Pragmatic Thinking and Learning

Pragmatic Learning!!!!
Muthu
Ground Rules
24-04-2016 Banca Sella - Chennai 2

Quick Look

Choice

Expectation

Need of the hour!!!

Pragmatic
• of or relating to a practical point of view or
practical considerations.
• Dealing with things sensibly and realistically in
a way that is based on practical rather than
theoretical considerations
• involving or emphasizing practical results
rather than theories and ideas

Pragmatic Learning
Knowledge
Career
Growth
Skill
Work
Learning Smarter
Ability
Learn than
ever
before
Time

Unlock your potential

Day-to-Day Dreyfus
• What good is the Dreyfus model really?
• Armed with knowledge of it, what can you do
with it?
• How can you use this to your advantage?

Identify the G A P

Primary Learning Mode

Discover how you learn best
• Experiment with different learning modes.
• To help learn a new topic, try a couple of
different approaches.
• If you don’t usually listen to podcasts or
seminars, give that a shot, in addition to your
usual reading or experimenting.

Since the day men
came out of their
caverns.
They have been able to create a lot
of amazing things.
They have designed powerful computers
to create more and more amazing things.
As of today, even the most powerful computer is
yet less powerful than our brain.
Our brain is able to achieve wonderful things.
However, most people don’t know how to make the most of it.
There are over 100 billion neurons in our brain,
all interconnected.
Neurons are in either one of two states : on or
off.
The state of its neighbors.
The state of
the neuron
depends on
The strength of the link

with its neighbors.
When we gather information from the Outside
world…
Some neurons at the edge of our body are
activated, depending on the stimuli.
Information is transmitted
through nerves to the brain
and activates a specific
network of neurons.
This is also true for your internal activities.
The same network

of neurons will be
activated, whether
you see an apple or
think about an
apple.
The various neuronal networks activated in
our brain represent our knowledge.
When we catch something from the outside world, it must
match one of the neuronal networks stored in our brain.
Either it ignores it.
Otherwise, the
brain adopts Or it integrates the new piece of
one of two information in its knowledge database by
modifying the related neuronal network.
strategies.
When we learn something or experience something new,
we modify an neuronal
network and create new
connections with other
neurons.
There are more neuronal connections in our brain
than stars in the sky.
You can
endlessly
rework these
connections
Memory

Learning Illusion
• Merely glancing at the solution to a problem
and thinking you truly know it yourself is one
of the most common illusion of competence
learning.
• You must have information persisting in your
memory if you are to master the material well
enough to apply and think creatively with it.

Brain

Characteristics of Focused (L-mode)
Processing
• L-mode processing is comfortable, familiar, geek turf
– Verbal (Using words to name, describe, and define)
– Analytic (Figuring things out step-by-step and part-by-part)
– Symbolic (Using a symbol to stand for something)
– Abstract (Taking out a small bit of information and using it to
represent the whole thing)
– Temporal (Keeping track of time and sequencing one thing after
another)
– Rational (Drawing conclusions based on reason and facts)
– Digital (Using numbers as in counting)
– Logical (Drawing conclusions based on logic)
– Linear (Thinking in terms of linked ideas, one thought directly
following another, often leading to a convergent conclusion)

Characteristics of Diffuse mode
(R-mode) Processing

Focused (L mode) vs
Diffuse Mode (R mode)
• Focused mode gives you the power to work
through the details and make it happen.
• Focused mode involves a direct approach to
solving problems using rational, sequential,
analytical approaches.
• Diffuse mode is critical for intuition, problem
solving, and creativity.
• Diffuse mode allows us to suddenly gain a new
insight on a problem we’ve been struggling with
and is associated with “big-picture” perspectives.
Rise of Diffuse mode (R-mode)
• Positive emotions are essential to learning and creative thinking
• Being “happy” broadens your thought processes and brings more of
the brain’s hardware online.
• When you are fearful or angry—filled with negative emotions—
your brain starts shutting down extra resources in preparation for
the inevitable fight or flight
• Creativity comes from the selection and assembly of just the right
components in just the right presentation to create the work.
• And selection—knowing what to select and in what context—
comes from pattern matching,
• Pattern matching is a key ability demonstrated by experts. It’s how
they can narrow their choices and focus on just the relevant parts
of a problem.
• R-mode sees the forest; L-mode sees the trees

Einstellung Effect
• An idea you already have in mind, or your
simple initial thought, prevents a better idea
or solution from being found.
• This is frequent stumbling block
• If you are trying to understand and figure-out
something new, your best bet is to turn off
your precision-focused thinking and turn on
your “big picture” diffuse mode.

Avoid Einstellung
• Remember, accepting the first idea that comes
to mind when you are working on problem
can prevent you from finding a better
solution.
• Neural patterns have time to solidify properly.

Learning is creating
• Shifting between the Focused and Diffuse
mode
– Key is do something else until your brain is
consciously free of any thought of the problem
– I don’t have that kind of time, you do however if
you simply switch your focus to other things you
need to do, and mix in a little relaxing break time.

Creativity
• Harnessing and extending your abilities
• Many people think they are not creative, when that is
simply untrue.
• We all have the ability to make new neural connections and
pull from memory that was never put there in the first
place
• Just as creativity can be stifled by trying to tie ideas down
prematurely, learning can be impeded by trying to
memorize minor facts when you don’t yet grasp the whole.
• When learning, don’t try so hard to learn and memorize;
just get “used to it” first. Try to understand the meaning
first; get the overall gist of it.

Working Back and Forth between
Modes to Master
• Diffuse mode as base-station
• Base stations are essential resting spots in the
long journey to difficult mountaintops.
• You have to pause, reflect, check your gear
and make sure you’ve got the right route
picked out.

Working Back and Forth between
Modes to Master

• Studies have shown that we have only so
much mental energy – will power for this type
of thinking
• When your energy flags, sometimes you can
take a break by jumping to other focused-type
tasks.
• But the longer you spend in focused mode,
the more mental resources you use.

General Diffuse mode activators

Bottom line
• Problem solving often involves an exchange
between the two fundamentally different
modes.

DIY Brain Surgery

Changing Mindset
• Mindsets are powerful
• Our natural brain biases can get in the way
• Although it is possible, forming new
connections in the brain requires effort and
motivation.
• Thinking habits and mental maps change the
brain.

• Learning involves a complex flickering of
neural processing among different areas of
the brain, as well as back and forth between
hemispheres.
• Thinking and Learning are more complicated
than switching between focused and diffused
mode. We will take different approach.

Procrastination Prelude
• When you procrastinate, you are leaving
yourself only enough time to do superficial
focused-mode learning.
• You are also increasing your stress level
because you know you have to complete what
feels like an unpleasant task.

Enhance your Learning
• When you are consciously thinking of a
problem, which mode is active and which is
blocked?
• Name some activities you would find helpful
for switching from focused to diffuse mode.

2

Spaced Repetition
• Repeating 20 times in one evening – won’t
stick nearly as well as it will if you practice it
the same number of times over several days
or weeks.
• Leave time for the mortar to dry. (Time for the
synaptic connections to form and strengthen)

Repetition Frequency
• How many times to should you repeat?
• How long should you wait between
repetitions?
• And is there anything you can do to make the
repetition process more effective?

Spaced Repetition to Help Lodge ideas
in Memory
• Focusing your attention brings something into your
temporary working memory. But for that “something” to
move from working memory to long term memory, two
things should happen:
– The idea should be memorable
– It must be repeated
• Otherwise natural metabolic processes, like tiny vampires,
simply suck away faint, newly forming patterns of
connections.
• This vampiric removal of faint patterns is actually a good
thing. Much of that goes on around you is basically trivial,
you’d end up like a hoarder, trapped in an immense
collection of useless memories.

Metabolic Vampires

Importance of Sleep in Learning
• Simply being awake creates toxic products in
brain.
• Erase trivial aspects of memories and
simultaneously strengthen areas of
importance.
• During Sleep, brain also rehearses some of the
tougher parts of whatever you are trying to
learn going over and over neural patterns to
deepen and strengthen them.

Stress
Stress trigger a Chronic stress can

chemical change makes shrink your brain
you irritable
Stressful even can kill Stress can Disrupt

brain cells memory by triggering
brain’s threat response

What happens When You Focus your
attention?
• Focus attention, can help solve problems, but
it can also create problems by blocking our
ability to see new solutions.
• When you are stressed, your attentional
octopus begin to lose the ability to make some
of those connections. This is why your brain
doesn’t seem to work right when you’re angry,
stressed or afraid.

The connection between
two neurons works like a
wire conducting
electricity.
The conductivity
of this wire
depends on its
use.
At first, conductivity is low and it requires a lot of efforts to
integrate new neurons into the network.
Then, through repetition, conductivity increases and
less effort is required to assimilate knowledge.
Eventually, conductivity is high enough for
new knowledge to be assimilated effortlessly.
3

Chunking and avoiding illusions of
competence
• Focused practice and repetition – the creation of
memory traces
• The path to expertise is built bit by bit
• Chunks are pieces of information that are bound
together through meaning.
• To gain expertise, create conceptual chunks –
mental leaps that unite separate bits of
information thro’ meaning
• Chunking example – Getting dressed – one simple
thought

Basic Steps to Forming Chunk
• Step 1: Simply focus your attention on the information you want to
chunk
– Octopus tentacles can’t make connections very well if some of them
are off on other thoughts.
• Step 2: Understand the basic idea you are trying to chunk.
– Understanding is like a superglue that helps hold the underlying
memory traces together.
• Step 3: Gaining context so you see not just how, but also when to
use this chunk.
– Going beyond initial problem and seeing more broadly.
– Eg. Tool in a toolbox
• Practice helps you broaden the networks of neurons connected to
your chunk, ensuring that it is not only firm, but also accessible
from many different paths.

Bottom-up, Top-Down chunking

Chunking vs Choking
• Chunking – Integrating a concept into one
smoothly connected neural thought pattern.
• Choking – panicking to the point where you
freeze can happen when your working memory is
filled to capacity, yet you still don’t have enough
room for the additional critical pieces you need
to solve the problem.
• Chunking compresses your knowledge and makes
room for your working memory for those pieces
so you don’t go into mental overload so easily.
Chunking & Memory

Law of Serendipity
• Lady Luck favors the one who tries
• Don’t feel overwhelmed with everything you
need to learn.
• Instead, focus on nailing down a few key
ideas.

Two ways to solve a problem
• First, through sequential, step-by-step reasoning
• Second through more holistic intuition.
• Sequential thinking, where each small step leads
deliberately toward the solution, involved the
focused mode.
• Intuition, on the other hand, often seems to
require a creative, diffuse mode linking of several
seemingly different focused mode thoughts.

Practices make Permanent

Importance of Chunking
• You may struggle a long time, step by step, to
work through the same process or idea from
several approaches. But once you really
understand it and have the mental perspective to
see it as a whole, there is often a tremendous
mental compression.
• Everybody knows you can’t effectively learn the
chunked patterns of chess, language, music,
dance without repetition.
• Good instructors can explain why the practice
and repetition is worth the trouble.

Retrieval
• When we retrieve knowledge, we’re not being
mindless robots – the retrieval process itself enhances
deep learning and helps us begin forming chunks.
• Learning any new skill or discipline, you need plenty of
varied practice with different contexts. This helps build
the neural patterns you need to make the new skill a
comfortable part of your way of thinking.
• Recalling material when you are outside your usual
place of study helps you strengthen your grasp of
material by viewing it from different perspectives.

Intention
• Attempting to recall the material you are trying to
learn – retrieval practices – is far more effective
than simply rereading the material.
• When you have the material open right in front of
you, it provides the illusion that the material is
also in your brain. But it’s not.
• This indeed, is why just wanting to learn the
material, and spending a lot of time with it,
doesn’t guarantee you’ll actually learn it.
• Intention to learn is helpful only if it leads to the
use of the good learning strategies.
• Using recall - mental retrieval of the key ideas
– rather than passive rereading will make your
study time more focused and effective.
• The only time rereading text seems to be
effective is if you let time pass between
rereading so that it becomes more of an
exercise in spaced repetition.
• Knowing where the holes are, of course, is the
first step toward getting them filled in.

• Different types of problems have different
time frames that are specific to your own
learning speed and style.

Practice….

Interleaving vs Overlearning
• Interleaving – Practice by doing a mixture of different
kinds of problem requiring different strategies.
• Overlearning- When learning new problem-solving
approach, you tend to learn the new technique and
then practice it over and over again during the same
study session. Continuing the study or practice after it
is well understood is Overlearning.
• Overlearning is useful – Serve in a tennis, Piano
concerto.
• Focusing on one technique is like learning carpentry by
only practicing with a hammer.

Emphasize Interleaving instead of
Overlearning
• Overlearning means studying or practicing
until mastery is achieved.
• Rather than devote a long session to the study
or practice of the same skill or concept so that
overlearning occurs, students should divide
their effort across several shorter sessions.

Select and use proper techniques
• You want your brain to become used to the
idea that just knowing how to use a particular
problem-solving technique isn’t enough – you
also need to know when to use it.
• Creating index cards with the problem
question on one side and the question and
solution steps on the other.

Test Taking
• Testing is itself an extraordinarily powerful
learning experience.
• Testing, it seems, has a wonderful way of
concentrating the mind.

4

Procrastination
• Procrastination is one of our generation’s biggest problems. We
have so many distraction.
• We procrastinate about things that make us feel uncomfortable.
• Anticipation is painful – The dread of doing a task uses up more
time and energy than doing a task itself.
• Avoiding something painful seems sensible. But sadly, the long
term effects of habitual avoidance can be nasty.
• Procrastination is a single, monumentally important “keystone” bad
habit.
• Change it, and a myriad of other positive changes will gradually
begin to unfold.
• Better you get at something, the more you’ll find you enjoy it.

Procrastination Pattern

• Procrastination is like addiction.
– Temporary excitement and relief from boring reality.
– Start telling stories
– Device irrational excuses
– Learn early, I will forget
• Source of pride as well as an excuse for doing poorly.
• Like habit, you can simply fall into.
• Get your cue, and unthinkingly relax into your comfortable procrastination
response.
• Over time, zombielike response obtain temporary dollops of pleasure
• Gradually lower your self-confidence, leaving you with even less of a desire to
learn how to work effectively.
• Higher Stress, Worse Health
• As time goes on, the habit can become entrenched.
• Start telling yourself that procrastination is an innate characteristic – a trait height,
color

• After all, if Procrastination is easily fixable,
wouldn’t you have fixed it by now?

Habit
• Habit is an energy saver for us. It allows us to
free our mind for other type of activities.
• You don’t think in a focused manner about
what you are doing while you are performing
the habit.
• Habits are powerful because they create
neurological cravings. It helps to add a new
reward if you want to overcome your previous
cravings.

Habit - Procrastination
• The Cue: Recognize what launches you into your zombie,
procrastination mode.
– Cues fall into: location, time, how you feel, reactions to other people,
or something that just happened.
• The Routine: The key to rewiring is to have a plan. Developing a
new ritual can be helpful.
• The Reward: Why you are procrastinating? Can you substitute in an
emotional payoff? A sense of satisfaction? Provide yourself with an
evening of mindless television or websurfing without guilt?
• The Belief: Belief that your new system works is what you can get
through.
– Mental contrasting : you think about where you are now and contrast
it with what you want to achieve.
– Placing pictures around your work and living spaces that remind your
of where you want to be can help your diffuse mode pump

Learning Problem
• We have a lot to learn, and we have to keep learning as we go.
There’s just no way around that. But the very word learning may
have some unpleasant baggage
• The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled—your
own fire. It’s not something that someone else can do for you
• Too often, most of us slip into a kind of default learning schedule:
you might take some time to learn a new language when you have a
free moment or to look at that new library in your spare time.
Unfortunately, relegating learning activities to your “free time” is a
recipe for failure.
• We’ll see how to accelerate learning by approaching it more
methodically and by using the best tools available for the job at
hand.

Focus on Process, Not Product
• Process : The flow of time and the habits and
actions associated with that flow of time
• Product : Outcome
• Focus on Process (the way you spend your
time) instead of the Product (what you want
to accomplish)
• Avoid focusing on Product, Product is what
triggers the pain that causes you to
procrastinate
Pragmatic Investment Plan
• PIP: Have a Concrete Plan
• PIP: Diversify
• PIP: Active, Not Passive, Investment
• PIP: Invest Regularly

Use Enhanced Learning Techniques
• Better ways to deliberately read and summarize written material
– As a result, it seems that we learn best from observation. We are natural
mimics, and the best, most effective way to learn is by observing and
mimicking someone else.
• SQ3R
Survey: Scan the table of contents and chapter summaries
for an overview.
Question: Note any questions you have
Read: Read in its entirety
Recite: Summarize, take notes, and put in your own words
Review: Reread, expand notes, and discuss with colleagues
• Using mind maps to explore and find patterns and relationships
• Learning by teaching

Avoid overconfidence
• Right hemisphere serves as a sort of “Devil’s
Advocate’, to question the status quo and look
for global inconsistencies,”
• While “the Left hemisphere always tries to
cling tenaciously to the way things were.”

Enhancing your Memory
• Memorable Visual Images
• Memory Palace Technique
• Lively Visual Metaphor or Analogy
• Create Meaningful Groups
• Create Stories
• Muscle/Procedural Memory
• Emotional Memory

Working and Long-Term Memory

Build new connections, as changing your world
demands resources.
So focus your energy on what you want to change.
Experiment to see the consequences of every change, until
you find the appropriate connections.
And then repeat again & again, until the desired skill
becomes a habit.
Be aware of
your role, the
role of your
brain and its
power.
Prepare your brain to learn new things and
develop its creativity.
4

• Speaking of talking to other people, when
you’re genuinely stuck, nothing is more
helpful than getting insight from peers,
leaders, mentors.

Value of Brainstorming with Others
• Importance of working with others doesn’t just
relate to problem solving – it’s also important in
career building.
• Research on creativity in teams has shown that
nonjudgmental, agreeable interactions are less
productive than sessions where criticism is
accepted and even solicited as part of the game.
• In a related vein, people often don’t realize that
competition can be a good thing – competition is
an intense form of collaboration that can help
bring out people’s best.

Conclusion
• Five Rules for Bad Studying
• Ten Rules of Good studying
• Beyond Expertise

Five Rules for Bad Studying
• Passive rereading
• Waiting until the last minute to study
• Thinking you can learn deeply when you are
being constantly distracted.
• Not getting enough sleep
• When Stressed

Ten Rules of Good studying
• Curiosity
• Use Recall
• Test Yourself
• Chunk your Problems
• Space your repetition
• Alternate different problem-solving techniques during
your practice
• Take breaks
• Use explanatory questioning and simple analogies
• Focus
• Make a Mental contrast
Beyond Expertise
• Your brain is not necessarily going to cooperate with us on this venture
• So, you have to convince your brain that this is important. You have to care. Now
that we have your attention....
• Change is always harder than it looks— that’s a physical reality, not just an
aphorism.
• Research has shown that students learn best when they themselves are actively
engaged in the subject instead of simply listening to someone else speak.
• Taking responsibility for your own learning is one of the most important things you
can do.
• Imagination Overrides Senses (Dhoni)
• Start with a plan
• Inaction is the enemy, not error
• New habits take time
• Belief is real
• Take small, next steps

Things to follow
Habit
Test Taking
Interleaving
Retrieval
Chunks
Spaced Repetition
Mindset
Focused & Diffuse Mode
Curiosity

Watch out
Learning Illusion
Einstellung Effect
Metabolic Vampires
Sleep
Stress
Procrastination

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Pragmatic Learning!!!!

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The strength of the link

The same network

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Stress trigger a Chronic stress can

Stressful even can kill Stress can Disrupt

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