Trying to learn something new sometimes can be either a scary thing to do or an enjoyable new adventure that you are excited about. But on either case, having a thorough understanding of a discipline is not an easy task to achieve. The problem is that our mind has developed to be good in situations that are related to life treating conditions, like run from predators or find our way back to home. That’s why we are so good at estimating the speed of a car and know if we can cross the street safely, or identifying animals or objects when looking at the world, without even thinking about it. However, some of the things that we are trying to learn nowadays are very abstract concepts; e.g. mathematics, algorithms, and statistics. For this type of concepts our brains are not hard wired to do well instinctively. As a result, we need extra effort, mainly two things: focus time and some down time. I'm going to give you some of the techniques that I've learned from the course Learn How To Learn, thought by Dr. Barbara Oakley, and Dr. Terry Sejnowski, but first some background.
There are two main modes of thinking that our brain operates, one is the focus mode, and the other is the diffuse mode. The focus mode is the concentration mode, and the diffuse mode is the relaxed mode, the creative mode of our mind. In order to understand a concept or solve a problem we need both modes. When understanding a concept, we need to create these traces in our memory, or neural pathways as explained by Dr. Oakley, and we do that by using our focus mode. We need to concentrate for a period of time without interruption in order to create these paved roads on our minds and solidify concepts. Afterwards, we need to allow our diffuse mode to take action, and broaden the connections of our brain. It is like a flash light, the focus mode is a flash light with a very focused light and the diffuse mode has a broad light, which allow us to access other areas of our brains. To access our defuse mode we need to let our mind wonder, for some people is a nap, for others is a walk on the street, or a shower, or some sort of down time.
The other thing we need to understand is that learning takes time, just like exercising, we need to do a little bit everyday, without repetition the neural pathways that we have created in our minds become less and less strong until we loose all the information. That’s why it is important to constantly study a subject, and when I say constantly, it doesn’t mean that we need to study something for 12 hours non stop. In fact, over studying may create a big problem. What is recommended is to study a little bit every day, this way you are creating stronger traces in your brain. Besides that, it is important to alternate periods of down time so your mind can access the defuse mode as I talked before. We can "see" very clearly the defuse mode acting when for example we are trying to understand a complex concept or trying to solve a problem and we get stuck. However, when we put the problem aside and go for a walk, or wash the dishes or simply take a shower, the solution for the problem seems to magically appear in front of us. This magical think is the defuse mode in action. The defuse mode simply try to make connections with things that we already have in our mind, but it would never be linked when we are using our focus mode. That is why the diffuse mode, or the creative mode is so important. And the only way to access this mode is to take our attention off the problem that we are trying to solve.
I'm not saying that we only need to go for walks or take showers and all our problems will be solved, what I am saying is that we need to put some uninterrupted focused time first in order to have an understand of the problem and then put our defuse mode to work. Another great tip to learn is to, right after reading a text, go over in your head the main points and try to recall all the important things that you have just read. This recalling technique is more efficient then simply rereading the text in terms of retention. This self tests are very important for retention. Another technique to truly understand a concept is called interleaving. Interleaving consists of alternating between different concepts, for example doing different exercises of different chapters interchangeably. If you are reading a physics text book you could try to do an exercise from chapter 1, and right after that jump to an exercise in chapter 4. This technique in the beginning will feel very hard, but later, your brain will have created more connections and concepts that you could not understand at the moment will be easier to understand. The reason for that is that concepts that you thought were unrelated at first, can surprisingly be related and make sense later on.
Memory is a huge peace in learning, however, our minds are very good with pictures, but not abstract concepts. To make use of this super power, a good way to remember complex concepts is to make analogies. Try to create a real life analogy to a concept that is hard to grasp. For example, to remember the central limit theory in statistics I think about a motorcycle running and the speed is changing over time from one city to another. In order to have the average speed of the motorcycle from A to B I simple need to average all the speeds over all the time. However, I can also do that by calculating averages of small interval and later on average them all. The average calculated that way will be the same as the average calculated by using the whole time. So, the average of the sample means is normally distributed and equal to mu.
Connecting concepts to images is another good way to remember things. A very interesting technique is called memory palace technique. It consists of thinking about a familiar place, like your own house and use locations of your house to hang some concepts. This technique is very useful to memorise things that are not connected, like groceries list. I actually used this technique to memorise a song from the red hot chilli peppers. So for example I imagined a Chinese guy right in the door step of the entrance, and that picture captures the first strophe of the song that says "psychic spies from China try to still your minds elation”. And I went on and populated the rest of the house with all these unrelated concepts. The crazier the images you create the easier it is to remember later.
In summary, to improve your learning abilities use both your focus mode and defuse mode. Understand that you need to study a little bit every day to solidify the concepts on your mind, as you get better you can space out your studies to every other day or every two days and so on. Use analogies to facilitate comprehension, and use the palace technique when you need to memorise something. As an extra tip, I would like to mention that exercising is very helpful to keep your brain health, in fact , studies have shown that exercise can create new brain cells. So, keep a balanced life style and lets keep learning.
Reference:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/home/welcome