Learning How to Learn by Barbara Oakley [Actionable Summary]

The Book In Three Or More Sentences:

Essentially written for kids, but it’s of great value for people of all ages. Learning How to Learn is the missing handbook schools had to create to improve our ability to learn. Using clever metaphors and easy-to-get language, the authors explain how the brain works. What happens in the background which allows us to better engage with incoming information – learn faster, improve our memory, distill key components, stuff like that. Don’t get fooled by the funny concepts and the silly illustration. This book is not only for kids. It’s for adults, too. Adults who want to upgrade their learning skills and master subjects faster.

The Core Idea:

Our brains are capable of so much more. We simply need to know how to turn on that power. The research-based learning strategies the authors share in this insightful book will open your eyes and your mind. Show you that by acquiring a couple of learning strategies, you can learn pretty much everything – even if it feels impossible at the moment. The book is full of stories of people who did badly in school but later in life discovered that learning can be improved. Learning How to Learn will allow you to learn anything. Thus, improve the quality of your life exponentially.

Reason To Read:

It’s easy to believe that you should learn only in school. That after you enter the world of adulthood, you should immediately burn your textbooks and throw away your library card. Staying curious and inspired, hungry to increase your skills, is vital. Especially in our time. Where technologies are not only rapidly evolving and changing the world. But at the same fast pace making what we know obsolete. To continuously grow – both intellectually and financially – you need to improve your learning. And this book is one of the best resources to become a disciplined, skilled learner, who can grasp new concepts faster and better.

7 Key Lessons from Learning How to Learn:

Lesson #1: The Problem When You Follow Your Passion

Follow your passion, they say.

Do only things you like, and there will be no resistance in your path in life.

It makes sense, of course. When we do things we like, we feel better. Work harder. Improve faster.

But we do all of these improvements in one field. And being good at only one thing is rarely enough.

Or as mentioned by one of the authors in the book:

“I realized that by only following my passion, I didn’t have many choices.” Barbara Oakley

Learning How to Learn opens with the story of the author, Barbara Oakley. She makes a confession about how she sucked at math. She was so bad, that she stopped learning and focused solely on the subjects she enjoyed. Fast-forward a couple of years in the future, and she got a degree in computer science – and you need a lot of math to get such a degree.

If we only concentrate on subjects we like. We do get better, yes. But if we go a bit off track. If we go outside our comfort zone. We can improve much faster. Broaden our passions and open ourselves to many other wonderful opportunities.

The main thing that stands in your way. The main hurdle that prevents you from understanding hard subjects. Is your ability to learn.

If you improve your learning skills, you can greatly improve your life.

Commonly, we convince ourselves that we can’t learn something. “It’s not our thing,” we say. “It’s too hard for me.”

But not the subject is hard, we simply don’t know how to learn. We don’t know how to approach different and difficult subjects.

When you acquire new mental learning tools. Understand how to approach a subject. You can learn anything, even if you failed at it many times before.

That’s exactly what the book teaches us. How to get better at learning, so we can conquer new territories and expand our knowledge map.

“It’s easy to believe that you should only concentrate on subjects that come easily for you. But my story reveals that you can do well in subjects you don’t even like. The truth is, it’s okay to follow your passions. But I also found that broadening my passions opened many wonderful opportunities. Learning new subjects I didn’t think I could do turned out to be an adventure!” Barbara Oakley

Lesson #2: We’ve Got Two Ways of Thinking

After many brain scans, neuroscientists have discovered that our brain works in two different ways.

The authors label them as focused mode and diffuse mode.

These two thinking modes are essential for coming up with fresh ideas and, more generally, improving your thinking.

Let’s look at them one by one:

Focus Mode

Focus mode is essentially paying close attention to something. You are fixated on a particular topic and nothing else seems to matter. When you are learning something, you are in focus mode.

The author relate the concept to a pinball machine. You know, the ones you’ll see in game rooms. So, when you are in focus mode, imagine the ball bouncing between just a couple of bumpers in one small area. While hitting these bumpers, the ball creates trails. Similar trails are created in your brain. When you learn something, you create internal pathways. The more you focus while you learn, the stronger the pathways.

Diffuse Mode

Diffuse mode is practically daydreaming. Your mind is not focused on anything particular. You just let it wander.

“What’s the benefit in that?” you might ask.

Let me explain…

While in diffuse mode, different paths of the brain are activated. When you let go of the flippers, if we return to the pinball example. The ball falls into a different table with fewer bumpers – another metaphor the authors use. The bumpers are much farther apart. So, your thinking is much broader. You think about different things that initially might not seem related to a problem you are facing, but they do help. Help you to see the broader picture.

Focused and Diffuse Mode

The best way to solve problems is to switch between focused and diffuse mode.

We can’t see the big picture when we are focused on the problem. We ignite only the pathways that we previously created. However, these are rarely enough to solve a difficult problem. We need to invite different concepts from other domains.

When you enter diffuse mode, you give your mind a break from the problem. But you also do something else, you let it see how the problem you are solving relates to other things you know. That’s how you solve complex problems.

That’s why the famous Pomodoro technique is so, well, famous.

For those who don’t know, the concept is the following: You set a time to work for 25 minutes on a particular task. After the 25 minutes, you take 5 minutes break.

This technique works not only because you take regular breaks. But because it allows you to switch between thinking modes. 25 minutes of focused work and then 5 minutes of daydreaming. Both of which essential to help you come up with original ideas to solve the problems you are facing.

“This is why, when you’re stuck on a math problem, you can instead switch your focus to studying geography for a while. Then you can make a breakthrough when you return to the math. But it seems that the best ways to give your diffuse mode a chance to work out a difficult problem are through activities like sleeping, exercising, or going for a ride in a vehicle.” Barbara Oakley