A great book written by Barbara Oakley. The book contains so many details about how to learn everything the easiest way possible. The following summary contains my favorite points.
Habits You can think of habits are like (brainless) zombies, if you don’t train yourself to control them, they will live for you, maybe not the way you want your life to be spent.
To get rid of the procrastinating zombie:
- Make a weekly to-do list of 20 or fewer items, from this list create a daily list of five to ten items. Don’t change the to-do list after it has been created.
- If you feel paralyzed by the many tasks you need to do, create three micro-tasks which can be done in five minutes. Focus all your attention on the first task: Close your eyes, tell your mind nothing else matters now. Take it step by step!
- Set your quitting time everyday
You cannot force creativity, the harder you try being creative, the less creative you will be.
The Pomodoro technique combines the focused “Step by Step” and the diffuse mode “Big Picture”, which are both needed for effective learning. I’m using YAPA2, Forest and Pomodoro Timer.
To build consistent knowledge, you need to focus all your attention on only one problem and solve it by yourself, without looking at the solution while solving it! Also, you are doomed to fail if you get the “Aha!” moment and then stop doing this kind of problem. The mind quickly forgets any knowledge which is not repeated (Spaced repetition is your friend – Anki). You also need to include breaks, my favorite activities are: Go for a walk, listen to music or meditate.
Most important: It’s okay if you procrastinate once, there are bad days, life comes in its way of your goals. Don’t beat you up for this, you cannot change what happened, you can only act now. Ask yourself: How can you go back on track?
It’s all about Metaphors. If you want to learn, metaphors are great. The more imaginable, the better it is. Try to create stories, they only need to make sense for yourself. You can also use the memory palace technique to create fancy stories about unrelated things (Like grocery list). Get fancy, nobody will ever find out which crazy things you are imagining.
The one rule I always want to remember: Law of Serendipity: Lady Luck favors the one who tries
How to read a book?
First look at table of contents to allow your brain to create mental hooks, ask yourself: “Is this book related to anything I already know?” (For me, this book, contains a mixture of ideas from Atomic Habits and the book Deep Work applied to learning). Before reading the book, take your time to look ahead and leaf through the book, taking a look at headings, graphics, summaries, and even questions.
😇 Great study rules:
- Eat the frog first, if you need to eat a frog today. Do it first thing in the morning!
- Repetition is essential for remembering
- Chunk your problems: Understand and practice solutions, so you can keep them in your head and have low access time to it
- Ask yourself, “How can I explain this so that my eight-year-old child could understand it?” – Don’t just do it in your head, say it out load or write it down.
- “Create a mental contrast: Imagine where you’ve come from and contrast that with your dreams”: When you are lacking motivation, it’s great to have some reminder: Create a reminder of your dreams and make it visible at your workspace.
👹 Last but not least, some study rules to avoid:
- Passive rereading
- Too much highlighting
- ‘Knowing’ how to perform a perfect push-up by watching it on YouTube without trying,
- Texting friends and learning at the same time
- Skipping the textbook: “Jump into the water without learning to swim”
Some AI powered tips:
- After reading a book(or even a part of the book) you can ask ChatGPT to generate questions for you and challenge what you learned
- Ask ChatGPT if it has any more good great books for you
How did you like this article? Is there anything I should add?
Leave me a comment if you like to 😄
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