#31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn

Just when I start to think I’m using my time well and getting a lot done in my life, I meet someone like Barbara Oakley. Barbara is a true polymath. She was a captain in the U. S. Army, a Russian translator on Soviet trawlers, a radio operator in the South Pole, an engineer, university professor, researcher and the author of 8 books. Oh, and she is also the creator and instructor of Learning to Learn, the most popular Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) ever(!), with over one million enrolled students. In this fascinating interview, we cover many aspects of learning, including how to make it stick so we remember more and forget less, how to be more efficient so we learn more quickly, and how to remove that barriers that get in the way of effective learning. Specifically, Barbara covers: How she changed her brain from hating math and science to loving it so much she now teaches engineering to college students What neuroscience can tell us about how to learn more effectively The two modes of your brain and how that impacts what and how you learn Why backing off can sometimes be the best thing you can do when learning something new How to “chunk” your learning so new knowledge is woven into prior knowledge making it easily accessible The best ways to develop new patterns of learning in our brains How to practice a skill so you can blast through plateaus and improve more quickly Her favorite tactic for dealing with procrastination so you can spend more time learning The activities she recommends that rapidly increase neural connections like fertilizer on the brain Whether memorization has a place in learning anymore, or simply a barrier to true understanding The truth about “learning types” and how identifying as a visual or auditory learner might be setting yourself up for failure. ...and a whole lot more. If you want to be the most efficient learner you can be, and have more fun doing it, you won’t want to miss this discussion. Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to the Farnham Street Podcast called The Knowledge Project. I'm your host, Shane Parrish, the curator behind the Farnham Street blog, which is an online community focused on mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. The Knowledge Project is where we talk with interesting people to uncover frameworks you can use to learn more in less time, make better decisions, and live a happier, more meaningful life. On this episode, I have Barbara Oakland. She's a professor of engineering at Oakland University, the co-creator of the most popular online course on learning, a speaker, the author of two books, A Mind for Numbers and Mind Shift. This podcast is a near non-stop exploration of how we learn.

• 0:51Shane Parrish?

  We bust some myths about how we learn, offer effective strategies you can use today, and show you how everything from reading to memory to recall all fits together. What better way to master the best of what other people have already figured out than improving your ability to learn? Enjoy the conversation.

• 1:10Shane Parrish?

  I've been waiting for this conversation for so long. I've been so excited about it.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Well, I think we'll have a lot of fun here today.

• 1:18Shane Parrish?

  So first of all, you've worked as a Russian translator on Russian boats. You've taught in China. You were in the US Army as a signal officer. You were a radio operator in the South Pole. You're an engineer many times over, a professor, a writer many times over. What gives, man? Like, why do you make everybody else look so lazy and boring? And like, we're all couch potatoes. Like, what's in your Wheaties?

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Oh, I have no idea. I think it's... I just love it when I'm concentrating on something. That's sort of my therapy. And so what that means is, like, if I'm not concentrating on something, I feel all antsy. And it's just like, really? And so I end up just sort of doing this stuff. Mostly, it's... I keep saying yes to when some bizarre opportunity arises. And I don't know, it's just turned out with this strange... Once you get into this path where you start doing... Kind of wacky things, then it becomes more comfortable and you're actually,

• 2:26Speaker 01

  you're like itching for what's the next wacky experience I can become involved in? And so it's, looking back on it, I'm sort of surprised at everything because I'm actually an absolutely perfectly normal person. I am not some super genius or anything of that nature. I'm actually a very slow learner, a slow reader, a slow whatever. And so I think this is a tribute to what an ordinary person can do if they just try out some new things.

• 3:00Shane Parrish?

  And apply themselves in kind of one direction.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:04Shane Parrish?

  So that's a good launching point. I mean, there's so many things that I want to talk to you about today and I was trying to narrow it down before our conversation. And hopefully we can chat again sometime, but today I really want to focus on learning. Can we start with an overview of how you got so interested in learning and what it means to actually learn something?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Well, it's kind of surprising because, so I'm a professor of engineering now. I started out as a linguist and, and then changed completely when I was in my late twenties to study engineering. And, but I always had this sort of yen to understand from a broader perspective. And unfortunately, what academia often does is it like sharpens your focus so that you're, you know more and more about less and less.

• 4:01Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  And so I just didn't want to end up being that way. So that meant that, you know, I did my dissertation, I got my doctorate, hired on as a assistant professor, trying to get tenure. And even while I was trying to get tenure, in the background, I just had this stupid idea, wait a minute, I want to find out why mean people, mean people, do what they do, not psychopaths, but just those kind of people that they're super nice to you and then suddenly they just stab you in the back and try and, you know, KO your career and things like that. Why do people do things like that?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  And so I thought, wow, I'm a professor, I, I, I'm in a highly technical topic, right? I'm in, uh, my background is electrical engineering. I was, uh, my PhD was in systems engineering. Why don't I look up and see what science has to say about mean people? And it, it turns out that you, it didn't have a lot to say about mean people, not at that time. Uh, and that, but psychology had all this stuff that had no scientific foundation whatsoever. So, uh, there was a great body of literature on malignant narcissism.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Uh, and, but no connection to, uh, FMRI studies or anything like that. So I, I, anyway, I am really getting back to answering your question. But I spent six years kind of squirreled away while I was trying to get tenure, also working on this book that became called, and this is a totally tongue-in-cheek title. It was Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, and Ron Failed, and My Sisters Stole My Mother's Boyfriend. And, uh, and I, I'm like, why am I doing this? It's just, it's kind of nuts. Nobody's ever going to read what an engineer has to say about the discipline of psychology and why mean people do what they do.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  But to my, uh, you know, after six years of working on this thing, and I really did my homework and exposed a lot of flaws in the field of psychology. Yeah. And, uh, and prominent psychologists such as Steven Pinker gave me a great blurb, really liked the book, uh, and it was a hit, a critical hit with, um, with prominent psychologists, psychiatrists and so forth. And what that gave me though, was it gave me a very good understanding of what

• 6:45Speaker 01

  You know, not the best, but pretty darned good about what's going on in neuroscience.

• 6:50Shane Parrish?

  Yep.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, how, how do our brains really work? And then I began researching, well, why do good people do bad things? And that became an edited volume for, for Oxford University Press called, uh, pathological altruism. And, uh, and then I did a, a sort of a popular science, uh, book at the same time called Cold-Blooded Kindness, which was about a murderer who used this excuse that she was helping other people. Uh, well, she was a killer, actually.

• 7:23Shane Parrish?

  A wolf in sheep's clothing.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and her, you know, she'd present herself as, oh, I'm just doing it to help other people. And, and that was her facade that helped her to actually harm other people. And, um, so, so in any case, um, working on all these kinds of cases, um, you know, you can only take, um, researching really nasty people for so long before it starts to get to you.

• 7:54Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  And, uh, and so one of my students happened to ask me, you know, why did you, how'd you change your brain from somebody who, who hated math and science when I grew up? I mean, I flunked my way through, through those subjects in, in, um, all the way through high school. How'd you change to become someone who is now a professor of engineering? And I only started, you know, studying remedial high school algebra when I was 26. And the thing is, I, that was a really good question. And I, I said, well, golly, how did I change? Maybe I'll write a book about this, about how, how I learned to change my brain.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  And, and also how people in general can change their brain and learn more effectively. And I didn't really realize at that time, this is like such a long-winded answer to your question.

• 8:49Shane Parrish?

  Oh, it's amazing. Keep going, yeah.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Uh, that I didn't realize that, that a lot of people who are working in education do not have any sort of understanding of what's going on in neuroscience. And more than that, a lot of the top professionals who are in, for example, educational psychology, it's again that pointy discipline problem. Like, they know a whole bunch about this little tiny area of their discipline. And often, the people who are in educational psychology like that, for the most part,

• 9:31Speaker 01

  have no real good, solid background at highly professional levels in math and science. And so what this means is, they'll often talk about, you know, general learning and what's important in general learning, as if what they're talking about is gonna work for learning at advanced levels of math and science. But they've never taken it, so they don't know that it doesn't work. And, and so, or that it's just not very useful for people. And so, the more I begin researching things, the more I begin seeing how educational psychology often sort of cherry picks what they wanna communicate.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  For example, they don't talk about things like chunking, which is, that is incredibly important aspect of learning, and they, they just don't talk about it. And I, I think part of it is this sort of cognitive dissonance, because if you talk about chunking with relation to music, in other words, practice and repetition, well, everybody knows that you need that for, for music. And everybody knows you need that for language.

• 10:39Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  But when it comes to math, it's like, uh, let's not talk about the, how the neuroscience supports the fact that you also need practice and repetition for math, because it, then you start getting into the math wars. And so, um, so looking at all this, I, I began to realize that there's this gaping hole in what's available for the general public about how we learn effectively, in that a lot of the great and super useful information about how your brain works from neuroscience is simply not being communicated to the general public. And so, uh, so I think a lot of that information...

• 11:23Speaker 01

  You know, is what I've conveyed through Terry Sanowski. He's the Francis Crick Professor at the Solk Institute. And he and I teach the course, Learning How to Learn, together, which has had over 2 million students now, registered students. And it's also what I conveyed in the Book of Mind for Numbers. And I think that people just, they eat this stuff up. I mean, people are smart. They know that if you have something really solidly grounded in research, in neuroscientific research, and you present it and show it to them well, they're, I mean, they know it's useful. They can see the practical use and they, they just love it. And so, so anyway, I guess that's the long story

• 12:07Speaker 01

  of how I got started in working on this.

• 12:10Shane Parrish?

  What does the neuroscience of learning show us about how we can learn more effectively?

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Oh, it shows us lots of different things. One of the things it shows us, like, one of my biggest concerns is that I, I think there are a lot of people like me when I was growing up. Like I said, I, I was no super genius or something. And so, we moved when I was a little kid. I was seven years old. We moved from Texas to Massachusetts. And suddenly, they were way ahead of me in the multiplication tables. So, I wasn't a super genius. And I never really cared for math anyway. So, I just said, well, heck, I don't have the math gene. I'm not good at this. And so, I just gave it up.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  And nobody ever told me that, for example, the way your brain works is there are two fundamentally different modes. There's sort of this focus state and there's these resting modes. There, there are many dozens of resting modes. I mean, probably, we're just really getting a handle on it. But often, the, the most prominent of them is, is called the default mode network. So you either have a mode where you're focusing on something and that can activate different parts of your brain, or you can have this mode where you're not focusing at all, you're just sort of duh duh duh, you know, and thoughts are coming in and out,

• 13:42Speaker 01

  but you're not focusing, they're just doing it sort of randomly on their own. And that learning involves going back and forth between these two different modes. And if you don't get something the first time, guess what? That's okay. If you don't get it when you're sitting there focusing the first time, back off, you know, after you've focused, back off, let it go. And what will happen is that default mode network, the diffuse network, I often call it the diffuse mode, kind of indicating the default mode network will, it will kind of take over in the background while you're not concentrating, and it will work away,

• 14:25Speaker 01

  consolidating and making sense of the material. And that's why when you come back later on, oh, it makes sense. And in fact, you can go, oh, you know, how could I have been so stupid? It's so obvious now. And if someone had even just told me back then, oh, it's not that you're stupid, that's not why you can't understand, or, you know, maybe I was stupid, but, but no, no more so than, you know, countless other children. It's just that if you can't figure it out when you first start trying, that's very normal, give it a break, instead of getting all frustrated, and then come back to it,

• 15:08Speaker 01

  and practice and repetition, those are all going to help in building things. A lot of these insights into how the brain works, I sort of figured out, sort of by guess and by gosh, because when I, when I graduated from high school, I enlisted in the army. In order to learn a foreign language, and I went to the Defense Language Institute, which is one of the greatest institutions in the world for learning another language. And the techniques they used are really the same great techniques that you would use to learn dance, to learn a musical instrument, to learn math and science.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  And when I later began, so when I was 26 and I got out of the army and I'm trying to learn math and science, and the only way I knew how to learn by then was the same way I'd learned Russian, which I hadn't known at all before. When I started using those practice and repetition and back away a little bit if you can't get it right away, and then come back to it, when I started using those, you know, even the impossible happened. I was able to learn math and science. I started really low and went really slow, and all of those things worked beautifully

• 16:34Speaker 01

  so that, I mean, it wasn't easy, and if I'd known then what I know now, it could have been a lot easier, but I was able to be successful.

• 16:43Shane Parrish?

  Do we learn different things the same way? Do we learn how to dance and learn a language in fundamentally the same underlying way?

• 16:51Speaker 01

  It depends on what level you look at. If you think of learning as creating a new pattern in your brain, which is exactly what new learning is, then yes, fundamentally, we are, whether we're learning dance or Taekwondo or, you know, differential equations, whatever you're learning, you're creating a new pattern in your brain. The thing is, of course, when you're learning different things, you have to get those patterns into your brain in different ways. So you're you're practicing with the mandolin and so you're you have to practice in that way.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  You're practicing здравствуйте, which is hello in Russian. So you're practicing with your mouth. And and math and science are a little bit more abstract. So it's harder to see that you're simply creating physical patterns in your brain when you are learning a new idea. But you are creating a physical pattern in your brain. And so so that is the underlying commonality, I think, of all of all learning.

• 18:07Shane Parrish?

  And the tactics by which we go about creating those new patterns change?

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yes, except that practice and repetition is it is a is an important part of creating those patterns. So so you're going to practice differently, but you're still going to repeat if you're learning learning a song on the flute. And then i- if you're, let's say that you have a base theorem problem is statistics and probability. You want to work it and then you want to see if you can work it cold. And I think that's one mistake we often make in in the US at least, as far as doing homework. We just do it and throw it in, right?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Instead of saying, oh, this is a key problem. If I've got this, I this one I should memor- I should not memorize like like just sort of like an automaton, but I should get this like a song. So it will, this problem's solution will unfold naturally and smoothly like a song in my mind when I look at it. That only comes through practice.

• 19:24Shane Parrish?

  Is there a specific way we should practice?

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Yes, we should look at what hurts the most and focus on that. So that's something called deliberate practice, which I know you know of. But if it flows really easily and then you keep going with, you know, repeating this very easy stuff, you're not going to make very fast progress on what you're trying to learn.

• 19:53Shane Parrish?

  Deliberate practice is super interesting because you know it's widely considered that we improve through that and someone you know who can run a few miles, who can't run a few miles and works at it gets better. So there's this great feedback system, but I want to talk about knowledge workers for a second. So if I'm a manager, maybe a portfolio manager, maybe a people manager in a large organization, let's also say I'm above average in my performance. But I hit a rut and all of a sudden my performance is worse than normal. I'm underperforming. This is kind of normal and natural, this variation. I mean, it happens, but at the same time, I feel smarter and better, like I'm learning. But history is replete with people like me being stubborn or lacking humility or missing a big change. And I'm

• 20:37Shane Parrish?

  just like, am I one of these people? So how do you measure whether you're in the, a typical trend of lost the skill advantage? In his book, I mean, Ed Thorp kind of talks about card playing and how he hit a rut, but as long as he was within this consistent data, he knew he was fine. But cards are a physical system. Managing people is a biological system. How do we, how do we do deliberate practice in a biological system? How would you kind of advise me?

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a great question. I think it's really hard in that if you have a mathematical system, it's all kind of quantifiable. It's everything, it can be laid out and there are concrete solutions to the problems that you are faced with. With people, it's just not that way. You can be a fantastic supervisor and if you have one, one of those, one in 10,000 who is, you know, kind of got subclinical manifestations of borderline personality

• 21:48Speaker 01

  or disorder or something, oh my word, you know, you've got some work ahead of you, even if you're the world's greatest manager, because whatever you do, they're going to be one step ahead of you in sort of making it look like it's all your problem.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  So I don't think there's a way to necessarily optimize being a manager, because it is, it's a, it's an open-ended system and an ill-posed problem, in a sense. You just, you can't get there from here. But you can, in most cases, incrementally improve. And there's obvious things you can do that are often covered in many managerial sorts of courses. I mean, I see, when I see mistakes in managers, you know, they're, they're often like, just really dumb mistakes, like somebody going up for a promotion

• 22:52Speaker 01

  with walks-on-water reviews, and they just say, "I don't like this person." So it doesn't matter if they've got great reviews, I just simply turn it down. And it's obviously a case of deep, personal antipathy and bias. And, but what you gonna do? You know, a lot of, I think, administrative mistakes are of these kinds of form. They're, they're unforced errors that, that any rational person would probably not do.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  So, I don't know, I, I think that being a good administrator is one of the world's most difficult jobs, because part of it's a, it's, it involves vision, it involves being able to inspire people, it involves being able to be a little Machiavellian yourself, because you have to be able to anticipate the kinds of tricks that can be pulled on you. And yet, also, you know, being genuinely decent enough that most people can catch the fact that that's what you're trying to do. So, you know, so I, I just don't think it's as simple as,

• 24:15Speaker 01

  "I'm going to optimize my administrative skills," because every set of personnel you ever get will have their own sets of great things, and potentially their own sets of... For example, uh, who, who's the latest one, uh, who is at, um, was it CNN or one of those, uh, like apparent superstars who turns out to be quite nefarious in what they were, uh, what they were actually doing. I, I was just appalled when I was reading about one fellow. And what he'd do is he would give some undesired proposals to the young women who were trying

• 24:58Speaker 01

  to, you know, come up in the, the news profession. And when they turn him down, appalled, he would go to the office and tell everyone there that this young lady had, had given him an indecent proposal and to really watch out for her. Uh, because, and he kept killing the careers of these, you know, young women. And, you know, if you have sort of a nefarious, uh, star that who's doing that kind of thing, uh, who's working for you, it's pretty hard to, you know, how do you deal with that? Um, cause it's, it can be kept hidden until it all explodes and, you know, so.

• 25:39Shane Parrish?

  Do you, do you think we as a society will learn from all of this coming to light and change?

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Such a good question. I have, I have really wondered about that because

• 25:52Speaker 01

  there are nefarious ones among us and they are really, really clever. And so it looks like this is shutting down some of these nefarious individuals, but they're really, really intelligent people. And so it will find other ways to manifest itself. And, and what I'm interested to see is how, how will that manifest? Because it won't manifest in a way that's eas- as easily detectable as what's going on now. And you know what's going on now is really only the tip of the iceberg because a lot of people are too afraid

• 26:34Speaker 01

  to, uh, come forward. And I say this as a, um, You know, as one who is also very cognizant of the fact that there are, there can be, you know, just as dishonest men, there could also be dishonest women who could make false accusations. So, I don't know, I'm just kind of sitting there with my bowl of popcorn, watching everything unfold and going, wow, this is a first really in history, that there's been such a solid, kind of outpouring like this. And is it actually just the beginning

• 27:11Speaker 01

  of the Jacobite, you know, that it's actually going to go way too far the other way? And, I mean, that's possible too. Will decent people start being brought down because they're, because they can find a group of women to, you know, make accusations? Because all it seems to take is you have some, I don't know.

• 27:37Shane Parrish?

  The burden of proof seems to have shifted from.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a very, very difficult situation.

• 27:45Shane Parrish?

  I want to go back to something you said earlier about the two modes of thinking, so focused and diffused. And how does that relate to procrastination?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Oh, I think it relates in that it is, it is the other main key of learning. And in other words, learning about focused and diffuse helps inoculate you against thinking you're stupid when you're trying to learn. But the other major, major issue in learning relates to the fact that, that people procrastinate. And, yeah, how do you do, how do you deal with that? Because I think, oh.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  A lot of times, it's just, it's easy to say, great learning takes place when you use deliberate practice and so forth, but they, people forget about the fact that, well, you gotta get to the table, you gotta not procrastinate before you even, um, you know, start using deliberate practice. So i- in any case, um, what happens when you even just think about something you don't want to do, uh, or don't like, it activates a portion of the brain in the insular cortex that experiences pain. So it's kinda like that same feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you don't really wanna do something.

• 29:10Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  You know, so what does the brain do? The brain says, oh, hey, guess what? I didn't like this. When I thought about this, it made me feel uncomfortable, so I'll think about something else. And so off it skitters to, uh, think about, uh, Facebook or something, or anything. I mean, even cleaning your room can be more pleasant than whatever unpleasant task you're, you're thinking about. So the best trick, um, you know, to overcome this as, uh, as literally thousands and thousands of people from Learning How to Learn have told us, is the Pomodoro Technique. So this technique is just, it's fantastic. Uh, it was invented by

• 29:53Speaker 01

  an Italian, Francesco Cidillo, and all you have to do is just turn off all distractions, so nothing bugging you on the phone or whatever, uh, nothing popping up on your computer screen. And instead, what you do is you just, um, after turning off these distractions, set a timer for 25 minutes and then focus for 25 minutes. And, uh,

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Your mind may drift off it because it's very natural, but just bring it back. And the whole idea is you're focusing as intently as you can for those 25 minutes. And when you're done, you, and this is the most important part of the whole Pomodoro technique, you reward yourself. So listen to a piece of music you like, go on to Facebook, you know, go walk around, go dance around, anything to comfortably distract yourself from what you've been doing. And that can, this whole business of focus intently and reward yourself at the end,

• 31:00Speaker 01

  that almost trains your brain to, to be more comfortable in the focused mode and to, and to enjoy it. And then to integrate that, the consolidation that's happening in the diffuse mode at the end of your, your little session there. And it is really a powerful technique.

• 31:22Shane Parrish?

  Are there some activities that are better than other for encouraging that diffuse mode kind of reconciliation, like going to the gym? Or are they all very similar as long as they take your mind off?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Well, I, I always think that something active is, is better than anything else in that, um, what you want to do, let's say you've been writing a report. And then when you're taking your break, you don't want to go onto Twitter or Facebook and continue writing because you're using sort of the same areas of the brain and it's not giving that area a little bit of a rest. So the, uh, the best all purpose break thing is to, uh, move around to some extent, do something that's physical. And we, of course, as far as exercise itself goes, oh my gosh, that's one of the best things you can do for learning.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Um, what exercise does is it helps produce.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Brain-derived neurotropic factor in your, you know, in your brain. And this is kind of like a fertilizer that helps dendritic spines grow. In other words, it helps make new connections. So, and you can see it. I mean, there's some great neuroscience papers, like in Nature Neuroscience, that, that show that little dendritic spines just popping right out when they've got B D N F, um, you know, uh, that they, they're exposed to that. And so, exercise is what kind of brings this all out for you. And it's, it's, um, it is a fantastic learning, um, you know,

• 33:06Speaker 01

  it's like a medication to help you learn better. Uh, my, my co-instructor, Terry Sanowski, um, I'm convinced that he did some of the earliest studies, uh, that showed that exercise is a really helpful tool, uh, in learning. And because it, in part, because it promotes neurogenesis. You get new neurons and they help you build new patterns. Uh, but the guy is, he's approaching, you know, 70 and he's going stronger now than he ever was before. And I'm, I'm convinced part of it is just he really makes exercise an important part of his working day.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, every other day or so, he's down on the beach going for a run. And, um, I, I, I, I think that people don't quite, sometimes don't take the, um, the wherewithal to add exercise in, you know, because they're, they're working as hard as they can and they don't realize that adding at least a little bit of exercise can actually help them to learn in shorter periods of time and help it kind of stick in their brain better.

• 34:19Shane Parrish?

  Is there kind of like an ideal frequency or ratio between how much time we should be spending in focused versus diffuse mode?

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Um, not that I'm aware of. Um, I think the one thing to be the, that I'm just aware of is I, I think there's a little bit of, of concerning evidence and it still has to be borne out with even further research and so forth, that the more time you spend focusing, as for example, if you are folk, if you do focused mantra type meditation, uh, and let's say you add that in to a lot of other focused work you're doing and so forth, um, the, the

• 35:07Speaker 01

  mantra meditation can be excellent in helping to even further build your focusing ability, but there's some evidence that at the same time, um, it's also suppressing that default mode activity. So it may be that you're focusing, you create, you can get even better at focusing, but you may be doing it at a trade-off cost as far as that other very different network, which makes wild and random and totally crazy connections, which is what fuels your creativity. So I can't help but wonder, um, that, um, I, I think it's important to spend at least

• 35:50Speaker 01

  some part of your day letting your brain just go random. Um, and that's why I think going for a walk is excellent, especially if you're just kinda, uh, letting your brain go while you're doing it and, and almost letting yourself be bored for some periods of the day, uh, is helpful because if you focus every, every single second that you have available, I'm just a little concerned that, that that's, that's not healthy for, uh, for your creative thinking.

• 36:24Shane Parrish?

  I like that a lot because I, I do think we need this sort of downtime and we can't always be on. I want to come back to a little bit more about learning, which is, can you explain to me kind of the, the role that memory plays as it relates to learning?

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Well, memory is integral to learning. And, and we all know that. But we've kind of gone off. I mean, there's this like seesaw through history. I mean, we see this um in all sorts of ways through history. Some, some idea will take hold and then everybody will go nuts for this idea. And they go way overboard and then it goes way overboard. And like Freudian psychology um or psychiatry there. You can think there were some points to Freudian psychiatry, but everything got Freudian. And then you couldn't like break out of that. And then it went to Skanarianism.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  And then you couldn't publish anything that was against uh Skanarian uh approaches and so forth. And similarly in education, we've gone on to this thing where memorization is evil. No, never allow people to memorize things because you just want them to understand it. And I mean, it's gone just crazy. And um and the, the fact that I even had a student, I remember I had a student come up to me. And he flunked this test and uh he's like, oh, you know, I just don't understand how I could have flunked this test. I understood it when you said it in class.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  And he'd heard for so many years that all he needed to do was understand something. And that was it. That's enough. That's like the golden thing. And, and it's not enough. It's not enough at all. Um, sometimes I, I will say to people like you'll hear um poets say, memorize the poem and you will understand it more deeply. It's, why should we let the poets have all the fun? I mean, it, if you memorize an equation, you will also understand it more deeply. So sure, I think there's ways you can memorize where it's just sort of your, your rote,

• 38:48Speaker 01

  putting something in your mind and you're not thinking about it while you're doing it. But actually, if you memorize equations, if you actively pull out uh a solution from your mind enough times.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  It's, it's, you've memorized it, right? But it's really a healthy form of memorization that allows you to master the material. So, um, so I think that memorization has gotten a terrible rap for what the last seventy, fifty, seventy years. And due to the, the wonderful work of some of these great, um, memory experts like Nelson Dulles, uh, he's the four-time US memory champ. Of course, um, Alex Mullin, then, and, uh, and then, uh, Josh Forre, uh, and his great book and so forth.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  I think that's starting to get people to think again about how memory is important, but it still hasn't made its way into educational systems who, where it's still kind of a dogma that, no, you gotta have them understand it. In fact, you've gotta have them understand it eight ways from Sunday, which actually can turn out to be confusing for people. Um, you know, if you can understand something really well in one way and you really got it, later you can build and add different sort of perspectives on that. But if you're just trying to give someone an initial idea of how to do something and you're like, well, see, look at this, now look at it from this way and then this way.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Well, this is why the Chinese, for example, are really just laughing at us because a, uh, um, someone from China who is, um, twelve years old is so much further ahead of a typical US student in math that it's almost like a joke for them. Uh, it is because we're, we're really not, we're using, uh, educational methods that are counter to what we know from neuroscience and actually can, to some extent cripple students' abilities to really, um, be successful in math and science. And I think that's why we've gone from

• 41:14Speaker 01

  From being at the very top to becoming, I think we're dead last in the group of 22 top nations in the OECD as far as the math abilities of our students.

• 41:30Shane Parrish?

  So you are a parent. I mean, what did you do with your kids to change or augment, I guess, what the schools were doing?

• 41:40Speaker 01

  I put them in a program called Kumon Mathematics, and I think some of what the schools are doing is really good, but they don't give enough practice and repetition so that students build solid neural patterns, neural chunks. So Kumon Mathematics is a terrific system developed in Japan where you gradually master different areas and you're developing these great neural patterns. There's another program that is much more recently developed

• 42:18Speaker 01

  called SMARTIK. That's S-M-A-R-T-I-C-K. And SMARTIK is similar to Kumon, but it's online, and so it has more of those online bells and whistles that can help gamify what you're doing.

• 42:36Shane Parrish?

  And how effective was that in improving understanding? Because I think ultimately this is where people get confused, right? Like, you can understand something without memorizing it, you can memorize it without understanding it, but what you really want is kind of some sort of balance between the two, or?

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Well, I think that there's a lot of confusion on the part of psychologists, educational psychologists in this area. And I'll illustrate this in several different ways. So there's a great study by Jeff Karpicki of Purdue about where he showed what is the best way to learn if you're reading, for example, a complex paper on some scientific study or subject. The best way is you read it and then you look away and you can, you see what you can recall of that, that page. So you're, you're basically reading it as carefully as you can and then

• 43:39Speaker 01

  you're looking away and just trying to recall what, what's the key idea. And this was contrasted with underlining, rereading or con- or concept mapping. And it turns out that just this simple look at it and then look away and see what you can recall is far better in building your understanding of the material. When people were tested even several weeks later, they, they understood the material better. And you think, well, you're just memorizing, right? But you're not, because when you're putting it in your brain, you're actually understanding it and that's how you're getting it in your brain.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Now, other studies have shown, for example, that, that understanding does not, it isn't like some little golden key that, oh, click, it goes on and then you got it. You think you have it, you're part right there, but only when you practice it, we can see those patterns further developing it. And then, so you go back and forth, you, you're, you kind of, you're reading about it, you think you got it, you start working a problem. Oh, it's the practice that builds your understanding. It, it's this conflation, I think, because there is a way that you can look at a solution

• 45:04Speaker 01

  to a problem, memorize it and have no real understanding of what it means and what you're doing. But if you kind of internalize it so that, yeah, you've got it memorized in the sense that you can, you can regurgitate it, but you actually are pulling each step up in your mind and you, you understand what you're doing, then that form of mem- of active recall type memorization is, it builds your understanding in a profound way.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  So for our daughters, I will, okay, so this is just between us and our listeners. So don't go, don't go telling my older daughter. So, so my older daughter, um, shall we say she's, she's not a natural at math. So everything was just, I mean, she was such a good sport about it. She really wanted to learn math, but everything was just like a struggle. And you know, and I'd be, I'd have like a little puppet that'd come up with, it's Mr. Hand and Mr. Hand has two fingers here. And now look, we multiply it and or we add two more fingers. Oh, it's four in Mr. Hand. So, um,

• 46:22Speaker 01

  so we worked with the Kumon and, and she would, so every day she'd be kind of just struggling with stuff. Now, her sister, on the other hand, was really was pretty natural at math, but she just didn't want to do it. Right? So it was always pushing a rope to get her to do it just because she didn't want to, even though the, what was happening was much more intuitively obvious to her than to our older daughter. So our older daughter goes to college, goes to, and now she's finishing her medical residency in Stanford. And I'm convinced she would have been one of those girls who's like, you know, I just don't have the math gene.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  I just couldn't do it. And instead she, she went forward and she did, she did really, really well. But I will say, so the other daughter, the one who really didn't want to do math, but we had her doing it anyway. But she was more natural at it. So she wanted to be an artist and, and she's a really good artist. And now she works as a photojournalist. But when she was in college, she took calculus and she got a four point, which was

• 47:39Shane Parrish?

  Wow, that's

• 47:40Speaker 01

  than her older sister, and she has never let her live it down. So I, I think it is, it is helped her professionally. I mean, even what she's doing with photography. I mean, all you had to do is read about Leonardo da Vinci and so much of art is informed by, by science and math. So if you have some of that with you, it can just make, help make you better at whatever, whatever you're trying to do. Like, let's take Cormac McCarthy. So, uh, so I, I'm just, I'm like, kind of flabbergasted, but he's a friend. So Cormac McCarthy is a Pulitzer Prize

• 48:20Speaker 01

  winning author and he's extraordinary. I mean, he's just like unbelievably good writer. How was he originally trained? He was an engineering student and he realized that he was even, you know, he was better at writing than at engineering, which is pretty, uh, I mean, his writing is better than pretty much anybody's. But I think part of the reason his writing is so profoundly beautiful is because he, he's also thinking about it analytically. Uh, so I think that, that can very much help whatever field you're trying to do is if you, if you're, if you try to think in more of

• 49:04Speaker 01

  a kind of a polymath, an all encompassing perspective, you don't have to be just a, you know, just a coder or just a, um, a chemist or just a, but think of yourself more broadly and kind of incorporate some of these other approaches. And I think you'll, your career and you will be happier.

• 49:25Shane Parrish?

  What's the role of short-term memory versus long-term memory in learning?

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Well, uh, I have a confession to make and that is that I have a very bad short-term memory.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  And my husband will agree with that assessment because he'll be like, well, did you call Fred? And you know, Neil have just told me to call Fred and I really do intend to call Fred. And by the time I get to the phone, I'm like, oh, shiny, you know, I've gotten distracted and I just forget. So, um, so the great thing though, is that um, working memory and long-term memory are kind of different, but they interact with one another. And if you have a really bad working memory, in other words, the things that you hold temporarily in mind, that, that can be a great thing.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Because number one, there's good research that shows that you're more, um, you're more creative. And another thing is it allows you to simplify, to see some simplifications that, that people with better working memories simply can't see. And how this happens is, we used to think there are seven slots in working memory. So it's like seven things you can hold in mind, uh, like seven numbers. That's why, you know, it was four, five, three, seven, two, three, nine, or whatever phone number had seven digits in it because they thought that's what you could hold easily in working memory. Well, that was wrong. Uh, it's probably more like four slots in working memory.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  So four things you can hold in mind. So I prefer to think of it as, it's like you've got this little octopus of int- attention of things you can hold in working memory and your octopus has only got four arms. So, uh, so if you're intently looking at something that's really hard to figure out, all four arms of your octopus are going a little crazy and you can see that. Your, your attentional octopus, so to speak, is in your prefrontal cortex. And we can see your prefrontal cortex working very hard when you're trying to figure something new out. But surprisingly, once you master something, you've figured it out, like you can solve this

• 51:49Speaker 01

  kind of problem fairly easily, you know how to do it, your working memory just calms right down. It's not, it's not working very hard when you're solving these kinds of problems. And it's because you've parked, sort of like a subroutine in your long-term memory. And incidentally, that parking of the subroutine happens during sleep. So this is part of why sleep is really important, is because sleep clears out your hippocampus and puts it in long-term memory. And that's where you're gonna go to grab it with that one arm of your octopus, your attentional octopus. You bring it back up, and that's how you, like,

• 52:34Speaker 01

  if you know how to solve these kinds of problems pretty easily, you just reach into working memory and grab that subroutine, and it starts working with things. So the perfect example of this, and it may be hard initially to see how it relates, but it does, is backing up a car. When you first start backing up, learning to back up a car, your working memory's going crazy, because it's-

• 53:03Shane Parrish?

  There's so much to keep track of.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Yep, looking in the front mirror, in the back mirror, that, you know, behind you, where do you look? You back into the ditch, and it's like, not so good. But once you learn to back up the car, you've created that neural subroutine in your long-term memory, right, which is kind of anywhere in your, your cerebral cortex, and, or, you know, in various places. You can, all you have to do is think, I'm gonna back up the car, that octopus arm reaches into long-term memory, pulls up that, it activates that subroutine, and boom, you start backing up the car. And the other arms of your octopus are still

• 53:47Speaker 01

  free. So that's why you can also kind of be listening to the radio, or talking to your friends, or thinking about what you're gonna have for dinner that night. But so it's it's the idea is you wanna create those patterns in long-term memory that you can easily pull up your activate with like by touching them with one of your arms of your attentional octopus. And once you uh once you've got a lot of patterns like that, you're starting to become an expert. And so it just takes a practice and uh and a lot of, you know, active focus and also

• 54:29Speaker 01

  diffuse relaxation while your brain is consolidating these ideas and a lot of sleep because sleep is when uh that the hippocampus is sort of cleared out and it's put into long-term memory for you to be able to grab it later on.

• 54:46Shane Parrish?

  And what we store in memory, is that the chunking you were talking about earlier?

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Uh, yes, that's the long-term memory. Uh, that's what's um the pattern that's stored in long-term memory, which is sort of like in the ah, the outer cortex of your of your brain, um, well, the cortex is on the outer part. So uh, what happens is your prefrontal cortex, so that's the really the front of your brain where your working memory is, it's uh, it works with this stuff and kind of creates these sort of temporary um chains or or patterns in your hippocampus. And then the hippocampus in turn um sort of uh, the sleep spindles, when you're sleeping,

• 55:34Speaker 01

  it is transferring that information into um sort of a uh, the locations uh in long-term memory, kind of more scattered around your uh, your cerebral cortex. And that's where your long-term memories are that you that you're grabbing when you uh, when you need to pull on that particular chunk and activate it or subroutines, so to speak.

• 55:59Shane Parrish?

  If if you were to advise somebody on how to like what the steps are to creating a a chunk, what would they what would they be?

• 56:06Speaker 01

  First, to be aware that there's a way of crystallizing what you're doing um that creates a pattern that is a chunk. And you can you can make a a bigger pattern, right? Just like just like a chain and you can add more links to the chain. So it depends a lot on what the subject is that you're learning. If you're um. If you're learning a language, you'll start with one tiny pattern that you have.

• 56:40Shane Parrish?

  Hmm.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Which is like a word. The word is pato, uh, which is duck in Spanish. So, oh, you've just got one chunk. Now you might um, you might add to that. You might say, okay, well, uh, you'd learn how to say a big duck. Or you say, I see a duck. Oh, I see a duck. Well, how does that relate to you see a duck? So you start creating these patterns. Um, and then you learn how to conjugate a verb. So you're creating a pattern sort of in a different way. If you wanna think of it in a vector uh, form, you can say, you know, you've got the. You've got a verb.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Uh, the, the different conjugations of the verb are di- different vectors. Um, that point to uh, the different conjugations and the different words that that word relates to. Um, but in any case, um, whatever you're learning, you just start small. So let's say you're learning the guitar. You learn a chunk, right? Or a, a chord, that's one chunk. Then you learn several chords together. That becomes a new chunk that's larger, that incorporates part of the previous one chord.

• 57:58Shane Parrish?

  So you're building on top of a foundation you already have.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Right. And when you are really comfortable, you can access those chunks from different directions. Like you, you've got a chord, but you, you can access that chord from this song or that song or different kinds of songs. Then you start um. Creating a very rich chunk that's instantly accessible, and the more you practice it. And people, when you're learning a new language, people who know a language will often say that when they go to France, for example, that if they haven't used it for a while, it'll be rusty and kind of hard, but then that's because they haven't been

• 58:38Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  accessing those chunks, but the more they get at it, the more they start, those chunks start to get easier to pull to mind. Um, I still laughed, once I went to Moscow and I hadn't been speaking Russian for like 25 years and I was like, oh man, I've forgotten it all. And so we get in the taxi cab and this driver's like trying to rip us off and, oh, I lit into him and I was, I was like, oh, I knew those words. You know, I was so amazed at what my mouth remembered, which I hadn't really consciously thought about in decades. So it is funny how that works.

• 59:22Shane Parrish?

  What does the science tell us about effective study techniques for students in school?

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Oh, well.

• 59:31Shane Parrish?

  I know one of the popular ones is kind of like rereading and is that effective? Should we do that? What should we replace it with?

• 59:40Speaker 01

  I think the best thing they can do is, is order my, preorder my book, Learning How to Learn, which is on my website and it's for students. And it is, it's all about how to learn and how to study in school. And so it's, it's kind of like, it's a book. There's just like so much information.

• 1:00:02Shane Parrish?

  What's the table of contents kind of like? What is the rough outline of what makes for an effective studying versus ineffective? What are the habits we should get rid of?

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Well, first off, you don't want to sit and reread. Um, because rereading, what that does is when you read something again, you think, because your eye is like comfortable looking at it and it seems familiar, you think you know it, but you actually don't. So, uh, so, uh, one of the best approaches is to use the Pomodoro technique. Set everything aside. When you are studying, you want to be really intently focused and don't just look at something and think you know it. That is one of the biggest mistakes people, uh, do in anything.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Uh, and that's particularly common in math and science. You can look at the answer and it just seems obvious. And, and so then you don't actually work it yourself. And so then it turns out you didn't know it. And it's, it's amazing. So many students will come in and say, I suffer from test anxiety. And, and it's actually not true at all. It's just that when they sat down to do the test was the very first time they realized that they actually didn't know it.

• 1:01:34Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  They'd have checked themselves beforehand. And so the more you can test yourself on anything you're doing, uh, the better off you will be. Uh, so if you're learning, if you've just, um, read a problem, see if you can work that problem yourself. Uh, and these are the kinds of things, um, I think that, that can be super helpful. And then knowing, for example, when you practice during a day, something new.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  You have to get a good sleep that night. If you don't, your hippocampus doesn't get cleared out.

• 1:02:18Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  And you don't create good patterns in your long-term memory. So then you're thinking, well, I'm just stupid because I can't seem to remember this stuff very well. But you're actually not giving yourself enough sleep to be able to consolidate the material you're learning each day. And sometimes people are very good students and they'll do, they're like too good. What they'll do is they will learn something or, or complete an assignment, say on Monday, just as soon as they get it, they'll complete it. And then the test is on Friday. Well, they did everything. So then they'll, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they won't review it or anything.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  And because they've already done it and then Friday they're tested and surprise, it, it's not fresh on their mind. And they don't do very well, even though they did the assignment just fine. So it's this idea of a little bit every day, like on that assignment, it's fine to do it early. But look, look at some aspect of it so that you're actively bringing it to mind each day. And I think that's, um, that is a extremely powerful way to, to help, uh, improve your learning. I think the biggest mistake that people make is not. See, because learning involves the creation of a new pattern in your, in your brain.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  You have to, you actually, it's, it's almost like this. When you're learning something and you actively do it yourself, it's almost like you're, you're conscious, like working hard on this. Or, or actively working it almost pulls those little dendritic spines up. And it gets them to start connecting with the axons of other neurons. And those are the patterns of your memory. And so you have to actively be working it in order to pull those dendritic spines up and get them going and get them growing. And if you're just. Placidly looking at the material, for example, or rereading it,

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  you're you're just not going to get those patterns and you're you're not going to learn it.

• 1:04:34Shane Parrish?

  I think the sleep one is like something that people don't understand and the familiarity and just kind of like doing it every day. Because what you want to do is test your illusion of understanding based on familiarity and actually practice it, is that?

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  That's right. And I mean, you can you can have a little test of yourself to see how well this works. But just pick something that is really hard, you know, or just kind of hard for you to get. And and just try it and and you'll see that that day when you're first trying to learn it. I mean, even if it's a simple word like zdravstvujete in saying that in Russian, it's hard for a lot of native speakers of English to say that word.

• 1:05:21Shane Parrish?

  I'm not even gonna try it.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  If you try to say it, really, really focus and try to say it a number of times. And then you go to sleep and then you try it again the next day, you will be shocked. It's like, I'm better. And and people often do this when they're learning to play some difficult

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  piece of music, they've got some little part they're struggling with and time after time you just you struggle with it and then you give it up and you come back the next day and it's like magic. You can suddenly play it. And all of this is that consolidation that's taking place. I think sleep is is a totally neglected aspect, an important aspect of good learning. And fortunately, I love sleep, so I'm totally on board with that.

• 1:06:18Shane Parrish?

  So it sounds like that's a really effective way to kind of test your understanding through problems and books that you're learning in school. But as adults, most of us are trying to learn from other people or learn through observation of other people so we don't maybe make the same mistakes they do. Or we learn why they were successful and try to copy that. How does that change how we learn?

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  I think it it depends on what kind of person you are. If you're a little bit extroverted, I think that learning from people is more fun for you and maybe less intimidating.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  If you're a bit more introverted, like I am, it's it's a little bit more intimidating. But learning from people, I think you have to, it's it's the same general idea. You're trying to figure out a pattern from them, whatever that pattern actually is. So you may be struggling with something related to differentiating and you're really struggling, or the chain rule or something. And so then you talk to your friend about it and you're learning from them as well as from the

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  material and what you get from them can be more relaxing in a way because you're just both struggling over the same topic. I guess this is a hard question for me to answer because learning from people has so many different aspects because you can be learning textbook kind of stuff from people or you can be learning stuff that hasn't been written into a textbook and you're just kind of learning it from sort of the master who's been around for a long time and just kind of has it and you want to kind of pick up and intuit what that guru has to to share with you.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  So this one is a tough one to answer because I think it just, it's, it can be so highly variable. But the main thing is just capture what you can and try to chunk it. What are the key ideas? And each time you glean a key idea, figure out some wacky way to get that into your long-term memory.

• 1:08:44Shane Parrish?

  How would you encourage kind of like organizations to allow learning based on like a corporate? So if you had a body like that's making decisions, how would you disseminate information to people so that they could learn what factors are being considered relevant? Or how would you encourage this sort of like corporation becoming a learning a learning corporation where everybody's learning from each other?

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  I think it's a little tough in that I believe this is something that society should be encouraging right from the get-go, and we haven't been doing that, not very well. In fact, it's amazing to me that people can go through 12 to 16 years of education and never have a single course in how to learn effectively. Yeah. I mean, that's just boggling. And so I think that for corporations, talking about the importance of learning, the head person, whoever is the CEO, could be modeling the importance of learning,

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  perhaps through learning something and kind of sharing it with the corporation and those in the corporation, and sharing his struggles or her struggles as the new ideas are being assimilated. And showing, if you show from the top that you're really serious that lifelong learning is something that is of great value in that company, I think that is probably the very best way. And then help make it available.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  For me, my course, "Learning How to Learn," is through a massive open online course provider called Coursera. And so obviously, I'm a little biased, but I think they're a fantastic institution, and they have plenty of opportunities for corporations to interact with them, to provide great learning experiences, not only in technical kinds of, or business, or professional. But if you're learning about Greek vases or

• 1:11:06Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Or Sanskrit, or you know, even languages that are no longer commonly spoken, all of these, these, it manifests a kind of an orientation. And really, whatever you're learning that's new can, through metaphor, be brought into, to bring great new ideas to whatever, whatever you're actually working on. In fact, I think that's one of the best ways to be, uh, fresh, to, to maintain freshness in whatever you're working on, uh, at, at a day job, so to speak,

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  is to try to spend a little bit of your time, you know, either offline or online, um, or at work or not at work, learning something completely different, completely unrelated to what your, your job is. And what that can do is, there's a concept called transfer. And transfer means you get a, a neural chunk, a neural pattern. And whatever that is, you will be able to bring it through metaphor to give you fresh ideas in whatever area you're working in. And even if they don't want you to be creative at your job,

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  it will help keep you fresh and looking at the world in a fresh way.

• 1:12:37Shane Parrish?

  Do we have learning types? Like, some people say there are visual learners versus auditory learners versus, like, how do you, how do you think about that?

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  I think you have to be very careful if you look at the research literature. Uh, because, for example, there was an excellent study done by a woman named Beth Rogoski. Um, and what she did was, she took one of the standard tests to kind of analyze, a very widely used test, that is used to distinguish, uh, an individual as to whether they're a visual learner, or an auditory learner, or a kinesthetic learner, or whatever. So she had people take this test, and, uh, so then she got categories, right? So she's got her visual learners and her auditory learners and so forth. And so she then took the visual learners.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  And had them take a test that was uh through hearing. And then she had the auditory learners and she had them take a test that was visual. And what she found ultimately was people are are fooling themselves completely. Those who thought that they were more visually oriented, they just just fine with auditory. And likewise, those who thought that they were, they only learn best through auditory, they learn the same as uh as the visual learners in in looking at some some sort of visual thing. So people fool themselves, they because we're we're presenting this thing and saying, oh, yes, there are these categories of visual and auditory learners.

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  Then um people think it's actually true and they quantify themselves that way. And then when you actually test them, it isn't true at all. And it's a bad thing to think of yourself as only being One type. Yeah, because then what happens is you close yourself off to the other sensory channels and you become less expert at them because you're not practicing with them. So, I mean, think of it this way, so some student comes up and says, I'm only an auditory learner. So I want you to present me only materials in auditory way. What that means is you're not going to give them written test materials and you're screwing that student's life

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  because you're not giving them any practice in doing written testing. And that's the way testing usually is. So not only are you messing up their life, but you're also setting yourself up, if you're a teacher and you're using, you know, teaching to certain learning styles, you're setting yourself up to be potentially sued. Because if if a student doesn't do well, they can say, guess what? You didn't teach to my preferred learning style and that's why I'm failing.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  And so I think that this whole learning styles business is a very, is deeply pernicious and problematic and it, it keeps going. It's like this Hydra, uh, because textbook publishing companies make, uh, and a lot of independent corporations make mints of money off of these kinds of tests. And so it's, um, it's reprehensible, but it, a lot of these tests, when you actually really check them out, there's no there, there. But, um, they just keep going because everybody's like, oh, it's a major publisher or it couldn't be, or it couldn't be wrong. Well, of course it can be and it is.

• 1:16:16Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, I've never looked into the research as much as you have, but I've always been skeptical of it. My skepticism derived from the fact that a lot of people seem to, uh, use that as a convenient excuse. Um, instead of putting in effort, they would use that, oh, I'm a visual learner. So, uh, and that was just their way of like backing out of the situation. And I always thought that that was just almost too convenient mentally for that to, to kind of be true, right? Because it absolves us from the labor or pain of learning something or doing something that may be causing uncomfortableness.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  I, I think you're right. I, I think it's a little like that test phobia. Oh, I just suffer from test phobia instead of not, I'm not studying correctly. And then I think people who, uh, it, it, it is, it's just so easy to say, um, you know, well, like the one thing I found, there's one common aspect of learning styles and that is whenever someone claims, I'm a kinesthetic learner, I always know that that person has heard the word kinesthetic. Because everybody's a kinesthetic learner. I mean, when you get your hands, really get your hands on something, it, it works great. Uh, and you know, the common thing about kinesthetic

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  learners is they've all heard of kinesthetic, but you still learn by looking, by saying, I mean, you don't get blindfolded when you are. Getting your hands on something. And so it's um, yeah, it's it's kind of a quagmire. Uh, and I unfortunately, I don't think it's going to go away soon because uh, there's just so much money to be made.

• 1:18:00Shane Parrish?

  How do you think about the difference between learning something in serial versus kind of parallel? Like if I want to master three different things in the next 10 years, am I better off working on them all simultaneously? Or focusing intensely on one at a time? Or is that too kind of situationally driven?

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  I think it's situationally driven. Um, because, well, usually the longer you know something, the better you can get at it. So I suppose that, let's say I was trying to learn three different languages. Well, if I studied three languages for five years, um, and kind of on a parallel track, I think, I think I would be better at each of them than if I studied, uh, you know, three for, you know, one and a half years, or is, you know, one of them for one and a half, and then sequentially the next, and then the

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  next. Because if you're totally focused, you'll do great on the first one. And then with the second one, well, the first one's starting to disappear. And with the third one, well, the first two, you're not really focusing on them, so they'll start to disappear. Whereas if they're all three kind of in track, you've got more and more time to sleep on it and grow those new neural patterns. And there does, we we kind of talked a little bit, you alluded to, there can be a point, I think, sometimes when you're learning anything, where you kind of just like, blah!

• 1:19:34Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just, I remember when I, I used to work for the Soviets and, um, so I was working out on Soviet trawlers and. Yeah, we're getting drunk all the time and all this kind of stuff. And, and you're just, it's all Russian, all the time. And there can come a point where it's just like, oh, man, you know, if I hear another Russian word, I'm just kind of, I, I, I just, you, you get almost overloaded. And it, it, there's these cycles, um, when you're learning something new. And I think that if you portion things out, so you're not just like everything all at once,

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  uh, but you're kind of breaking it up with other topics, um, it, it, I think it could be beneficial. Because if you're going pedal to the metal with everything in your life on one topic, um, there, there can come points where it just becomes so overwhelming. Um, whereas I think if you can take a break and do something different, that, that, that's a, somehow, for my brain at least, I, I'm not aware of any relevant research. It probably is, but it'd be hard to look up, for me, anyway. Um, but I think, guess, thinking about it some, I, I do them in parallel track.

• 1:20:55Shane Parrish?

  You've done a ton of work, kind of experimenting with online learning. What kinds of things do you find are better learned online, in your opinion, versus learned in person? And how do we augment online learning?

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  Let's see, that's a great question. I think that most things can be learned beautifully online. And the challenge is, is getting professors to create great online courses. Um, professors are often really used to students in caged classrooms, right? So they got them sit in front of them, you can be as boring, or as, you know, just... Repetitious and just kind of an awful teacher as you want and and students will take it because what other option do they have but online it's just not like that I mean it's I I always like to say that on the online world is a mixture of academia and

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Silicon Valley mixed with a little bit of Hollywood so it's more exciting there's there's more potential for some really cool stuff you could do online and this is in any topic so like people who are working in the humanities for example are like they're often ah my discipline just doesn't work for online that's just Yeah And it's mostly because well they they're not familiar with uh with studios and videotaping and all of the great visuals that you can bring in and actually the humanities is one of the best things you could put online because you can do this fun stuff with walking around

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  in metaphors and and it's cheap to do too because it's um it I mean it's it's easy uh it well like when I would get stuck uh creating something and learning how to learn I just ask a local high school kid uh I remember I was asked to speak at Harvard uh you know about the course and I was shocked because I walked in the room and it was just packed and I thought why is there so much interest and I come to find out that our one little course that was made for less than five thousand dollars mostly in my basement um had on this order the same number of students as all of Harvard's online courses put together

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  made for millions of dollars with hundreds of people Yeah And so as I was talking to him I was like you know you guys this is not rocket science and boy the reaction was you know that folded arms it's like well when Harvard does it's rocket science and but some of the the the things that are being taught are there's a use of metaphor for example when I describe using metaphors it's like oh my god you're dumbing things down well you're not dumbing things down neural reuse theory theory shows that you're actually activating those same mechanisms for the metaphor that you would for the underlying difficult concept you want to try to convey

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  So rather than dump things down, you're actually onboarding students more rapidly. So what I'm really trying to say is if you look at a lot of the top, you know, the materials that are from top institutions nowadays, some of it is just really bad. And you can go to YouTube and you can go to some of the other, you know, online providers from lesser institutions, shall we say, and find much better in information. But the challenge is that universities do have great research underpinnings, that if they can convey that in what they're teaching,

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  it's a one-two punch that is the most powerful and effective way of learning something. So I think there's a lot, a lot of progress that needs to be made in the world of online learning to make great materials that people wanna watch. They're enjoyable to watch and you don't need millions of dollars to make that happen. You just need professors, some of your best teachers. And, and right now, it can sometimes be difficult for, the best teachers don't really have access to really good online provider platforms.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  And, and so there's kind of a, I think this is a seeking process at present where universities, a few visionary universities are beginning to really improve some of their courses. And they're beginning to grab onto talent, but it's still a slow process. So I think there's gonna be much excitement to come and some really great learning materials. And we're just in the infancy of what online learning will be able to do.

• 1:26:09Shane Parrish?

  Do you think that universities who are funding this have an obligation to make that knowledge public to people about how we can effectively learn online as a means to facilitate a massive global online learning push?

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  I think that many universities, that there are often great administrators who see it as their duty to help share this information. But as, you know, as is sometimes said, moving a university is like moving a cemetery. You cannot expect any help from the inhabitants. And there's a lot of institutional inertia. There's a lot of opposition to online learning at, at many universities just because, you know, there's a fear that jobs would be lost.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  And this makes it difficult for some of these visionary administrators to, to get that material out there that they really want to share. And, you know, I, it's, the hardest part, this is the part that I find, that I really struggle with, is the top-tier universities are getting information out there with, with massive open online courses. It's the second-tier universities that often kind of go, oh, no. We shouldn't have anything online because people will lose jobs. So we're not going to allow anything going on with massive open online courses at our universities

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  because that's bad for faculty and so forth. So what this means is they're shooting that institution, so to speak, in, in the foot. Because, and they're allowing these top-tier universities to get all their stuff out there. And then the second-tier universities, well, the faculty are often hamstringing the, that, those institutions' abilities to reach out. And then that, I mean, that does a real disservice because I think that a lot of these so-called second-tier universities Are fantastic. They have some of the best instructors, the best professors. Those are the ones you really want to get out there.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  And, uh, and it's, it's really, there's something called the tall poppy syndrome. Uh, where that's an old phrase. It just means if anybody sticks up and they're really good, we're going to beat them down, right? I'll lop those heads off if they, if they stick up and they're good. And I think this, uh, the world of online learning is a little bit like that. And, uh, that, that second tier universities are sometimes doing this tall poppy syndrome where they, you know, if you're a really good instructor, well, it doesn't matter. We, we just want no online learning at our institution. That is of a massive form because it could, could affect, you know, our jobs.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  And that what they're not seeing is that it's going to affect their institution. And i- in 10 years, you don't want everybody getting their computer science masters from, uh, Georgia Tech. I mean, you don't want the whole world doing that. You want them to be at your local institution with getting their masters, with getting their undergraduates. And if you aren't setting things in motion in present year, I, I'm ranting a little bit. Uh, just because I think it's so important that, that more institutions, more universities, um, is particularly universities that are not in the top tier. That those are the ones where there's the best teaching often going on.

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  And that this needs to get out to the public.

• 1:30:09Shane Parrish?

  I wholeheartedly agree. Um, Barb, this has been fascinating. Where can people find out more about you?

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  Just go to my website, which is barbara oakley.com. And you can find all sorts of great things. And, uh, and look at my new book, which will come out in August next year. And there's a little link, you can preorder that. And also, um, my previous books and, uh, the learning how to learn, uh, massive open online course and the mind shift open online course, which, uh, is actually in the top 50 MOOCs of all time. So lots of great stuff. Uh, take a look there, but I, you're. You have a phenomenal, phenomenal website and phenomenal articles and it's really a pleasure to be here with you.

• 1:30:55Shane Parrish?

  Oh, thank you. That's very generous of you. I've really enjoyed our conversations. Thank you very much, Per. Hopefully, we can chat again soon.

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  It'd be a pleasure.

• 1:31:07Shane Parrish?

  Hey, guys. This is Shane again. Just a few more things before we wrap up. First, you can find show notes from today's show at fs.blog/podcast. You can also find out information on how to get a transcript. And if you'd like to receive a weekly email from me filled with all sorts of brain food, go to fs.blog/newsletter. This newsletter is all the good stuff I found on the web that week that I've shared with friends, that I've read, books I'm reading, and so much more. Last, if you enjoyed this or any other episode of The Knowledge Project, please consider subscribing and leaving a review. That leads me to this. Derek S. left a review on iTunes that said, "While the team thought

• 1:31:47Shane Parrish?

  it was hilarious, though, I'm still a little on the fence," Derek wrote of The Knowledge Project show, "that it's nuanced, diverse, and intelligent interviews. Shane's brain is so hungry that it ate all of his hair. His hair loss is your gain." Thanks, Derek. I think. If you're listening, shoot me an email at [email protected]. I'd love to send you some Fernum Street swag. And if you haven't let us know what you think of the podcast yet, please do it now. We'd love to hear from you. Every review helps us make the show better, expand our reach, and share our message with more people. And it only takes a minute. Thank you for listening and being part of the vibrant Fernum Street community.