Title How We Learn

Author Benedict Carey

Year Published 2014

Kind of Book Science/Psychology/How-To

How strongly I recommend it 5/10 

My Impressions The information in this book was great. It was all about the science of how we learn. My only problem with it was that I disliked the journalistic tone of the writing.

Date Read Aug 2019

Practical Takeaways

  • First teach students how to learn, then teach them what to learn-Tony Buzan

  • Vary study location frequently

  • Vary study music

  • Vary what time you study

  • Vary standing, sitting, walking to study

  • Vary writing notes by hand and at a computer

  • Practice reciting what you're learning in front of the mirror

  • Make rewards periodic and random rather than automatic and predictable-BF.Skinner

  • Don't worry about using up storage space in your brain (you have more than you could ever use Biologically there is space to burn)

  • Force yourself to try to remember whatever you forgot before looking it up

  • Don't worry about forgetting skills (The old dog quickly relearns old tricks)

  • Have something going on in the study environment like music, that your mind can associate to the material you're learning

  • Make study intervals as long as possible, but short enough that the knowledge is still remembered.

  • Review the material you learn one or two days after initial study, then a week later, then about a month later, then longer intervals

  • Review material 2 months after learning it.

  • Treat your first encounter with new information as a casual walk-through, a meet-and-greet. Put in just 20mins. Go back and review in at a later date for 20 mins, then a third time 20mins.

  • Test yourself on what you learned, don't just reread it

  • Spend the first third of your time memorizing it, and the remaining two thirds reciting from memory

  • Quiz yourself/others as soon as possible

  • (when teaching) don't call it a test. Call it "retrieval practice"-Robert Bjork

  • Give ungraded "tests" and "quizzes" for their learning benefit, not for their evaluating benefit

  • Take a guess even if you are wrong (it will increase your likelihood of remembering the right answer)

  • Encourage others to guess even if they are wrong (it will increase their likelihood of remembering the right answer)

  • When writing a long book, pretend that the book already exists and you are just writing a summary or commentary

  • After reading something a few times try to summarize it to yourself out loud or explain it to someone else//Feynmann Technique

  • Work hard on a problem (in focused mode) Then leave it and let your subconscious go to work on it

  • Daydream or play ping-pong (to activate the diffuse mode)

  • Don't take a break to incubate the problem you're working until you're truly stuck (not if you are just at a minor speed bump)

  • Try out different activities and amounts of time to find an incubation routine that is optimal for you

  • End each chapter, episode, or blog post with a cliffhanger

  • Keep your goal foremost in your mind

  • Start work on large projects as soon as possible and stop when you get stuck

  • Don't procrastinate on large projects by taking care of the small stuff first

  • Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong-Unknown

  • Practice multiple things in a single session

  • Switch between multiple things in a single lesson (eg. Snare, drumset, charting, ear training etc.)

  • Don't rely on your own subjective impression of how well your practice session went, look at the data (our subjective impression is often wrong)

  • Chop your practice routine up into 15 or 10 minute sections for each thing you're working on

  • Surround the new material or new skill set with older stuff, stuff you already know but haven't revisited in a while

Big Ideas

  • The Brain's default is to forget most of the new information it takes in

  • We quickly relearn things that we have already learned, but forgotten (The old dog quickly relearns old tricks)

Surprising Facts

  • Some breakdown must occur for us to strengthen learning when we revisit the material. Without a little forgetting, you get no benefit from further study. It is what allows learning to build, like an exercised muscle.

  • Cramming works fine in a pinch, but it doesn't last. Spaced repetition does.

  • The harder your brain has to work to dig out a memory, the greater the increase in learning

  • (Jerome Siegel theory for why we sleep) The reason we evolved to sleep is because at night hunting and foraging is difficult and dangerous. Therefore sleep keeps us from wandering around in the dark and possibly getting killed.

 

Unknown Terms

The Ballard Effect: The phenomena whereby memory of imagery such as photographs, drawing, paintings, films, and poems increases after a few days without further study instead of decreasing * This effect does not occur with vocabulary words, facts, and random information etc.

Desirable Difficulty: The harder your brain has to work to dig out a memory, the greater the increase in learning

Reinstatement Theory: memory functions best when the brain is in the same state during study as during testing

Jost's Law: Studying a new concept right after you learn it doesn't deepen the memory as much as studying it hours or days later.

Meta-analysis: Pooling all the findings, and then determining what the bulk of the evidence is saying

The Zeigarnik Effect: The cognitive bias that finds that unfinished jobs or goals linger in memory longer than finished ones