YouSaid · the spoken record

Barbara Oakley

lines on the record: 104
first: 2018-04-10
most recent: 2018-04-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Just go to my website, which is Barbara Oakley.com, and you can find all sorts of great things and look at my new book, which will come out in August next year. And there's a little link you can pre-order that and also my previous books and the learning how to learn a massive open online course and the Mindshift Open Online course, which is actually in the top 50 MOOCs of all time. So lots of great stuff. Take a look there. But you have a phenomenal, phenomenal website and a phenomenal articles and it's really a pleasure to be here with you.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Masters from Georgia Tech. I mean, you don't want the whole world doing that. You want them to be at your local institution with getting their masters, with getting their undergraduates. And if you aren't setting things in motion and present, I'm ranting a little bit just because I think it's so important that That more institutions, more universities, particularly universities that are not in the”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's something called the tall poppy syndrome where that's an old phrase. It just means if anybody sticks up and they're really good, we're going to beat up down, right? Lop those heads off if they stick up and they're good. And I think the world of online learning is a little bit like that. That second tier universities are sometimes doing this tall poppy syndrome where they, you know, if you're a really good instructor, well, it doesn't matter. We just want no online learning at our institution that is of a massive form because it could affect our jobs and that what they're not seeing is that it's going to affect their institution and in 10 years, you don't want everybody getting their computer science.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Abilities to reach out. And then that, I mean, that does a real disservice because I think that a lot of these so-called second tier universities are fantastic. They have some of the best instructors, the best professors. Those are the ones you really want to get out there.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The hardest part, this is the part that I find that I really struggle with, is the top tier universities are getting information out there with massive open online courses. It's the second tier universities that often kind of go, oh no, we shouldn't have anything online because people will lose jobs. So we're not going to allow anything going on with massive open online courses at our universities because that's bad for faculty and so forth. So what this means is they're shooting that institution, so to speak, in the foot and they're allowing these top tier universities to get all their stuff out there. And then the second tier universities, well, the faculty are often hamstringing those institutes.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that many universities that there are often great administrators who see it as their duty to help share this information. But as is sometimes said, moving a university is like moving a cemetery. You cannot expect any help from the inhabitants. And there's a lot of institutional inertia. There's a lot of opposition to online learning at many universities just because, you know, there's fear that jobs would be lost. This makes it difficult for some of these visionary administrators to get that material out there that they really want to share.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have access to really good online provider platforms. And so there's kind of a, I think this is a seeking process at present where universities, a few visionary universities are beginning to really improve some of their courses and they're beginning to grab onto talent, but it's still a slow process. So I think there's going to be much excitement to come and some really great learning materials. And we're just in the infancy of what online learning will be able to do.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Institution, shall we say, and find much better information. But the challenge is that universities do have great research underpinnings that if they can convey that in what they're teaching, it's a one-two punch that is the most powerful and effective way of learning something. So I think there's a lot of progress that needs to be made in the world of online learning to make great materials that people want to watch. They're enjoyable to watch. And you don't need millions of dollars to make that happen. You just need professors, some of your best teachers. And right now it can sometimes be difficult for the best teachers don't really.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But some of the things that are being taught are there's a use of metaphor, for example, when I describe using metaphors, it's like, oh my God, you're dumbing things down. Or you're not dumbing things down. Neural reuse theory shows that you're actually activating those same mechanisms for the metaphor that you would for the underlying difficult concept you want to try to convey. So rather than dumb things down, you're actually onboarding students more rapidly. So what I'm really trying to say is if you look at a lot of the top, you know, the materials that are from top institutions nowadays, some of it is just really bad. And you can go to YouTube and you can go to some of the other online providers from lesser”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's easy. Like when I would get stuck creating something and learning how to learn, I just ask a local high school kid. I remember I was asked to speak at Harvard, you know, about the course and I was shocked because I walked in the room and it was just packed and I thought, why is there so much interest? And I come to find out that our one little course that was made for less than $5,000 mostly in my basement had on this order the same number of students as all of Harvard's online courses put together made for millions of dollars with hundreds of people. And so as I was talking to him, I was like, you know, you guys, this is not rocket science. And boy, the reaction was, you know, that folded arms is like, well, when Harvard does it, it's rocket science.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“you could do online. And this is in any topic. So like people who are working in the humanities, for example, are like they're often, oh, my discipline just doesn't work for online. That's just, and it's mostly because, well, they're not familiar with studios and videotaping and all of the great visuals that you And actually the humanities is one of the best things you could put online because you can do this fun stuff with walking around in metaphors and it's cheap to do too because”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's see. It's a great question. I think that most things can be learned beautifully online. And the challenge is getting professors to create great online courses. Professors are often really used to students engaged classrooms, right? So they got them sit in front of them. You can be as boring or as you just repetitious and just kind of an awful teacher as you want. And students will take it because what other option do they have? But online, it's just not like that. I mean, I always like to say that the online world is a mixture of academia and Silicon Valley mixed with a little bit of Hollywood. So it's more exciting. There's more potential for some really cool stuff.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there can come a point where it's just like, oh man, you know, if I hear another Russian word, I'm just kind of, I just, you get almost overloaded. And there's these cycles when you're learning something new. And I think that if you portion things out so you're not just like everything all at once, but you're kind of breaking it up with other topics I think it could be beneficial because if you're going pedal to the metal with everything in your life on one topic, there can come points where it just becomes so overwhelming. Whereas I think if you can take a break and do something different, that's a somehow for my brain at least, I'm not aware of any relevant research. It probably is, but it'd be hard to look. Up for me anyway. But I think yes, thinking about it some, I do them in parallel track.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It just, I remember when I used to work for the Soviets and so I was working out on Soviet trawlers and we're getting drunk all the time and all this kind of stuff. And you're just, it's all Russian all the time.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I would be better at each of them than if I studied three for one and a half years or one of them for one and a half and then sequentially the next and then the next because if you're totally focused you'll do great on the first one and then with the second one well the first one's starting to disappear and with the third one well the first two you're not really focusing on them so they'll start to disappear whereas if they're all three kind of in track you've got more and more time to sleep on it and grow those new neural patterns and there does we kind of talked a little bit you alluded to there can be a point i think sometimes when you're learning anything where you kind of just like”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's situationally driven because, well, usually the longer you know something, the better you can get at it. So I suppose that let's say I was trying to learn three different languages. Well, if I studied three languages for five years and kind of on a parallel track,”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because everybody's a kinesthetic learner. I mean, would you get your hands, really get your hands on something, it works great. And, you know, the common thing about kinesthetic learners is they've all heard of kinesthetic, but you still learn by looking, by saying, I mean, you don't get blindfolded when you are getting your hands on something. And so yeah, it's kind of a quagmire. And unfortunately, I don't think it's going to go away soon because there's just so much money to be made.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you're right. I think it's a little like that test phobia. Oh, I just suffer from test phobia instead of I'm not studying correctly. And then I think people who it is, it's just so easy to say, you know, well, like the one thing I found, there's one common aspect of learning styles, and that is whenever someone claims I'm a kinesthetic learner, I always know that that person has heard the word kinesthetic”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But a lot of these tests, when you actually really check them out, there's no there there, but they just keep going because everybody's like, well, it's a major publisher. It couldn't be, or it couldn't be wrong. Well, of course it can be. And it is.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's the way testing usually is. So not only are you messing up their life, but you're also setting yourself up if you're a teacher and you're using teaching to certain learning styles, you're setting yourself up to be potentially sued because if a student doesn't do well, they can say, guess what? You didn't teach to my preferred learning style and that's why I'm failing. And so I think that this whole learning styles business is deeply pernicious and problematic. And it keeps going. It's like this hydra because textbook publishing companies make a lot of independent corporations make mints of money off of these kinds of tests. And so it's represented.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, because then what happens is you close yourself off to the other sensory channels and you become less expert at them because you're not practicing with them. So, I mean, think of it this way. So some student comes up and says, I'm only an auditory learner, so I want you to present me only materials in auditory way. What that means is you're not going to give them written test materials and you're screwing that student.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ultimately, was people are fooling themselves completely. Those who thought that they were more visually oriented, they just fine with auditory. And likewise, those who thought that they were, they only learned best through auditory, they learned the same as the visual learners in looking at some sort of visual thing. So people fool themselves. Because we're presenting this thing and saying, oh, yes, there are these categories of visual and auditory learners, then people think it's actually true and they quantify them themselves that way. And then when you actually test them, it isn't true at all. And it's a bad thing to think of yourself as only being.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think you have to be very careful if you look at the research literature because, for example, there was an excellent study done by a woman named Beth Rukowski and what she did was she took one of the standard tests to kind of analyze a very widely used test that is used to distinguish an individual as to whether they're a visual learner or an auditory learner or a kinesthetic learner or whatever. So she had people take this test and so then she got categories, right? So she's got her visual learners and her auditory learners and so forth. And so she then took the visual learners and had them take a test that was through hearing. And then she had the auditory learners and she had them take a test that was visual. And what she found”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Completely unrelated to what your job is. And what that can do is there's a concept called transfer. And transfer means you get a neural chunk, a neural pattern. And whatever that is, you will be able to bring it through metaphor to give you fresh ideas in whatever area you're working in. And even if they don't want you to be creative at your job, it will help keep you fresh and looking at the world in a fresh way.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or Sanskrit, even languages that are no longer commonly spoken, all of these, it manifests a kind of an orientation. And really, whatever you're learning that's new can through metaphor be brought into to bring great new ideas to whatever you're actually working on. In fact, I think that's one of the best ways to be fresh, to maintain freshness in whatever you're working on at a day job, so to speak, is to try to spend a little bit of your time, you know, either offline or online or at work or not at work, learning something completely different.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For me, my course learning how to learn is through a massive open online course provider called Coursera. And so obviously I'm a little biased, but I think they're a fantastic institution and they have plenty of opportunities for corporations to interact with them to provide great learning experiences, not only in technical kinds of or business or professional, but if you're learning about Greek vases or”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, that's just boggling. And so I think that for corporations talking about the importance of learning, the head person whoever is the CEO could be modeling the importance of learning, perhaps through learning something and kind of sharing it with the corporation and those in the corporation and sharing his struggles or her struggles as the new ideas are being assimilated and showing if you show from the top that you're really serious that lifelong learning is something that is of great value in that company, I think that is probably the very best way. And then help make it available.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's a little tough in that I believe this is something that society should be encouraging right from the get-go and we haven't been doing that not very well. In fact it's amazing to me that people can go through 12 to 16 years of education and never have a single course in how to learn effectively.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it just can be so highly variable. But the main thing is just capture what you can and try to chunk it. What are the key ideas? And each time you glean a key idea, figure out some wacky way to get that into your long-term memory.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you're learning from them as well as from the material. And what you get from them can be more relaxing in a way because you're just both struggling over the same topic. I guess this is a hard question for me to answer because learning from people has so many different aspects because you can be learning textbook kind of stuff from people or you can be learning stuff that hasn't been written into a textbook and you're just kind of learning it from sort of the master who's been around for a long time and just kind of has it and you want to kind of pick up and intuit what that what that guru has to share with you so this one is a tough one to answer because”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it depends on what kind of person you are. If you're a little bit extroverted, I think that learning from people is more fun for you and maybe less intimidating. If you're a bit more introverted like I am, it's a little bit more intimidating. But learning from people, I think you have to, it's the same general idea. You're trying to figure out a pattern from them, whatever that pattern actually is. You may be struggling with something. Related to differentiating, and you're really struggling or the chain rule or something. And so then you talk to your”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you try to say it, really, really focus and try to say it a number of times, and then you go to sleep and then you try it again the next day, you will be shocked. It's like, I'm better. And people often do this when they're learning to play some difficult piece of music. They've got some little part they're struggling with. And time after time, you just struggle with it and then you give it up and you come back the next day and it's like magic. You can suddenly play it. And all of this is that consolidation that's taking place. I think sleep is totally neglected aspect, an important aspect of good learning. And fortunately, I love sleep, so I'm totally on board with that.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. And I mean, you can have a little test of yourself to see how well this works by just pick something that is really hard or just kind of hard for you to get and just try it. And you'll see that that day when you're first trying to learn it, I mean, even if it's A simple word like in saying that in Russian, it's hard for a lot of native speakers of English to say that word.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“See, because learning involves the creation of a new pattern in your brain, you actually, it's almost like this. When you're learning something and you actively do it yourself, it's almost like you're conscious like working hard on this or actively working it almost pulls those little dedritic spines up and gets them to start connecting with the axons of other neurons. And those are the patterns of your memory. And so you have to actively be working it in order to pull those dendritic spines up and get them going and get them growing. And if you're just placidly looking at the material, for example, rereading it, you're just not going to get those patterns. You're not going to learn it”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like on that assignment, it's fine to do it early, but look at some aspect so that you're actively bringing it to mind each day. And I think that is an extremely powerful way to help improve your learning. I think the biggest mistake that people make is not”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you don't create good patterns in your long-term memory. So then you're thinking, well, I'm just stupid because I can't seem to remember this stuff very well, but you're actually not giving yourself enough sleep to be able to consolidate the material you're learning each day. And sometimes people are very good students and they're like too good. What they'll do is they will learn something or complete an assignment say on Monday, just as soon as they get it, they'll complete it. And then the test is on Friday. Well, they did everything. So then they'll, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they won't review it or anything because they've already done it. And then Friday they're testing. And surprise, it's not fresh on their mind and they don't do very well, even though they did the assignment just fine. So it's this idea of a little bit every day.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so then it turns out you didn't know it. And it's amazing. So many students will come in and say, I suffer from test anxiety. And it's actually not true at all. It's just that when they sat down to do the test was the very first time they realized that they actually didn't know it. Check themselves beforehand. And so the more you can test yourself on anything you're doing, the better off you will be. So if you've just read a problem, see if you can work that problem yourself. These are the kinds of things I think that can be super helpful and then knowing for example when you practice during a day something new, you have to get a good sleep that night. If you don't, your hippocampus doesn't get cleared out.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first off, you don't want to sit and reread because rereading, what that does is when you read something again, you think because your eye is like comfortable looking at it and it seems familiar, you think you know it, but you actually don't. One of the best approaches is to use the Pomodoro technique, set everything aside. When you are studying, you want to be really intently focused and don't just look at something and think you know it. That is one of the biggest mistakes people do in anything. And that's particularly common in math and science. You can look at the answer and it just seems obvious. And so then you don't actually work it yourself.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the best thing they can do is order my pre-order my book Learning How to Learn, which is on my website and it's for students and it is all about how to learn and how to study in school. And so it's kind of like it's a book.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Accessing those chunks, but the more they get at it, the more they start, those chunks start to get easier to pull to mind. I still laugh once I went to Moscow. I hadn't been speaking Russian for like 25 years. And I was like, oh man, I've forgotten it all. So we get in the taxi cab and this driver's like trying to rip us off. And oh, I lit into him and I was, I was like, oh Those words, I was so amazed at what my mouth remembered, which I hadn't really consciously thought about in decades. So it is funny how that works.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, and when you are really comfortable, you can access those chunks from different directions, like you've got a cord, but you can access that chord from this song or that song or different kinds of songs, then you start creating a very rich chunk that's instantly accessible. And the more you practice it. And people, when you're learning a new language, people who know a language will often say that when they go to France, for example, that if they haven't used it for a while, it would be rusty and kind of hard. But then that's because they haven't been”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But in any case, whatever you're learning, you just start small. So let's say you're learning the guitar. You learn a chunk, right? Or a chord. That's one chunk. Then you learn several chords together. That becomes a new chunk that's larger, that incorporates part of the previous one chord chunk.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is like a word. The word is pato, which is duck in Spanish. So, oh, you just got one chunk. Now you might add to that. You might say, okay, well, you'd learn how to say a big duck or say I see a duck. Oh, I see a duck. Well, how does that relate to you see a duck? So you start creating these patterns and then you learn how to conjugate a verb. So you're creating a pattern sort of in a different way. If you want to think of it in a vector form, you can say, you know, you've got a verb, the different conjugations of the verb are different vectors that point to the different conjugations and the different words that that word relates to.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First, to be aware that there's a way of crystallizing what you're doing that creates a pattern that is a chunk. And you can make a bigger pattern, right? Just like a chain and you can add more links to the chain. So it depends a lot on what the subject is that you're learning. If you're learning a language, you'll start with one tiny pattern that you have.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, that's the long term memory. That's what's The pattern that's stored in long-term memory, which is sort of like in the outer cortex of your brain, well, the cortex is on the outer part. So what happens is your prefrontal cortex, so that's really the front of your brain where you're working memory is, it works with this stuff and kind of creates these sort of temporary chains or patterns in your hippocampus and then the hippocampus in turn sort of the sleep spindles when you're sleeping, it is transferring that information into sort of the locations in long-term memory kind of more scattered around your cerebral cortex and that's where your long-term memories are that you That you're grabbing when you need to pull on that particular chunk and activate it or subroutine, so to speak.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Want to create those patterns in long term memory that you can easily pull up or activate with by touching them with one of your arms of your attentional octopus. And once you've got a lot of patterns like that, you're starting to become an expert. And so it just takes a practice and a lot of active focus and also diffuse relaxation while your brain is consolidating these ideas and a lot of sleep because sleep is when the hippocampus is sort of cleared out and it's put into long-term memory for you to be able to grab it later on.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, looking in the front mirror and the back mirror behind you, where do you look? You back into the ditch and it's like not so good. But once you learn to back up the car, you've created that neural subroutine in your long-term memory, right, which is kind of anywhere in your cerebral cortex. various places you can all you have to do is think I'm going to back up the car that octopus arm reaches into long-term memory, pulls up that, it activates that subroutine, and boom, you start backing up the car. And the other arms of your octopus are still free. So that's why you can also kind of be listening to the radio or talking to your friends or thinking about what you're going to have for dinner that night. So the idea is.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And incidentally, that parking of the subroutine happens during sleep. So this is part of why sleep is really important is because sleep clears out your hippocampus and puts it in long-term memory. And that's where you're going to go to grab it with that one arm of your octopus, your attentional octopus. You bring it back up, and that's how you, like if you know how to solve these kinds of problems pretty easily, you just reach into working memory and grab that subroutine and it starts working with things. So the perfect example of this, and it may be hard initially to see how it relates, but it does, is backing up a car. When you first start backing up, learning to back up a car, your working memory is going crazy.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we can see your prefrontal cortex working very hard when you're trying to figure something new out. But surprisingly, once you master something, you've figured it out, like you can solve this kind of problem fairly easily. You know how to do it, your working memory just calms right down. It's not working very hard when you're solving these kinds of problems. And it's because you've parked sort of like a subroutine in your long-term memory.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“See, and how this happens is We used to think there are seven slots in working memory. So it's like seven things you can hold in mind, like seven numbers. That's why it was 453-7239 or whatever phone number had seven digits in it because they thought that's what you could hold easily in working memory. Well, that was wrong. It's probably more like four slots in working memory. So four things you can hold in mind. I prefer to think of it as it's like you've got this little octopus of attention of things you can hold in working memory and your octopuses only got four arms. So if you're intently looking at something that's really hard to figure out, all four arms of your octopus are going a little crazy. And you can see that your attentional octopus, so to speak, is in your prefrontal.”
2018-04-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #31 Barbara Oakley: Learning How to Learn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT