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RAPID LEARNER Scott H. Young (Practice (Practice – Quick Guide (In…
RAPID LEARNER
Scott H. Young
Introduction
The Top 10 Tips for Learning Quickly and Effectively:
Recall not review
Spaced not massed
Start at the source
Never memorize what should be understood
Don’t highlight or transcribe
Transform to remember
Frustration is your friend
Sleep is essential
A little maintenance goes a long way
Be curious
Project
Project - Core Lesson
Motivation
is key, more than resources
Build
motivation
and
discipline
into the structure (
Project
) of what you're trying to accomplish
Avoid rinse and repeat (cramming)
Learning as a value
A project creates 2 things:
Connects
with the desire to learn, and tackles a big task into
parts
(not overnight) and focus
Ask yourself the reasons behind the project (What
fascinates
you?, become a
craftsman
)
See things as a
mental challenge
, and cultivate the right
attitude
Project - Quick Guide
(Designing a Project)
Step One:
Defining a Clear Goal
Types of
goals
:
Complete formal classes
Learn a skill (or practical ability to a certain level)
Learn an area or body of knowledge
Step Two:
Pick Learning Materials and Approach
Sometimes the material has been provided (curriculum or syllabus), sometimes not
When not provided, don't get lost in a sea of choices. Just commit to your choice
Step Three:
Estimate Time Required to Reach Goal
For a
fixed deadline curriculum
(like taking classes) this is probably already decided for you
For
self-study
, there are two approaches:
Bottom up
: estimate the time required based on the tasks
Top down
: decide a deadline, and make the timeline fit into it
Step Four:
Set Deadlines and Milestones
Write down any
hard deadlines
(assignment due dates, final exam dates, and midterm dates)
Add
soft deadlines
. If you only rely
on hard deadlines, it tends to result in crunches
Estimate the
amount of work
required to hit each milestone
Step Five:
Create Week-By-Week Schedule
Take milestones and deadlines and break them down into a
week-by-week schedule
It’s important here that how you break it down week-by-week should
include all the effort you have to invest
If you don't include all the effort, then
your project can easily get lopsided
A
simpler
,
consistent schedule
is the right approach in the long run.
Step Six:
Review and Update Plan
“No plan survives contact with the enemy.”
Your plan is
not going to be accurate
We’re trying to engage in the practice of planning, and
planning itself is useful
Setting aside
20 minutes each week to review
your plan
It should be a
living
,
organic document
Creating Projects for Practical Skills
Directness
is the third principle of ultralearning. This principle emphasizes the importance of practicing your skill in the same way you’d be using it in real life.
Transfer
is, basically speaking, when you learn something in one context and try to apply it in a different
context
Step One:
Defining a Clear Goal
Question One:
Where will I use the skill I want to develop?
Question Two:
What exact skill am I going to need to use?
Question Three:
What would qualify as success in applying these skills?
Step Two:
Selecting Materials and the Approach
Directness
doesn't mean theory isn’t important. Rather, it means that when you learn theory, you should tie it
into the context you care about.
Step Three:
Estimate the Time Required
My advice is to set your
goals directionally
, not absolutely
Instead, what I usually like to do is the following:
1. Define your activities
in which you should include both progressing through the material you've selected
as well as direct practice and possibly additional time for drills
2. Define the direction
you're aiming at, which will allow you to be more direct in your practice efforts and give a clear benchmark of progress
3.
Once you’ve started
making progress
on the goal and can see your growth, pick a more precise targeted benchmark
Step Four:
Set Deadlines and Milestones
Starting with the milestones to be in terms of t
hings you have control over
Step Five:
Week by Week Schedule
Remember, an important part of this is
putting in enough time on direct practice
Step Six:
Review and Adjust
Adjustment
is more important for practical projects than almost any other kind of project.
- One:
Regular Check-In Tests
- Two:
Estimate Weaknesses and Drift
How to find materials
Finding a Curriculum (Formal or MOOCs)
Coverage Material
1) Coverage is only as good as you make it
2) More material isn’t always better
Practice Material
PurePractice Project
Making Realistic Predictions
Work on Your Terms
PriorExperience Planning
Substract 30%
Use Soft Deadlines
- Work on Your Terms
1) They aren’t adapted to your schedule
2) They don’t train your self discipline
3) They don’t allow any flexibility in an emergency
How to Implement Soft Deadlines
Step One: Actually set them
Step Two: Treat them the same as hard deadlines in your system
Step Three: Build the habit of following through
Productivity
Productivity – Core Lesson
Creating a project was the first step. Building a productivity system will allow you to dig deeper
Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr called “The Power of Full Engagement”
Energy is a little bit like a bank account balance
But because energy is invisible, finite, and requires replenishment
3 important things:
1- A good productivity system requires recovery
2- A good productivity is sustainable productivity (can't max-out days)
3- The difference between feeling productive and being
productive.
Good systems have three qualities:
One, A good system doesn’t just tell you when to work, it tells you when you can’t work or when you shouldn’t work
Two, productivity system defines being productive objectively. You don’t have to rely on your emotions
Three, A productivity system focuses you on the few important things
Productivity – Quick Guide
Very simply, it breaks down to three rules:
1- Every Sunday you're going to
create a weekly goals
to-do list
2- The second rule of this weekly-daily goals system is that every night you're going to
create a new daily goals
3- Finally, when working, only
focus on the daily goals
Fixed-Schedule Productivity
It works better when you have to deal with a bunch of things that you need to do
Fixedschedule productivity instead constrains your hours
The basic idea is that if you set certain hours, you're not allowed to work outside of those hours
This system works well with a calendar lookahead method
I also suggest a hybrid system (daily tasks and stated hours)
Improve Your Energy
Physical Energy:
First, get enough sleep
Exercise at least three to four times a week (40 mins)
Eat healthy (avoid particularly high glycemic index foods)
Mental Energy
Two of the drives all human beings have is for intellectual stimulation and a kind of reduction in effort
We’re driven to learn something because it's interesting and stimulating. Other times were pushed away from it, because it's frustrating and effortful
Effective learning is often more effortful than ineffective learning (low-effort, low efficiency approaches)
The decision to start studying must be automatic
Smart breaks (sitting quietly with your eyes closed, going for a walk, eating an apple in silence, meditating, or even doing something physically strenuous, like push-ups or jumping jacks)
Create environments and habits so that your drive for intellectual stimulation isn’t wasted on low-value activities.
Emotional Energy
Strong emotions can interfere with our ability to perform mentally (Negative and Positive)
With negative ones, directly deal with the issues that are central to your life
Spiritual Energy
Sense of meaning and purpose you have for your life
deep meaning can compensate from a deficit in almost all the other three energy resources
Meaning can come from many sources
Keys to improving spiritual energy:
1- The need for deliberate reframing
2- Your procrastination has a deeper cause (not doing what you ought to be doing with your life)
Kill Procrastination
Techniques for Procrastination:
- Pomodoro Technique:
20-25 mins timers with 5 mins breaks
- MIT Method:
identify your most important task of the day, and do it first
- Endurance Targets:
“Let’s just go for another 10 minutes. If after 10 minutes I still feel like taking a break, then let’s take a break.”
Make Productivity a Habit
Temporary vs Permanent Productivity
Many students get in cycles of temporary productivity
We want to make that system a permanent habit
Why Do You Backslide on Productivity?
1) The better system was not held consistently for long enough
2) The better system has unresolved drawbacks that trigger reversion
3) Productivity is unsustainable and leads to burnout
How can we resolve these issues?
I recommend setting 60 days to write your weekly/daily lists
Don’t aim to get more work done than normal in the beginning
Start Your First 60 Days Today
Do not commit to too much at once
Set one task in your weekly list to
review the system
Don’t set more work than you're doing right now in the beginning
The Calendar Look-Ahead Method
Steps to the Method
Step One:
Estimate how much time each task needs
Step Two:
Place tasks at the most reasonable times throughout the day
Step Three:
Don’t forget about lunch, breaks, errands, commuting, etc.
Step Four:
Adjust your schedule as needed throughout the day
Troubleshooting Weekly/Daily Goals
Common Weekly/Daily Problems
Problem No. 1:
I can never get my list done
Problem No. 2:
I’m really bad at guessing how much time I'll need
Problem No. 3:
I get my list done, but I still feel unproductive
Problem No. 4:
I keep forgetting to make the list
Problem No. 5:
Work keeps coming up, disrupting my list
Problem No. 6:
My tasks are large and ambiguous. It’s hard to make a list
Practice
Practice – Core Lesson
Separate the
feeling of being productive
, and
being productive
No. 1 most-effective technique
in a comprehensive survey: practicing, retrieving an answer without looking at it as one of the fundamental principles of memory
Two particular methods:
Distributed practice
, the idea of practice being spaced out over time
Practice testing
, exactly this idea I described, of trying to come up with the answer to something that you probably know, but is not fully reinforced yet, without looking at the answer
The purpose of our knowledge is largely for recall
Retrieval practice does this far better than passive review
There are three main ideas about practice. 1) The first is that practice should be spread over multiple sessions (crammed sessions). Reviewed something x10, it is still only consolidated once, whereas if you review it over 10 days, you’ll consolidate the memory 10 times. A good rule of thumb is that you should practice material five times from when you first cover it, until you are finally tested on it. 2) The second idea I want you to associate with practice is directness
What’s the solution here?
First
, you want to
make practice more direct
Second
, if your goal is to have more flexible and general knowledge, you can only achieve this by practicing in more varied domains (and different situations)
Third
, I want to make about practice has to do with
drills
. Drills form a continuum between direct practice, and specific practice
If you want to become a master, however, you need to isolate and
work on specific components
you struggle with
75%
percent of your time should be spent on practice and only
25%
on more advanced techniques
Practice – Quick Guide
In particular, we’re going to set up a system that implements two ideas: active recall and distributed practice.
Active Recall
Techniques that vary somewhat from subject-to-subject
Practice generating the correct answer instead of merely reviewing it
Distributed Practice
Spread your review over the entire period of your studies
Integrate active recall into your week-by-week schedule of the project
Have time allocated in your week-by-week schedule for doing this practice
Spaced Repetition Software
Set up the software so that it will create the flash cards for you
First, decide on the best practice activity for your subject
You may want to use a couple different practice activities to cover those weak points
Insert regular minimal review into your week-by-week project schedule
Doing a spaced and distributed practice schedule is more efficient in the long term
How to Choose Drills
Theory #1: Choosing the Right Level
High-level practice is natural, robust, complicated
Low-level practice is specific, simple and rote
Lower levels should be used to reinforce weak points at higher levels
Theory #2: Choosing the Right Breadth
Practice can be narrow or broad
High-level practice tends to be broader, but not always
Sometimes a “real” situation is quite specific and narrow, whereas a toy problem exhibits greater generality
Tip #1:
How is it Normally Learned?
Tip #2:
What are My Weaknesses?
Tip #3:
Start Simple
Fix Your Weak Spots First
The Correct Mindset for Practice
In most cases, your potential practice exceeds your available time
Practice problems and recall are to work on things you’re bad at
Seek the hardest questions first and focus on the hardest parts of the hardest problems
Do a practice exam FIRST, to figure out which subunits I’m weakest on, before doing more extensive problems
Practice Should be Intense: Productivity = Time x Intensity
How Memory Works
Short-Term Versus Long-Term Memory
To remember something long-term, the idea must first appear in our shortterm memory and then be transferred to long-term memory
We remember the things we think about
Losing sleep is a good way to forget things
Working Memory and Chunking
Our capacity for items in this temporary memory storage is extremely limited (4 items)
We can combine ideas together into “chunks” so that they only take up one space
A subject being confusing to you is often because you don’t have enough premade cognitive chunks (too many loose pieces)
How Memory is Encoded
Short-term memories are often encoded by the actual
perceptions while long-term memories seem to be encoded by the meaning of ideas
Trying to remember superficial forms instead of deeper meanings is working against how your brain was designed
How to Practice Without Problems
No Porblem sets?
Simple. You make your own problem sets
Making Your Own Problems
Ask yourself:
What level of depth do I have to understand the ideas? What level of detail do I need to remember the facts?
Tackling Deep Subjects:
Blind Explanations, and What if questons
Tackling Detailed Subjects:
flashcards and SRS
The Question Book Method
Step One:
Leave a page after each class/chapter in your notes
Step Two:
Translate the important ideas into questions
Step Three:
When you’re reviewing, try answering the questions
Step Four:
Give yourself a score based on how well you recalled the idea
Step Five:
Put your scores in a box beneath that unit’s questions
Step Six:
When you study, always test the lower scores first
Watch and Read Only Once
Don’t Reread, is inefficient
You only reread what you actually need to
You end up spending more time on active versus passive review
How to Intelligently Reread
Cover the material for the first time. Take good notes
Do practice problems and/or active recall
ONLY when you don’t understand and can’t figure it out, reread
Transfer Troubles
Skill Gap
When one of the necessary elements for performing a given skill is weak or missing
Skill gaps happen when the practice activity simplifies the real activity to avoid certain skills
Fix:
use recall on hard areas
Content Gap
When you go to the real situation, there will inevitably be things that your practice situation didn’t cover (subsets of knowledge in real life and practice)
Fix:
introduce more varied practice
Activation Gap
They occur when you have the right skills, you have the right knowledge, but you don't use the knowledge when you should
Fix:
The easiest way is to make the connection with the likely real life situation explicit (1 on 1 linkages)
Deep Dive – Note-taking
Purpose of note taking?
Facilitate attention and learning in class
Meticulous record of a situation
Facilitate storage and retrieval
Taking notes for learning
What you"re doing with your mind while in class or reading
What you should pay attention to
Shallow vs. deep processing (pay attention to material and think deeply)
Deep processing = Paraphrase or link to examples
Processing notes for storage
Mnemonic storage (question book method and Practice Problems)
External storage (Evernote)
Breadcrumbing
Notes that help search later (Symbols, highlights, headers)