Most Efficient Learning

So in Anderson's Learning and Memory, there is a study about baseball coaches teaching batters. They try giving instant feedback after every single pitch and feedback after every seven pitches. Apparently knowing what you did wrong after every pitch is counter productive and less effective than learning what was wrong every seven pitches. This has consequences for teachers more than students. Students will learn how they learn, but teachers must be wary of correcting every single little thing. The student won't learn as quickly or effectively if told what they did wrong on every trial. You must let them make their mistakes many times before correcting it. The reason is because usually the student knows they are making the mistake, but it takes some time to fix it. Whereas a mistake that occurs over and over again is probably unnoticed and readily fixed by an outside observer.

Set Low Goals

First of all, the easy thing for me to say is that you have to choose something that you are going to be intrinsically motivated about. Something you care about so much that no one has to tell you to get up and do it. Of course, that isn't going to happen realistically most of the time. Still, the studies show that intrinsic motivation is necessary for a higher level of proficiency -- this means that you do it because YOU want to, not because you will get money, or fame, or praise, or recognition, or sex, etc. And believe me, money is a big motivator at Clarkson, but it's still extrinsic which is worse than intrinsic (in my opinion the reason why grades are not as good as at other schools).

Now to address how to get motivated when it isn't automatic. The key here is to set your goals low. It sounds weird at first, but let me explain before you jump to conclusions. Setting high goals is an excuse to fail. The mentality is: "It was too hard, no one could have done it, so it's okay that I didn't." There's more though. Low goals everyday builds confidence that you are accomplishing something. When you feel like you are achieving results, you are more likely to keep trying for more results. With a high goal somewhere in the future, it doesn't feel like you are making progress. But here's the thing, with gains everyday, you are building up more and more, and eventually you achieve more than if you had set a large goal from the beginning. Let me provide a simple example. Let's say you want to write a story this semester. If you think about the whole story, it's hard to sit down and try to write it. There's too much to do. But if you write just 3 sentences everyday, then that seems reasonable. Who can't write three sentences a day? But times 7 days a week, times 15 weeks. You get 315 sentences, which is a decent length story if it is your first time (and you'll probably do more, since 3 is so easy). Or if you want to study more. When you want to play a video game, just say: "No, I'll play in 10 minutes." Studying for 10 minutes every day gives you over an hour of extra studying a week -- and it's so easy! (This also gives 17.5 extra hours of studying a semester). Another part to the low goals, is to only focus on one skill you want to improve. Don't say "I'm going to do this, this, this, and this," because you most likely won't do any of them. I want people to pick one thing, and go to it.

Now there's lots of evidence that this strategy works. Most Nobel Prize winners are what's called "High in Need for Achievement." Strangely, these people set low-to-medium goals, and consistently achieve them. By doing this, they end up achieving much more than any normal person who would set high expectations for themselves. In fact, one of the best convocation speeches Clarkson has ever had (I wish I remember the person's name), was from someone like this. They ended by telling the students not to reach for the stars, but to just reach for the low-hanging fruit. It was so inspiring and true, that they got a standing ovation.

What is Excellence?

Does everyone have to ability to be excellent? I believe so. Why is it that so often people who are students of Nobel Prize winners go on to become Nobel Prize winners? Why can almost anyone go to a great trumpet teacher and learn to play in ways that they never dreamed of? These teachers are teaching their students to be excellent -- excellence isn't the person; it's the philosophy.

How can we be excellent at what we do? After all, we don't have great teachers to show us the way. First of all, if you are reading this, you are already well on your way to excellence. You care enough to try to learn about it and do it. These are my thoughts on what I do differently than those around me -- especially people who view me as some sort of genius. I'm going to estimate out of 100 people that half will leave at each step of excellence.

First, you have to be demanding of yourself. You can't stop or give up when the going gets tough. Through your journey there will be ups and downs and ins and outs. Rejoice on the ups and ins, but use it and ride it forward. Out of the 100 people, 50 will be satisfied with their first couple of successes and stop there. People who demand excellence know that each success is a small step towards excellence. You must keep climbing. On the other hand, progress is not linear (or step-wise), you will fall on your journey. You will go backwards, not just leveling off but decreasing in ability. Recognize that this is also a step towards excellence. You must be the most demanding at this point. Do not stop just because you stopped improving. The dip in ability is the tear down before the build up. Ride it; it gives you momentum to overcome the next big hill. What happens when you work out at the gym? You must tear the muscle down before it can repair itself and become stronger. This will happen to anyone's abilities if they want to become excellent. Out of the 50, 25 will leave when they become discouraged from decreased abilities.

Let's say you're one of the 25 people who demand more from themselves. What now? You have to practice every single day. People who are excellent don't miss a day of practice, period. Vacation is not an excuse. Some things require days off -- like body building. On the days of physical rest, you read about it, you visualize yourself doing it well (better than you currently can), you go out and teach someone else, there are hundreds of things to keep you doing your activity on your day off (if the day off is truly required). But beware, be sure that you really should be taking the day off, rather than making an excuse not to do it. Also, it is even more important for those people to get back in and continue practicing on the days they should be. We will lose 13 more people, leaving us at 12 out of the original 100.

You must practice correctly! Practicing everyday is bad if you are practicing incorrectly. When you practice incorrectly, you reinforce bad habits. This can be the hardest step for most people -- especially without a teacher. Demand more than just consistent practice from yourself -- demand excellence! There are ways around the teacher issue, but finding a good teacher is always the best solution at this stage. If you are a body building, read about proper posture, and get a mirror and check your posture. If you are trying to learn music, get a tape recorder and record yourself. The recording does not lie. Listen for what is wrong. Does it sound good? Are you on pitch? Can you even tell? If you can't tell, then you know what the next step for improvement is. I want to say that 90% will fail at this step, but I'll stick to my estimate. Of the original 100, only 6 will practice correctly every day regardless of improvement or failure.

Identify your weakest ability, and work on that. Most people -- even the 6 who made it this far -- only like to work on things they are good at. Be critical every day, and keep a journal. Write down what went well and what went poorly. Analyze what you did that day. Then the next day, work on the thing that needs the most improvement. It is too easy to keep building up the skill that we are best at, and it causes a level off in overall ability. This level off will be permanent even following the above advice if you don't work on the things that need improvement. Of the original 100, only 3 will do this step along the above steps.

You must be intrinsically motivated. Be honest with yourself. Why do you want to be excellent at this thing? If it is for money, or power, or fame, or something external in the world, you will probably never become as good as you could be. You must have a desire, a passion, to be good at what you do. Without this, you cannot achieve excellence. I find it hard to believe people could do all the things above without some internal burning desire to be excellent, but this chops off 2 of the last 3 remaining people. Following the above advice, you can be the one excellent person for every hundred that try. Now stop reading and go out there and practice!

Using A Notepad

Carry a notepad and writing utencil with you everywhere! I can't believe the number of creative ideas that occur to me in a day, and I also can't believe how incredibly fast they disappear from my memory. It's been shown that writing down all your ideas -- including the bad ones, because they may be useful elsewhere -- increases the number of ideas you have! Writing it forces you to think about it and consider it further. It also encourages your subconscious to produce more of creative ideas because you are paying attention to them and putting them to use. Almost everything has a snowball effect in life. The more creative you are the more creative it makes you, and the notepad is a key step to starting to be creative. You will begin looking for inspiration in everything, and then jot it down, think about it, and remember it later.

Triggering Neurons

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but the way you learn something is not by forming new physical connections in the brain. Learning is done by reinforcing connections that are already there. Reinforcement happens when you associate one thing with another, and the brain fires "electric currents" through those neurons. So every time you think of something, you reinforce it. That makes perfect sense when you actually think about how people learn -- they usually have to go over things many times. Anyway, here is an interesting article on when happens to the surrounding neurons when you activate one. Keeping Up With The Neurons Surprisingly, those surrounding guys fire too. This goes to show you that it is a good thing to warm up or get in the mood to do something before starting to do it. You will learn better when you get the neurons associated with it fired up first. Also, every time you think about something, you are helping yourself in the learning process. So don't completely take breaks over school breaks -- it will be a horrible waste. Do something fun, but make sure you take some time to think or do something fun relating to your subject.

The Food Thing Again

So I've got more to say on this issue of being hungry, since I left it so unresolved before. In my post on 11/14/2007, entitled "Food!", I mentioned that the research evidence points to being hungry helps learning. Something I can't believe I didn't think about because it's brought up so often in Honors is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. So Abraham Maslow created this pyramid structure of needs. You must fulfill lower order needs before higher order. Here's the structure:

1. Physiological -- you need food, water, oxygen, etc. in order to survive. These needs must be filled before any other needs can be addressed.

2. Safety and Physical Security -- shelter from weather, protection from predators, etc. Clearly if your house was inaccessible and your oxygen supply was inaccessible, you would try to regain your air supply before your house. So you need to fulfill 1 before 2.

3. Love and Belongingness -- companionship, affection, acceptance from others, etc. Now we have needs that are satisfied through interaction with other people. Clearly the first two needs are more important to survival than this third one, but Maslow claims that you must fill those needs before you are able to competently fill this one.

4. Esteem -- need for a sense of mastery and power and a sense of appreciation from others. Let me clarify why this one is different than 3. Esteem needs are evaluative (and self-evaluative). Appreciation requires evaluation while acceptance or affection do not. Thus appreciation is more elaborate than acceptance and is a higher order need.

5. Self-Actualization -- this is the tendency to become whatever you're capable of becoming, or to extend yourself to the limits of your capabilities. See research by Carl Rogers to gain a better understanding of this.

So Maslow's main assumption was that the needs that are lower on the scale are more demanding, meaning that if we are hungry, we cannot have a strong need for achievement (something less demanding that food).

Dark Matter

Just so people who follow this aren't too bored waiting for a new post, here's a quick rundown on dark matter. It's a pretty cool and fun explanation.