take away: Learn Like a Pro: Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything

课程 | Learn Like a Pro: Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything | edX

• 1) Learning Means Linking - Challenge Yourself to Read or Watch What You’re Learning Only Once (Except Maybe This Video)

• Learning well means creating strong neural links in long-term memory.

• Retrieval practice is the best technique to help you build strong links in long-term memory.

• It’s possible to make dramatic improvements in your learning—even related to topics you thought you could never learn.

• 2) How to Overcome Procrastination and Focus Intently

• Learning happens more swiftly when you avoid multitasking.

• The Pomodoro Technique is a good way to sustain your focus and avoid distractions or multitasking. Computer popups will almost always prove to be a momentary disruption of your thinking.

• Taking brief, five-minute breaks after approximately 25 minutes of studying can help your brain process new learning, so what you’ve just been learning isn’t overwritten.

• When you take a five-minute break, try to avoid anything that requires focus, such as checking emails or social media. That takes time and effort, known as “switching costs.”

• 3) How to Overcome Being Stuck

• Learning involves two fundamentally different modes of thinking: focused and diffuse. Focused mode is when you are paying close attention to what you are learning. Diffuse mode is when your mind wanders, e.g. when you are taking a walk or falling asleep.

• You often alternate between focused and diffuse modes during the learning process.

• The diffuse mode (taking a break!) is important in helping you figure out especially tough problems.

• The “Hard Start” Technique can help you get credit for tougher problems on tests. It involves starting with a test or assignment’s hardest problem and then pulling yourself off it when you get stuck and returning to it later instead. Loading the difficult problem into your brain, and then switching your focus to something different and a little easier can give your brain a chance to work quietly in the background on the more difficult problem. When you later return to the more difficult problem, the solution can appear more obvious.

• 4) How to Maximize Your Working Memory

• Your working memory can only grab and temporarily hold onto a maximum of about four simple concepts or ideas. Free your working memories any nonessential thoughts by writting a task list.

• If you have already stored information as neural links in long-term memory, your working memory can grab onto it. In this way, working memory can hold and manipulate much more complex pieces of information, even if it can still only hold onto about four things.

• Online videos are easier to learn from, because you can hear and see explanations. They also allow you to easily take notes—you can stop the video if you are confused.

• In-person lectures can be harder for some to simultaneously listen to and take notes. If this is a problem for you, it can help to concentrate intently on the lecturer, making very brief notes, and then complete your notes after the lecture. You can also borrow more comprehensive notes from a friend. Have something to write on as you learn, so that you can jot down words as you need.

• If you are overwhelmed by what you are trying to learn, look for ways to break what you are learning into smaller chunks.

• Use images and visual representations. It’s easier to learn from a vedio than a book. Cuz some octopus arms are for visual information and others for auditory information.

• 5) Digging Deeper into Strengthening Your Neural Links

• You create stronger sets of links if you break your learning into smaller periods of time, spaced out over several days.

• The strengthening you get during sleep enhances the learning you’ve done each day.

• Exercise can also speed up your learning, because it helps your brain produce BDNF, a kind of neural fertilizer.

• When you not only know a certain idea, but also can see it in a larger context, how it compares and contrasts to other similar ideas, that’s when you build deep understanding.

• It can be smart to connect a new idea to other knowledge that you already have. Associations and metaphors are a great way to do this.

• 6) How to Memorize More Easily

• Having some critical pieces of knowledge memorized, nestled nicely in your long-term memory, can be very helpful.

• Some of the best ways to memorize include:

• Retrieval practice

• Form an acronym or sentence from key words

• Form memorable mental images

• Use the Memory Palace technique

• 7) Introduction to the Declarative and Procedural Systems

• Links in long-term memory are deposited through two different systems: the declarative and the procedural systems. Both types of links are needed to really understand what you’re learning.

• The declarative system uses the hippocampus—it is what you use when you are first consciously trying to learn something.

• The procedural system uses the basal ganglia—it generally learns information that’s hard to explain, like physical skills. The procedural system helps you gain speed and ease with whatever you’re doing, such as speaking a foreign language or working mathematical-type problems.

• The procedural system is like a black box—you can never be aware of how it learns—you can only be aware of what has come out as a result of procedural system processing. It needs lots of practice to do its learning.

• The procedural system has two paths:

• Goal-based learning—you can prod this part of the procedural system with your working memory.

• Habit-based learning—this is used for physical actions, like learning to ride a bike, and other activities you do without even paying much attention, like typing. The “black box” of the procedural system learns slowly.

• The declarative system is fast to learn but slow to use.

• The procedural system is slow to learn but fast to use.

• 8) How to Gain Intuition and Think Fast

• You often do your initial learning through the declarative system. But as you practice, you begin to also develop links in the procedural system.

• Procedural learning helps you be faster and more comfortable with material you are learning. To enhance your procedural as well as declarative links in long-term memory, you should use spaced repetition and, especially, interleaving.

• The declarative system learns through structure, explanations, and step-by-step examples.

• The procedural system learns through immersion and “feeling out” the patterns and rules on its own.

• The declarative and procedural systems can learn the same information. They just allow you to use that information differently—either slowly and with sometimes difficult thought, or quickly, without even thinking about it.

• Just because you can recite the definition for something doesn’t necessarily mean you understand that concept.

• Internalization by learning to listen to your internal whispers as you repeatedly solve problems until they seem natural and easy will help you build an internal scaffold (a “schema”) that will allow you to more easily learn new material related to those problems.

• Interleaving different types of problems as you internalize will help develop your procedural sets of links.

• 9) How to Succeed with Online Learning... and Improve Your Self-Discipline

• To maximize learning from online courses, it’s not enough to watch videos and read articles, you need to process the content more actively, e.g. by taking notes, relating the content to what you already know, applying it in your life or work and by discussing the content with colleagues, friends or in forums.

• Watching the same videos several times isn’t the best way to spend your study time. You will learn more by watching a video only once and then spend the extra time working actively with the information, for example, by making notes.

• Self-discipline can help you stick to your learning goal, but is an unreliable aide, so it’s better to find ways to get things done that don’t rely on your self-discipline.

• Planning when, where, and how you will study is a good idea. Students who plan their studies spend more time studying.

• One powerful planning technique is to do a “WOOP” (Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, Plan) every evening, before you go to sleep, and reaffirming those thoughts in the morning before the day’s work begins.

• Good habits grow from the procedural system. They help you get on and keep on task without even thinking about it.

• 10) How to Motivate Yourself

• Motivation is what gives you energy to act and to pursue goals.

• Release of dopamine in your brain creates motivation. Dopamine-producing cells operate in two modes: phasic and tonic.

• Phasic dopamine is produced when you experience an unexpected reward and when your curiosity is satisfied. Being curious about your learning can therefore help with motivation.

• Tonic dopamine is produced when you are working towards completing a goal.

• To increase tonic dopamine, identify and remind yourself of the value of completing a task, and use techniques such as consequence mapping, mental contrasting and reframing.

• Interacting with other motivated learners can also help motivate you, something known as motivation contagion.

• 11) How to Read Effectively

• Your reading speed is determined by processing in your brain, not by how quickly your eyes can glide across the text.

• Trying to read more quickly is not the way to read more effectively. If you try to increase your reading speed beyond what feels natural, your comprehension will suffer. Speed reading techniques don’t work.

• To read more effectively, preview the text, practice recall, and work actively with the text, for example by discussing it with others or annotating it.

• Reading about something from multiple sources (and perspectives) gives you a deeper understanding.

• 12) Putting It All Together - How to Learn Like a Pro

• To be a pro learner, you need to have a toolbox of effective tools, but also know when and how to best use those tools. For this, you need metacognition.

• Metacognition is like a brain outside your brain that thinks about your learning and how you can improve.

• One way to be more metacognitive is to follow a process for learning consisting of 3 phases:

Planning: Before you start learning, think about how to best learn and which tools to use.Learning: During your learning, stop briefly now and then to see if you are working effectively or if you should change something.Evaluation: Look back at your learning and determine what you did well and what you can do better next time.