>> Amy Alkon is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, radio show host, journalist, book author and blogger. She turns reporting on evolutionary psychology and behavioral science findings into an art form, combining great writing were deep yet humorous insight. The result provides terrific and practical advice for how ordinary people can live better lives. Amy's book, I See Rude People. And most recently, Good Manners for Nice People, Who Sometimes Say the F word. Have helped create a new genre of insightful humor, based on practical science. Amy may be, as the LA Weekly put it, Miss Manners with fangs, but I tend to think of her as the literary daughter of Charles Darwin and Dorothy Parker. In Amy's work, she's forced to learn fast, reading a new book every other day or so even if she's keeping up with her voluminous writing and radio show hosting. She has a great deal of insight about efficient learning. So, it's a pleasure to speak with her today about her work.
Hi, Amy. Thanks so much for taking time from your busy schedule. We both know, we're both writers that writing is a form of learning. And so what I'd like to know is how do you use the focused and diffused modes to help you with your writing and with your learning?
>> I'm normally, very focused in my writing. It's a very intense process for me every hour of writing. And so, I need to take a break from that in order to really have the information be assimilated into me. And so what I like to do is to see that I work every day, little by little on a piece of work that I'm doing. Because then in the background when I'm sleeping, when I'm washing dishes, when I'm doing something other than writing, that information has a chance to process in my brain and that's a very important thing for me. I used to sometimes wait until the last minute to start writing my weekly advice column. And this is a huge mistake, because I would fail to take advantage of the diffuse mode where I would have these sort of elves in my brain taking the information, running around, doing something with it and processing it. Instead, I would just be all last minute and I really wasn't as smart in my writing or my thinking, because of that, cuz I didn't have the extra time. And it wasn't that I spent so much time doing extra work, it was just doing it days ahead of time that really made a difference.
>> That sounds a lot like the way I approach writing, as well. Well, tell me this, what do you do to help prevent procrastination? When you have the kind of writing job that you'd really rather not be doing?
>> Well, all writing jobs are jobs I'd rather not be doing. It's sometimes you have a beautiful paragraph, it just goes like butter. It's wonderful, it's funny. It's all together and clear, but usually that's not the case. And so usually knowing that, I would rather do just about anything than write. This is the time I sit down to write and I think about lint that must be lurking behind my furniture. So what I do is I turn on a timer. I set the timer for an hour. I know other people use different times. 20 minutes, the pomodoro. But I like the hour, because that gives me enough time to into flow, a flow state where I maybe can lose myself in the work. And sometimes I'll get going and I just feel dumb and like I'm making no progress, but I start typing and I start thinking. And eventually, something will come and I usually do get to that state where I get lost in my work and something really wonderful happens, but you really need to put in that time like that and not go cling behind your furniture in order to make the work really work.
>> You keep a very fast paced reading schedule on top of your regular work that many people would find daunting. How do you do it and do you have any special advice for picking out and remembering key points in books?
>> One of the really important things I learned. I used to read whole books even if they were boring and terrible and I was reading War and Peace. And every other chapter is Napoleon, they're cold, their feet are wet. And these chapters were just boring with me. So, I realized it's okay to skip parts of books. And so now, I approach a book like I do a buffet. And I take the things from it that are important to me and I skip the parts that are not. So when I say, I read probably a book a night, but I don't read the whole book in every case. Some of them, I just open and I see they're not worth very much and I close them right away. But I think it's very important to, even when you're reading a chapter, if you see a story you've already read. If you read a lot of science, you'll read research that you've read a million times before. I just lop that off the chapter and move on to the stuff that I don't know and haven't read. I think it' s really important to be a critical reader in that way. And then the other question you asked me, so you asked how do, what was the second question? Sorry.
>> [LAUGH] Do you have any special advice for picking out and remembering key points in books?
>> Well, there aren't so many key points in books. And sometimes when a book is very important to me or a point is very important, what I'll do is I'll write it down. It's really important. Writing something down with an actual pen and ink. Remember, those? It seems to ingrain it into your brain better. And then what I do and this maybe seems funny, I tape it on the wall outside my shower and I can see it from when I'm there. And so, I can look at that idea when I'm there and this is a sort of diffused mode of thinking. I'm not really focused on it. I'm not as intense as I am when I'm reading a book, but it's just there and so I can think about it in a sort of less intense way. And it helps me ingrain an idea that maybe is a difficult idea to otherwise get.
>> Any particular tips on how you learn most efficiently? >> When I read a passage, I don't quite get. I'll read it a few times, because sometimes the first time you miss things or it's the language that you're not used to. So that's pretty important. Another thing I'll do is go to other reference material, because sometimes someone is a poor writer, but has some really good ideas. So if I can understand the things they don't explain well, then I can maybe understand their idea better.
>> That makes sense. Finally, do you have any tips related to sleep?
>> I love sleep. I do about six things well and one of them is napping and this was not always the case. I took a yoga class, which I hate yoga. It was horrible, but the thing I learned to do was to breathe. I learned to slow down my breathing. And so in order to sleep, I just slow down my breathing. I'll take ten really, really slow breaths and I use that to slow myself down, so I can fall asleep. And something very important is not to sleep for too long. Because if you sleep for too long, you can actually get groggy. So I set my alarm clock for about 30 minutes and about 5 minutes of that is getting my dog to calm down, cuz she sleeps with her little snout on my neck. And she's only five pounds, she's not a Great Dane. So I then sleep for maybe 20 minutes, which seems to be a very good amount of time to give you a reboot rather than make you groggy.
>> That all sounds great. And Amy, thank you so very much for all of these insights. I'm sure they'll be particularly helpful for the writers among us. So thank you so very much.
艾米·阿尔坎是一位全国发行的报纸专栏作家、电台节目主持人、记者、作家和博主。她将进化心理学和行为科学研究成果的报导转化为一种艺术形式，结合了深入且幽默的见解的优秀写作。她的作品为普通人如何过上更好的生活提供了极好的实用建议。艾米的书《我看到粗鲁的人》以及最近出版的《好礼仪给好人，有时说脏话》帮助创造了一种新的富有洞察力的幽默风格，这种风格基于实际科学。正如《洛杉矶周刊》所说，艾米可能是“带牙齿的礼仪小姐”，但我倾向于认为她是查尔斯·达尔文和多萝西·帕克文学的女儿。在艾米的工作中，她被迫快速学习，即使她在忙于大量的写作和主持电台节目，她也会每隔一天左右阅读一本新书。她对高效学习有很深的见解。因此，今天能与她谈论她的工作是一件很愉快的事。
“嗨，艾米。非常感谢你从繁忙的日程中抽出时间来。我们都知道，我们都是作家，写作是一种学习的形式。所以我想知道你如何使用专注模式和发散模式来帮助你写作和学习？”
“我通常在写作时非常专注。对我来说，每个小时的写作都是一个非常紧张的过程。所以，我需要休息一下，以便真正让信息被吸收。我喜欢做的是每天都一点一点地完成我正在做的工作。因为当我睡觉、洗碗或做一些除了写作之外的事情时，这些信息有机会在我的大脑中处理，这对我非常重要。我曾经有时会等到最后一分钟才开始写我的每周建议专栏。这是一个巨大的错误，因为我没有利用发散模式，在这种模式下，我的大脑里会有一些小精灵来获取信息，四处奔跑，用它做些事情并处理它。相反，我会把所有的事情都留到最后一刻，因为我没有额外的时间，所以在写作或思考方面我并不聪明。这并不是因为我花了太多时间做额外的工作，而是提前几天做真的会有很大的不同。”
“这听起来和我对待写作的方式很像。那么告诉我，你是如何防止拖延的？当你有一个你宁愿不做的写作工作时你会怎么做？”
“嗯，所有的写作工作都是我宁愿不做的工作。有时候你有一个美丽的段落，就像黄油一样顺滑。它很棒，很有趣。一切都在一起并且清晰明了，但通常情况下并不是这样。所以通常知道这一点后，我宁愿做任何事情也不愿写作。这是我坐下来写作的时候，我会想到家具后面一定潜伏着一些灰尘。所以我会打开计时器。我设置计时器一个小时。我知道其他人使用不同的时间。20分钟番茄工作法。但我喜欢一个小时，因为这给了我足够的时间进入流动状态，在这个状态下我可能会沉浸在工作中。有时候我开始写并且感觉自己很愚蠢，好像没有进展，但我开始打字并开始思考。最终，一些东西会出现，我通常会进入那种状态，在那里我迷失在工作中并且发生了一些真正美妙的事情，但是你真的需要像那样投入时间而不是躲在家具后面为了让工作真正发挥作用。”
“你如何在日常工作的基础上保持如此快的阅读速度？很多人会觉得这很艰巨。你是如何做到的？你有什么特别的建议来挑选和记住书中的重点吗？”
“我学到的一个非常重要的一点就是，我曾经会读完整本书，即使它们很无聊、很糟糕，比如《战争与和平》。每章都有拿破仑，他们冷得要死，脚都湿了。这些章节对我来说只是无聊。所以，我意识到跳过书中的部分是可以接受的。所以现在，我对待一本书就像对待自助餐一样。我从中找到对我重要的东西，跳过那些不重要的部分。所以当我说，我可能每晚读一本书，但并不是每次都读完整本书。有些书，我只是打开看，发现它们并不值得花太多时间，我会立刻合上它们。但我认为，即使你在读一章时看到一个你已经读过的故事也很重要。如果你读了很多科学书籍，你会读到你已经读过无数次的研究。我只是把这一章删掉，然后继续读我不知道和没有读过的内容。我认为以这种方式成为一个批判性的读者是非常重要的。然后你问我的第二个问题是什么？抱歉。”
“（笑）你有什么特别的建议来挑选和记住书中的重点吗？”
“嗯，书中并没有那么多重点。有时候当一本书对我来说非常重要或者一个观点非常重要时，我会把它写下来。这真的很重要。用真正的笔和墨水写下一些东西。还记得那些吗？它似乎能更好地将信息植入你的大脑中。然后我做的一件事可能听起来很有趣，我会把它贴在我浴室外面的墙上，当我在那里的时候可以看到它。所以，我可以在洗澡的时候看到这个想法，这是一种分散思维的方式。我并不是真的专注于它。我不像读书时那样专注，但它就在那里，所以我可以用一种不那么强烈的方式思考它。它帮助我理解一个可能很难理解的想法。”
“关于你如何最有效地学习有什么特别的技巧吗？”
“当我读到一段我不太明白的话时，我会读几遍，因为有时候第一次你可能错过一些东西或者你对这种语言不熟悉。所以这非常重要。另一件事我会做就是查阅其他参考资料，因为有时候有些人写作能力不强，但他们有一些非常好的点子。所以如果我能理解他们没有解释清楚的事情，那么我可能能更好地理解他们的观点。”
“这很有道理。最后，你有没有什么与睡眠相关的建议？”
“我喜欢睡觉。我做六件事情都很擅长，其中之一就是小憩，但这并不总是这样。我上了一堂瑜伽课，虽然我不喜欢瑜伽。那很糟糕，但我学会了呼吸。我学会了放慢我的呼吸速度。为了入睡，我只是放慢了我的呼吸速度。我会非常非常缓慢地呼吸十次，我用这个方法来让自己放慢脚步，这样我就能入睡了。有一件非常重要的事情是不要睡太久。因为如果你睡得太久，实际上会让你昏昏欲睡。所以我设置我的闹钟大约30分钟，其中大约5分钟是用来让我的狗安静下来的，因为她把小鼻子放在我的脖子上睡觉。她只有五磅重，不是大丹犬。然后我大概睡20分钟，这似乎是一个很好的时间来让你重新启动 而不是让你昏昏欲睡。”
“听起来都很棒。艾米，非常感谢你所有的这些见解。我相信它们对我们中的作家来说尤其有帮助。非常感谢你！”
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