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- Ep. 36: Want to Learn Like A Pro?
Happy Friday, all! šŖ·
Are you or your kiddo learning a new skill? Math, piano, baking sourdough bread? Get stuck, frustrated, or even mad you canāt pick it up as fast as you want?
Here is the science of learning as we understand it today, which Iāve distilled down to these core elements from Andrew Huberman PhD, a well-respected neuroscientist at Stanford.
Learning is a 2 stage process:
Active engagement & focusāthe trigger to learning is controlled by three chemicals in your brain (dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine) which when released, prime your brain to create new connections. These growth chemicals get released with active focus and effort at whatever youāre trying to learn.
Sleep and restāLearning happens during deep sleep or resting! 20-minute naps after 20-90 minute bouts of deep focus and learning. The brain replays and refires the same sets of neurons that were stimulated DURING the active learning stage, in your sleep! So, sleep. If you sleep better, you learn better!
Thatās it.
Also, itās OK if you lose focus at random points in your ādeep focusā. This is another stimulant for learning. It's called, Gap Learning, and itās your brainās way of encoding new information. So donāt beat yourself up for not being locked in for all 90 minutes.
Small side note on excessive caffeine, and stimulants like Adderall to āenhanceā learning. These stimulants might help with the active engagement part (stage 1) but hinder the resting end of things (stage 2). This might lead to tasks getting done but not learning. Stage 1 AND stage 2 are necessary for learning at the neuronal level.
Again: focus, relax, focus, relax, repeat!
In my educational journey, Iāve met incredibly brilliant professors, classmates, and doctors that I look up to professionally but not in any other way. With a work, work, work, mentality (skipping stage 2), their lives are a total unhappy disaster that I wouldnāt wish on my worst enemy.
Mastering this how to engage and disengage while learning is how we access our brainsā full potential and with it, all of the beauty that life has to offer outside of our work too!
Hear it from Dr. Huberman himself!
Quote of the week:
Via negativa: the principle that we know what is wrong with more clarity than what is right, and that knowledge grows by subtraction. Actions that remove are more robust than those that add because additions may have unseen, complicated feedback loops.
Thatās all this week!
If you like these little messages of mine (they really do come from my heart!), please share with friends to subscribe!
Namaste, š
Deepak
Currently:
š : Reading | š: watching/listening | šµ: song of the week | šļø: Team Message
š : The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant & Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb
š : The Other Guys- Netflix
šµ : Bones- Michael Kiwanuka
šļø : Ehm Academy : A Total Solar Eclipse on Monday (East Coast to Texas) š š¤ No Office hours this weekendāHappy Spring Break!
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