Learning How to Learn ( Renaissance Learning )

Metaphors

• One of the best things you can do to not only remember but understand concepts is to create a metaphor or analogy for it.
• Metaphors and visualization—being able to see something in your mind’s eye—have been especially helpful, not only in art and literature, but also in allowing the scientific and engineering world to make progress. 
• It’s often helpful to pretend you are the concept you are trying to understand. 
• Metaphors and analogies are useful for getting people out of Einstellung—being blocked by thinking about a problem in the wrong way. 

Change your thoughts, Change your life

• It is proved by Santiago Ramon y Cajal that if you do a big effort even if you dont have all the intelligence will brain will develop more neurons
• Cajal named the perseverance the virtue of the less brilliant

Exercise, answer the following questions. 

Take a moment now and think about your own learning style. Do you think that you take responsibility for your education? Do you think you spend enough time practicing and studying? Are there any specific instances or areas that you think you can improve upon?  Write your thoughts below.

By taking the simple action of thinking about this and “chunking” your answers, you can have a surprisingly positive effect on how your learning unfolds. 

Teamwork

• The advantage of teamwork is that the rest group can help you as the devil's advocate 
• The left brain side always try to justify you point of view 
• The right brain side is responsible of see the big picture
• Work in team, only if all the members 
• Are focus
• Don't turn the session in social events
• Get to the session with all the information and material

Test Checklist

• Did you make a serious effort to understand the text?
• Did you work with classmates on homework problems?
• Did you attempt to outline every homework problem solution?
• Did you participate actively in homework group discussions?
• Did you consult with the instructor ?
• Did you understand all of you homework problem solutions?
• Did you ask in class for explanations of homework problem solutions that weren't clear to you?
• A study guide?
• Did you attempt to outline lots of problem solutions quickly?
• Did you go over the study guide and problems with classmates and quiz one another?
• A review session?
• Did you get a reasonable night's sleep before the test?

How to start

Start with the HARD problems but jump quickly to the easy ones

• When you fell stuck then change to the easy problems
• This allow been in focused and diffuse mode
• Change to something easy as you get bogged down or stuck

Breath

• breathe filling up your belly not your chest

Hitchhiker's Guide

What the problem is about?

• What are you trying to do?
• What do you want to achieve?
• What information do you have?

ADEPT

Analogy

Diagram

Example

Plain English
Technical description

Finance (Cash Flow)

Valuing an Idea / Project

• All value is relative: Law of one Price!
• There are two ingredients to conducting a valuation:
• Cash Flows: Who do they "belong" to? Project
• Cost of Capital, r: Who does this "belong" to? Market Place

Principles

• Estimate all cash flows on an incremental basis 

1. Always for each project draw two time lines divided by the same periods of time
2. In the first time line is for the period without the project  ..... (A)
3. In the second line  is for the period with the project ........... (B)
4. The earn is the difference from (A) - (B)

• Main accounting issue is DEPRECIATION because is Made Up
• The second main thing is Non-cash items by tax reasons
• Do not mix Financing with Operations
• The project analysis must be based on ASSETS
• Include the effects of inflation/deflation
• Do not compare projects with unequal lives

Sources of cash flows

• Performance Income Statement
• Show the flow of things during the year
• Balance sheet statement
• A snapshot of assets/stocks

The differences between Balance sheet and Income Statement is FLOW and ++SNAPSHOOT

Cash Flow from Project / Operation

The good companies do the analysis by the sellers. 

The field is called Market and research analysis

Cash Flow is determined by:

• Revenue = (Price)  x (Quantity)
• The price is the market price determined by the marketplace
• Costs of Goods Sold = (Price)  x (Quantity) from your inputs
• The differences is that can be many prices and quantities  
• Selling, General & admin costs
• Depreciation
• How much do you use a (machine)

Cash Flow    

   Revenue 

- Costs of Goods Sold  (COGS)

- Selling, General & admin costs   (SG&A)

- Depreciation  

______________________________

= Operating Profits

- Cash Taxes on Operating Profits

______________________________

= Net Operating Profits After Tax (NOPAT)

+ Depreciation
- Capital Expenditures
- Increases in Working Capital   <=  Account Receivables (AR) - Account Payables (AP) + Inventory
______________________________
= Free Cash Flows (FCF)

Depreciation 

• Depreciation is the non-cash flow item. It is something that is not happening in this year.
• First you subtract the depreciation in order to reduce the taxes, then you need to add to your Net Operating Profits After Tax because depreciation is not real.

Capital Expeditures

• Also known as CAPEX
• Is the amount of money you spend on things that lost a while. Example: A new machine to produce

Working Capital

• Resources to spend before it is produced.
• Example: The inventory
• The field is called Working Capital Management
• This is the reason of the philosophy zero inventory

Learning How to Learn ( Procrastination)

Procrastination

When you procrastinate, you feel better--but only temporarily.  In this, procrastination shares common features with addiction.

Building habits

• The Cue
• The trigger that launches you in zombie mode
• The cue could be beneficial like when see the first task of our list or denial as the message of our friend to go out. 
• The real problem is the routine to react to the cue
• The routine
• Create a positive routine
• Reward
• Have a reward is beneficial otherwise the procrastination seems more pleaseant overall by be inmediatly
• Belief
• The most important thing is change the underline belief

Surf's up 

This is a technique to re-frame your mind when start an activity you are procrastinating.

• Focus on the PROCESS not the PODUCT
• The process is the habit that of course at the end will produce the product
• It is like surf a wave, the surfer is focus in the moment not in arrive at the end of the wave

Steps

To create a new habit or override a habit is CHANGE the reaction to the cue.

• Identify the cue for the bad habit, this cue can be in at least one of these categories:
• Time
• How I feel
• Location
• Reaction
• Create a routine
• Develop a plan like leave the cellphone on the car before you go to the classroom
• Establish the reward
• Like in the TV show establish your goal or what you gonna get at the end of the process
• The belief
• Belief that you can change and get your goal

Advices

• Create a list
• Planning your quitting time is as important as planning your working time. 
• Eat your Frogs first. This phrase means to do the things you don't like first

Techniques

• Create acronyms 
• Associate the number with something meaningful like a birthday
• Create mnemonic that is a sentence where the first letter of each word represent a concept

Memory palace technique

• Remember a place you know very well like your house
• Put the things you want to learn in a path from that place
• For example: When you enter to you house there is a concept, later few more steps ahead there is another and so on.

Learning How to Learn (Focus Vs Diffuse Thinking)

 Focus Vs Diffuse Thinking

• Metaphor provide powerful techniques for learning
• Diffuse mode is like an artist (Dali)
• Dali relax thinking in his problem to solve falling asleep, in that moment a keys from his hand would fall and the clatter would wake him up.
• Learning something difficult takes time
• This is why you should study frequently instead of trying to learn everything in one day. Is like a weightlifter, he train everyday not one day previously as crazy

Procrastination

• Use Pomodoro technique
• The idea is to focus only in the task for that period of time and the get a gratification. This will cause a greater sensation of happiness 

Chunk

• A piece of information
• The main idea

Build a chunk

• Start forming a pattern
• Be focus or you are losing power to memorize the new thing
• Understand the concept, in other words when to use that chunk
• Define the context of the chunk you are building up
• Practice
• Use the bottom up technique
• Use the top down technique

Techniques 

• Recall instead of re-read the material
• Transfer one knowledge from one field to another.
• Interleave different concepts, approach and concepts all in one session.
• Test your self continually
• Mistakes are good!!!
• Law of serendipity, once you understand one concept the second one will be more easy
• Zooming in and zooming as analogy in this video Royksopp - Remind me

Library of chunks

• The creation of chunks is a good step and after that the second step is create a library of chunks.
• To create a library of chunks needs to related the new chunk with previous chunks. 

Chemical in the brain

• Acetylcholine affects focused learning and attention
• Dopamine signals in relation to unexpected rewards
• Serotonin affects social life and risk taking behavior

Improve the knowledge and techniques

Overlearning

After mastering a skill o knowledge continuing studying create the effect of overlearning that is the development of automaticity.

The problem with this is that for future problems only one see one possible solution. As the phase that tell that if you have a hammer you want to solve the problems hammering everything. This is called Einstellung

Einstellung

In Einstellung, your simple initial thought, an idea you already have in mind, or a neural pattern you’ve already developed and strengthened, may prevent a better idea or solution from being found. 

It can sometimes be all-too-easy to take a wrong approach about problem solving or understanding a concept, because sometimes your initial intuition about what’s happening or what you need to be doing is misleading.

Finance (Decision Criteria)

Payback

In this method you only see which option return first you investment

• It is the rate of return you earn per year over X years, which makes the NPV zero
• It is not recommended to use this method, because you do not see in the long term.
• Ex. If we evaluate, R&I will never be an option using Payment as method for decision because R&I pay in the long term
• It is very common by been easy to calculate

IRR

• The problem with this method is that only use two variables without considering the Interest Rate.
• It is possible that you don't get any extra money because even you see a positive number in the IRR, you are not considering the value of the money over the time
• When IRR is used it need to be compared against the NPV, when NPV is zero
• If the IRR is bigger than "r" is a good project. "r" is the rate result of the bench marking
• You can have multiples IRR, and in this case need to calculate where is the positive are

Formula

Excel

• IRR(values, [guess])
• values are all the periods. Ex. A1:A8

Finance ( NVP )

NPV

• NPV, calculate the benefit of invest in one idea today and the benefit for the next period of times
• Is the rate of return which makes NPV zero

Interest rate (r)

• Captures the opportunity cost of investing in the idea (business)

Essence

• Value is always incremental

Excel

• NPV(rate, value1, [value2], ...)
• rate is the interest rate
• value1 is the first payment in one year in the future
• value 1 can be type as a rage of values A1:A5
• In a real exercise after the NPV you need to add the first payment that is the inversion amount. 

Formula

Properties

• (TVM) Time Value Money = Benefit - Cost
• Has a unit of measurement
• If NVP > 0 then has a obvious benchmark

Public Speaking - Vocal projection

Vocal Projection

Activators

• chest

Vibrator

Resonators

• Use the pharyngeal space to have more resonance.

Exercises

• Make the sound of; HA HA HA or HO HO HO
• Yawn opening the mouth as big as you can
• Make the sound of a siren

Vocal Health

Advices

• Drink lot of water
• Do vocal warm ups
• Say tongue twisters

Public Speaking - Framing languaje

Framing languaje

• Identificication / Consubstantially
• Is find a common place among
• Topic
• Speaker
• Audience
• Where we share common substance

Speaker audience commonalities

• Where you and the audience 
• have a sort of common substance
• are on the same side
• Find existing areas of agreement
• Be hard on the problem, but soft on people

Topic-Audience commonalities

• Don´t eliminate the possibility of a counter-argument
• Do augment the argument through deliberate word choice

Stylistic devices

• Alliteration
• Repetition of constant sounds
• Example: Let it be our cause to give that child a happy home, a healthy family, and a hopeful future.
• Asyndeton
• Omission of normally occurring conjunctions
• Example: "Be one of the few, the proud, the Marines"
• Example: "Now as an engineer, a planner, a businessman, "
• Polysyndeton
• Insertion of excessive conjunctions
• Ex: "We must change that deleterious environment of the 80's, that environment which was characterized by greed and hatred and selfishness and mega-managers and debt overhang..."
• Anaphora
• Repetition of the first word or set of words in a sentence or phrase
• Ex. "We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans,we shall fight with growing ..."
• Epistrophe
• Repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive phrases
• Ex. "... and that goverment of the people, by  the people, for the people shall nor perish from the earth"
• Symploce
• Repetition of the first and last word in a clause over successive clauses
• Use the repetition in periods of three times 
• Use it to increase your value or priority
• Ex. "My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it"
• Anadiplosis
• Repetition of the last word in one sentence at the beginning of the next sentence
• Ex. "Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution"
• Antithesis
• Pairing of contrasting words or ideas
• Ex. "Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"
• Antimetabole
• The beats are A,B, B, A.
• Ex. "My fellows Americans, ask not what your country can do for you: ask what you can do for your country"
• Appositio
• Elaboration and variation of a word
• Ex. "JFK,  a great and good President, a friend of all people of goodwill, a beliver in the dignity and equality of all human beings, ..."
• Schesis Onomaton
• Elaboration and variation of a phrase
• Every time you break the seal on that liquor bottle, that's a goverment's seal you're breaking! Oh, I say and I say it again, ya been had! Ya been took! Ya been hoodwinked! Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok! This is what he does.
• Maxims
• Short, pithy phrase
• The main sentence that captures the key idea
• "Short words are best and the old words, when short, are best of all"
• Ex. "This was their finest hour"
• Emphases
• Variations in intensity or tone