Turning Information to Intelligence!
Reconsidering How We Learn
Recently I came across a year-old video by Barbara Oakley, the author of “Learning How to Learn”. The video is a very nice summary of her book.
Why am I sharing this since it is more than a year-old? A few reason:
In the spirit of this newsletter, the tagline “Building Intelligence Together!” Why I chose this tagline is besides sharing on Artificial Intelligence, I hope also hope to grow more intelligent together with you, my subscriber. And building intelligence requires all of us to learn, as the first step.
Learning how to learn will be a key skill going forward, a skill that will differentiate the humans from the machine, that humans will not be replaced by machine, at least not in the near future.
If you consider my sharing to be beneficial and will like to support it, consider making a “book" donation. Link at the bottom of the newsletter or here. :)
There is a misconception on learning, especially Lifelong Learning. In the video, Barbara, talked about two things I felt is critical to lifelong learning.
Focused and Diffused State of mind: The focused mind is where you absorbed the information you are reading and less focused on understanding and joining the dots, whereas the diffused mind is where it works in the background to “improve” the understanding and joining the dots.
Diffused state of mind happens usually when the mind is in relaxed state. This explains why you usually have your “Eureka” moment when you are either showering or having the sip of the coffee in a cafe or nature environment.
Learning is never about stuffing yourself up. Learning is also about drawing and connecting the dots as well.
Interested to learn more? Can start off with Barbara Oakley video shared below!
Your thoughts? If you have any learning tips, please share them below! :)
Here is the video!
Very cool. Like analyzing around a topic and then digging in on the intersections. That’s kinda similar to snowball sampling, starting with a few seeds and seeing where they go and how they connect. Hope I understand correctly.
Very cool. I think about learning, constantly. No matter if I am I am learning data science or guitar, I tend to do the following:
* Learn very high level (overall idea, high level capabilities, or chords if guitar)
* Gradually go to lower levels
* Allow myself space so that my mind learns when I am sleeping, playing video games, doing something else. This is the unconscious part that was mentioned.
As I learn, I revisit lower levels and gradually become more and more technical.
This helps me to first understand (high level) then do (low level, implementation). You can’t build or do what you don’t understand.
How about you?