What

On Coursera [[Barbara Oakley]] Learning How to Learn Originally, came across by reading a medium post by [[Aleksa Gordić]]. This was a surprisingly useful meta-course ! (NOTE my mini write-up here is still somewhat in DRAFT mode)

In three sentences

You control the input of learning and the output is a side-effect. But not all strategies are as useful and rote learning is overrated and recall like spaced repetition is where the benefit is. Sleep and taking walks is the learning multiplier enabling diffuse mode you don’t benefit from if you are trying to just focus really hard on something.

Impact

The after the fact synthesis summary you do after immersing

in an article or podcast or meeting is better than no synthesis at all. The story was of someone painting a subject, but by making observations in one room and then going to another room to do the painting. This forced the painter to actively recall from memory. And this is like putting something in your own words but with a delay. The reference I wrote down here was a research paper by [[Jeffrey D. Karpicke]] about recall. This very much reminds me of preventing #overfitting as in the [[ML]] sense. I think this article may have been linked from the course, about that 30 second synthesis concept. Learned from my friend Zeph this is like the #upshot .

“If your inner writing brain and editing brain are in the same car, only one can drive at any one time”. 😀.

[[Daphne Gray Grant]] , one of the interviews , with this editor, she said to separate the writing from the editing. This is really helpful, because I have spent a lot of time doing both writing and editing at the same time and I realize now that is really slow. Just get it out and then edit later. “Write with your diffuse thinking brain and don’t write with your editing brain!” I like the way she put it that, She had a interesting point too about avoiding [[linear]] thinking also, like write in a [[landscape-paper]] to write more broadly . Yea I remember adapting this a while back from this professor ,

Take a break !

Many of the experts interviewed said they benefited from stepping away from problems they were trying to solve that would not yield. Including [[Keith Devlin]], And also that [[nose to grind stone]] quote, [[Dr Norman Fortenberry]] , he said , about diffuse thinking that yes you end up often putting your nose to the grindstone but there are people out there walking around without noses, so don’t grind too much else you grind away too much. haha 😅. [[turn off your brain]] [[chill out]]

Planning learning can be overwhelming, so focus on that [[do that one next thing]]

And a interesting tip is to plant seeds of your next day sort of end of the day, as a kind of using sleep strategy for preparing for that next day

Summary of take aways

Picking up from [[Andrew Huberman/Goals Toolkit]], the discomfort of the challenge of not knowing something is the curiosity potential that seems to drive you towards this unknown. Writing notes during vs after. I also had a physics professor in school who pointed out to me , to put my pen down so i could more immerse in what he was showing. And I get that the extension of the above is the [[learn-do-show-loop]] [[learn-do-explain-loop]] The input and the output Funny enough this reminded me of the [[decoupling]] suggested in [[book/Philosophy of Software Design]] splitting away #UI , so the input and output separation, the input is like the UI of your life. That is the part you can influence. Haha. 😅. Of course [[Indistractable book]] [[Nir Eyal]] helps cement this for me too. Rich and strong Connections [[Nelson Dellis]] , in an interview, mentioned from the [[memory palace]] perspective, strengthening associations, letting concepts share space in your mind with what is already familiar to you. Building on what already exists vs what is totally new. But haha this reminds me of that anecdote, when I started learning [[chopin]] [[études]], [[Chopin etude op 10 no 1]] and others I remember reading through a [[Alfred Cortot]] book, that Chopin’s Etudes are haha not really simple things you learn but more like how to unlearn all of the things you probably learned haha probably all wrong. But that makes sense actually, [[two steps forward one step back]], this is the painful experience but it is as true in [[strength training]] as in learning.

Additional Questions

The learning path can be winding and chaotic. It can feel good in the moment but can end up being a bit like #[[rabbit hole]] at times. Is it better to set limits or let research go where it leads? Related though, I enjoyed this interview with [[John Maguire]], about writing. He said, one, favor clarity over sounding impressive, using [[Plain language]], like [[Steven Pinker]] [[classic style]] , but particularly, when stuck, aka [[writers-block]], write what is the [[do that one next thing]], whicch much reminds me of the [[agile]] [[acceptance criteria]]

And the [[procrastination]] topic. So I understand how procrastination can get in the way, especially per [[Tim Urban]] story, but I do think about [[creative-procrastination]] and also [[help others as procrastination]] . And even think back to this [[tv-show/Dr House]] , where [[person Hugh Laurie]] [[doctor house hugh laurie show]] had his doctors solve sort of seemingly unrelated problems because I think looking back that activated their [[diffuse thinking]] , letting their brains churn on the harder problem in the background . But like I think [[Keith Devlin]] pointed out, you have to do the hard part first, you have to try try [[try try again]] initially, #exhaustive-search in the problem space in front of you and then #stepping-away . It was his [[thinking doing thinking loop]] . Also [[Barbara Oakley]] pointing out the [[funnel of demands on your time]] and [[single-tasking]] , which reminds me of [[multi-tackling]] also, where at any one time you are focusing but you can take a break by switching to some other problem actually when you [[hit wall]].

reminds me of [[instant-gratification-monkey]] and [[Tim Urban]] who had that crazy #[[TED talk]]

{{query (and [[course/Learning How to Learn]] [[take-away]] [[TODO]] ) }}