deliberate Practice.
I suspect that Deliberate Practice is far easier to apply in sports or arts than in knowledge work. Most sports and most arts have a long teaching tradition—there are moves, techniques, steps, swings, katas, scales, chords, chess tactics, strokes that can be practiced over and over again, often under a coach’s supervision. Identifying your weaknesses, and developing a workout routine to address them, seems to me to be far easier in, say, freestyle swimming than in computer programming.
So I’m not so sure how to best apply Deliberate Practice when learning a new subject such as mathematics, physics, computer programming, or any similar mostly-intellectual topic. I’m not sure there exists a body of, say, mathematical drills one can perform in order to become better at it. Computer programming might be an exception here: people (including me) have experimented with so-called code katas, where you solve (sometimes repeatedly) some programming problem. But that’s the closest thing to Deliberate Practice we have to date.
Procrastination
The course explains that procrastination is the brain’s natural defense mechanism against unpleasant tasks, such as sitting down to study. A valuable technique against this is the Pomodoro technique: you make a deal with yourself that you will only work for 25 minutes, then take a break. You might even bribe your brain with the promise of some treat after work: perhaps some social media time, or reddit, or twitter. (A very similar idea was proposed in The Power of Now.)
I’ve been using variations on the Pomodoro technique for many years now (I was introduced to it by the book of the same name published by the Pragmatic Programmers). I regularly work in 25 minute bursts, punctuated by 5 min breaks. During the breaks, I will frequently walk around, perhaps fetch fruit from the cafeteria three floors upstairs, or visit the bathroom. Of late I’ve experimented with the use of Brain.fm, setting their timer to 30 minutes. I find this very effective at improving my focus and blocking out distractions from the surrounding open space.
Metaphors
Metaphors are said to be a great way to internalize what you learn, though I don’t think I use that technique very much in my own learning. I have, however, been told that I’m pretty good at using metaphors and analogies when I explain technical concepts to a non-technical audience. Recently I’ve been working on a statistical model of the effectiveness of calls to action sent to customers, using a class of models called Survival Analysis. Originally developed to model the survival of patients in a clinical setting, it was rather easy to build the right metaphors: an email you send to your customer gives “birth” in his mind to a certain inclination to do something; that inclination can either “die” when it is acted upon, or “live on” forever if the customer never does anything about it. That kind of metaphor made it easy to communicate the gist of a highly technical subject.
Self-testing
When you sit down and study something, you will frequently end the study session overestimating what you’ve really internalized. This is also known as the illusion of competence. The best defense against this, and also a great way to consolidate what you have learned, is to test yourself: not only right after the course, but also at regular intervals thereafter. This is sometimes called Spaced Repetition.
Self-testing is, indeed, why the Cornell system of note taking works so well: you’re supposed to summarize, in your own words, the content of your notes at the end of the note-taking session. Recently I came across a fine piece on Medium by Robyn Scott who tells of a habit consisting of spending 30 seconds (not more, not less) after every important event in your life, writing down your own summary of the event.
Sleep
Nobody questions the benefits of sleep on thinking and learning, so I won’t berate the point. But the instructors included a little nugget of wisdom: before you go to sleep, they recommend going over your current to-do list (or personal kanban board, which is the only system that ever worked for me) and select 3-5 items that you commit to doing the next day. That way your brain won’t worry about what to do the next day; your “to-do” will be sitting there ready for you, and your brain will have more freedom to mull over more important things while you sleep—such as internalizing what you’ve learned during the day.
Conclusion
I don’t have time to cover all the tips and tricks, so I’ll have to stop here. The course is not over yet but I’m thoroughly enjoying it. There’s some material that I was already more or less aware of, and it’s great to review it again (spaced repetition, remember?) But there’s also plenty of genuinely new material, and I appreciate having it presented in such a clear and lucid manner by the instructors.