Learning

The more you bleed in practice, the less you bleed in war

Introduction

I've always wondered about learning and what makes things stick. Recently a friend of mine reviewed Make it stick on Goodreads with 5 starts. So I decided to give it a read. This book challenges the existing status quo about education and wants us to change the way we learn.

Current methods

The current methods include rote memorisation and repetition to perfection. But these don't serve the purpose beyond temporary learning for tests/exams. Students try cramming as much knowledge as possible the before the exam so that they can pass. This goes one step further and children start optimising based on the questions being asked and hence skip certain sections of the syllabus.

This method of repeating until one gets it right is observed in plenty of other fields like learning music and playing a sport. This method is highly ineffective and I can vouch for it. The problem with this method is that the person feels like he's got it at the moment, but soon after the forgetting curve kicks in and it slips from his memory. I just did an online course by De Bono on Thinking and I've already forgotten a large part of it. I barely recall 20% of the course material, so now I've to rewatch it.

Recall

Once we have been exposed to some new knowledge, it's important to spend some time recalling the contents. It's the best way to understand something and break the forget curve. I realise this from personal experience. Between June and December, I used to read something every night and would then explain the contents to my (ex)girlfriend. That recall would help me consolidate ideas and remember things that I'd read earlier.

Ideally every night one should spend some time recalling the events of the day before they go to sleep. This breaks the forget curve. Recall strengthens the neural path ways. We then tend to really understand a topic rather than just keep surface knowledge of the concept.

Reflection is a great form of recall. One should often question themselves as to how they could have better tackled a situation and what are the alternatives to the proposed/implemented solution. This helps consolidate ideas and build the critical neural pathways.

Mix it up

It's important to learn many aspects of the topic and then practice them regularly. We should learn different ideas and concepts of a particular topic and see how they may be applied. We should practice each of these so that we don't bored of repeating the same thing too many times. We also learn how many ideas can be applied in different situations.

For example, when practicing elementary mathematics, one should be practicing both algebra and geometry. Not just one of them until we get it right. So if one is running, then they should consider running long distance and short sprints. They should also practice other things like running on different terrains and going up and down hill etc. This kind of variations tests us to be best prepared for various circumstances and adapt to a variety of challenges as we encounter them.

The author suggests that for education, instead of mid term and end semester exam, colleges should opt for period tests at regular intervals (maybe 8-10 tests for a semester). This way students are forced to apply their knowledge more often, acting as a form of recall.

It's important to practice often. Keep practicing a core set of skills and add minimal amount of differentiating skill. One proposed idea is The Leitner box which asks us to divide a set of flashcards into four boxes. The first compartment contains the parts that we are weakest at and needs most practice. The next box are the ones that we have better familiarity, so they practiced with half the frequency and so on.

The role of repetition is critical, but it must be done in regular intervals while being interleaved with other ideas. Have a hold on various concepts so we understand how each piece fits in the whole. The last few hours of REM sleep plays an important role in reinforcing motor skills. (A detailed account of this given in Why we Sleep? by Sleep Scientist Matthew Walker.)

Desirable Difficulties

Learning happens as a three step process. First we need to encode the rough information available into a form that our mind understands. The next step is consolidating these short term memory to long term memory. The last step is recalling the stored memories applying them as required.

These learnt skills are stored in our brains as mental models. They represent how we think of the world and the various situations and how we behave when under the circumstances. We should update these mental models whenever new information is available.

A key step towards learning is figuring out how to persevere past desirable difficulties. We may fail repeatedly in the process, but that's what helps us figure out what's wrong and build better mental representations. Failure should not be thought of as a mistake and something to regret, but as a stepping stone in the right direction. A desirable update to our mental models.

Steve jobs said the best thing that happened to him was getting fired, so he could start again as a beginner. Edison once said, he hadn't failed, but had found 10000 ways of not getting not the required output. Perseverance and a strong heart to follow a vision that only you can see is the secret to success.

Desirable difficulties are the ones that help us do more and better by applying the right constraints. Good examples include project deadlines and resource constraints. Undesirable constraints are the ones that make life unnecessarily harder like translating an Lithuanian book for knowledge.

Illusion of Knowledge

Humans have two systems of cognition, System 1 for involuntary actions and fast thinking and System 2 for slow thinking and decision making. This dual system was introduced and popularised by Daniel Kahneman. His book Thinking Fast and Slow describes the role of each of these systems in detail.

As a result of the dual mental systems that all of us possess, we are victims to several cognitive biases and misunderstandings and victims of memory corruption. The author has written about several of these biases and given an example for each kind. It was definitely one of the best written chapters in the book.

• Fluency vs Understanding: We often think we are good at a particular topic although we are just fluent with the ideas and concepts presented to us. For example, the author was taking about a flight crash incident in this chapter which felt oddly similar to the one I had read in Smarter, Faster, Better, so I quickly went over it and only later realised the story was different.
• Time taken by others to understand(master) a topic: We underestimate how long other take to understand a particular topic. I experienced this first hand while teaching Circles to a 15 year old. I taught him the whole text book material in one hour without realising that I had spent months learning and understanding the ideas.
• Dennis Kruger Effect: Rating ourselves better than we really are. I believe that I'm good at judging people and yet I get surprised by the results that they produce.
• Mistaking imaginary thoughts for memories: Like the lady who thought her innocent dad had abused her as a child. The memory was planted by her psychologist who had a personal agenda against some men.
• Recalling slightly different occurrence of the event each time: Ever noticed how the story we tell is slightly different each time? These newly recited ideas become our new beliefs of the story which change every time the event/story is recounted
• Success is all Skill, Failure is External Factors: I've seen this quite often, people are ready to attribute success to pure skill and go to any extent to blame failure to factors well beyond their control. For example, I bought bitcoin in early 2017 and got rid of it in Feb 2018 and made some good profit in the exchange. I always thought of it as a great and skilful investment. Until recently, now I know it was sheer dumb luck.
• Social conformity and ideas manipulating memories and thoughts: Our memory is very hazy. When we are recounting a particular incident, when a friend adds some detail to the story (which may not be true), it gets added to our mental model of the incident and gets distorted. So the next time we recount this event, we tend to include the new detail.
• The world we see is from our perspective and assume that everyone sees it the same way: What seems so obvious to us is not so for others because their perspective is entirely different.
• Often seeing ideas presented from our experience point of view and then agreeing and disagreeing with it: When an article with a particular view is presented, we view it from the facts and experiences that we have and rate it. It's hard to be objective without being subjective.

We can't eliminate the effect of biases in our thought process, but we can be aware of incidents around us. We can improve with feedback (positive and negative) by taking it constructively. For instance we can see how the players who get picked last for a team know that they are no good at the sport.

Learning Styles

The author argues that different people are more comfortable in learning, but often this is a result of correlation rather than causation. For example: subjects like maths are learnt better through seeing examples than listening to an audiobook. He urges us to move beyond learning style and comfort. He asks to pursue feedback based learning instead.

Pick up a topic, find out our initial competency. Then figure out what's lacking and resources to learn from. Practice those, get better and repeat the cycle. When struck with a problem, examine the why behind the problem. Try to find it's root cause. As explained in Start with Why, to get to the root cause of a problem ask Why repeated. 5 times is enough to get you to the original cause.

When we pick up a concept to learn, we should build strong structure of the underlying fundamentals. Everything we learn after will be built on our understanding of these fundamentals. Figure out the basics better.

Look for similarities and rules behind different underlying concepts and examples, rather than memorising different examples. This is called rule based understanding. Rather than choosing what's easy, choose what's hard and find out why it's hard.

Growth Mindset

The brain is believed to plastic, so it can build new connections and strengthen pathways in the light of new information. No one is cursed/blessed with innate intelligence. Sure everyone has a base IQ which can be improved by hardwork, grit and perseverance. Adopting a growth mindset can help attain mastery over any subject as described in Peak. There are three important ideas to follow. First is the Inner Locus of Control, Second is Deliberate Practice and finally mental models and mnemonics.

Inner Locus of Control is belief in oneself. He blames himself for failure and acknowledges the role of luck in success. When he fails in something, he learns from it and grows.

Deliberate Practice is concentrated effort on a particular topic. It's the identification of different concepts and how to improve each aspect of them. Generally a coach/trainer helps with this because they've made the journey earlier and can explain how to achieve success. Meticulous deliberate practice over thousands of hours yields to mastery over any subject.

Mnemonics and Memory Techniques help remember concepts that we have learnt. There are several methods of remembering things. The technique's of remembering are for another blogpost. But the key take away is that these techniques are a way to connect and remeber things that we have already learnt, it's not a way to learn new concepts.

Putting it all Together

Now I know the techniques of learning, I intend to put them to good use in my daily life.

• Recall the concepts that I've studied rather than reread them
• When reading concepts interleave them to get different perspectives and see how it fits in the bigger picture
• I'll struggle with problems before looking for solutions, because desirable difficulties are the best way to learn
• I'll have to practice spaced retrieval to build better neural connections
• I'll test often to avoid common cognitive biases
• I'll look for rules and commonalities and differences between examples rather than mugging them
• I'll follow the growth mindset and keep an internal locus of control
• I'll follow the principles of deliberate practice to get better
• I'll use mnemonics and memory techniques to remember topics

Posted a miniature version to goodreads: Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

View all my reviews