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.