The 80-20 of learning how to learn. • Aryan Rahman: Building Reality

Summary: A few simple tips on learning that go a long way.

Before we start, it’s important to have a growth mindset when it comes to learning and life, in general.

Growth Mindset is basically the belief that You can achieve things using hard work and dedication.

Learning is an important skill. Knowledge is power, wealth and freedom. How?

Let’s say you had the knowledge of what the winning numbers of the next big lottery ticket are. You could either buy those exact numbers and win big bucks or you could announce that you’re buying this ticket and buy them off of the person holding it.

I make outrageous examples to prove my point. Let’s tone it down a bit.

The knowledge to make the necessary calculations and find patterns on the stock prices of companies has made a lot of people rich. If you can predict which stock prices will rise you’ll be wealthy. With that wealth, you can buy freedom and power 🤑.

What are the best ways to learn?

Our goal is simple, learn the right things in the right way so we can optimize applying that knowledge to our advantage.

For this blog post let’s focus on the right way:

When you’re a complete beginner you will need a lot of hand-holding before you can apply the knowledge.

Focus on lectures, books, YouTube videos. This phase contains passive consumption mostly but you’ll need to do practice problems and work through them while looking at a solution. Our goal is the figure out the fundamental patterns of this new thing.

Many people will stress that you learn by doing, doing and doing, but recent research has shown that this is inefficient.

For example, let’s say I gave you a special relativity problem(Einstein theorized this) and a book about it, then I told you to ‘dive in’ and solve it. Unless the book contains the exact solution or a similar pattern it’s highly unlikely someone with 0 knowledge can figure it out.

As you take your time with these things you can also incorporate note-taking after you’re done with studying. The purpose of this note isn’t to have a permanent record, it’s purpose is to organize your thoughts after the study session so your brain can process it. You can also take help from drawing things out such as in mind maps or diagrams.

You learn the right things when you know what the right thing looks like and slowly working towards it by attempting to do it repeatedly. In this process, you’ll do things wrong but you’ll also identify it. The formal name for the methods in this section are Efficient Encoding, Mind Mapping and Visualization. These techniques help you clarify and organize your thoughts, find patterns and figure out the best way to store it in memory.

This can be related to any sort of learning be it academics, sports, martial arts, swimming etc.

Take frequent random breaks between study and practice sessions.

This break must not be something that distracts you rather just stay still, close your eyes, take a walk or drink some water. This gives your brain some time to process all that information.

Technique Name: Pomodoro. Don’t have fixed sessions, just figure out when you’re brain is tired of learning.

Your brain is a muscle, so just like doing pushups maybe you can do 10 pushups in a row. However, if you do 4, rest 20 seconds, and do 4 again, you’re probably going to do more than 10 pushups rather than being exhausted. The point is resting can lead to more study time overall.

Have the mentality that you’re teaching yourself or another person the material. This will gear your brain to make more efficient patterns.

Look at what you’ll be studying beforehand on a surface-level, like looking at the title and summary. Your brain will automatically make assumptions about the topic. Then after you actually start consuming the content, check with your assumptions and spark questions as you go(write them down!).

Most of the times your questions will be answered when you finish the material but if it doesn’t you look for answers elsewhere(ChatGPT or Google).

You might ask. Isn’t this what a teacher does for student? Yes, you’re right. The formal name for these techniques are the Feynmann Technique and Inquiry-Based Learning.

After reaching a baseline of expertise, practise on your own.

Now you know what the right pattern looks like, it’s time to drill down on doing it right. For coding it would mean, you know JavaScript and it’s concepts but now you’ll do your own projects to solidify them. For learning Maths, it would mean that you already solved 3-4 problems by looking at the examples now you’ll try 1-2 problems on your own.

Formal Name: Active Recall. When someone tests themselves without help from the resources and only relies on their memory. Their brain works harder to remember leading to better memory. Moreover, if you truly want to embed your learnings in memory you might have to go back to them from time to time, this is formally called Spaced Repetition.

An important step before you do this is to gain a basic understanding first from an external resource.

Sketch out a roadmap by consulting other experts in the thing you’re trying to learn. From doing this you’ll know:

Why you want to learn this thing? This will ignite motivation.
What pre-requisite topics are needed.

Have a project at the end of this roadmap, where you’ll bring every learning together to create something. This something can be a video, a blog post, a coding project etc.

This project will challenge your brain the most as you’re trying to create something new from your learnings.

Take your time!

Learning is a complex topic and there are a lot of ways to approach it but in the end it’s just a function of the time and effort you put into it. Learning means you have to overcome procrastination and distraction, set a schedule, practice material, and do it repeatedly so it sticks. There’s no short cut but being smart about it can hugely help you out!

Some more research-backed things that contribute to better learning:
- Sleep! Our brain processes information even when we’re idle or sleeping. This is why cramming doesn’t work.
- Intense physical activity 3 times a week, can be lifting weights or cardio/sports(best if both).
- Eat healthy.
- Focus. Humans can’t multitask. Train your brain to focus.
- Don’t cram. Space out your studies. Learning 10 minutes everyday for 10 days is better than 2 hours in one session.
- Avoid procrastination. This is another topic of discussion.
Avoid useless techniques such as:
- Re-reading multiple times. Rather find a temporary alternate resource to gain another perspective.
- Highlighting. Doesn’t work.
- Note-taking directly from the content. Your brain is not involved in this activity.

That’s it really. Personally I learn in the best way when I look at other people’s solutions to problems or questions and then come up with my own. Once you do it enough times, you’ll have the expertise to come up with your own answers.

In this article, I tried to give you a simplified view of the best study techniques, I’ve been following this field of study for close to 3 years 😛.

Happy Learning!