Priscilla Xu

We spend a lot of time in our minds, using our brains, learning, and finding resources to solve problems.

The other day, I was finding ways to learn how to learn. The algorithm pushed me a video from warming, a study YouTuber and one from a learning coach that I have no idea about. Which one will I click on? Probably, the warming Studytuber with a thumbnail that is colorfully designed.

Algorithms are very good at pushing our information and guessing what we like. Still, it cannot fact-check the video’s information. As a result, innocent people can be unintentionally impacted by the news.

Undoublty, learning is a human superpower, but how can we not be affected by the fake news out there to learn to use our brains accurately.

The Fallacies of Memorization

When I meet a teacher who does not give with me, I hate that subject and rote memorizing facts for the exams. It feels like forcing myself to eat even when I am whole. I bet no one likes that feeling.

Concepts bring out facts depending on where the truth is applied to. Turn this statement the other way. If I know the concepts, I can apply them to different situations. The hard part of studying is knowing what strategy and knowledge to use during the test or any other real-life situation.

Studying should not feel like living in a cave and memorizing. The experience should feel like tinkering and play when I make connections. I can ask myself how x is related to y and then draw the connections on mind maps. The process will look inefficient because building the mental framework of the relationships is slow. However, learning and studying the time spent with desirable difficulty will be longer-lasting, and I spend less time memorizing.

Praising Talents

When praised for how smart or talented you are, it might limit your true potential. 

In research, when parents expressed approval on the effort at children from 14 to 28 months old, their children have a higher probability that their ability and skills can be developed as a truth. In addition, their children improved their success to internal controls such as learning abilities and hard work until they were 7 years old. Extrinsic motivation undermines intrinsic motivation is known as the overjustification effect.

To see the effects of praising talents versus efforts in an even longer run, I introduce you to the almighty “Grit” coined by Angela Duckworth.

Grit is that ‘extra something’ that separates the most successful people from the rest. It’s the passion, perseverance, and stamina that we must channel in order to stick with our dreams until they become a reality.

Angela Duckworth

According to the book Grit, someone’s higher score can be a good predictor of success. When you believe you can succeed working smart and hard, you will develop a growth mindset.

Isolating your weakness in knowledge to practice them.

Isolating the concepts that are not understandable into drilled and blocked practice seems intuitive. However, it is doubtful that the skills you ended to solve a problem will be in isolation in the real world. The skills most likely will contain many concepts. Practicing deciding what strategies to use for problem-solving is sometimes more complicated than understanding how to use the concept.

Interleaving — mixed practice — as the antidote to drilling weaknesses.

The non-comprehendible concepts will be focused first but still relate to where concepts fit into the big picture. Then, the concepts will be put into mixed practice problems to train the abilities to pick what concepts to use.

Finally, mixing and matching the concepts up for problem-solving will develop long-term strategies that an avid issue solver can use in the real world.

Rewarding Yourself After Studying

Praising talents is similar to rewarding me after my studies. We want to learn because the process of finishing the task is exciting. However, we will be more likely to continue when no external rewards are tied to the task, even when the results are not desired. Then, we can be build resilience and be likely to be consistent with our goals.

In a literature review that covered 25 years of studies on motivation, the researcher identified the factors to build intrinsic motivation by developing the tasks’ context, challenge, curiosity level, and range of control.

For example, I hate studying accounting, but I still found a way to do it.

• I like the feeling of studying efficiency with mindmaps.
• Why and how questions to increase my curiosity level in an artificial school environment.
• I feel challenged when I can study subjects I hate.
• I am within the control of my studies by drawing a mind map and building connections.

Cover your notes, and Reciting them means that I can memorize them.

I constantly find myself escaping the struggles that I face in my day. I avoid it by creating an illusion of memorizing the information. I will look at my notes and recite them by covering them in a relaxed state with one hand. This is partial recall instead of total recall. In contrast, during the test, I am stressed and urgent to find the answer in my brain. Therefore, I will not have my notes beside me to cue for partial recall. What I need is a total recall to ace my test.

But back in my mind, I know that doing so will not make me successful. Instead, I should love mistakes and failures because they activate the brain’s neuroplasticity and forces the brain to rewire to change.

The tendency of creating an illusion is called “self-handicapping” in psychological terms. I am playing the lame game. I blame the other factors or people for my failures because it is idiot-proof, admit the mistake, and take responsibility myself.

So how can you avoid partial recall too?

• The brain takes around 48 hours to consolidate what you have studied. If you do any type of recall within 48 hours of the studying session. It is still partial recall.
• Use spaced repetition. Space out your reviewing sessions and allow some forgetting to happen.

10,000 Hours Studying in a domain of knowledge will make me an expert

The 10,000 rules of studying came from a book named “The outliners.” The author researched deliberate practice in music and sports. The 10,00 rule was branded as the amount of time you can be successful in any career.

However, this rule should not be generalized to studying and knowledge work. Mindless repetitive work will not bring you to a mastery level.

When it comes to creative knowledge like writing or being an entrepreneur, mindful and deliberate practice will be less impactful because the conditions change too quickly.

The solution to this is to be a generalist but still specialize in a few areas.

In David Epstein’s book Range, he explains why early specialization does not certainly mean career success.

In his Tedtalk, he cited a study about young high-performing athletes. The young athletes spend less time practicing in the sport they were brilliant at in their careers. In other words, they had a sampling period of trying what sport they liked before committing to the sport.

Another research looked into people who won the Nobel prizes are 22 times more likely to have a side hobby, such as being an amateur actor or artist.

What if you still choose to specialize early?

The results are pretty surprising. A notable 20 years study of specialists focuses on predicting political and economic trends. The most minor predictors were the most specialized ones. They are experts who pay out their entire careers to the problem. The side effect of solving only a few difficulties is they look at the complex world with one lens of expertise.

Humans are so pwoerful!

The good news is that human learning abilities will probably always be more significant than computers.

To better use our pattern recognition skills in a multidisciplinary world, we have debunked the myths of learning and the brain.

Through evolution, understanding the human brain shifts my fears about my non-stop worrying about artificial intelligence.

Learning is a human superpower because our brains can recognize patterns when we are not even told to. In contrast, machines are described to recognize specific patterns.

For example, the YouTube algorithm can predict by pattern recognizing your watch history and comparing it to someone else, but how can it know that it creates hate speech and political extremities issues with echo chambers.