How to Become a Better Learner - Effective tips for learning any skill or subject

Learning How to Learn and how to become an Avid learner

Inspired by the Coursera MOOC, "Learning How to Learn," by Dr. Terrence Sejnowski and Dr. Barbara Oakley 

Have you ever sat down to learn a subject for hours or struggled with learning a new skill, and ultimately gave up, finding it so hard and inscrutable, thinking it's just not meant for you?

Well, we've all been there at some point in our lives and have faced this scenario, especially students.

We're all familiar with that little voice in our head, whispering incessantly to us to just give up and bestowing us to get in that comfy couch with a nice warm comforter and binge-watch Netflix for the rest of the day. Wouldn't it be nice if you do that? It asks rhetorically (I know mine does).

Believe it or not, the reason behind this is pretty simple, and that is because we've been told, what to learn but seldom are we told about how to learn, or what are the effective methods to make learning a more immersive and fun experience and how to get the most out of it.

Our Brains have incredible capabilities, but we don't know how to harness that power and put it in our natural learning process. My aim here is to share some of the highly effective methods and techniques to have a better understanding of the psychology behind the learning process and how to use these tips to become an avid learner, be it in the field of art, music, literature, math, science, sports or any other discipline. 

These insights are backed on consolidated research by Neuroscientists, and cognitive psychologists, so don't worry, you're gonna get plenty of bang for the buck. 

So, let's just dive right into it and sift through these methods of Learning how to learn, shall we?

Alright, so the learning process of our Brain is subtle, and without proper guidance, it's hard to understand how it exactly works. The following methods are excellent ways to exploit that veiled potential inside of you. Learning and making use of these psychologically proven techniques can transform the learning process and bring about drastic changes in one's understanding of their undertakings.

Focused and Diffuse Modes of the Brain

What to do when it seems impossible to figure something out? Well, if it was the "Night of the Living Dead," I would probably tell you to bash that sweet Brain of yours against the wall, but it turns out it only works for Zombies, not humans. That's because our brains are a lot more complicated.

There are inherently two modes of thinking in which our minds work, the Focused, and the diffuse mode. The focused mode is active when we're trying hard to learn something, focusing the hell out of that thing. The diffused mode on the other side is the one we're less familiar with. It is a more relaxed thinking style, and it's special because, for some mysterious reason, extraordinary ideas love to pop up more often when the Brain is in its resting mode.

Geniuses like Edison and Salvador Dali got some of their most exceptional ideas when their mind was resting in the diffused mode. The reason for this can be better understood by using the analogy of a pinball game where the rubber bumpers represent links to your thought pattern for a familiar task like adding numbers or remembering the path back to your home. The thought process works by bumping into the link bumpers, and that's how we're able to figure out the problem in hand. In the focused mode, these bumpers are placed comparatively nearer to each other than in the diffuse mode, and the pattern to thinking is familiar like a nicely paved road. Contrarily, in the diffuse mode, the thought pattern moves more smoothly, bumping into fewer neural links (rubber bumpers). So new neural pathways are created easily, allowing the brain to think more creatively, and brilliant ideas light up these neural pathways.

Blue dots represent neural links, the red lines represent the thought pattern.

The bottom line here is that our mind needs to shift between the two modes of thinking when presented with a new problem, especially if it's a difficult one. So, the next time you face difficulty in figuring something out or coming up with new ideas, just let your mind relax for a moment and make it switch into that diffuse mode, and only when the ideas finally come, switch to the focused mode and then work on them. 

Procrastination and The Pomodoro Technique

Multiple studies have shown that the single most prominent hurdle that most people struggle with while working or learning something new is Procrastination. Ah, that old pal of yours who shows up almost instantly, every time that you want to do something productive. In his Insightful and hilarious Ted Talk called "Inside the mind of a master procrastinator," Tim Urban talks about the way the minds of big-time procrastinators differ from those so-called Non-procrastinators and how our minds tend to get distracted easily and we turn to do something more pleasurable, the moment we feel some uneasiness at the task beforehand. I'm not gonna get into the whole thing, so here's the Youtube video if you want to know more about procrastination and get a few giggles along the way.

A simple way to beat your procrastination habit is by following The Pomodoro Technique. It's a handy little mental tool, invented by Francesco Cirillo in the early 1980s. This simple yet highly effective method allows us to get control over our procrastination habits and gain more control over the workload. 

On the most basic level, the Pomodoro Technique is about dividing large tasks into 25-minute chunks by setting a Timer with a 5 or 10- minutes break between them. Piece of cake, right? Well, kind of. As with most productivity methods, unless used properly, it might gradually incorporate into your ineffectual way of working.

Here's a short visualization of how the Pomodoro works and the steps involved to make effective use of the technique: 

Sleep and Consolidation of Memory

Did you know that an average person spends 229,961 hours of their lifetime sleeping? That's basically one-third of their life. What an absolute waste of time, right? Well, not quite because it turns out that sleep is as important for the human body as is food, to function properly. Without proper sleep, we won't be able to get rid of all the toxins being produced inside the brain, literally the whole time that we're awake.

Facts aside, sleep also plays a crucial role in our learning process and the consolidation of Memory.

On the outside, it looks pretty quiet when we sleep, but a lot happens inside the mind during sleep. Ideas and concepts related to whatever we're learning, get tethered firmly during sleep. It strengthens the neural patterns by rehearsing the tougher bits and skimming through the less important ones. 

The remarkable technique of Lucid dreaming can be used to help remember most parts of your dreams and help you perform better in tests and come up with exceptionally creative ideas. No wonder the visionary director Christopher Nolan used this very technique to come up with the premise of the mind-bending Sci-fi film"Inception" in 2010. Dreaming about what you're learning can substantially enhance your ability to grasp the concepts and consolidate it into your long term memory. So, next time you decide to pull an all-nighter before a test, consider sleeping instead. With some studying prior to it in your focused mode of mind, of course, and let the magic of dreams do its work.

Chunk it Up!

As funky as it sounds, Chunking is an immensely worthwhile technique which can be used to handle cumbersome tasks at hand by splitting them into easy to manage chunks. 

Now, what exactly is a Chunk? ( it's not junk, for sure)

According to Neuroscientists, Chunks are bits of information that are bound together through meaning or use. In easy terms, it's like compressing a large computer file into a zip file. Behind the whole chunking picture, complex neural pathways are created to simplify abstract thoughts. Whether these thoughts are ideas, acronyms, or concepts of Science, literature, or Art.

The process of chunking information can help your mind work more efficiently. You don't have to memorize all the subtle underlying details of a concept or action once you chunk it up.

The chunk itself consists of the central notions, and that's enough.

Four Steps to Chunking Information

• Step 1: Start at the highest level.

Use a hierarchical strategy while chunking any piece of information. Split into large chunks and then to smaller mini-chunks.

• Step 2: Focus on one chunk at a time.

Simply focus your undivided attention on the information at hand that you want to chunk and don't try to chunk it all once.

• Step 3: Get the Gist only.

Synthesize the gist that is to figure out the main idea or the context. This creates broad encompassing traces that can link to other memory traces.

 

• Step 4: Do a working memory check.

Remember, Less is more. During chunking, think in terms of working memory and include only the essential contents and get rid of the extraneous ones.

 

                      Refrain from Overlearning

Practice makes it perfect, doesn't it? Yes, of course, but once you've mastered the concept or the skill, it doesn't add much to it if you keep practicing it over and over again. The fact is, once you've got the basic overview during a session, hammering away at the same thing doesn't strengthen the long term memory links of your mind.

Using successive practice sessions to repeat what you've already learned is fine and often helpful, but be cautious, for a little Illusion of mind comes into play when you repeatedly work on something. It's called "The Illusion of Competence" that makes you think you've mastered it thoroughly when you've actually only learned the easy bits. Contrarily, you need to focus on the difficult parts and practice them more deliberately.

Overlearning sometimes also results in a phenomenon called Einstellung, where an idea or a particular method of solving a problem you learned gets so deeply engrained in your mind that it starts to hinder better ideas and solutions to be formed. This German term means Mindset, but remember, we need to develop a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. So, sometimes we need to unlearn the erroneous older ideas and approaches and need to think out of the box to learn new ones.

In the long run, becoming a good learner is a skill and not an innate talent that can be acquired over time. Learning is too valuable to be just confined between the four walls of a classroom. Why can't we learn from the world around us? Why can't we enjoy the experience of learning? Applying these proven techniques into your daily learning process can bring about remarkable results. So, Learn wisely, Learn better and remember, don't forget to have fun along the way.