Learning how to learn

1. Intro (Quote; Learning curve)

2. Scheduling & Pomodoro (Objectification, Splitting, Time–Signposting (eat your frogs first),
Quitting time) Time Management vs. Focus Management; Interleaving of Senses and Perception
limits
3. Focused vs Diffused mode (Dali: half-asleep, Exercise, Mundane Chores, Meditation)
4. Spaced repetition and Recall (divide equally, continuous responses, recall & Feynman
technique)
5. Sleep
6. Chunking
7. Environment and Habit building (set up, cue, reward; 5-hour rule, )
8. Emotional response and amygdala
9. Procrastination & Emotional Control
10. Don’ts: binge consumption, procrastination, over-eating, genius envy, einstellung
11. Quote (Humility, open mind, and understanding the expanse of knowledge)
12. Upcoming episode: Creativity & Astrocytes; Food Habits and Lifestyle
Intro:

More often than not, we face challenges or encounter desires that require us to learn a new thing to
progress. It could be a specific study, a new language, market-related products, services, software,
musical instruments, artistic techniques, or a plainly a new skill for personal development or career
growth. So, in this video, we are going to Learn How to Learn, so we learn everything. I’m really excited
about this one. Let’s go!

Chapter 1: Learning Curve

If something has ever piqued your interest—could be a broad field of study, a job-specific knowledge or
skill, or someone playing a guitar or piano, or have been exposed to a masterpiece of art—and if you felt
a strong desire and curiosity to learn these skills and develop an understanding, but faced surmounting
challenges after going through the basic stuff, and ultimately, found it difficult to continue when the real
deal of knowledge started, then probably you have been in the Learning Abyss, which refers to a chasm-
like state that people often encounter after completing the introductory phase of learning something.

It’s like you want to build a car and start leaning about mechanics and automobile engineering, but you
are soon exposed to related studies such as thermodynamics, fuel kinetics, machining, fabrication,
ergonomics, economics, and many others, which make you probably more confused than what you were
at the beginning.

The same thing happened with me when I was curious about learning video production and editing for
this YouTube channel, and I started checking out all these software, but I was soon engrossed with how
the human eye works, and how brain responds and reacts to different color schemes, sound cues, LUTs,
presets, animation, lighting, optics, lenses, graphic formats, keyboard shortcuts, arghhh… it was a mess.
Well, yeah, I am still probably in the learning abyss of video editing, but the clutter is clearing up now.

So, this is a huge problem that any beginner face while starting to learn something of interest;
conversely, the problem aggravates when students or workers are asked to take up something that does
not even remotely interest them, like high-school organic chemistry or mathematics, or that boring
quarterly business projection that never gets met.

But, there’s a solution, in fact, there are many solutions to how we can garner this interest and develop
a skill or understanding without being entirely dependent on costly college programs or shiny seminars.

Contrarily, if you have learnt something—well, there’s a great chance you have at least learnt your
native language—then you can probably fathom from your existing experience that learning a new thing
requires exposure, practice, and application, involving memory, habit-building, and practice that
ultimately rewards you with the fruits of recognition, deliverance, and innovation, i.e., you have learnt it
so well that you hardly have to blink an eye to identify the problem in order to solve it, and maybe, you
can get creative with it.

So, we’ll check out some key techniques that work wonders in learning.
Chapter 2:

Pomodoro technique—or as I like to call it "working in zests" is a useful technique that helps you to build
focus and get things done within a short period of time.

Named after a tomato-shaped clock bearing a dial that spans only 25 minutes, the Pomodoro technique
involves you to shift into a focus mode for a significantly short period of time— in this case, 25 minutes.
You can chunk certain related tasks that involve the same function of your brain, for example, reading a
particular chapter, or solving a small set of problems, replying to emails, writing a scene, picking up a
song, going through a lecture, and so on. You can even divide the task into smaller chunks and set
milestones for each session, after which you take a break of 5 minutes and reward yourself with
something of liking. This reward is also essential to maintain motivation and orientation of your brain to
get you pumped up for the next session of focus.

Learners can use this break period to recall a comprehensive outlook on the topic studied during the
focused period. This recalling and summarizing activity helps you to chunk all the related keywords and
draw relations with your existing knowledge to establish it into memory.

After 3-4 such sessions, you can take a relatively long break, like taking your dog for a walk, or cooking
your meal, catching up with your friends (if you have any), stretching, yoga, meditation, or any other
activity that relieves your mind so that you are able to focus for another string of sessions.

One useful tip that I have learned from my experience of using this technique is the activation of
different senses or mental spaces during the break period as compared to those involved during the
focused period. For instance, after a session of reading or editing text that primarily involves eyes
(vision) and forelimbs (coordination), I'd rather engage in conversations (speech), listen to music
(hearing), grab a snack (taste), or stretch (body/muscle). This allows the focused region of the brain to
rest for a certain period before the next session begins. Side note: I wrote each chapter of this video in
such sessions, and in breaks, I listened to music (hearing) and tried singing along (voice).

Note that this technique could be further extended if you are involved in multiple tasks throughout the
day, where you evenly space out the various kinds of tasks in hand and interleave short- and long-
sessions throughout the day, such as reading and responding to emails at either the beginning or end of
work day, conducting meetings post lunch when you feel a bit more relaxed, finishing the hardest task of
the day first thing in the morning to optimize willpower with schedule, and completing regular active
work during the heat of the day.

As Gary Vaynerchuk once said, “time management is nothing without focus management”. If you cannot
focus your mind to finish something within a particular block of time, you’ll never be able to stick to your
schedule and thing will continue to get delayed. Thus, the aspect of time blocking through scheduling is
crucial in this aspect, and can be combined with Pomodoro for best results.

Another cool phrase I learnt from Dr. Barbara Oakley is “Eat your Frogs first”. Certain other productivity
Youtubers refer to this as “Highlight of the Day” or similar phrases that primarily mean that you
complete the hardest task at the beginning of the day when you wake up with maximum willpower. This
could include studying chapters, writing your mind, exercise for that dream body, or your personal
passion project that you are just too tired to do after finishing your work at the end of the day. Once you
get this done every morning, and even a single Pomodoro session helps, trust me, you will have a clear
mind while starting your active work day and will not feel guilt at the end of the day for inevitably
postponing that task every weekend. Therefore, incorporating the focus-mode Pomodoro with active
scheduling and interleaved tasks can really get you in the game of harnessing the most out of learning as
well as doing mentality.
Chapter 3: Focused vs Diffused mode (Dali: half-asleep, Exercise, Mundane Chores, Meditation)

The span of our thought, more appropriately called the thoughtspan, primarily acts in two distinct
modes: the focused and diffused mode.

Imagine the network of your brain as a chart of points, where each point reflects a particular topic
describing something you already know. Now, in case of focused mode, which is activated upon the
secretion of the neuroendocrinal signal acetylcholine, your brain is focused in a closely-knitted group of
points, where it is thinking about only the directly related factors to solve a problem. This could include
drawing from the immediately related topics such as trigonometry, algebra, or statistics if you are
solving a math problem, or branching out to other studies within that discipline.

This mode is exceptionally useful in performing daily functions that comprise your active work of the
day, where you are required to concentrate and focus to get a task done by activating only a certain
region of your brain.

In contrast, the diffused mode of your brain acts quite mysteriously, because research still do not
understand the exact mechanism causing such triggers, but it is generally considered to be in function
when you are not thinking anything specific at all, and your thoughtspan takes rapid leaps between
diverse topics that are situated quite far off from each other. This mode is often associated with
comprehensive cognition of your surroundings and utilizing your entire knowledge bank to solve a given
problem, and most of it, occurs instantaneously through instinct and intuition.

This is where your developed experience comes in handy while taking a decision, or you correlate to a
drastically different topic using your understanding of the current one, and work with an
interdisciplinary approach that triggers you to ideate and innovate across diverse disciplines. This is
probably similar to the Eureka moment of Archimedes or the Apple moment of Newton or the
clocktower gaze of Einstein.

Salvador Dali, in his book—50 tips to master your craft, describes how he used to rest in his chair with a
small keychain in his hand. In a meditative state, Dali used to half-close his eyes with a constant gaze
and phase out from all the surrounding stimuli to absorb and ideate from all the things he had observed
that day.

A similar experience occurs in the contrasting situation of exercise such as running, swimming, biking,
calisthenics, or weight training, where your body is heavily engaged in coordinating the active
movements while your brain shifts into a static mode and all kinds of thoughts start to pour in—but
exercise does just more than that.

According to Dr. Terrence Sejnowski, a pioneer in computational neurobiology working at the

Tenenbaum Center of Human & Life Sciences, states that “exercise is the best thing you can do to your
body and brain,” because it not only revitalizes your muscles but also it maintains every aspect of your
body, starting from homeostasis to sleep and memory. Regular exercise also enhances the oxygen
carrying capacity of your cells that ultimately provide you with more energy and active periods every
day, thereby boosting your function and learning ability.

Now, it is important to differentiate that the focused mode is useful while absorbing knowledge with
attention, whereas the diffused mode aids in novel applications, worthy innovations, generation of
ideas, conclusions, and principles that are derived from your existing understanding, and it can quickly
yield you a long-sought solution in an off-guard moment, when you are not even looking at it, like in the
shower or cleaning the room or taking out the garbage bag.

This is a great tool for generalizing or simplifying complex concepts or notions that are probably too
difficult to grasp when you are focusing too hard on it. So, the next time you are stuck at a problem,
don’t grind your way into it, just “take a break”. Good things happen when you are not looking for them.

Highly recommended: Meditation is an extremely useful practice that has helped generations of humans
across millennia in understanding the essential concepts of life and nature. It steadily increases your
brain’s capacity to think across domains, build focus on specific tasks, improve your attention span
(much needed in today’s social media world), and generalize concepts for better understanding, all of
which are super beneficial in learning anything.
Diffused mode of thinking- I was extremely glad when I noticed Prof. Oakley define this mode of
thought, as it accumulated all the related experiences I have had but hadn't known the exact term or
definition of this mental state. As an engineer engaged in arts, this has been a regular practice of mine
since I can remember—whether in improvising jazz, designing posters, jotting down thoughts on paper,
or solving practical problems, this mode of thinking is an essential for any craftsman or professional to
achieve breakthrough strategies, derive novel concepts, and strategize solutions.

Feynman technique- From one of the greatest teachers and innovators of modern time, the Feynman
technique has been a strong driver of curiosity and an equally adept tool for understanding new things.
Essentially, the Feynman technique involves the learner in explaining the content they have come across
in a form of teaching to another person, or the self in context. This practice engages you in deep-
thinking sessions where you can ask questions regarding certain complex topics and try to explain the
absolutely basic understanding of it, much like the first-principles theory, in an attempt to dig deeper
and further into this realm that is currently incomprehensible to you. Concurrently, you’ll stumble upon
more questions than what you started with, but I guess, it is a part of the learning process, and
eventually, you’ll develop an understanding and even be able to communicate it to any audience using
simple words and analogies. This technique can help you to simplify complex topics into practical
statements that consequently develops a better understanding of your surroundings.

In summary, I believe that learning is an endeavor where one teaches oneself, and teaching is an act of
making others learn. Simply said, we teach ourselves when we learn and make others learn when we
teach. Thus, learning and teaching are the two sides of the same coin, i.e., the coin of understanding.
Orders of Displacement (Position):

1. Velocity
2. Acceleration
3. Jerk
4. Snap/Jounce
5. Crackle
6. Pop
7. Lock
8. Drop
9. Shot
10. Put

http://wearcam.org/absement/Derivatives_of_displacement.htm

https://thespectrumofriemannium.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/log053-derivatives-of-position/

https://agilescientific.com/blog/2018/3/6/jounce-crackle-and-pop#:~:text=That's%20jounce
%20%E2%80%94%20the%20fourth%20derivative,are%20called%20crackle%20and%20pop.

https://twitter.com/inertialobservr/status/1181494183061647360

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00426-017-0893-3

http://klotza.blogspot.com/2017/10/applications-of-higher-order.html