2-12 Week 2 Wrap Up

We’ve had a lot of fun this week going deeper into what’s needed to learn effectively. We reviewed some useful tricks like the Pomodoro Technique to help you keep your focus on what you’re trying to learn or accomplish. Increasing your expectancy of success, your feelings about the value of the task and removing distractions are also important ways of improving your ability to retain focus. But we also found that, perhaps surprisingly, you don’t always want to keep your focus on your learning. In fact, a valuable part of any learning process involves stepping back after periods of intent focus. Allowing more diffuse mode consolidation to take place involving whatever you’re trying to master. We can also better prepare our brains for the type of discovery we want to do in our lives by choosing the appropriate form of meditation. Focused attention types of meditation enhances our ability to focus and can calm our brain. While open monitoring types seem to enhance our creative abilities. Gaining expertise at anything doesn’t just involve understanding the concept, it also involves, practice, repetition, and yes, even some memorization. You want to feel so comfortable with key concepts that you don’t have to even think about them, you can just use them. This kind of understanding means building neural chunks. That is, well connected neural patterns that you can draw to mind when you need them, much like computer sub-routines. This approach to learning can lead to extraordinary results. Procrastination can be productive, if you’re using that time to synthesize information you’re gathering or have already gathered. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that procrastination is quite all right when you’re learning or trying to understand something new, especially if it’s difficult. New thinking involves growing new neural connections and that takes time. We also learned that restricting yourself to one preferred learning style is a bad idea. Try to learn using many approaches. Your eyes, your hearing, your hands, and of course, your imagination through metaphor. It’s also a good idea to use common sense in your learning. Don’t take on too much or it can suck the joy from the experience. A great way to make learning and actually anything you do, more fun, is to hang out or work with the right group of people who will support you in positive ways. Mental tricks can be invaluable in helping us to reframe seemingly bad occurrences so that we can minimize our stress and reduce the bad effects that stress can have not only on our mental health but on our physical health. Putting a label on your feelings is one of the most helpful mental tricks you can use when you find yourself emotionally upset. We learned many of the common ways that our mind can mentally distort the reality of what’s going on. Reframing to put a better light on whatever’s causing you stress in your life isn’t just mental trickery. Reframing extinguishes negative emotions arising from the fight or flight center of the amygdala. That sums things up this week in mindshift. Next week, we’re on to learning and careers. Whatever stage you are in life, whether starting out, mid career, or in retirement, you’ll find there’s a lot there for you. And as you’ll see, sometimes your worst traits can be your best traits.