【Learn how to learn】Focused versus Diffuse Thinking

Focused Modes: It’s a familiar thought pattern. The concept you’re trying to understand that’s related to something you’re rather familiar with.

Diffuse Modes: You can look at things broadly from a very different, big-picture perspective. You can make new neural connections traveling along new pathways.

So, the bottom line is, when you’re learning something new, especially something that’s a little more difficult, your mind needs to be able to go back and forth between the two different learning modes.

To gain muscular structure, you need to do a little work every day, gradually allowing your muscles to grow. Similarly, to build neural structure, you need to do a little work every day, gradually allowing yourself to grow a neuro-scaffold to hang your thinking on a little bit, every day, and that’s the trick.

Brains evolved to help us navigate complex environments, and
most of the heavy lifting is done below our level of consciousness. Psychologists who study the unconscious mind have found that influences include thought processes, memory, emotions and motivation.

This illustrates that, intriguingly, that you are not the same person you were after a night’s sleep or even a nap. It is if you went to bed with one brain and woke up with an upgrade.

Supplementary course text: a mind for numbers