The Art of Improving Oneself
Introduction
We are born, and before we know what's going on, we are thrown into a school, to update our knowledge of the world. At least us, the lucky ones, are thrown into a school. Remember not everyone is as lucky as you, and may have to work hard before he has the chance to learn to read and write.
My point is: learning converts weak children into (mostly) decent and competent adults. Learning and improving is what differentiates the human from the animal.
The zen of improving yourself
Kung-fu masters spend decades practicing, punching and kicking, and that's how they become masters. But I'm a bad and impatient young grasshopper. I'm not willing to wait 50 years to become a master. I want to believe there is a way to accelerate it, to accelerate the acquisition of knowledge, skills and wisdom. And I think I have a point: some masters are incredibly young. So there must be some difference between the way the young master learns, and the way the old master learns. Otherwise young masters would not exist.
Motivation
Me, me, me. It's always me. I want to improve. I want to be better. I want to be great, and awesome, and powerfull, and all that stuff. And I happen to be a software developer, which puts me in a high learning career. Either learn and improve, or become an obsolete old fart. So following from it, I want to improve my way of improving, so I can be all that awesome in less time.
The way of the learner
So I used to learn the way I learn. Not really efective way. You know, you spend all these years at school learning Maths, and Geography, and History, and Language. But no teacher spends a friggin' minute teaching you how to learn. So you discover your own way, which mostly works for school, but it's probably sub-optimal, if not completely misleading.
Decades later, I read about the most popular MOOCs of 2014. And one of them was "Learning How to Learn". And it was an eye-opener for me. On this document, you will find a reduced version of what's available on the MOOC, so you can have it as a quick list.
Focused and diffuse modes of thinking
Your brain works in misterious ways, but the scientists have managed to separate them into two main ways:
- The diffuse mode: on this mode, your brain doesn't concentrate on anything special. You think about everything at the same time: the groceries list, today's bad traffic on the highway, the conversations you overheard at the office today... Just a bit of everything. On this mode, your thoughs jump around without focusing on anything. It's also the same mode you are on when you are going to sleep.
- The focused mode: This is the mode you enter when you are concentrating in order to solve a problem. All you can see is the problem in front of you. The sexiest girl in the world could be dancing naked in front of you, and you wouldn't see her.
The problem is that the focused mode is what you use to learn and to fix hard problems. It's the sharp point of the though. But it's so concentrated, it can't see any other solutions. On the other hand, the diffuse mode can see lots of solutions, different approaches, and is the way to think "out of the box". But it's pointless, and hardly could fix anything.
And your brain can only be at one mode. So you have to learn how to juggle the modes. How to go into focused, and diffused, on demand.
Key learning techniques
You open a text book. It's full of words. Definitely, not all the words are important. Some of them are more important than others. And there is this thing, called the "main idea", which is what you should remember. And that's probably the biggest point: remember the main idea.
- Remember: You are not learning if you are not remembering. Techniques such as highlighting fail often because the student concentrates into highlighting. What matters at the end is what you remember. So the first technique of the great learner, is to remember as much as possible of what has been studied. Study a bit, close the book, try to remember as much as possible. The very act of trying to remember helps push the knowledge into your long-term memory.
- The main idea: Everything revolves around the main idea. You can't learn properly until you have found the main idea and distilled it to it's minimum components.
- After each lesson, you have 1 minute to write down the key ideas in their minimum components, because you have just 1 minute. This will help memorize the core ideas and discard the chaff.
- Don't learn. Do. You will never become a master until you do whatever you want to learn. Read the text book, then apply what's written on the text book to actually fix something.
- Learning takes time. In order to learn something, you have to repeat it several times, over a long period of time. If you learn something in a day, it will be forgotten in another day. The only way to make it stick is by repeating it over several days.
- Relax. Not everything can fit in your head in a day. Even worse, when your head is stuck with the wrong answer, hammering it will only make it worse. Let your mind wander away for a while, and let go the broken answer in order to make space for the right one.
- Interleave learning. Study several disciplines every day at different times. Your brain works and improves when you make it switch between different tasks.
- Exercise is awesome. Your brain relaxes when you exercise, your blood flows better, the toxins go away, the belly fat dissolves, and you feel better. There is no bad side.
- Sleep is very important. Your brain cleans up itself and reinforces ideas while sleeping. So sleeping too little in order to study more is actually a bad idea.
Closing
Mastering learning is really worthy, specially in this day and specially for technical and information professionals. Not a single day goes on where something new is discovered, or a new technique is developed. So if you want to stay on top of everything, you certainly need to be really good at learning and improving. So keep learning!