学会如何学习学习笔记——1. 4 什么是学习——拖延症简介、实践使记忆永存

拖延症简介

Everybody has some issues with procrastination. Because if you're working on something, it means you're not working, on a lot of other things. But some people have more issues with procrastination than others. In this video, we're going to give you a little insight into procrastination. Why it arises, and a powerful little tool to help you address it.

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. 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. So it seems what happens when you procrastinate, is something like this. First, you observe, and get a cue about something that causes a tiny bit of unease. You don't like it, so to make the sensation go away you turn your attention from whatever caused that unease. You turn toward something more pleasant. The result, you feel happier, temporarily. We're going to talk more about procrastination later on.

But in the meantime, I'm going to let you in on a handy little mental tool. This tool is called, the Pomodoro. It was invented by Francesco Cirillo, in the early 1980's. 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.

Give it a try. Next, we're going to see how one very shy ten-year old, changed her brain.

每个人都会有一些拖延的问题。因为如果你正在做某件事情，那就意味着你没有在做其他很多事情。但是有些人比其他人更容易拖延。在这个视频中，我们将给你一些关于拖延的启示。为什么它会出现，以及一个强大的小工具来帮助你解决这个问题。

当你看到你不想做的事情时，似乎你激活了你大脑中与痛苦相关的区域。你的大脑很自然地会寻找一种方法来停止这种消极的刺激，通过将你的注意力转移到其他事情上。但这里有个小技巧。研究人员发现，在人们开始真正处理他们不喜欢的事情后不久，那种神经不适就消失了。所以当你拖延时，似乎会发生类似的事情。首先，你观察并得到一些引起轻微不安的线索。你不喜欢它，所以为了让这种感觉消失，你会将注意力从引起不安的事物上转移开。你转向更愉快的事物。结果是，你暂时感到更快乐。我们稍后会更多地谈论拖延问题。

但与此同时，我会让你了解一个方便的小心理工具。这个工具被称为“番茄工作法”。它是由弗朗西斯科·西里洛在20世纪80年代初发明的。“番茄”是意大利语中的“番茄”的意思。你经常使用的计时器看起来像一个番茄，实际上，这个优雅的小技巧只需要一个计时器。你需要做的就是设置一个25分钟的计时器，关闭所有干扰，然后集中注意力。就是这样！大多数人都可以在25分钟内集中注意力。最后一件重要的事情是在完成后给自己一个小小的奖励。几分钟的网络浏览、一杯咖啡、或者吃一块巧克力，甚至只是伸展或漫无目的地聊天，让你的大脑享受一段时间的注意力转移。你会发现使用番茄工作法非常有效。这有点像在精神健身房进行一次25分钟的高强度锻炼，然后进行一些精神放松。

试试看吧。接下来，我们将看到一个非常害羞的10岁孩子如何改变她的大脑。

实践使记忆永存

[BLANK_AUDIO] Yep, that's me when I was 10. I loved animals, handicrafts, and dreaming. Back then, I was the belligerent queen of anti-math. I neglected, ignored, flunked, and downright hated math and science all through grade school, middle school, and high school. It's strange to realize I'm now a professor of Engineering. I enlisted in the army right out of high school to study language at the Defense Language Institute. That's me at 18, looking very nervous and very focused while throwing a hand  grenade. I only started to study math and science when I was 26 years old, after I got out of the military. At first, it was really hard. There were all these quick thinkers in my classes who seemed to get everything a lot easier and faster than me. Sometimes I'd take a break for a few months, I'd go out and work as a Russian translator on Soviet trawlers. That's me up in the Bering Sea. And I'd come back to school and try and learn some more. As I gained technical know-how, new doors started opening up for me. I ended up working as a radio operator at the South Pole Station in Antarctica. That's where I met my husband. I always say I had to go the end of the Earth to meet that man. Here he is, after only 10 minutes outside at minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit with a 60-mile-an-hour wind. The wind chill takes it off the charts. Now, I wasn't natural in math and science. Not at all. The way I succeeded was to gradually begin to figure out some tricks.

But let's back up a step. In the greater scheme of all the different careers and disciplines that people can pursue, why are those involving math and science, sometimes, a bit more challenging? We think it may be related, at least in part, to the abstract nature of the ideas. I mean, let's take a cow for example, out standing in a field. If you have the word cow, you can point right to a cow to learn what that word means. Even the letters for the word cow, C-O-W, are roughly analogous to sounds that they stand for. 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.

You can see on your left here the symbolic representation of a thought pattern. Neurons become linked together through repeated use. The more abstract something is, the more important it is to practice in order to bring those ideas into reality for you. Even if the ideas you're dealing with are abstract, the neural thought patterns you are creating are real and concrete. At least they are if you build and strengthen them through practice. Here's a way to picture what's going on. When you first begin to understand something, for example, how to solve a problem, the neural pattern from is there, but very weak. Kind of like the faint pattern at the top of our pinball machine analogy here. When you solve the problem again fresh from the start, without looking at the solution. You, if you begin deepening that neuron pattern, kind of like the darker pattern you see here in the middle. And when you have the problem down cold, so you can go over each step completely and concisely in your mind without even looking at the solution, and you've even had practice on related problems, why then, the pattern is like this dark firm pattern you can see towards the bottom of the pinball frame.

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.

Next stop, we'll be talking about chunking, the vital essence of how you grasp and master key ideas. 

是的，那就是我10岁时的样子。我喜欢动物、手工艺品和做梦。那时候，我是反数学的女战士。在整个小学、初中和高中阶段，我忽视、忽略、不及格，甚至完全讨厌数学和科学。现在意识到我是一名工程学教授，这很奇怪。我从高中毕业后就直接参军，在国防语言学院学习语言。那是我18岁的样子，手里拿着手榴弹，看起来非常紧张和专注。我是在26岁开始学习数学和科学的，那时我刚从军队退役。起初，这真的很难。我的班上有很多思维敏捷的人，他们似乎比我更容易更快地掌握一切。有时我会休息几个月，出去做俄语翻译工作，在苏联拖网渔船上工作。那是我在白令海的样子。然后我回到学校，再尝试多学一点东西。随着我掌握了技术知识，新的大门为我打开了。我最终在南极洲南極站担任无线电操作员。那就是我遇到我丈夫的地方。我总是说我要走到地球的尽头才能遇到那个人。这就是他的样子，在零下70华氏度的温度下，外面的风速为每小时60英里的情况下，只在外面待了10分钟。寒风刺骨。现在，我在数学和科学方面并不自然。一点也不。我成功的方式是逐渐开始找出一些窍门。

但是让我们退后一步。在人们可以追求的所有不同的职业和学科中，为什么那些涉及数学和科学的有时会更具挑战性呢？我们认为这可能至少部分与这些想法的抽象性质有关。我的意思是，让我们以一头牛为例，站在田野里。如果你有“牛”这个词，你可以直接指向一头牛来了解这个词的意思。即使是“牛”这个词的字母C-O-W，也大致类似于它们所代表的声音。但是对于数学概念来说，通常没有你可以指向的类似的东西。田野里没有突出的加号标志。没有直接等同于数学或科学术语的乘法、除法或其他东西。换句话说，这些术语更抽象。好吧，你可能会说，是的，但是像爱、热情或希望这样的词呢？这些都是抽象的。是的，它们是抽象的，但问题是，这些抽象术语通常与我们的情感有关。我们可以感受到我们的情感，即使我们不能看到并指向具体的例子，就像我们可以用牛一样。这意味着用你在数学和科学中学到的想法和概念进行练习是很重要的，就像你在学任何东西一样，帮助你增强和加强你在学习过程中建立的神经连接。

你可以在左边看到思想模式的象征性表示。神经元通过重复使用而相互链接在一起。越抽象的东西就越重要去练习以便将这些想法变成现实。即使你正在处理的想法是抽象的，你正在创建的神经网络模式也是真实和具体的。至少它们是真实的和具体的，如果你通过实践建立和加强它们的话。这里有一张图片来描述正在发生的事情：当你第一次开始理解某件事时（例如如何解决问题），神经模式就在那里，但很弱小。有点像我们在弹球机比喻中的顶部微弱的模式。当你再次从头开始解决一个问题时（不看解决方案），如果你开始加深那个神经元模式（就像你在中间看到的这个更暗的模式），当你已经完全掌握了这个问题时（甚至可以不用看解决方案就能在脑海中完整而简洁地回顾每个步骤），并且你已经在相关问题上进行了练习，那么这个模式就像你可以在弹球机的底部看到的这个深色坚固的模式一样。”

实践使持久不变。当你在学习时，你想要做的是研究一些东西。通过专注地学习来深入研究它。然后休息一下或者至少把注意力转移到其他事情上一会儿。在这个看似放松的时间里，你的大脑的散漫模式有机会在后台工作并帮助你理解概念。你的神经网络在某种程度上有机会干燥起来。如果你不这样做，而是通过死记硬背来学习，那么你的知识基础就会看起来像这样——所有东西都混乱不清、基础薄弱。如果你有拖延症的问题，那就是你想使用番茄钟的时候了——那个短暂的计时器。这有助于你开始行动起来，每天使用短暂时间段的专注注意力来帮助你开始建立你需要在更困难的材料上取得成功的神经网络模式。”

下一站我们将讨论组块化——你抓住和掌握关键思想的关键本质是什么。