How To Do Anything

Have you ever wanted to be able to do something? It is very simple actually. We often forget that everything that is accomplished is done in baby steps. There are many saying that go along with this, but none really emphasize the action that needs to take place, they emphasize the patience that needs to take place: "Rome wasn't built in a day." Do you understand the immense power of spending 10 minutes a day on something? We so often feel that we don't have time to do something because it requires us to put aside some chunk of the day. If you could write 275 words per day, you would write 100,000 word novel in a year. This is really nothing -- easily accomplishable in 10 minutes a day. The average reader reads 200 wpm. For 10 minutes a day, that is 730,000 words per year. True that isn't much, but say for the sake of argument that you read for a half an hour a day, and you are slightly above average (as I'm sure anyone reading this is -- or you will get there rather quickly by doing this), then you can read 25 books a year (which is 2 books a month).

I'm really more interested in acquiring skills right now than how much can be accomplished in a year for something ridiculously small as 10 minutes a day. I've already mentioned that spaced practice yields much better results than massed practice. This is a very natural extension of that idea. What do you want to do? Set aside 10 minutes a day, and you can do it rather quickly. I've picked up enough Korean for 10 minutes a day (not even every day) to listen, speak, and comprehend simple things, greet people, say goodbye, and I learn new vocabulary every day. (By the way this is over the 275 word mark for those interested -- in fact, writing to the beginning of the parenthesis every day, it would only take 11 months to write the novel.) The key is to do something every single day, not to do something a lot once a week. The benefits stack up so much when done every day as opposed to 2 hours on Wednesday every week. This is something hard to understand until you've experienced it. I recommend just trying it with something, and you will then understand. If it doesn't work, then stop, but there is no harm in spending 10 minutes on something just to see what the possibilities are.

http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret-281626.php
http://dontbreakthechain.com/

Confidence is Important

If there is one thing that I've learned from playing tennis, it's that confidence is one of the most important aspects to performing well. You have to trust that what are doing is correct, and then do it. There are many learning and memory studies that address this, and in that context the advice would be: when frustrated, do problems you know how to do. This could simply meaning going back and resolving stuff you've already done. The process solidifies your knowledge and reviews things you've previously done. That, and we've seen in the creativity section that difficult problems work themselves out by focusing on something else first. The act if solving something else could spark what you need in the current problem.

There is more to it than just this stuff. Confidence in your abilities play a big role on tests and performance in general. I find that anyone who can start a math proof can also finish it. Even I fall into the trap of trying to see the whole proof before writing anything down. I am completely unable to solve the problem when I try to do that. If I start writing down what I know, the rest usually just follows easily. Doing problems you know you can do will help build confidence and keep you on track, realizing that you can actually accomplish things in this field. Just take it one step at a time.

Creative Traits

Donald MacKinnon studied the characteristics of creative architects. There is a hidden assumption here that if you want to become a certain type of person, you can adopt their habits, traits, characteristics, and become that type of person. So here are the traits of presumably creative people:
(1) Aggression - They tend to express their dislike for what others are doing
(2) Autonomy - They are very self-governed. It doesn't matter what others or the administration want, they will do their own thing.
(3) Low on socialization - If you socialize, you don't have time to be creative and let ideas manifest themselves.
(4) High on expressed desire to control others.
(5) Belong to fewer social groups - see (3).
(6) Independence - see (2). They don't follow the norms or trends set by others.
(7) Value some artistic standard of excellence and have a sensitive appreciation of the fittingness of architectural solutions to that standard - from personal experience, this may cause the other ones. When you have a standard and are extremely sensitive to it, it will be hard not to express this in some way listed above. This may also be one that uncreative people have the hardest time understanding.
(8) Not preoccupied with the impression they make on others
(9) Guided by aesthetic values and ethical standards which they have set for themselves - It is very important that they set these standards themselves. There is a list of traits uncreative architects have, and it is very much the opposite of this one. The difference in this point (in the uncreative list) is that they follow preset standards.

Intrinsic motivation is what allows creativity to foster. Image being a writer, publishing these amazing books. Then suddenly, someone pays you thousands of dollars to continue writing brilliant books. They feel like they are doing you a favor by giving you subsistence, but the motivational orientation has shifted, and now there is pressure externally to create. It will be much harder to write as well.

Creativity

A while ago, I discussed some of the characteristics of someone high in need for achievement. Those 4 things were fairly straightforward to understand why.
(1) If the risk is too high, probably won't achieve anything; too low and you don't achieve enough.
(2) Feedback is extremely useful in learning (as we will eventually discuss!) and improving at what you are doing.
(3) Personal control and direct responsibility: people who need to achieve things (or at least feel they do) must be the ones achieving things! Maybe I'll get around to talking about need for power -- people high in need for power delegate to accomplish things rather than being directly in control. The responsibility part puts a fear of failure into the achiever which creates more motivation to do things.
(4) Research and experts gives the achiever a tremendous advantage in what they do. They want things done well and right and fast.

Today I want to talk about creativity. This is based off of Eliot Hutchinson's How To Think Creatively. There are four stages to attaining creative insight. Creative insight is that spark of genius that makes people go 'wow'. Given a problem with no known solution, creative insight is the thing that solves it. Let me explain:

(1) Stage of Preparation:
Superabundance of hypotheses -- you just have hundreds of ideas and false starts. Creative people tend to have the trouble of sorting through their ideas to find the best ones, rather than a lack of ideas.
Logical attack of the problem using every known method -- no matter what you try, nothing will work.
Resort to trial and error -- before creative insight, you usually end up doing useless repetition.

(2) Stage of Frustration
Melancholy, anxiety, possible breakdown of the personality, feelings of inferiority. Creative people are tormented by their problems until the problems get solved. There is regression, solace in fantasy, negativistic attitude, stubbornness, negligence in personal habits.
Hutchinson recommends that if you find yourself in this stage, consciously renounce the problem you are working on. Because eventually there is:

(3) Stage of Achievement
Often times this is brought on by an accidental stimulus. There are countless stories about how famous scientists came up with their big insight in a dream, or watching an opera, or something completely and utterly random. Theories speculate that our subconscious works on our problems when we are not focusing on it -- but this is still far from being proven (we know unconscious thought exists, but how intelligent is it?).

(4) Stage of Verification
This is the hardest part! It requires a shift in mental attitude. We are often unable to see the faults in our own reasoning and creations -- perhaps it isn't such a miraculous discovery after all. An example of this is the tires that caused SUVs to roll over a couple of years back (there was a massive recall). The new design was so revolutionary that the engineers could find no fault in it. Don't get lost in your own glory only to find that it kills people.

Soon, I will go into the characteristics of creative people. Then I will try to get back on track with the efficient learning habits.

Software Freedom Day

Thought it would be worth noting that today is "Software Freedom Day." This is pretty important in trying to get the world to understand that there is more out there than Windows and Microsoft programs. I've survived 4 years of college using only Linux, and it has come a long way since when I started. Linux is very user friendly these days, although there is still not an ideal desktop operating system. Both Linux and Windows have many drawbacks that result from their production process -- for desktop environments (as opposed to servers). See here for more information: http://softwarefreedomday.org/ . You can seriously do everything you want (most of the time better and easier) for free on your computer. There is no need to pay for software. The cool part from a computer science perspective is that you can go into the code and implement any features that you are interested in yourself and re-release it back into the public.

Some Motivation

I've been talking a bit, but I haven't given anyone a good reason to listen to what I have to say. It's true that I don't believe I am very smart, and maybe you shouldn't either. I am probably what psychologists would call high in achievement motivation. People high in achievement motivation have high correlation to these 4 behaviors:
1) Preference for moderate, calculated risk
2) Preference for concrete, immediate feedback
3) Preference for personal control and direct responsibility
4) Tendency to research the environment and seek the advice of experts

These are the type of people who accomplish great things such as winning Nobel Prizes (or equivalent awards). This is a narrow view though since you can be very motivated and achieve a lot without receiving awards such as in business, agriculture, or carpentry to name a few. These people become very passionate about what they do and find as many ways to improve the process as possible.

I should mention that achievement motivation is naturally occurring in people who were raised a certain way, but anyone can learn it and learn to take advantage of it to their own benefit. You may want to read references by David McClelland to learn more.

A Common Problem

One thing I notice quite frequently in students is that they are unwilling to put significant individual effort into problems. When solution manuals are available, my suggestion is to not even get one. The act of checking answers and discussing discrepancies with another human leads to much greater insight and understanding of the subject matter than checking the answer in a book. If you must get a solution manual, seriously attempt problems before looking at the answer. I have a feeling that many people learn some things well enough to pass a test when they study or do homework with the solution manual open right in front of them, but they do not pick up any new skills or retain the information. The act of putting the mental strain on a certain type of problem helps it stick in your memory, plus if you do solve it on your own, you are learning crucial problem solving skills. What happens in the future when you must solve problems that do not have a predefined answer? You must rely on the problem solving skills you have trained yourself in. I do admit needing help on problems though. I know this is inevitable in everyone's college career and in life, but whatever trick or technique is necessary to solve your problem you will remember much better in the future after having struggled with it. Don't fall for the temptation to save some time now because it will inevitably cause much greater wasted time in the future.

Notice, I am not saying feedback is unimportant. In fact, it is quite important, and I will get into that at a later date. I'm only saying that there is a lot to learn in the struggle. To support this, I will cite Eliot Hutchinson in his book "How to Think Creatively." He states that once you reach that stage of frustration where you've tried everything you know, just stop. Do something else, take a break, do another problem, anything to get your mind off of it. When you return to the problem, your subconscious will have continued working, and this is when you achieve "creative insight." There are countless stories throughout history of Nobel Prize winners and such who claim this is precisely how they came up with their big idea that brought them fame. Looking at the solution manual during this stage of frustration would thus stifle this creative process and you are no longer learning how to do this. You are in fact teaching yourself how not to think creatively. And thinking creatively is necessary in even the most rigorous and strict disciplines.

Order Matters

When studying, it has been shown that you will retain what you start with and what you end with much better than the stuff in the middle. So, practice in a random order. I say practice because, what if you are learning how to play an instrument? If you always start with the same scales, you will certainly learn the first scale better than the rest. You will also learn scales better than whatever else you practice, since you begin to fatigue after a some amount of practice. Rotate the order in which you practice things, and you will learn the material rather than the order the material is presented. The same goes for subjects in school and for problems within the subjects.

What to do with this

Hopefully, I'll be adding new information every day (hopefully). My recommended course of action is to read it if you like, but only try to start doing it once you have mastered the previous one. It's hard enough to start forming one good habit without another thing to think about and interfere. If you try to implement everything before the previous is firmly ingrained, it is likely that you will do none of them. Of course, it isn't impossible to start doing all of them regularly all at once, but I'm just giving a word of warning about human tendencies -- myself included.

Time Allocation

The biggest secret of all is how to allocate your time. It's not actually a secret, but not very many people use this technique. This is well studied, and the results come out the way they do for many different reasons. Let me just emphasize here that this one thing will greatly increase your efficiency of learning and retention.

First, let me explain. Study in small chunks spaced far apart. The best way to understand what this means and why it works is to exaggerate an example. Suppose you studied something 5 times in one minute. This is like studying only once. The extra 4 times do not add much, if anything, in the course of a day or week or month. If those 5 times were spaced throughout the day, it would be like seeing it fresh 5 times, and becoming reacquainted with it 5 times.

At first, this seems like it would require spending more time studying and working rather than less, but the truth is that it actually saves a lot of time! Not only do you learn faster, but you will retain it a lot longer. The same is true for practicing some skill. You will acquire the skill much faster if you spend an hour in the morning, an hour in the day, and an hour in the night rather than a 3 hour block in the day. In fact, after a certain point, you are almost just wasting your time. You have less focus, you are tired, you've been seeing the same thing over and over again, etc. Doing something else for a couple of hours will refresh your desire, energy, and focus for that one particular thing you were doing. And we'll soon learn that any mistakes you make are being learned, and they are only countering your efforts.

New habits are incredibly hard to form, and this one seems to be unusually resistant for people. There is something about needing to spend multiple times a day doing something that gives people a mental block. Do the research if you have to convince yourself it is worth it; this topic is usually classified as "spaced vs. massed practice."

A Cautionary Word

Let me say a few quick things before I get into the bulk of this genius stuff. There are many people out there who get all A's in school and who do not learn very much. What they do is an entirely different process than what I would like to talk about in the coming weeks. Perhaps I'll reread this post and remember to talk about it in the future. I would like to talk about truly learning something in the sense that you maximize the retention time after learning it and maximize the speed by which you acquire this long lasting knowledge. I will be citing people that have done scientific studies into the human mind that demonstrate what I have to say about the subject, so that it is easy to check the facts. And finally, since I am interested in being a true learner, what I have to say will generalize to as many things as I can make it. Learning should not be about school; it should be about life and skills. Memorizing facts is great, but learning new skills is extremely gratifying.

The Curse of Learning

What is a good measure of a person's potential? Is it how smart they are? Or is it how well they do in school? These second two questions seem to be completely unrelated. A low intelligence person can be motivated and responsible and do well in school. A high intelligence person can be of low motivation and low responsibility and do poorly. These things tend to be confused amongst the common people, but it is well accepted amongst behavior psychologists and anyone researching the area. I think one of the best things that can be done is to educate the public about these matters. I am commonly referred to as 'smart' or 'genius', when in fact I am a very slow learner and forget things quite easily. I overcome this by studying actual methods (textbooks and scientific articles) to become a more successful, efficient learner. In conjunction with this, I do all of my work on time and go to class. These simple ingredients can allow anyone to score mostly all A's in their class work. Part of the curse of modern learning is that it is not taught to be enjoyable and useful; it is used to weed people out and force facts down young people's throats. Everyone learns the same things whether interesting to them or not, and everyone must learn it at the same pace as the rest of the class. Learning and Memory techniques are never taught to children (in fact, bogus methods that have no evidence for working are taught such as visual, kinesthetic, and audio learners). Only in college can one begin to choose to study things they are interested in, and by then it is far too late to easily instill proper methods of learning and a love of learning in people. Nonetheless, some people (particularly college students) find the need to become good at learning and memory even if they do not enjoy it; and some people learn to enjoy it once they realize what it is all about. It is my unprofessional opinion that anyone can become a genius by developing the proper habits, regardless of actual mental capabilities. I will attempt to outline how over the next few weeks (supposing that my train of thought remains on this topic). I love to learn and love to learn how to learn, and that is the reason people think I am smart, not because I have a naturally superior mind (which I don't).

Uses for my blog

I thought that this would be fun to try out, but as I think about it I do have a good use for it. This blog will be my creative burst for the day. As a mathematician, I must hone my creative ability and continue to practice the art of insight. Using some space like this, to let my thoughts out is a perfect way to continue to improve my creativity. As many of us know, it is difficult to become good at something if we do not practice it daily and creativity is no exception.

Thought on Blogs

As my first post, I thought it would be appropriate to comment on blogs. At first, they were quite the novelty, but now they are a dime a dozen. Everyone has at least one and is posting daily. I'm not sure what the appeal is, except that now I've decided to try it out. If it is to become famous or have many people read your thoughts, it just is not likely. You have to be someone who is already famous, or someone who is extraordinary for people to regularly read your blogs. Even then, the extraordinary person needs a great deal of luck to be read by many. It just isn't likely that they will be found in the massive amounts of garbage out there. I think that I am safe in my anonymity of the crowd of bloggers out there. People will not find this and will not read this.