How to optimize your learning time, memorizing techniques, Awesome Good and Bad Rules of Study

1. Learning
How To Learn
Presented by: Abu Saleh Muhammad Shaon
Software Engineer at VroomVroomVroom

2. At the end you will get idea about
▸ What is Learning?
▸ Chunking
▸ Procrastination & Memory
▸ Renaissance Learning and Unlocking Your Potential
▸ Awesome Good/Bad Rules of Learning

3. What can we do?
What do you do when you just can't figure something out? For
zombies, it's pretty simple. They can just keep bashing their
brains against the wall. But living brains are a lot more complex.
Though, if you understand just a little bit of some of the basics
about how your brain works, you can learn more easily and be
less frustrated.

4. Introduction to our brain
Our brain weighs three pounds, but it consumes ten times more
energy by weight than the rest of the body, a very expensive
organ. It is the most complex device in the universe. All of your
thoughts, your hopes, your fears are in the neurons in this brain.
We prize our abilities to do chess and math, but it takes years of
practice to acquire these skills. There are a million billion
synapses in our brain where memories are stored.

5. Introduction to the Focused and Diffuse Modes
Researchers have found that we have two fundamentally
different modes of thinking or learning.
▸ Focused Mode
▸ Diffuse Mode

6. Focused Mode
It's when you concentrate intently on something you're trying to
learn or to understand. it is doing one task, while minimizing
time and attention on anything else. It is maintaining a singular
point of attention when the brain concentrates its abilities in the
prefrontal cortex, ignoring all extraneous information.

7. Diffuse Mode
Diffuse thinking happens when you let your mind wander freely,
making connections at random. The diffuse mode of thinking
does not happen in any one area of the brain, but rather all over.
Example: when you learn driving.

8. What is Chunking?
When you first look at a brand new concept it sometimes doesn't
make much sense. Chunking is the mental leap that helps you
unit bits of information together through meaning. The new
logical whole makes the chunk easier to remember, and also
makes it easier to fit the chunk into the larger picture of what
you're learning.

9. What is Chunking?
Just memorizing a fact without understanding or context
doesn't help you understand what's really going on or how the
concept fits together with other concepts you're learning. So in
this case you can make chunks in your brain.

10. How to Make a Chunk?
If you're learning to play a difficult song on the guitar, the neural
representation of the song in your mind can be considered as a
rather large chunk. You would first listen to the song. Maybe
you'd even watch someone else playing the song especially if
you were just a beginner who was learning things like, how to
hold the guitar.

11. How to Make a Chunk?
You often have to grasp little bits of songs that become neuro
mini-chunks, which will later join together into larger chunks. For
example, over several days, you might learn how to smoothly
place the musical passages on a guitar, and when you've
grasped those passages, you could join them together with
other passages that you've learned, gradually putting everything
together so you can play the song.

12. How to Make a Chunk?
In learning a sport, say basketball, soccer, golf. You grasp and
master various bits and pieces of the skills you need. You're
creating little neural mini-chunks that you can then gradually knit
together into larger neural chunks. Later you can hit those larger
chunks into still larger and more complex chunks that you can
draw up in an instant. The best chunks are the ones that are so
well ingrained, that you don't even have to consciously think
about connecting the neural pattern together

13. Introduction to Procrastination and Memory
When you look at something that you really rather not do, it
seems that you activate the areas of your brain associated with
pain. Your brain, naturally enough, looks for a way to stop that
negative stimulation by switching your attention to something
else. But here's the trick. Researchers discovered that not long
after people might start actually working out what they didn't
like, that neuro-discomfort disappeared.

14. The Pomodoro Technique
It was invented by Francesco Cirillo, in the early 1980's.
Pomodoro is Italian for tomato. The timer you use often looks
like a tomato and really, a timer is all there is to this elegant little
technique. All you need to do, is set a timer to 25 minutes, turn
off all interruptions, and then focus. That's it! Most anybody can
focus for 25 minutes. The only last important thing is to give
yourself a little reward when you're done.

15. The Pomodoro Technique

16. The Pomodoro Technique

17. The Pomodoro Technique

18. The Pomodoro Technique

19. The Pomodoro Technique

20. The Pomodoro Technique

21. Unlock Your potentials
Make a good habits
▸ Cue
▸ Routine
▸ Rewards
▸ Belief

22. Unlock Your potentials
Zombie every where.
If you want to study something for an hour, you will retain it longer if you spend 10 minutes each month over a semester
than an hour on one day

23. Awesome Tricks of Learning

24. Use recall
After you read a page, look away and recall the main ideas. Highlight
very little, and never highlight anything you haven’t put in your mind first
by recalling. Try recalling main ideas when you are walking to class or in
a different room from where you originally learned it. An ability to recall
to generate the ideas from inside yourself is one of the key indicators of
good learning.

25. Stop editing while writing
It damages your confidence.
It’ll take you longer to finish things.
You’ll still have to edit anyway.
It’ll make you a better editor.

26. Plan your quitting time!
Planning your quitting time is as important as planning your working
time. Generally, researchers found, most perfect quit time is at 5 pm.

27. Test yourself
On everything. All the time. Flash cards are your friend.
To study most effectively, handwrite (don’t type) a problem on one side
of a flash card and the solution on the other. (Handwriting builds
stronger neural structures in memory than typing.

28. Chunk your problems
Chunking is understanding and practicing with a problem solution so
that it can all come to mind in a flash. After you solve a problem,
rehearse it. Make sure you can solve it cold every step. Pretend it’s a
song and learn to play it over and over again in your mind, so the
information combines into one smooth chunk you can pull up whenever
you want.

29. Space your repetition
Spread out your learning in any subject a little every day, just like an
athlete. Your brain is like a muscle it can handle only a limited amount of
exercise on one subject at a time. rather than mass learning all at once.
If you want to study something for an hour, you will retain it longer if you
spend 10 minutes each week periodically than an hour on one day.

30. Alternate different
problem‐solving techniques
during your practice
Never practice too long at any one session using only one problem
solving technique after a while, you are just mimicking what you did on
the previous problem. Mix it up and work on different types of problems.
This teaches you both how and when to use a technique.

31. Take breaks
It is common to be unable to solve problems or figure out concepts in
math or science the first time you encounter them. This is why a little
study every day is much better than a lot of studying all at once. When
you get frustrated with a math or science problem, take a break so that
another part of your mind can take over and work in the background.
You can take a bath if you want.

32. Use explanatory questioning
and simple analogies
Whenever you are struggling with a concept, think to yourself, How can I
explain this so that a ten-year‐old could understand it? Using an analogy
really helps, like saying that the flow of electricity is like the flow of
water. Don’t just think your explanation—say it out loud or put it in
writing. The additional effort of speaking and writing allows you to more
deeply encode (that is, convert into neural memory structures) what you
are learning.

33. Focus
Turn off all interrupting beeps and alarms on your phone and computer.
and then focus on your study/tasks. You can use pomodoro for best
focus.

34. Eat your frogs first
Do the hardest thing earliest in the day, when you are fresh.

35. Make a mental contrast
Imagine where you’ve come from and contrast that with the dream of
where your studies will take you. Post a picture or words in your
workspace to remind you of your dream. Look at that when you find your
motivation lagging. This work will pay off both for you and those you
love!

36. Hard start jump to easy
The hard start jump to easy technique may make more efficient use of
your brain by allowing different parts of the brain to work simultaneously
on different thoughts. In some sense, with this approach to test taking,
you're being a little like an efficient chef. While you're waiting for a steak
to fry, you can swiftly slice the tomato garnish and turn to season the
soup and then stir the sizzling onions.

37. Don’t Panic
Another good tip for panicky test takers is to momentarily turn your
attention to your breathing. Relax your stomach, place your hand on it,
and slowly draw a deep breath.The body puts out chemicals when it's
under stress.If you shift your thinking from, this test has made me
afraid, to this test has got me excited to do my best, it helps improve
your performance. You should blink, shift your attention, and then
double check your answers using a big picture perspective, asking
yourself, does this really make sense?

38. Passive rereading
Sitting passively and running your eyes back over a page. Unless you
can prove that the material is moving into your brain by recalling the
main ideas without looking at the page, rereading is a waste of time.

39. Letting highlights
overwhelm you
Highlighting your text can fool your mind into thinking you are putting
something in your brain. A little highlighting here and there is okay,
sometimes it can be helpful in flagging important points. But if you are
using highlighting as a memory tool, make sure that what you mark is
also going into your brain.

40. Merely glancing at a
problem’s solution and
thinking you know how to
do it
This is one of the worst errors students make while studying. You need
to be able to solve a problem step‐by‐step, without looking at the
solution.

41. Waiting until the last
minute to study
Would you cram at the last minute if you were practicing for a
track meet? Our brain is like a muscle it can handle only a limited
amount of exercise on one subject at a time.

42. Repeatedly solving problems
of the same type that you
already know how to solve
If you just sit around solving similar problems during your practice,
you’re not actually preparing for a test it’s like preparing for a big
basketball game by just practicing your dribbling.

43. Letting study sessions with
friends turn into chat
sessions
Checking your problem solving with friends, and quizzing one another
on what you know, can make learning more enjoyable, expose
flaws in your thinking, and deepen your learning. But if your joint study
sessions turn to fun before the work is done, you’re wasting your time
and should find another study group.

44. Neglecting to read the
textbook before you start
working problems
Would you dive into a pool before you knew how to swim? The textbook
is your swimming instructor, it guides you toward the answers. You will
flounder and waste your time if you don’t bother to read it. Before you
begin to read, however, take a quick glance over the chapter or section
to get a sense of what it’s about.

45. Not checking with your
instructors or classmates to
clear up points of confusion
Professors are used to lost students coming in for guidance, it’s our job
to help you. The students we worry about are the ones who don’t come
in. Don’t be one of those students.

46. Thinking you can learn
deeply when you are being
constantly distracted
Every tiny pull toward an instant message or conversation means you
have less brain power to devote to learning. Every tug of interrupted
attention pulls out tiny neural roots before they can grow.

47. Not getting enough sleep
Your brain pieces together solving problem when you sleep,
and it also practices and repeats whatever you put in mind before you
go to sleep. Prolonged fatigue allows toxins to build up in the brain that
disrupt the neural connections you need to think quickly and well. If you
don’t get a good sleep before a test, YOU ARE NOT YET DONE.

48. In Case you are more interested
▸ Learning How To Learn By Barbara Oakley at
coursera.org
▸ Brainfacts to learn Brain’s Thinking, Sensing,
Behaving
▸ Anki Flash Cards App use for Long Term
Memorization
▸ Memory Challenge Extreme memory challenge

49. THANKS!
Any questions?