Learning How To Learn – Part 1

I struggled quite a bit in school all the way from elementary school to university. I had to put in a significant amount of time just to get a B.  The way a teacher taught the material made a difference and allowed me to excel. When I was in university, the most challenging classes were where I excelled, because of one TA who took the time to break things down. She showed us how to really think critically and structure an essay. That was my first A in university.

Studying the material was an experiment for me – taking notes, making cheat sheets to study from, studying with friends and doing practice questions. I did what I could to remember material but I was left forgetting shortly after taking an exam or completing a course. At the end of the day I never learned how to learn or study – not even in teachers’ college! 

I’m grateful that someone introduced me to the free course by Barbara Oakley, Learning how to Learn. This easy-to-follow course is broken down into four modules and each is broken down into short bit-sized videos. 

In this blog I’ll be going over a brief summary of the first part of the course so that you can get a sense of some of the key components to learning. This is beneficial for anyone – not just students – because it allows you to understand how to acquire new information, store it in your long term memory, and make new connections to previous knowledge. 

The Two Modes Of Learning 

When you are fully engaged – your prefrontal cortex is active, you’re concentrating, conscious and the information you are working with is relatively predictable – you are working in a focused mode. However, when you are in a relaxed state, mostly your subconscious mind is working and you might experience a surprise connection – this is the diffused mode.

When learning something you actually need to go back and forth between the two in order to create new neural structural growth. This is why cramming for an exam doesn’t work. You need the resting state of the diffused mode to embed the information into the long-term memory and create strong neural structures. 

Overcoming Procrastination

We all procrastinate at one point or another. It’s the body’s natural way of avoiding pain. When you have a negative association to something and are confronted with it – like doing the dishes – the insular cortex (the part of the brain that activates pain) goes off, and you naturally bring your attention to something else.

Unhappy feeling -> Temporary pleasant feeling

The interesting thing here is that if you confront the unpleasant feeling, the pain pathway to that activity breaks. You may need to do it more than once but it’s worth the brief discomfort.. Think of how often you say that once you get started, you’re fine. You are avoiding the pain and negative association to the task at hand. 

One way to overcome this and to create an optimal learning cycle is to do a Pomodoro. Now, you may have tried this before – but have you done it this way?

• 25 minutes of focused time (no phone, no distractions)
• 2 to 5 minutes of recalling the information you just focused on
• 2 to 5 minutes of complete rest – no screens!

Practice makes permanent 

The Pomodoro technique is one tool, but it works best when paired with consistent practice. The other thing to consider is that the more you practice the more it becomes permanent in your long-term memory. This is harder for subjects that are more abstract, like math and science. But if you study hard over a longer period of time with spaced repetition, you create a solid structure of the material. 

This brings me to long-term memory, where information is stored from the past like a huge warehouse. Our working memory is when we are able to hold a few ideas and connect them together to understand a concept or problem we are working on. When we are using our working memory, we’re able to hold four chunks of information. With practice, this information moves over to the long-term memory. 

Retrieval Practice

My go to when studying was making notes and reading them over and over again. I also was a highlighting monster and colour coded everything. Even though this helped me chunk and organize information, I wasn’t spending enough time retrieving the information on my own without looking at notes.  The more you retrieve information you are studying, the more it will get embedded into your long-term memory and increase your conceptual understanding. 

When doing retrieval practice, it’s important to pair it with spaced repetition and the use of flashcards. This is where you spread learning the material over a several day period instead of cramming it all in the night before. A positive way to use AI for learning is for this specific method: uploading information from your learning material, have it generate flashcards, and – most importantly – using a platform that allows you to schedule spaced repetition. Barbra Oakley recommends smarterhumans for these reasons:

• Schedules for you so you don’t have to – less decision making
• Practice fewer cards daily because it’s spaced out – less time each day
• Creates a “desirable difficulty” – just hard enough to challenge you and to learn the material
• Can source where the question came from so you can reference if you are still having trouble

The Power of Sleep

It doesn’t matter what aspect of life we’re talking about – sleep is essential for all. When you are awake, your body produces toxins, and during sleep these toxins in the brain are flushed out. If they are not flushed out, it causes everything from the inability to think clearly to health conditions. 

During sleep your brain erases the less important information and strengthens the important information. It will rehearse the tougher parts of what you are learning to help strengthen neural pathways. You can take advantage of this process by setting the intention to dream about what you’re learning. You can even get into a diffused mode before falling asleep and loosely think about the material.

Chunking: How to Organize Information

Chunking is an effective way to understand new material and helps incorporate key ideas and actions into your long-term memory. By taking pieces of information and finding connections, you are able to create common meaning. These threads strengthen and lengthen the more you learn about a chunk, and also make it easier to make connections between chunks of information on a variety of topics. 

How to do it

1. Undivided attention – make sure you are focusing only on the information that you want to chunk and remove all distractions.
2. Understand the basic idea – this looks like quickly scanning a chapter for key titles and topics, then doing Pomodoro sessions where you go back and forth from focused to diffused mode. But remember: understanding doesn’t mean you’ve learned the material. Using recall is vital to learning the material and having it embedded in your long-term memory.  This can look like recalling the information from what you just read for the first part of your break. 
3. Gain context – you are able to see more broadly through practicing related and unrelated problems. The more you practice, the more you know which concepts, rules, and other pieces of a chunk to apply to a situation or problem. 

Some Things to Keep In Mind 

• Illusion of competence – If you’re spending time reading over material, it will seem familiar, but you can’t actually recall it without looking. Another thing to be aware of is that too much highlighting isn’t helpful. Rather, do a minimal amount then write in margins – it’s more effective for remembering the material. 
• over learning – This is where you  practice the same material too much in a session. This doesn’t allow for better understanding of all the material. However, it can come in handy when studying for a test or public speaking where you need your responses to be automatic.
• Deliberate Practice – Is the balance between spending time on both easy and challenging material to ensure you’re learning all aspects of the subject.

Motivation and Neurochemicals

We are human, and part of being human is having emotional responses to experiences. These emotions also play a role in our learning experience. Different neurochemicals play a role in how you feel and operate, including your motivation to learn. These chemicals can be optimized with healthy lifestyle choices like, getting enough sleep, protein, exercise and staying away from stimulants, alcohol and drugs. 

It’s also a place and opportunity to let go of self diagnosing and saying “Because of my ADHD I can’t…” You have the power to make changes to your brains functioning with lifestyle changes alone. Let’s look at how these work together both for learning and overall well-being. 

Dopamine – is connected to future and immediate rewards, along with pleasure. Dopamine is what gives us a sense of motivation and drive. Often people will think it’s their “ADHD” that is causing them not to be motivated; however, it’s likely that lifestyle is also playing a huge role in lower levels. Take some time to honestly assess each of the areas listed above to ensure you are taking charge of well-being and ability to learn. 

Serotonin role – is connected to your social life and connection with others. It is connected to risk taking activity, low levels are linked to more risky behaviour. Serotonin is also related to impulse control. Healthy and consistent levels of serotonin help with taking moderate risks, promotes impulse control, and the ability to learn quicker. 

Acetylcholines – is connected to movement, encoding new memories, cognitive function, and attention. The better able you are to pay attention and focus, the more likely you are able to process new information and remember what you’re studying. The information you study during the day will then be consolidated while sleeping – another reason to get a good night’s sleep.

All three of these chemicals are affected by lifestyle. Managing your stress levels, getting enough sleep, eating enough protein and being active are essential to having healthy levels of each. I would add that screen time and other distractions affect your ability to stay focused and train your brain and nervous system to constantly be scattered and distracted. Being mindful of your screen time and making well-being a priority will have a huge positive impact on your ability to learn. 

The more you understand what is beneficial around a topic, the more likely you will succeed. This blog is just a quick peak at the two main factors that affect learning, the learning process and the use of chunking. In my next blog, I will go further into procrastination, memory, and how to become a better learner. I highly recommend taking this course at any stage of your life because it supports your understanding of how to learn, remember, and utilize the gift we have to learn and grow.