Priscilla Xu

Reading time: 6 mins

There are two ways to work.

The first way is you work hard; then, you don’t have time to work smart.

The second is investing in how to work smart, then work hard.

Most people are so caught up in the tunnel vision of working smart. The problem with working hard first is that you are wondering why you are making the same mistakes again and again.

During my gap year, I looked into the neuroscience of memory and learning skills. I believe it’s never too late to start investing in yourself to make you a more valuable and skillful player.

*This is a synthesis article of two Huberman’s Lab podcasts.

Components of Skills to Learn Anything

Skills are your ability to execute a unique task with accuracy.

There are two types of skills: motor and cognitive skills.

• Motor skills are how to throw a ball or ride a horse.
• Cognitive skills are the thinking processes involved in critical thinking, language processing, attention control, problem-solving, and decision-making (Yes, all of those unseeable skills are to be learned too).

There are two parts to any skill: execution accuracy and the instruction manual.

In neuroscience, the execution accuracy would be the precision of motor control and procedural memory. And the instructional manual would be the declarative memory.

The brain reading and using the instructional manual to plan the order of motor execution are done by the upper motor neurons. Then, the upper motor neurons run through the spinal cord and connect to the lower motor neuron to use your finger muscles to type out the code.

In an exact situation of learning how to code, the syntax, Boolean logic, and types of codes are declarative knowledge, while how to write a code bug is procedural memory and motor control.

In the process of execution, the two feedback loops help you error correct.

An open loop is writing the code and not testing if the code is correct or not and relying on prior instinct and experience. An open loop is beneficial for testing how accurately and efficiently you can write code without constant feedback. In addition, it benefits intermediate and advanced learners because you can focus on practicing controlling and adjusting your error on the go.

A closed loop is writing the code, testing it, and then adjusting it until testing how accurate your knowledge is in generating a correct code. Closed loops are more beneficial to beginners because you can immediately get feedback on correcting your code after writing it.

Focus on one thing at once

As beginners, we don’t know what to focus on in a practice session.

A study was conducted on focusing on motor sequences while playing the piano. Two types of feedback were given, either focusing on the key press sequence or the resulting sound.

Participants were given the correct key sequence on one piano that produced the correct sound and another that produced random tones.

Results showed the rate of learning the correct given motor sequence was the same whether they received accurate sound feedback or random tones. However, performance was poor if they received random tones without focusing on the motor sequences.

Focus on the sequences of motor skills. Then, as the motor control becomes more automatic, the movement pattern would be stored in central pattern generators at the brain stems.

The Brain State That is Capable of Growth.

Neuroplasticity is a popular buzzword, but misinformation can affect learning.

The brain comprises neurons that communicate through electrical signals and chemicals in synapses. The strength of the synapse determines the effectiveness of communication. The cortex has 21-26 billion neutrons, leading to countless combinations of learning experiences shaping brain connectivity.

Dr. Huberman defines neuroplasticity as a state of mind that allows synapse rewiring.

A specific neuro-cocktail is needed:

• Epinephrine increases alertness
• Acetylcholine focuses on the visual field,
• Dopamine boosts motivation if the consequences of change are significant.

Errors Signals the Brain to Change

Have you ever felt frustrated when practicing a new skill, not knowing where to continue after that “this doesn’t seem right” feeling? Of course, we hate frustration due to its draining energy and the fear of failing to learn.

This frustration arises from the discrepancy your prefrontal cortex detects between what you want to perform and what you’re doing.

The discrepancy signals the brain to release epinephrine and acetylcholine to help you stay alert and focused on finding the error. The key to learning is to drill into the frustration for 7-10 minutes or practice 10-100 times to identify the error margin and learn how to perform the skill correctly.

Your brain will release dopamine as a reward for accurate performance. Still, increasing dopamine before the learning session decreases the signal-to-noise ratio and makes rewards less prominent.

The Mindset of Trying Again

Practicing to find errors leads to plasticity and learning. The beauty of repeating mistakes signals the brain to change and improve.

YouTuber Mark Rober demonstrated this in the “Super Mario Effect” experiment, where he gave subscribers a puzzle. One group was told to keep trying after failures, and the other lost five points. The group that was rewarded with the “try again message” was 68% more successful.

This defied the loss aversion bias. The reason? The brain’s focus on errors and dopamine release from correcting them motivated players to persist until they solved the puzzle. You want to perform as many repetitions as possible in a set number of times when you are learning new skills.

The more mistakes you make, the more plastic your brain becomes, and when you get it right, the action sequences will be rewarded and consolidated.

Never Forget When You Have the Most Willpower and Mental Acuity

Willpower helps you stick through your hardships and frustrations of making errors.

Test and determine what time of day you have the highest mental acuity and enough willpower for learning.

But, when life gets in your way, and you cannot schedule your learning sessions according to your mental acuity, you can also practice changing your state.

• If you’re too alert, use deep breathing to calm down.
• If you’re too tired, try non-sleep deep rest to increase alertness. The more you want to change, the faster your brain will adapt.

The key is to adjust yourself ruthlessly to what you want to achieve through learning.

Replay the mistakes you make when you use a metronome to time your repetitions against time pressure

You will not have bad habits if you perform errors because the error cues your attention to focus on the change.

Using a metronome can help improve skills by increasing the number of errors made during practice. This is because the metronome sets the pace and repetition, allowing the brain to focus on the tone rather than the repetition. This increases the pressure on the nervous system, helping it learn and fix mistakes.

After finishing a sports practice with the metronome, close your eyes and replay the actions in your mind for 5-10 minutes to help your brain improve. This will delete wrong actions and reinforce the correct ones.

Maintaining Long Term Sustainable Learning and Change

As adults, we engage in neuroplasticity differently than our young plastic selves. So the Knudsen Lab did some research about neuroplasticity in adults.

A study researched on importance of incremental learning.

The subjects were asked to wear prism glasses that misalign their vision from what they initially saw.

In a study, two groups of adults wore prism glasses. The first group experienced a sudden and drastic shift in their visual field. The second group experienced a gradual shift, a few degrees at a time.

The first group was unable to adjust to the sudden shift. However, although initially struggling, the second group eventually made a significant change in their mental visual field through incremental adjustments. This outcome was similar to that of juveniles, which can quickly adapt to dramatic shifts in visual field angles.

So, to maintain long-term change, it’s essential to focus on incremental learning and celebrate small wins, even if they involve failing in new ways.

Life-long learner people who tolerate uncertainty will increase faster in interrelate and advance skills development. Keep experimenting to improve.