Foundational Skills: Learning How to Learn
There are few concepts that have had more of an everlasting impact on me than this one. Learning how to learn is a foundational skill— it can change the trajectory of studying, switching careers, picking up a new hobby, but more importantly, our mindset that we are capable learners.
I vividly remember trying to study for interviews, stumbling upon this Coursera course online (procrastination really, but aren’t we glad?) and then slowly completely altering my learning style over the years. I’ve since used these to keep up with the ever-evolving world of software engineering, to learn finance and investing, to recall more from books I read, to learn cooking and for numerous courses I’ve taken.
Overview
My goal here is to make these concepts practical and accessible so each section comes with a “Putting it in Practice” section. 🤓 We’ll cover 4 key concepts here:
- Chunking: Learning in short bursts of time and breaking large amounts of information into smaller parts
2. Grouping chunks together: See the bigger picture before diving into details
3. Active recall: Summarizing and recalling material at frequent intervals
4. Spaced repetition: Relearning the material at spaced intervals
Followed by a bonus section for making learning fun! ✨
Core Concepts and Putting it in Practice
1. Chunking: Learning in short bursts of time and breaking large amounts of information into smaller parts
Why is it that we can remember telephone numbers like 081–129–832 (or atleast, could before mobile phones) but 9 single digits like 0–8–1–1–2–9–8–3–2 is a hard number to remember?
Our short-term memory can only hold seven chunks of information at once; therefore nine single digits is information overload, whereas three chunks isn’t. This is the crux of most memory games.
Fun fact: This concept was introduced by George Miller, “Father of the Cognitive Revolution”.
Putting it in practice
- Try the Pomodoro technique with 25 minute intervals of focused learning followed by 5 minutes break and repeat
- Divide content into smaller lectures grouped by a theme, like sections in a chapter
But how do we move this information from short-term memory to long-term, where it can be stored for years?
2. Grouping chunks together: See the bigger picture before diving into details
In order to master a concept, you need to know how it fits into the bigger picture, just like a puzzle piece. This is why books and courses have a table of contents and semester syllabus respectively to glance through the topics before diving into details.
Making connections to existing concepts can help with long term retention. This is very much like habit stacking, where you tack on a new habit after an established one.
“It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”
Putting it in practice
- Skim a book or course outline before diving into it. Have an organized outline of topics to illustrate the big picture or include a mind map diagram for non-linear concepts.
- Use analogies to identify patterns between previous knowledge and newly learned content. The opposite also works well where you can ask “How is concept X different from concept Y?”
- Ask yourself questions like “What am I looking to learn here”, “What are the real-world applications of this?”
3. Active recall: Summarizing and recalling material at frequent intervals
Do you find yourself reading a book but having trouble remembering its contents later ?It’s common to have a sense of familiarity with notes after glancing at them for hours. However, there is a difference between recognizing content and recalling it.
This is why studying with flashcards is so effective.
Putting it in practice
Group study and discussing with peers organically involves summarization and reflection. This comes with the added bonus of learning takeaways from multiple perspectives.
- Even when studying alone, you can ask yourself a series of questions about the content you just learned. It’s worth noting that mistakes made at this stage and correcting them is also an important step towards solidifying concepts.
- Studying with flashcards, doing practical exercises and quizzes
- If following the Pomodoro technique, sprinkle in 5 minutes of recall time before starting the next 25 minute study interval.
4. Spaced repetition: Relearning the material at spaced intervals
We don’t expect one big meal to curb our hunger for days, and neither can we expect one long study session to solidify our learnings.
In 2009, Nate Kornell at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that spacing out learning was more effective than cramming for 90% of the participants who took part in one of his experiments — and yet 72% of the participants thought that cramming had been more beneficial.
Additionally, each time we relearn something, we grasp somewhat different things from it, especially if some time has passed since the previous study session.
Putting it in practice
- Revisiting past content at frequent intervals. Structuring this into the study plan.
- Trying different modes of learning — quizzes, group study, exercises, or writing a summary for relearning content over spaced intervals.
Bonus section: Making learning fun
- Learning from multiple sources: Switching between text, video, audio and between formal and informal sources is a good way to keep it interesting and get the benefit of “multiple perspectives”.
- Raise the stakes. Add an element of productive pressure like a competition, a game, a performance, a deadline, a public commitment.
- Multiply the milestones en route to a goal. With a goal like “learn a new language”, there’s no destination and no intermediate levels. Creating multiple checkpoints makes it a more exciting journey, much like playing a game. You could also create before-and-after videos to see how far you’ve come.
LEVEL 1: Order a meal in Spanish.
LEVEL 2: Have a simple conversation in Spanish with a
taxi driver.
LEVEL 3: Glance at a Spanish newspaper and understand at least one headline.
LEVEL 4: Follow the action in a Spanish cartoon.
LEVEL 5: Read a kindergarten level book in Spanish.I’m happy to say that while this interest was born out of necessity, it has slowly completely altered my style of learning and increased my joy for learning. I hope it does the same for you! 😃 If you’re interested in reading more about this topic, here are some other resources:
- Coursera course by Barbara Oakley & Dr. Terrence Sejnowski
- Youtube videos by Ali Abdaal on Study Tips — How to learn new content and How to learn anything faster
