Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or, How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything

by Ulrich Boser

For centuries, experts have argued that learning was about memorizing information: You're supposed to study facts, dates, and details; burn them into your memory; and then apply that knowledge at opportune times. But this approach to learning isn’t nearly enough for the world that we live in today, and in Learn Better journalist and education researcher Ulrich Boser demonstrates that how we learn can matter just as much as what we learn.

In this brilliantly researched book, Boser maps out the new science of learning, showing how simple techniques like comprehension check-ins and making material personally relatable can help people gain expertise in dramatically better ways. He covers six key steps to help you “learn how to learn,” all illuminated with fascinating stories like how Jackson Pollock developed his unique painting style and why an ancient Japanese counting device allows kids to do math at superhuman speeds. Boser’s witty, engaging writing makes this book feel like a guilty pleasure, not homework.

Learn Better will revolutionize the way students and society alike approach learning and makes the case that being smart is not an innate ability—learning is a skill everyone can master. With Boser as your guide, you will be able to fully capitalize on your brain’s remarkable ability to gain new skills and open up a whole new world of possibilities.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Education, Psychology, Personal Development, Productivity, Business

304 pages, Hardcover

First published March 7, 2017

Reviews

[Matt Root · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's good content here. But it's one of those 'popular science' books that's about 90% anecdotes. Some people learn well from this way of writing, but I find it tiresome.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good - I think it was longer than it needed to be, but the examples did a good job of illustrating the benefits of putting into action the methods described within each chapter. So the ways we learn better are:
value - see the value in what you're learning. If your disengaged out of principle, it's unlikely you'll learn much in your activity. If you're not interested, you're telling your brain not to learn.
target - know what it is you want to learn and target your learning goals every session. Having a measurable outcome quite increases one's ability.
develop - get rapid feedback on what you need to improve. Use recall and self-quizzing as much as possible. Tutoring is super-effective. Take lessons if you can, they help!
extend - typically we hit plateaus or places where we're comfortable with our ability but still not as good as we can get. Train near the edges of your understanding or current capacity in order to stretch said capacity. Deliberate practice, you've probably heard it before. 600,000 minutes, or 36 million seconds, if you prefer.
relate - draw connections, use analogies, make sense of the seemingly disparate information you're receiving and try to paint a cohesive picture. We store relationships and connections between concepts much better than isolated facts.
rethink - reflect on what you've learned. Take time for silence. Let your background brain do some work too. Use the power of recall and spaced repetition systems such as Anki to really cement what you know. Our brains are naturally sort of leaky, so common reflection is necessary to truly absorb information. Consolidate what you know. Visualize if applicable. Rethink your learning process. Think about thinking.

Some similar takeaways to the Coursera course Learning How to Learn, which I really loved, but this book is also worth reading even if you've taken the course.

[Tiffany Taylor Attaway · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will caveat this by saying I am probably the wrong audience for this book, since I read a lot of this type of book, and I studied cognitive psychology as part of my grad school curriculum. But I hated this book. It uses/overused the most trite practices of pop science books in a way that will annoy anyone with any knowledge of the subject.

He repackages established learning theories by giving anecdotes from contemporary researchers instead of referencing the more established terminology. If this is the only book you will ever read, that's fine. If you want to know more, then using the established terminology would be helpful. Examples: calling it "the forgetting curve" instead of Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve." Calling it spaced practice instead of spaced repetition. Doing a whole page on ZPD without actually calling it ZPD or once mentioning Vygotsky, instead referencing some researcher or educator he had coffee with. He talkes about how an educator at University of California "discovered" that some students used large piles of flashcards with spaced repetition. Yes, it's called a "Leitner box" and it is hardly revolutionary.

He uses sloppy writing. Roger Craig did not invent spaced learning, though the author sort of implies it. SuperMemo and Duolingo did not add it to their programs because of him. It existed long before him. (Which one can logically deduce from the note that he used Anki to practice for Jeopardy).

He repeats constantly. In every chapter he repeat the same ideas - self-quizzing or asking questions, getting feedback from an expert, etc. The book could have been a third of the size without the repetition. (Unless he is going for spaced repetition- see what I did there... )

Calling things the wrong things- he spent a whole chapter on "analogies." What he was really talking about was "pattern matching."

Non-sequiturs. Once part talked about how people don't notice things, and described a picture that had been drawn on and no one noticed for weeks, to a psych study about people not noticing a fight on the street (thank you for not citing the gorilla in the basketball game). The piece wraps with the conclusion that our brain is on autopilot because he used confirmation bias and justification to buy himself a new grill. huh?

Odd little things that make no sense in the real world. He was 6 so he was too young to have drawn a mustache on a painting. Really? Then my 4yo is wildly precocious. People who do lots of PowerPoint presentations don't put much thought into doing new PowerPoints because they are so used to it even if the meeting is different. Huh? If the content is different (and you are a professional) then of course you put more work into it, the delivery method is immaterial. According to him, everyone apparently scores themselves higher than average on how a toilet works. Uh, nope. I know jack about a toilet, and the beauty is that I don't have to. Everyone is overconfident so therefore it's "just embarrassing to to give the I've-got-no-idea-shrug." Why? Wouldn't you rather be the genuine person who admits they don't know something and gives someone else an opportunity to show what they know, or the asshole who pretends he knows it all while everyone recognizes he doesn't and sneers behind his back? Is that a guy thing? I have never felt the need to be omniscient or an expert in every single subject on the planet. That sounds really boring anyway.

If you're going to read books on learning, read something else. Read Josh Waitzkin's book. Or Tim Ferriss's books (he's less of a bro in the later ones). Or Daniel Goleman. Or Csikszentmihalyi. Read Jim Gee. Ruth Colvin Clark. Clark Quinn. Skip this one. Though if you do read it, it is skimmable- he takes forever getting to a point.

The unfortunate thing is that the methods he cites are not wrong. There's a lot of good advice in there. It's just packaged as new when it's not, skips over properly citing the founders in the field and the proper names of theories in order to make it sound new, and makes odd jumps in places. It could have been a much better book than it is with just a little work.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was okay. Some useful content but not well written and in desperate need of a better editor. Frequent typos, absent or poorly placed words hampered meaning and discredited the author's claims of expertise. Could have easily been summarized in one well-written blog post rather than filling a whole book.

[Jules · Rating 2 out of 5]

The biggest issue I had with the book is that it never seemed to know if it was geared at school learning (students, teachers, parents, etc) or adult learning (learning new skills, information, etc). There would be long passages about adult learning (what I'm interested in) that would end in 'and this is how it applies to a chemistry test.' Some of the examples were condescending (I bet you don't know the capital of Australia! Or how a toilet works!) and while the little pop quizzes illustrated a point about school learning, by the last chapter I was bored since they rarely referenced anything beyond the first chapter. There were also better and more interesting resources the author could've used, like Taylor's learning cycle which just ended up feeling like lazy research.

Despite the author touting his use of a freelance editor, I wonder if they didn't see the "Relate" chapter. The chapter used the word "analogy" to talk about SAT analogies (bird is to nest like...), metaphors (reflecting on Einstein's journey may give more perspective), and critical thinking (what is true, possibly true, probably not true, and ridiculous about Holy Blood, Holy Grail's arguments).

The book references some good research but I can't in good faith recommend it, especially if you know anything about adult learning. If you're interested in school learning and reforming the way things are taught, then you may get a little out of it, but I'm sure there are better books about the trouble with American education. And as a manifesto to change education (which the epilogue felt like a bit), it lacked clarity and a driving call to action.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learning is a skill. You can get better at it. Boser can help you discover how.

This is a readable, well-paced, organized introduction to the scientific literature on learning. Occasionally a bit heavy on anecdote (much like Malcolm Gladwell), but overall quite informative. It focuses mostly on the big picture, explaining in a general sense how learning occurs and how to structure your approach to learning in a global sense. Some specific practices are recommended, such as spaced repetition and self-quizzing, but these really aren't the focus. The back of the book contains some useful summaries, strategies, and bibliography.

Probably the most significant point this book makes is that in order to learn well, people need to think about and monitor their own learning. So, for example, in attempting to learn German, I ought to identify priority objectives, devise a systematic plan for learning, keep regular tabs on how my learning is progressing, and occasionally reflect on or tweak my process. This "metacognition," taking a step back and thinking about thinking, not only helps someone learn a particular task better, but also improves the person's ability to learn in general.

[Ziyad Khesbak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimately, it is lacking in writing quality and meanders with its stories, following formulaic non-fiction format of "This person knows ____. He is a ___ at ___ University and studies ____. Once upon a time, he was ____ and wondered ____, which led him to study ____ and discover ____." Over and over.

Regardless, Boser provides a narrative format to learning research better served in a well-structured text such as "The ABCs of Learning" which I absolutely loved and does a more robust job of interpreting the research than Boser's arbitrary assumptions. Additionally, I am not sure that his categorizations of learning progress, "Value, Target, Develop, Extend, Relate, Rethink" and necessarily accurate and need to follow in succession rather than in parallel.

This is a good introductory text and a quick read (noting for a moment that its individual points regarding learning techniques are perfectly accurate) but for those more interested, there are better books.

[Song · Rating 5 out of 5]

自古以来，中国就有着高度重视教育，重视学习的优良传统。其他国家和民族也类似，能够接受教育，有机会学习，是保持社会阶级流动，跻身精英阶层的必由之路。而今知识经济的时代，知识就是竞争力，学习知识是个迫切的任务。活到老学到老，家长带着稚气未脱的学童奔走于各种辅导班学习班，可以说是全民高度重视学习。但学习本身到底应该怎样做才好？能够更高效，记住的更多，掌握得更牢固？这个问题似乎探讨得不多。

作者在走访无数教授、心理学家、认知科学家和脑科学家的基础上，结合实际的教学案例，提出了一整套更佳学习方法论。清晰易懂的论述，建立在丰富而确凿的理论和案例基础上，非常令人信服。

推荐给每位有志向学的人。

[Victor · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is supposed to spotlight some of the latest findings in how people learn and the most effective strategies for learning, but much of it is old hat. For instance, metacognition (“thinking about thinking”) is at least a twenty year-old idea; using flashcards and self-quizzing to learn words or concepts was a strategy widely used by high school and college kids in the 80s; the finding that people learn best in environments free of distractions or that building knowledge happens best through studying over intervals of time—as opposed to cramming in one night—are hardly new discoveries.

Ulrich Boser’s book is really meant for people who never paid attention in class or couldn’t. (Cramming, by the way, is effective for short-term goals like completing a midterm or final exam, after which one is unlikely to retain the information.)

Nevertheless, Boser is right that meaningful long-term learning can only be done through hard-study fueled by self-motivation. There is no magic pill. Deep reflection, expert feedback, and constant questioning of what one has learned or is trying to learn, is essential in acquiring strong knowledge and skills. The unsexy truth is that learning is a tedious process—one that demands endurance and perseverance.

Although the author has a good sense of what it is like to learn, he has little sense of what it is like to teach. One of the major flaws of Learn Better is that it ignores how the compulsory nature of school actually undermines the strategies outlined in the book. The strategies do work but are most effective when students are free to be self-directed and in charge of their own learning, conditions that most schools prevent.

Regrettably, Boser suggests that “policymakers” make changes “to improve the nation’s system of schooling” and make it “better.” Beyond its vagueness, it is a rather obtuse view. The people who can improve education and who ought to be in charge of it are the folks who actually teach in the classroom—not policymakers.

For me at least, it is difficult to say what in Learn Better was worthwhile. The book is presented in a bland and uninspiring writing style. For a text about education, it also suffers from some embarrassing and unforgivable typos and grammatical errors—I counted at least eight. I might overlook 1-2, but beyond that the author’s credibility begins to crumble for me, especially if he or she has never taught in a classroom, which Boser has not, according to the book’s back flap. Nancy N. Bailey, who copy edited this book, seems as unqualified for the job of proofreading as the author was for writing this book.

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is full of good information. Unfortunately, the writing is pretty awful. Boser jumps around between facts and anecdotes without considering his reader; the lack of flow is distracting and has the unfortunate effect of being jerked around on an old wooden roller coaster. For a book about learning, there were also a surprising number of instances where his points were either unclear or misleading. If you are a learner, parent or teacher interested in how to apply the findings in this book, just skip to the end and read the concise and direct appendix-like sections.

[Nathan Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book takes a very well-rounded approach to learning how to learn. Most others in this space focus on one particular set of scientific research to prove their point and miss the broader picture of how to learn effectively.

Although there are six chapters, each focusing on a different phase of the learning process, my takeaways can be summed up in three key points:

1. Motivation(we need deeply personal reasons for why we are studying our topic)
2. Relation(relate ideas to other ideas to think deeper, more creatively, and challenge preconceptions)
3. Recall, recall, recall(we can't expect to remember material the first pass through)

I have one gripe with this book that is completely inexcusable, and is the reason for taking off one star: grammatical errors. Many errors. Words that should not have been in sentences, missing words, and continually misspelling the word "gaffe." This word was spelled "gaff" and means something the author did not intend. It boggles my mind that this book passed the editing stage without these errors getting corrected. Aside from this issue, I benefited significantly from this book and it is most definitely worth a read.

[Mars Cheung · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learning material from a vast assortment of various subjects (languages, history, politics, science) ranging from the obscure to the controversial in order to be able to understand and engage in conversation has been a great interest of mine. Being able not only to take in but assimilate stores of information and draw inferences is a skill that anyone could spend more time honing.

I enjoyed the book for some perspectives it offered on how 'learning' occurs and what are some tools/strategies/methods that can be used to speed the process along. I thought some of the book was repetitive and some areas could have been explored in greater detail, but it was an interesting read and I'll be putting into practice some of the exercises described in this volume.

A decent read. Not a bad choice to invest in.

[Oleksandr Golovatyi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Игры для тренировки когнитивных способностей. (промо)

Лучшие заметки из книги:

"обучение - процесс, метод, система понимания. Это деятельность, требующая сосредоточенности, планирования и анализа, и, когда люди понимают, как именно следует учиться, они гораздо эффективнее овладевают требуемыми знаниями и навыками."

"последние исследования показывают, что мы с меньшей вероятностью запомним картину, виденную в музее, если сфотографируем ее. Такое впечатление, что наш мозг знает, что изображение сохранено на цифровом устройстве, и уже не тратит усилий на запоминание."

"Факты и сегодня продолжают играть важнейшую роль. Знания служат основой обучения. Запоминание остается важным инструментом, и от того, что вы знаете, по-прежнему во многом зависит то, чему вы способны научиться. Я называю это эффектом знания .."

"Но знание фактов - лишь начало. Учение как процесс подразумевает также умение видеть взаимосвязи, определять причину и следствие, находить аналогии и подобие. В конечном итоге цель обучения - изменение нашего мышления относительно какого-либо факта или идеи, и, когда учимся, мы стремимся усвоить определенную систему мышления."

"при решении сложных задача имеет смысл поискать аналогии вне сферы вашей деятельности."

"Точное определение проблемы часто способствует ее решению."

"Умение учиться - наш "главный инструмент выживания", один из самых важных талантов современной эпохи."

"если навык, которым вы хотите овладеть, требует глубоких знаний, значит, вы должны усвоить их как можно лучше. Для этого необходимо применить системный подход, состоящий из нескольких важных частей. Ценность ... Цель ... Развитие... Расширение... Взаимосвязи... Переосмысление..."

"Огромную роль в обучении играют эмоции."

"Процесс обретения мастерства затрагивает как наше сознание, так и сферу бессознательного. Поэтому мы не можем научиться чему-то, если не верим, что способны на это.., нашему мозгу для функционирования на высоком уровне необходимы как разум, так и эмоции"

"В современном мире наша цель - не просто быть умными или помнить много фактов. Этого уже недостаточно. Наша цель - стать эффективными учениками, способными извлечь преимущества из всех инструментов и методов, которые предлагает XXI век."

"Мотивация - первый шаг в процессе приобретения того или иного навыка."

"Если мы находим связи между новым материалом и тем, что нам уже известно, мы начинаем его осмыслять."

"Смысл не приходит к нам в процессе учения. Мы должны сами раскрыть его."

"смысл - один из самых главных факторов удовлетворения. Ценность нужна людям в жизни больше, чем счастье и выгода, и те, кто считает, что в их жизни больше смысла, оказываются менее обеспокоенными, более здоровыми и удовлетворенными."

"наибольшую эффективность продемонстрировали такие активные методы обучения, как проверка собственных знаний с помощью опроса самого себя или объяснения самому себе."

"в преподавании два основных фактора, стимулирующие высокие результаты у учеников. Первый - так называемое "академическое давление", то есть усилие, с которым учитель подталкивает учеников к усердному труду и активному освоению материала. Второй фактор - "академическая поддержка", или степень того, насколько, по ощущениям самих учеников, преподаватели мотивируют их. Здесь речь идет о значимости, об ощущении личной связи между учениками и учителями."

"Наш мозг способен одновременно оперировать всего лишь тремя-четырьмя единицами информации"

"приобретенный опыт должен пройти обработку кратковременной памятью, прежде чем сохраниться в долговременной."

"необходимо следить за тем, чтобы любое новое знание могло "пролезть" в наш мозг через узки "шлюз" кратковременной памяти - тогда впоследствии оно успешно сохраниться в долговременной."

"Усвоение чего-то нового всегда опирается на то, что нам уже известно, и все, что мы хотим изучать, основывается на том, что было выучено ранее."

"Несколько десятилетий назад психолог Бенджамин Блум заявил, что личное наставничество в два раза эффективнее любых других форм обучения."

"общение преподавателя с учеником один на один - это действительно один из самых действительных способов чему-либо научиться."

"Мнемоника очень эффективна как инструмент обучения именно благодаря природе долговременной памяти - она присоединяет новые знания к старым"

"Для каждого отдельного человека учение должно начинаться с четкого понимания того, какими базовыми знаниями ему следует обладать, чтобы далее совершенствоваться в выбранной области."

"природа учения - обретения мастерства - динамична. Чтобы стать в чем-то специалистом, нужно постоянно выходить за рамки своих навыков. Говоря коротко, в учении нет зоны комфорта."

"Объединяя учеников не по возрасту или соответствию формальному классу, а по реальному уровню знаний и достигнутым успехам, учитель может давать каждому более целенаправленные инструкции."

"важно помнить о том, что мастерство, как и память, нелинейно. Скорее их можно сравнить с расползающейся во все стороны сетью, системой дорог и перекрестков."

"В любых сферах - от пилотирования до архитектуры, от бейсбола до музыки - специалисты думают более связным образом, сразу выстраивая взаимоотношения между фактами. Долговременная память таких людей опирается именно на эти связи, а не на отдельные особенности, на систему, а не на факты, поэтому специалисты, словно истинные прорицатели или "ходячие анализаторы данных", способны абстрагироваться от поверхностных признаков и определить корень проблемы"

"профессионализм - это не просто выученный набор фактов. Чтобы действительно знать что-то, человек должен обладать определенными навыками мышления."

"достигнув мастерства в какой-либо области, мы перестаем сознательно контролировать все детали. Когда мы что-то знаем, нам бывает трудно объяснить это знание посторонним."

"в конечном итоге все снова сводится к ценности наставников. Нам нужны такие инструкторы, которые знают свой предмет - и способны объяснить его. А значит, не следует выбирать преподавателей исключительно по уровню их профессионализма в той или иной сфере. Нужно искать тех, кто имеет опыт именно в преподавании данного предмета, кто понимает, как следует объяснять ключевые умения и идеи."

"Контекст зачастую оказывается одной из важнейших частей понимания. Иными словами, чтобы научиться учиться, нужно знать, чему вы учитесь."

"в конечном итоге только контекст придает словам реальную значимость"

"метасознанием ... как размышления о мышлении"

"Как утверждают специалисты, у метасознания есть две стороны. Одна из них - планирование: "Как я собираюсь узнать, что я знаю? Каковы мои цели? Нужны ли мне еще какие-то базовые знания?" Вторая - мониторинг: "Могу ли я усвоить эту идею иным способом? Есть у меня прогресс? Почему я делаю то, что делаю""

"чем раньше мы научимся задавать метакогнитивные вопросы, тем быстрее сможем овладеть новыми навыками."

"Одна из самых серьезных проблем учения состоит в том, что мы недостаточно рано обретаем метасознание. Мы слишком мало стараемся понять то, чего не знаем, и в то же время чересчур уверены в собственных знаниях."

"метасознание можно свести к ряду вопросов, которые мы себе задаем: "Как я знаю, что я знаю? Что мне кажется неясным? Могу ли я измерить степень своего понимания?""

"исследователь Марсель Винман утверждает, что ученики, способные управлять своим мышлением, добиваются больших успехов, чем те, кто обладает высоким IQ... Вклад метасознания в результаты учебы составляет около 40%, в то время как вклад IQ - лишь 25%"

"Хороший пример метасознания - написание письма. Обычно, размышления над составлением фраз и абзацев, мы задаем себе критически важные метакогнитивные вопросы: "Кто это будет читать? Поймут ли они меня? Что я должен объяснить?" Именно поэтому письмо зачастую оказывается столь эффективным способом организации мыслей - оно заставляет нас оценить свои доводы и обдумать идеи."

"Психолог Линдси Ричленд с коллегами показала, что те, кто пытается до начала чтения учебного текста задавать себе метакогнитивные вопросы, узнают гораздо больше, даже если сперва не могут ответить на эти вопросы правильно."

"в ходе учения - и в мышлении -наши эмоции работают как первая линия обороны. Они - своего рода привратник, который советует нам, применять к данному случаю логические способности или нет."

"Оказывается, между представлением опыта и его реальным переживанием нет большой разницы."

"люди, имеющие четкие цели, справляются с задачами лучше, чем те, что руководствуется расплывчатыми формулировками... Ставя перед собой конкретные задачи, мы оказываемся более способными достичь желаемого."

"успех более вероятен, если человек намечает для себя простые и легко достижимые промежуточные ориентиры."

"когда мы учимся, нам часто приходится находить баланс между социальной поддержкой и социальным давлением."

"учения без усилий не бывает. Освоение любого навыка - напряженный, дискомфортный, а иногда и по-настоящему мучительный процесс."

"обучение - ментальное действие."

"Если информация неполна или не рассмотрена на трех разных примерах, ученик не усвоит идею... Причем трех раз может быть недостаточно. На самом деле три повторения - это минимум, и во многих случаях нам необходимо возвращаться к знаниям и навыкам снова, снова и снова"

"(книга) Конникова М. Выдающийся ум. Мыслыть как Шерлок Холмс"

"Не менее важно то, что ошибки рождают смысл. Они создают понимание."

"Совершая ошибку, мы начинаем искать смысл, и таким образом обучение становиться более эффективным."

"ошибки - суть мышления. Они лежат в основе развития любых идей. Чтобы учиться, чтобы овладевать мастерством, нам нужны ошибки, потому что без них нет понимания."

"теории когнитивного диссонанса, суть которой в том, что люди испытывают дискомфорт, если делают что-то, вступающее в конфликт с их идеалами."

"В предыдущей главе мы говорили о развитии навыков путем сосредоточенной практики. Но чтобы стать настоящим специалистом, мы также должны расширять сферу своего мастерства. Учение - особенно более глубокие его формы - включает в себя расширение области знаний и сферы профессионализма, и на этой стадии процесса необходимо добавиться углубленного понимания предмета."

"Импровизация как метод обучения - это способ расширить сферу своего профессионализма. Она двигает вас к мастерству, потому что заставляет глубже погружаться в соответствующую область. Импровизация помогает нам добраться до сути, построить когнитивные связи."

"Еще один способ расширить сферу своих знаний - задать вопрос "Почему?""

"Не менее важно и то, что вопросы "Почему?" помогают нам размышлять о нашем мышлении. Они дают нам стимул лучше понять то, что мы узнали, позволяют сформировать более детальное представление о предмете. Особенно хорошо эта техника работает при чтении - и, чтобы больше извлечь из текста, почаще задавайте себе разные вопросы, например: "Почему автор это утверждает? Почему я верю автору? Почему это важно?""

"Поиск аргументов - еще одна форма расширения в учении, еще один способ, позволяющий импровизировать на основании имеющихся знаний и развивать представление о предмете."

"Привлекая доказательства в поддержку нашего мышления, мы совершенствуем свои знания о предмете, и в этом смысле поиск аргументов работает так же, как импровизация. Он побуждает нас выстраивать логические связи внутри области знаний, заставляет больше и глубже размышлять и таким образом способствует нашему развитию."

"Неформальный девиз школы: "В "Хай-Тек Хай" можно играть в видеоигры, но только если ты сам их написал""

"чтобы полностью овладеть навыком, нужно самому активно применять его на практике."

"еще один способ применить полученные знания на практике - научить кого-нибудь другого."

"Читая лекцию перед тысячной аудиторией или пытаясь объяснить что-то небольшой группе новичков, мы сами начинаем лучше понимать определенную область знаний."

"обучая другого человека, мы пропускаем идеи через собственный разум. Мы подчеркиваем наиболее важные аспекты, формулируем идеи своими словами и таким образом повышаем уровень собственного профессионализма."

"для эффективного обучения требуется неопределенность. Мы должны видеть неоднозначность. Профессионализм основывается на изменении наших представлений о навыке или области знаний."

"повышение социального многообразия ведет к росту продуктивности"

"Для нас первый важный вывод из этого состоит в том, что увеличение разнообразия в группах стимулирует более многочисленные формы мышления."

"для более интенсивных форм обучения требуется определенный скептицизм. Чтобы обрести мастерство и расширить знания, необходимо сомневаться. Нужно задавать вопросы - и даже бунтовать."

"развивая логическое мышление и аргументацию, вы очень многому научитесь"

"Мысленные эксперименты как учебное упражнение применялись еще в Древней Греции и в целом служат способом более глубокого обдумывания идеи. Они заставляют людей разобраться, как определенный навык или знание встраиваются в систему ..."

"Чтобы учиться эффективно, люди должны искать причины, аналогии, различия"

"Диаграммы Венна подчеркивают важный момент в процессе обучения: люди способны усвоить очень многое, увидев наглядное истолкование системы знаний. Графическая форма представления взаимосвязей позволяет нам осознать очень важные вещи."

"Полезный пример - концептуальные карты. Эти родственники диаграмм Венна дают нам графический путь к знаниям."

"одно из главных преимуществ графических схем состоит в том, что они позволяют видеть более глубокие связи в области знаний."

"Tinderbox - приложение, строящее концептуальные карты. Этот инструмент помогает организовывать файлы, строя связи между различными областями и темами."

"инструмента под названием DEVONthink"

"я стал фанатом писательского софта Scrivener. Он помогает мне тем, что создает концептуальные карты, предлагая виртуальную доску для заметок и систему сетевого управления."

"(книга) Пойа Д. Как решать задачу (1959)"

"первый урок переосмысления знаний: будьте скромны"

"программу под названием Anki. Основанная на принципах интервального обучения, она с помощью сложного алгоритма предлагала людям опросы именно по тем темам, которые находились на грани забывания. Как было написано на сайте, посвященном этой программе, "повторяйте только тот материал, который вы вот-вот забудете""

"распределение обучения во времени - лучший способ приобрести и сохранить знания."

"VocApp позволяет пользователям включить в процесс обучения изображения. DuoLingo предназначена для изучения иностранных языков, и с ее помощью можно распределять во времени запоминание слов."

"Хотите получить высший балл на сложном экзамене? Начните готовиться заранее, чтобы распределить подготовку во времени, и каждые несколько недель устраивайте себе опросы, чтобы быть уверенным, что запомнили материал."

"размышления - важная часть обучения."

"Размышлять о своих действиях важнее, чем просто действовать"

"Письменная фиксация мыслей замедляет их течение, позволяя рассуждать более глубоко. Поэтому ведение дневника - один из способов повышения качества обучения."

"рефлексия не просто дает нам возможность проанализировать изученное. Она сама является собой формой обучения. Замечательный пример этой идеи - сон. Оказывается, во сне происходит осмысление наших собственных мыслей. Ложась подремать, мы наводим порядок в наших знаниях."

"Судя по данным различных исследований, сон дает нам удивительные преимущества. Он делает нас лучше и человечнее. Те, кто больше спит, как правило, больше зарабатывают. Сон помогает в снижении веса. Спортсменам сон дает улучшение координации и скорости."

"Люди ... должны погружаться в "продуктивное блуждание мысли""

"Гендиректор AT&T Рэндалл Стивенсон как-то сказал в интервью, что, если человек не занимается изучением чего-то нового хотя бы шесть часов в неделю, он "устаревает""

"Ценность. Невозможно научиться чему-то, если мы не хотим учиться, и, чтобы достичь мастерства, мы должны воспринимать навыки и знания как нечто ценное. Более того, мы должны создать смысл. Обучение - это придание чему-то смысла."

"Цель. На ранних этапах овладения мастерством главное - сосредоточенность. Мы должны осознать, чему именно хотим научиться, и установить для себя конкретные цели."

"Развитие. Одни формы практики позволяют людям достичь большего уровня мастерства, чем другие. На этой стадии обучения нужно оттачивать свои навыки и предпринимать целенаправленные шаги для улучшения качества деятельности."

"Расширение. На этом этапе мы должны выйти за рамки основ и применить то, что уже знаем. Нам нужно обогатить наши навыки и знания и добиться более значимых форм понимания."

"Взаимосвязи. Это фаза, на которой мы начинаем видеть единую картину. Нам недостаточно знать лишь какие-то отдельные детали или процедуры - нам нужно понимать, как все они взаимодействуют между собой."

"Переосмысление. В обучении очень легко допустить ошибки, стать слишком самоуверенным, поэтому нам нужно периодически анализировать наши знания, пересматривать понимание и извлекать уроки из процесса обучения."

"все мы должны осваивать процесс учения - мы должны учиться учиться" !!!

"Учение - процесс, метод, область мастерства, и, приложив необходимые усилия, сосредоточенность и практику, мы можем усовершенствовать этот процесс. Ниже приведен ряд ключевых этапов учения как метода, от постановки целей до пересмотра главных идей. 1) Найдите ценность. 2) Поставьте перед собой цели. 3) Развивайте знания и навыки. 4) Расширяйте сферу вашей учебы. 5) Ищите взаимосвязи. 6) Переосмысляйте изученное."

"хвалите за методы, а не за успехи: "Молодец, что так усердно работал. Продолжай в том же духе"" (Кэрол Дуэк)

"Ambrose, Susan A., Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett, and Marie K. Norman. How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. Kindle edition. 2010"

"Bourne, Lyle E., and Alice F. Healy. Training Cognition: Optimizing Efficiency, Durability, and Generalizability. 2012"

"Bransford, John D., Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking. eds. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School. 2000"

"Christodoulou, Daisy. Seven Myths about Education. 2014"

"Clark, Ruth C. Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement. 2008"

"Claxton, Guy. Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When you Think Less. 1999"

"Dunlosky, John, and Janet Metcalf. Metacognition. 2008"

"Stigler, James W., and James Hiebert. The Teaching Gap: Best Ideas from the World's Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom. 1999."

"Willingham, Daniel T. Cognition: The Thinking Animal. 3rd ed. 2006"

Скорочтение! Как читать быстро и осмысленно (промо)

[Aleixie · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 30%.

just really boring.

[Bud Winn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting read. Good examples and some vignettes. Framework looks promising - will play around with it.

[J. J. Chung · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the book provides very useful tips for learning, I found that there were too many anecdotes that sometimes unnecessarily overlapped with other content. Perhaps the anecdotes made the book more readable and relatable, but in my opinion, I believe it could've been more concise and succinct. Here's a detailed outline of the book:

Core Question: How can I learn better?

1. Create Value.
a. What is value?
Value is the meaning and significance we perceive in the skillset, intellectually, emotionally and socially.
b. Why is value important for learning?
Because value is a necessary condition for learning: learning requires motivation, and (deep) motivation consists of the cost (effort required), the reward (target), and the value (of the skillset). Value is the emotional fire that sustains motivation.
c. How should I create value for learning?
Value cannot be told or instructed; it must be self-generated by one's perceiving the connection between the skillset and their lives, within a free and safe space (but not too free; we still require some level of instruction and support).
- Instruction and support: academic press—how hard a teacher pushes his students; academic support—how students feel motivated by teachers; emotional support—encouragement and comfort for students to bear the strain of mental exercises.
- To perceive this connection, ask, How is this material valuable to me? How can I make it more relevant? How can I use this expertise in my own life?
- After perceiving the connection, we need to: (i) self-quiz and self-explain what we are learning—to make sense of what we are learning, and perceive how it relates to value; (ii) practise mindfulness—constantly look for value in what we are learning.

2. Form Targets.
a. What are targets about?
Targets are about taking focused steps to reach a definite goal in learning.
b. How can I set targets?
- Before learning a skillset, ask, what am I going to learn? what sort of plan do I have in order to learn?
- When creating a learning plan, beware of cognitive overload, e.g. too much information, stress, distractions.
- Instead,
(i) Ensure that we possess the foundational concepts needed for mastery,
(ii) Break down the 'curriculum' into bite-sized chunks of mastery while ensuring consistency,
(iii) Begin just beyond our existing knowledge,
(iv) Focus on 'pattern recognition'—i.e. connecting the data systemically, rather than rote memorisation,
(v) While setting goals, engage in metacognition: (a) Planning—how will I know what I know? what are my goals? what background knowledge do I have? (b) Monitoring—could I learn this idea in a different way? am I making progress? why am I doing what I am doing? (c) emotion-management—how do I feel?
-> To minimise emotional distress, (a) remove negative stimulus (e.g. stress), (b) mental imaging to overcome negative emotions (e.g. imagining one's successful performance), (c) create long-term strategies, (d) selftalk to remind yourself of progress, (e) believe that you
can overcome the specific task.
-> While difficulties can affect emotions, perceive them as indispensable for learning.

3. Develop skills.
a. What does it mean to develop skills?
It means to hone our abilities for improved performance.
b. How can I develop?
Development arises from two factors: (i) having a feedback loop, and (ii) a structured way of honing our skills.
-> (i) Having a feedback loop is very important because focused criticism helps us to recognise our mistakes better and provides ways of improvement. Examples include: coaching or high-quality curriculum, and self-monitoring errors. But note that feedback always requires explanations in order to be helpful. To appropriate the feedback well, we need to struggle with improvement through repetition or retrieval practice—viz. recall an idea and summarise it.
-> (ii) A structured way of honing our skills is by (1) retrieval practice and (2) dealing properly with errors.
--> (1) Retrieval Practice: Create two piles of cards: the first, with facts/concepts (e.g. Existentialism); the second, with questions (e.g. "Give an example", or "Draw this concept"), then pick a card from both piles of cards, one at a time. The rigour and precision is important because it forces the brain to create new neural structures to account for the knowledge.
--> (2) Dealing with errors: be prepared for them, as they are essential for developing expertise. Know our emotions, and then manage them by speaking to ourselves. Don't harp on
errors, but on performance.

4. Extend skills.
a. What does it mean to extend skills?
It means broadening and deepening an area of knowledge.
b. How can I extend skills?
(i) Explain what we are learning: can I describe the idea? can I clarify the skill? can I put it into my own words? In reading, ask: what did I just read? how does that fit together? have I come across this idea before?
(ii) Justify what you've learnt through arguments because they force us to engage with reasons.
(iii) Apply the knowledge by using concrete terms (e.g. vivid metaphors) to express the abstract knowledge.
(iv) Apply the knowledge by teaching; use open-ended questions often to encourage thinking.
(v) Appreciate ambiguity—effective learning requires uncertainty, and
we need to learn how to live with it.
(vi) Self-questioning: (1) Stretch your knowledge: make it more abstract; (2) Squeeze your knowledge: make it more concrete.
(vii) Introduce social diversity into dialogue—promotes critical thinking by making people more sceptical of each other, which forces us to understand their point of view.

5. Relate facts.
a. What does it mean to relate facts?
To relate facts is to understand a topic's underlying connections.
b. How can I relate facts better?
(i) Mix up our learning: practise using many different examples for a long chunk of time, and avoid repetition.
(ii) Be explicit about the deeper structure identified in the problem: e.g. writing the name of the concept implied.
(iii) Use hypotheticals (speculation): the 'what if' provokes us to consider aspects of the knowledge system.
(iv) Use the scientific process: (1) look at the evidence, (2) develop a theory, (3) test the theory, (through dedicated experimentation), (4) come to a conclusion.
(v) Use visual aids (e.g. Venn diagrams, concept maps)
(vi) Using software (e.g. DEVONthink, Scrivener) to sort through data to see connections.
(vii) Use analogies for:
- Comparing and contrasting ideas, which helps with understanding underlying ideas,
- Engaging in deeper forms of reasoning: it forces us to to study how we infer our conclusions, compare lines of thinking, expose assumptions.
(viii) Employ method of problem solving:
-> (1) Understanding—look to find the core idea or nature of the problem. What is the unknown? What are the data?
-> (2) Devising a plan—map our how we intend to address the problem by finding the connection between the data and unknown.
-> (3) Carry out the plan—trying to prove whether we are correct.
-> (4) Looking back—reexamining the result and the path that led to it, for people to consolidate their knowledge and develop ability to solve problems.

6. Rethink learning.
a. What does it mean to rethink learning?
It means to admit that we tend to be overconfident. For the following reasons: (1) Familiarity—if something looks simple or common (e.g. TED talks); (2) Past performance—success tends to breed complacency.
b. How can I rethink learning?
(i) Examine our own thinking: ask, what did I learn? What was hard to understand? What seems unclear?
-> Focus on the areas that give the most difficulty.
-> Change the context of the learning experience—e.g. printing the essay or reading out loud vs. reading from screen.
-> Most importantly, attitude: willingness to evaluate our performance closely and critically.
-> Review our learning periodically—distribute our learning over time.
(ii) Reflection: take time to deliberate on our knowledge and skills for a deeper sense of understanding.
-> Requires long, uninterrupted moments of calm for focused deliberation, even away from the study material and especially distractions. (even in sleep!)
-> Consider our emotional state while learning—need for cognitive quiet.
-> Before engaging in a learning task that takes a lot of concentration, people should work to push aside anxious thoughts.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first time I ignored the warning of reviewers about a book and got it anyway because it happened to be the Amazon Editor's Pick for Best Science Book of the Year. Well, it's actually kinda mediocre, especially compared to such powerhouses as Magness & Stulberg's Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success, Benedict Carey's How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens, Daniel Coyle's The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How. and the magisterial Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson. Sure, it contains lots of stories, which is one of the oft-discussed learning tools. But the stories don't really make strong, memorable points.
The unfortunate fact is that this book contains a lot of mistakes -- sloppy, avoidable ones. Like the combinatorics problem in which Boser quotes someone saying "if there are seven options for each of the five things... there would be 7x7x7x7x7 or 75 possibilities" (both numbers can't be right). Or when he recounts the math problem of the skateboarder traveling at 6.5 miles per second (faster than the Space Shuttle) that makes no sense at all. Or when the phalanx of writers and editors going through this book still misspell "gaffe" as "gaff" a dozen times (kinda funny if it were intentional). Mistakes like these diminish trust in the source.
I appreciated the very useful 10-page "Took Kit" summary at the end of the book. The thing is, that could have been the whole book, since the main body of the book was a bit thin and repetitive. If you have no exposure to the science of learning, you will pick up some interesting and actionable information from "Learn Better." Otherwise, I refer you to the other books mentioned above.
-- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil., Happiness Engineer and author of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible, the highest-rated dating book on Amazon for 4 years, and Should I Go to Medical School?: An Irreverent Guide to the Pros and Cons of a Career in Medicine

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should note at the outset, that this review is based on a Blinkist summary of the whole book. So it comes with limitations. Though, I have found the Blinkist summaries, very good in capturing the essence of the full book. But one is always going to miss the detail and the nuances of the full book. Nevertheless here are a few extracts from the summary that caught my attention:
The biggest finding is that, by employing learning strategies, you can dramatically improve your outcomes.
The members of "Team Performance” were told that they would win by hitting the bull’s eye; those of "Team Learning Method” were taught throwing strategies, such as keeping their arms close to their bodies;....."Team Learning Method” outperform the others; its members also had the most fun!
There’s another useful learning tool called self-quizzing. This learning strategy involves repeatedly recalling and testing yourself on what you’ve been taught. It’s a technique designed to help new ideas stick in your long-term memory........self-quizzing is 50 percent more effective than some other learning strategies.
A final method for improving learning is using earplugs to block out external noise. [Hmm...this seems to be in a totally different class to the techniques mentioned above...but maybe it has impact].
Learning can be made more effective still by using the six steps of learning.
1. The first step is all about value.........if you can make the skills or knowledge you're learning valuable and meaningful, you’ll be much more driven to take initiative and persevere. But meaning and significance don’t just appear out of nowhere. It takes time and a great deal of hard work to find them. [An example is where a teacher] made the students write essays on how statistics could enhance them and their interests......Consequently, they quickly became much more interested in the subject. In fact, some really got the bug and ended up jumping a whole grade level.
2. Step two is all about: breaking up larger goals into smaller goals, or targets, that you can focus on one at a time......But there’s more to mastering a skill than breaking up your goals. You also need to build up some background knowledge before you begin. That’s because it’s difficult to really grasp a new subject or field before you’ve gotten a handle on the basics.......once you have the essentials down, you'll be that much better at setting yourself small and achievable goals.
3. The third step is to develop–that is, to hone your skills by getting feedback......Someone else’s perspective is bound to help in the long run, even if it feels like it’s slowing you down at the time.......Another way to improve is to decrease error rate by monitoring and recording your mistakes.
4. in reality, geniuses are forged in the crucible of continuous learning......That’s step four in a nutshell–you’ve got to extend the knowledge you already possess. In other words, if you aspire to reach the highest echelons, you’ll have to constantly improve your understanding of a given topic.......A further technique you can use for deepening your skills and knowledge is to visualize images with your mind’s eye......[A student] wanted to memorize the titles of E. M. Forster’s novels. So he imagined himself in a room, looking out the window, through which he could see “a giant, throbbing thirty-foot-wide buttocks.” This image ensured that Harris would forever remember the book titles A Room with a View and Howard’s End.
5. Practice alone isn’t actually all that efficient.......This is where step five comes in–you’ve got to relate. In other words, you have to develop an understanding of the relationship between concepts......Varying how you practice also works wonders for learning.
6. The sixth and final step encourages you to review your knowledge–to rethink–and thus prevent exactly this sort of mistake....Overconfidence leads to mistakes on a fairly regular basis. People usually overestimate their past performance and familiarity: they think they’ve learned more than they really have, and so expect to perform well in the future.........reviewing your knowledge and understanding helps you to deal with overconfidence.
The key message in this book: By putting in the effort and focusing on learning, almost everyone can become an expert or master in almost any field. But to do this you’ll need to invest the time and use some tried-and-true strategies. Just remember these six steps: value, target, develop, extend, relate and rethink. With these methods, you’ll be well on your way to better learning.
Actionable advice: Space out your learning The next time you’re studying for an important exam, make sure to split your learning into several sessions. You certainly know the frustration of spending an entire day studying only to find, just a few hours later, that you’ve already forgotten almost everything. To spare yourself this frustration and learn more efficiently, you need to break up your learning into small achievable goals and spread it out over time, instead of trying to learn everything in one sitting. Your brain needs breaks to store new information, so go ahead–take one!
My overall take on this book. Actually quite impressed. There are stacks of books around on how to study. Though I must admit that I never found them when I was an undergraduate. And this one may seem to have oversimplified things, but I think he has probably captured the essence of learning new things really well. Although the summary doesn’t seem to mention it. It is all about active learning....engagement with the material being studied. And most of the six steps are the elements of engaging actively. I’l suggest this book to my son but expect that it will be ignored. (You have to WANT to learn). Four stars from me.

[Anthony Amore · Rating 5 out of 5]

In "Learn Better," Ulrich Boser has written one of those books that isn't just remarkably well-written and sourced (though it is), but is also a must-read for educators, public policy leaders, administrators, and anyone interested in how we learn. The writing is accessible--entertaining, even--and hard to put down. I think this book will ultimately be that rare work that is commonly known by name in college classrooms and school departments around the country.

[Jordan Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I thought that this book was pretty good. Then, I realized that the entire book was mainly going to be summaries of studies over and over. I liked when the author used his own stories as examples. What really got me, though, was the massive--and I mean massive--number of errors in the book. Missing words galore. It was almost comical. How did it go to press in this condition??

I'd recommend this book if you're new to the topic.

[Max · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book about how we learn. It had some memorable points but a lot of fluff too. I don't really care about the personalities or the appearance of all the people who the author interviewed. This book made me want to spend more time learning in a specialized (as opposed to generalized) way. I should read by topic/theme, rather than reading whatever book piques my interest.

[David Pulliam · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is a wordy book, some of the claims are backed up only by anecdotal evidence (personal stories, etc.) and I feel like a lot of it was taken from How Learning Works and How we Learn. It is not nearly as well written. You can get the same info and ideas in a shorter and better written book with those other 2 books. Skip this one.

[Dharma Agastia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit I did get some useful information out of this book, but then, it's just another of those popular science books that attempts to justify its "science-y" claims with anecdotes. Skip the anecdotes and distill the important takeaways (at least, the ones you think are), and you're good to go.

[Jeff Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some useful information, and a good deal of solid motivation to learn smarter. But most of this book is stories and anecdotes from the author’s own life and many, many interviews. There is a short appendix that lays out the key points over a few pages. Feel like this is all I really needed to read.

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pros: some useful tips on high-value learning methods that can be implemented immediately to improve learning habits
Cons: interviews and anecdotes throughout the book often seemed only tangentially related to the point argued

[Jaron Dunford · Rating 3 out of 5]

6 forms of learning:
• Value – It’s impossible to learn if we don’t want to learn, and to gain expertise, we have to see skills and knowledge as valuable. What’s more, we have to create meaning. Learning is a matter of making sense of something.
• Target – In the early part of gaining mastery, focus is key. We need to figure out exactly what we want to learn and set goals and targets.
• Develop – Some forms of practice make people more perfect than others. In this stage of learning, people need to hone their skills and take dedicated steps to improve performance.
• Extend – At this point, we want to go beyond the basics – and apply what we know. We want to flesh out our skills and knowledge to create more meaningful forms of understanding.
• Relate – This is the phase where we see how it all fits together. After all, we don’t want to know just a dingle detail or procedure-we want to know how that detail or procedure interacts with other facts and procedures.
• Rethink – When it comes to learning, it’s easy to make mistakes, to be overconfident, and so we need to review our knowledge, reconsider our understanding, and learn from our learning.

When it comes to learning, this idea is crucial. Motivation is the first step in acquiring any sort of skill. It’s hard to learn something if we don’t see any meaning in it. Value drives motivation.

Hulleman and his colleagues aimed to help students find value in data tools (stats): asked questions like, can you see yourself using statistics in your life. Can you imagine using stats in your career as a nurse, salesperson, or manager. Then students wrote a two page paper essays detailing answers. The outcomes were clear. By drawing a connecting between stats and their lives, the students became much more motivated in their studies, in some cases jumping a whole letter grade. In essence, explaining why statistics mattered to them – in their future careers – improved learning.

Videogame Minecraft is an interesting case study. When programmer Markus Persson launched the online game years ago, few believed that the program would succeed. After all, the game had no dramatic car chases, or displays of daring do. In Minecraft, there are not even points to figure out who is the winner. Instead, the online games provides people with building blocks and allows them to create whatever they want in the online world. Using square blocks, people can build sprawling castles, the Eifel Tower, this is your game. Despite convential wisdom, Minecraft has become one of the most popular games ever produced. There are more than 100 million users around the world, and Minecraft has outsold Tetris, Mario, and even Call of Duty. Why? Because the program makes it simple to create something relevant and find a personal sense of meaning.

Some high school teachers have taken up learn crafting. Students in St. Andrews Episcopal School are allowed the choice in how they’ll demonstrate their learning, from taking a convential exam to creating a video. Teens at school will most often opt in to create some sort of independent project to show off their skills and knowledge, even though it can take 3-4 more times much work as taking a traditional test. They see a lot of meaning, relevance and ownership.

The best forms of learning are active learning activities like self quizzing and self explaining. To learn we are not just copying the information, we’re making sense out of facts.

Long term memory is rooted in links instead of features, in systems instead of facts, and so like a diviner, like a walking data analyzer, they can look past the surface features of problem and identify core issues.
One approach about learning a new topic is to write down what you know about it. For example, honing grilling skills, make a note like: choose steaks with a bit of fat, high heat works best, use tongs, not a fork, so meat stays juicy. By probing ourselves before we gain a bit of expertise, we’re priming our metacognitive pump-and making our learning more durable.

When people learn, they need to learn to cope with negative feelings. Am I good enough? Will I fail? What if I’m wrong? Isn’t there something else that I’d rather be doing. Emotions can quickly rob us of our ability to gain expertise. They disrupt our short term memory. While some of these feelings are typical, too many of them and you’ll get totally wiped out.

Give feedback on feedback.

If developing skills begin with feedback, then we are bound to struggle. People will inevitable flounder, after all getting feedback is about discovering what you are doing wrong.

In the bluntest of terms, there is simply no such thing as effortless learning. To develop a skill, we’re going to be uncomfortable, strained, and often feeling a little embattled.

People often live up to labels they often give themselves.

If you are working on a tough problem, as yourself what if questions. What if we had more time. What if we had more people. What if we had more resources. The answers are often provocative and shed light on how a problem comes together as a system.

[Yasheve · Rating 1 out of 5]

Typos start in the introduction and continue throughout book.

[Chen-Yu · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a good book about learning, but I think knowing the high level principles are more than enough so I skimmed through most of the pages...

[Mushky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not all of the ideas were presented as clear as could be. Also, he connected a lot of different concepts without a clear connection.

[Chris Esposo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book. Totally needs to be read by all students, lifelong learners, professionals etc., especially of the older cohorts who want to learn, but maybe never learned how to learn purposefully. It’s often the case in the United States especially, that people have a belief that everyone can learn, but the “rate” of learning some item is fixed by the individual. Although few in the country would state it that way, it will often come out in casual conversation as “Oh I’m not a math person”, or “I’m just not good at that.” The history of this mind-meme/belief is long, and in the case of the United States, I suspect it’s tied to the country’s dark history with eugenics in the late 19th and early 20th century, and one will still see “respectable” academics today tout notions like IQ, as a human-invariant.

Luckily, however, this seems to not really be the case. Or perhaps more conservatively, if there is truly a fixed-rate of learning, up to an individual, it is the case that the range by which your “fixed” rate of learning can roam, is quite large, and thus, for most people’s purposes the fixture will be functionally inconsequential in their lives. How does one explore that range? That’s what this book is about. To be clear, this book has a large intersection-set with many other books in the genre, including very good ones, written by Cal Newport and Scott Young’s “Ultralearning,” and others not so good (which you can see from my past reviews which are). What I like about this book is not so much unique content (although to be sure there are distinct content from the other two in here), but the tightness of the organization of the content into something cohesive, a theory of the case.

The author’s thesis is simple, to effectively learn one must be able to personalize the information in some way, once this is achieved, it helps motivate the material. While engaging the material, there must be some kind of stress, a struggling that occurs with respect to grasping (and ultimately mastery in the beyond), but this struggle should be augmented with feedback through mentorship (which the author believes is the best mode of information delivery), and ultimately, there must be the revision of this understanding, introspection. I’ve come to a similar system as the authors through the hard way (something akin to random depth first search unfortunately), and thus only relatively recently started to implement a similar system for myself.

That being said, both as a student and mentor, I have found this system to be extremely effective, especially for highly technical material. First, contextualization is key. There is however, another word for this process, the “thought experiment” (or gedankenexperiment as made famous by Albert Einstein). By almost “anthropomorphising” the phenomena you are studying, whether that be a light wave or a search algorithm, you can better leverage the sophisticated bit of neural net kit in your head, your mind, to make connections and learn better (and faster). Unfortunately, too often in higher education for the past 30 - 40 years, “concretizing” abstraction has been viewed as a “lower” kind of thinking. However, the truth is, when reading the primary documentation of many pioneers in science/technology/engineering/mathematics, one will find the ability to analogize, one of the primary tools to achieve contextualization/personalization is absolutely critical deep understanding. The author’s points here are absolutely spot on.

The author adds many little tips and hints on how he has achieved functional abilities within each process, and I very much appreciated these as many books in this genre are often vehicles for second-hand delivery of research in neuroscience or psychology (many of these research papers are often underpowered statistically, which explains why there’s a never-ending stream of papers that often contradict each other every few years and hence, a never ending stream of layman books to report on them to the mass public). This book does not do that (much), the tips it provides are fairly useful and can be put to practice. For instance, the bit on improving memory towards the last 1/5th of the book were good, which introduced them via a recounting the study regiment of a former Jeopardy champion, and applying that regiment (intelligent timed-review of facts dependent on successful recall over a long time-interval) is something I will implement for my own purposes. I would have liked more of these tactical tools, but that’s really not the purpose of this book.

Overall, I am happy with this book, for the more functionally-minded, I think it delivers a good balance of stories, pop-neuroscience, and practical advice, and packages it all within a great meta-thesis (appropriate since the author’s meta-cognition is very strong throughout). Highly recommended for people just starting (or even intermediate) in their purposeful learning journey. I suspect this is not an advanced book, but it’s definitely at the level of a Cal Newport style book on learning-tricks (perhaps slightly less in terms of the tricks).