【Learn how to learn】Procrastination, memory and sleep

【Procrastination】

【一】

When you look at something that you really rather not do, it seems that you activate the areas of your brain associated with pain. Your brain, naturally enough, looks for a way to stop that negative stimulation by switching your attention to something else. You turn toward something more pleasant. The result, you feel happier, temporarily. But here’s the trick. Researchers discovered that not long after people might start actually working out what they didn’t like, that neurodiscomfort disappeared.

This tool is called, the Pomodoro (Pomodoro is Italian for tomato). The timer you use often looks like a tomato and really, a timer is all there is to this elegant little technique. All you need to do, is set a timer to 25 minutes, turn off all interruptions, and then focus. That’s it! Most anybody can focus for 25 minutes. The only last important thing is to give yourself a little reward when you’re done. A few minutes of web surfing, a cup of coffee, or a bite of chocolate, even just stretching or chatting mindlessly, allowing your brain
to enjoyably change its focus for a while. You’ll find that using the Pomodoro technique is very effective. It’s a little like doing an intense 25 minute workout at a mental gym. Followed by some mental relaxation.

【二】

If you have the word cow, you can point right to a cow to learn what that word means. But for mathematical ideas, there’s often no analogous thing that you can point to. There are no plus signs standing out in a field. No multiplication, division, or other kinds of things that can directly equate to mini mathematical or scientific terms. These terms are more abstract, in other words. Well, you might say, yeah, but what about ones like love, zest, or hope? Those are all abstract. Yes they are, but the thing is, these abstract terms are often related to our emotions. We can feel our emotions, even if we can’t see and point to concrete examples, like we could with the cow.

This means it’s important to practice with ideas and concepts your learning in math and science, just like anything else you’re learning. to help enhance and strengthen the neural connection your making during the learning process. Practice makes permanent.

When you’re learning, what you want to do is study something. Study it hard by focusing intently. Then take a break or at least change your focus to something different for awhile. During this time of seeming relaxation, your brain’s diffuse mode has a chance to work away in the background and help you out with your conceptual understanding. Your, your neural mortar in some sense has a chance to dry. If you don’t do this, if instead you learn by cramming, your knowledge base will look more like this, all in a jumble with everything confused, a poor foundation. If you have problems with procrastination, that’s when you want to use the Pomodoro, that brief timer. This helps you get going, using brief periods each day of focused attention, that will help you start building the neural patterns you need to be more successful in learning more challenging materials.

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【Memory】

Working memory is the part of memory that has to do with what you’re immediately and consciously processing in your mind. Short-term memory is something like an inefficient mental blackboard. The other form of memory, long term memory is like a storage warehouse, and just like a warehouse, it’s distributed over a big area. Different kinds of long-term memories are stored in different regions of the brain.

Research has shown that when you first try to put an item of information in long-term memory, you need to revisit it at least a few times to increase the chances that you’ll be able to find it later when you might need it. The long-term memory storage warehouse is immense, it’s got room for billions of items. In fact there can be so many items they can bury each other. So it can be difficult for you to find the information you need unless you practice and repeat at least a few times. Long-term memory is important because it’s where you store fundamental concepts and techniques that are often involved in whatever you’re learning about.

When you encounter something new, you often use your working memory to handle it. If you want to move that information into your long-term memory, it often takes time and practice. To help with this process, use a technique called spaced repetition. This technique involves repeating what you’re trying to retain, but what you want to do is a space this repetition out. Repeating a new vocabulary word or a problem solving technique for example over a number of days. Extending your practice over several days does make a difference.

Research has shown that if you try to glue things into your memory by repeating something 20 times in one evening for example, it won’t stick nearly as well as if you practice it the same number of times over several days. This is like building the brick wall we saw earlier, if you don’t leave time for the mortar to dry, that is time for the synaptic connections to form and strengthen, you won’t have a very good structure, and talk about lasting structure, look at this part of the Acropolis here.

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【Sleep】

You might be surprised to learn that just plain being awake creates toxic products in your brain. How does the brain get rid of these poisons? Turns out that when you sleep, your brain cells shrink. This causes an increase in the space between your brain cells. It’s like unblocking a stream. Fluid can flow past these cells and wash the toxins out.

Taking a test without getting enough sleep means you’re operating with a brain that got little metabolic toxins floating around in it, poisons, and make it so you can’t think very clearly. It’s kind of like trying to drive a car that’s got sugar in its gas tank, doesn’t work too well. In fact, getting too little sleep doesn’t just make you do worse on tests. Too little sleep over too long of a time can also be associated with all sorts of nasty conditions including headaches, depression, heart disease, diabetes and just plain dying earlier.

But sleep does more than just allow your brain to wash away toxins. It’s actually an important part of the memory and learning process. It seems that during sleep, your brain tidies up ideas and concepts you’re thinking about and learning. It erases the less important parts of memories and simultaneously strengthens areas that you need or want to remember. During sleep, your brain also rehearses some of the tougher parts of whatever you’re trying to learn, going over and over neural patterns to deepen and strengthen them. Sleep has also been shown to make a remarkable difference in your ability to figure out difficult problems and to understand what you’re trying to learn. It’s as if the complete deactivation of the conscious you in the prefrontal cortex at the forefront of your brain helps other areas of your brain start talking more easily to one another allowing them to put together the neural solution to your learning task while you’re sleeping. Of course, you must also plant the seed for your diffuse mode by first doing focused mode work.

If you’re going over what you’re learning right before you take a nap or going to sleep for the evening, you have an increased chance of dreaming about it. If you go even further and set it in mind that you want to dream about the material it seems to improve your chances of dreaming about it, still further. Dreaming about what you’re studying can substantially enhance your ability to understand. It somehow consolidate your memories into easier to grasp chunks.