About Learning
Recently, I finished listening to the audiobook Make It Stick. The book is about techniques to use when learning. It was a recommendation from a youtube channel. It was good enough. After the experience of reading a few self-help books, I didn’t expect it to be great. I don’t particularly enjoy self-help books. But while it did not add many ideas it was a good refresher. Something new to me: the book debunked the idea of visual, auditory, reading/ writing, kinesthetic modes of learning (VARK). Also, take a look at Bloom’s taxonomy.
Here is what I know about learning. Most of it has been there before the book.
First, human brain’s capacity for learning seems practically limitless. Neurons (nervous system cells) have axons and dendrons with which they connect and communicate with other neurons. Small electrical signals (called synapses) are sent among neurons across these connections to communicate. Because of branching, a neuron can connect to other neurons in multiple ways/ paths. As brain learns new stuff, new pathways are formed and some old (related) pathways are excited. As we recall/ use what we learned in the past, these connections are retraced. It’s not always the shortest path. Sometimes parts of the pathways may be already in a primed or excited state (due to, say, recent use) and such connections may be faster than shorter unexcited paths. (By the way, your subconscious may be playing tricks on you but ‘excited’ is a scientific term- for example, in metals an electron in the outermost orbit/ shell… you know the stuff.) As the pathways cannot always remain in use, to conserve energy some knowledge is ‘forgotten’/ archived. I don’t know how exactly information chunks are stored (data at rest) but it’s there. And it is fetched when synapses are sent along the path(s). Multiple pathways are better and (repeating here) when you learn new stuff, new pathways may be formed. “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”
Brain seems to archive unused knowledge. So the best learning happens when using the learned stuff. It seems that it is better to recall what we learned then let it go out of cache and recall it again (this is known as spaced repetition). It tells brain that this stuff will be needed later on and is important so better not to forget it. When I was a boy only so high, I was told that 50% of the stuff you learned today will be wiped out tomorrow and of the remaining stuff some 30% will be gone next week; so you must revise the stuff the next day and at the end of the week. Another thing I was told when I was 15-16 was that you should input the knowledge the way you are going to retrieve it. So reading mathematical proofs was not good. You better solve some exercise problems. Maths problems were fine but somehow I could never bring myself to learn the aldehydes and ketones reactions or formulas by writing them down.
Good physical health- particularly aerobic exercise- aids learning. Suggested reading in this area: Spark by John Ratey. A good enough summary video.
Having a lay of land before you dive deep into a topic helps. Learning gets more pleasurable the deeper we go.
While concepts are more important, knowing syntax helps in learning concepts. (Maybe it’s just me?)
Learning with concrete examples helps in the beginning. Principle of conservation of angular momentum? Remember an ice skater spreading their hands to reduce rotational speed. Atomic model can be related to the solar system with the Sun as the nucleus and electrons as planets. Later on we can fine tune the ideas like electrons behave both as particles and as waves.
It seems that learning a topic is best done by learning it with other (unrelated) topics. This may seem counterintuitive. Interleaving topics, difficulty levels is good. Cramming everything about a subject into your brain at a go is not good.
Most of the actual learning is made concrete when the brain is in relaxed/ diffused mode (not in focused mode). Pausing between learning sessions helps in letting the brain go into the diffused mode. I never went far with it but at some point pomodoro techniques were in vogue. Sleep, a walk, etc. are good. Some brain mechanisms kick in and efficient connections are made, cleansing/ garbage collection happens, etc. While it has been criticized for sampling, conclusions drawn, etc. the book Why We Sleep mentions a few studies about how during sleep some parts of the brain are in hyperactive mode doing some interesting stuff. Sleep helps. Lack of enough sleep is plain bad.
Regular/ continuous learning is better and long lasting than sporadic high intensity sessions. I never pulled an all nighter for studying. Sometimes people do such sessions for exams/ vocational trainings. Remember those preparation leaves before engineering exams? But it seems the benefits are not long lasting. Learning something new just before exam does not help. That time is better spent on revision.
State of panic is not conducive. But there are some studies which say that if you need to take quick decisions, having a sense of mild physical stress/ anxiety helps- you want (not need urgently) to go to washroom, you are feeling a little cold, etc. Perhaps evolution comes into play here*.
Rephrase the content and reflect the feeling. That is how Stephen R. Covey says you should practise the communication habit (seek first to understand then to be understood) in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (one of the 2-3 self-help books I liked). The same advice is good for learning. Learning is better when you use your own words and terminologies for concepts. Of course, once you have learned those concepts it is better to use the actual domain terminologies because of losses in translation.
Note taking helps. Not by copying the original material as is but in your own style. Notes are only good when used and particularly good when updated. Obsidian is a good note taking app. Some people say handwritten notes have advantages over typed ones. I don’t have one but if you like to take handwritten notes then reMarkable 2 or recent reMarkable Paper Pro may be good for you- unless, of course, you prefer pen and paper.
Different media help. For example, charts, diagrams, solving problems, bouncing your learning off your friend, debating a topic, using flash cards, video, tutorials, etc. (I haven’t tried Anki cards but have heard good things.)
If you have learnt something, you should be able to explain it. That is why an effective way to learn things concretely is to teach them (after you have learnt them, of course).
It is good to abstract various concepts and ideas from the content you learned. Then have it applied elsewhere (supporting/ combining with other ideas/ contrasting against other ideas/ comparing with other ideas). To quote John Locke, “The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made.”
Deliberate practice is good for learning. (May not have to be 10000 hours.) And having tests on the things you learned is good to make the topic stick. Even if you don’t get to the answer, trying to solve a problem before looking up the answer is good. I don’t remember doing this a lot even though everybody said that we learn better by studying a topic before it’s taught in class.
Time and place habits have positive effect on learning. You don’t have to burn incense sticks but it may help if you are into that. Also, not having distractions like say Tom And Jerry playing in the background helps. Oh, you are into the US version of the office, are you? Well, you did not have to specify the US version. The UK version is difficult to put in the background anyway. ADHD may be a real thing for many people.
I think that the Gita has some verses which say that study (Abhyaas) is where even though your mind wanders, as it will, with effort you command it back to the topic at hand. One of the most important parts of this is the effort. You need effort to learn something. The more the efforts better is the learning. As with many things in life (physical exercise comes to mind immediately) learning yeilds better results if you need to get- maybe not too much but- just outside your comfort zone, thus expanding the boundaries of your comfort zone. Learning new stuff can be overwhelming. So it works better if such things are made incremental.
We all have some cognitive biases which help or hinder learning. Knowing about those which govern you helps. Intention, willingness and desire to learn are important. You can trick your mind in some of these. External motivations like reward-punishment, carrot-stick approaches work. But intrinsic motivation trumps external one.
I learn faster when there is someone to teach me. And deeper when I learn on my own. Not sure if it’s same for others. These things are not exclusive, of course. But there may not always be someone to teach you.
There are some kinds of learning which may be instinctive (survival, procreation, etc.), some experiential (you cannot teach your kids not to touch hot kettle, they have to learn what hot means and if it’s good for them by burning their hand). Not sure about terms (is it experiential learning?). About instincts and habits- Darwin has spent a few pages in his Origin of species… book. And it amazes me how much he’s got right even though it was much before Gregor Mendel, DNA, genes, etc.
Forgetting does not happen on LRU (least recently used) basis although practically ‘use it or lose it’ may be a good rule of thumb. There may be other factors like intensity of a thing/ survival needs, etc. For example, people say life flashes before your eyes when you are about to die. Maybe your brain is recalling your entire life so as to find a relevant situation in which you had found a way to survive.
While this may not be politically correct to say, there may be some genetic, social, cultural inheritances involved in the ease with which you can learn some stuff/ acquire some skills. Not sure. Some people are good at commerce, some are better at mathematics just like some other people are better at running marathons and playing chess. I need to read more on this. Any recommendations? Similarly not exactly sure but gender may be a thing in learning. Are men better at abstract reasoning? Or spatial skills? For example, young girls seem to have larger vocabulary than boys of same age. I can attest to this from experience. When I was 7, I had a quarrel with a girl I was quite in love with and… **Well, that’s neither here nor there. Maybe girls that age are also physically stronger than boys.
The course ‘Learning how to learn’ on coursera should be a good start if you prefer courses over books and are interested in the topic. Of course, their ‘cheery greeting’ emails every Friday are annoying.
*Evolution has trained our brains. Our habits, instincts, phobias are byproducts of evolutionary learning to a large extent. This is probably why we like drizzle but do not like getting caught in a heavy weather. A drizzle signifies food to eat but a thunderstorm says we may have too find shelter soon or there is a chance of getting sick/ drowned, etc. We possibly like sound of small water streams because it means water to drink and maybe grains/ fruits from nearby trees or fish and animals to hunt. And do you like flowers? Another situation you might have experienced is that you get up and go into a different room in your house and as soon as you enter the room you forget what you came into the room for. Stephen Fry speculated on QI that maybe your brain is bombarded with information due to change in scenery and all your attention is busy taking it in- is there a predator here? Similarly, a bearable-as-of-now physical urgency such as feeling hungry, cold may engage your faculties more actively to find a solution. There may be some speculation, pseudo-science in this paragraph. But it seems to fit.
**An attempt at humor here. Copied Sir Gregory Parsloe like situation from P. G. Wodehouse’s Pigs Have Wings. Or maybe from the book after that one in the series.