Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today we have Barbara
Speaker 1: Oakley on the podcast. Barb, if I may call you,
Speaker 1: that is a professor of engineering at Oakland University. She's
Speaker 1: involved with multiple areas of research, ranging from stam education,
Speaker 1: to engineering education, to learning practices. Most recently, Professor Oakley
Speaker 1: has created and taught learning how to Learn Powerful mental
Speaker 1: tools to help you master tough subjects. It's the third
Speaker 1: Biggest mook, which is online and nonline on learning course
Speaker 1: available on Coursera. And you also wrote the book A
Speaker 1: Mind for Numbers, How to excel at math and Science
Speaker 1: even if you funked algebra, Barb, Professor Oakley, whatever I
Speaker 1: should call you? How are you doing today? Oh? Please
Speaker 1: call me, Barb. I'm doing just great. Actually, I've been
Speaker 1: looking forward to our podcast all day. It's so fun.
Speaker 1: Just you know, it brings back to mind, your wonderful book, Ungifted,
Speaker 1: and it's yeah, and so I just love thinking about
Speaker 1: how people think and why they do what they do.
Speaker 1: And that's that's a big part of I think, your
Speaker 1: own writing and your own approach to life. And so anyway,
Speaker 1: I guess for me, I share a lot of background
Speaker 1: or some background, I think with you. I know you
Speaker 1: had your own learning difficulties early on, and I did too.
Speaker 1: I basically flunked my way through elementary, middle and high
Speaker 1: school math and science. I know that, Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: And it's really kind of funny because I'm a professor
Speaker 1: of engineering now. So I think that people all too
Speaker 1: often sort of peck themselves and think that they have
Speaker 1: a certain type of intelligence and that means that's the
Speaker 1: only thing they can do and that's the only, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of world that they can have, And that's actually
Speaker 1: not true at all. There's much wider horizons for most
Speaker 1: people than they ever really imagine. Yeah, and particularly in math, right,
Speaker 1: because that seems to be a kind of topic that
Speaker 1: people just sell large swaths of societies assume that they
Speaker 1: don't have the math gene or they aren't talented in
Speaker 1: math before, they can't do it. But you really opened
Speaker 1: up my eyes a lot to that when I was
Speaker 1: reading your books. It's funny, people. Part of the problem
Speaker 1: is just the last few years, there's been whole new
Speaker 1: horizons of fantastic findings in how we learn effectively, and
Speaker 1: a lot of these findings haven't really percolated down into classrooms. So,
Speaker 1: for example, many people don't know the following idea. It
Speaker 1: looks like we have two fundamentally different modes of thinking.
Speaker 1: Your brain operates in two radically different ways. One of
Speaker 1: those ways is when you're sitting there and you're focusing
Speaker 1: on something like, let's say you're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: the tip right for a waiter or waitress, or you're
Speaker 1: trying to follow something that's going on in history and
Speaker 1: you're analyzing the historical trends and so forth. And when
Speaker 1: you're thinking in this way, with a careful, concentrated focus fashion,
Speaker 1: that is a completely different way of thinking than when
Speaker 1: you're sitting in a bus looking out the window absolutely
Speaker 1: not thinking about anything in particular, or you get in
Speaker 1: the shower and you're just taking a shower or something
Speaker 1: like that. And I call those two different modes focus
Speaker 1: mode and diffuse mode. And diffuse mode is actually a
Speaker 1: shorthand term for the many neural resting states. And as
Speaker 1: it turns out, when you're learning something new, you often
Speaker 1: have to alternate between these two different modes before you
Speaker 1: can actually figure out something, if it's something difficult. So
Speaker 1: are they pretty much they map on to Conomon's system
Speaker 1: one system too? Or is it a little bit different?
Speaker 1: I think? I asked Daniel Konneman once whether his System
Speaker 1: one and System two might be related to Simon Baron
Speaker 1: Cohen's system systematizing and empathizing sort of thinking, and he was, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, what a wonderful thing here. This brilliant man
Speaker 1: is a Nobel Prize winner. He doesn't need to respond
Speaker 1: to anybody. He wrote that very nice email and just said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I hadn't really thought of that. I don't
Speaker 1: really know. And I think there may be a fundamentally
Speaker 1: a fundamental relationship between this kind of focused and diffuse thinking.
Speaker 1: It between that and fast and slow thinking. I do.
Speaker 1: I mean, it does seem like slow thinking is really
Speaker 1: focused thinking, but fast thinking, I think can be a
Speaker 1: variety of differences. And that's Keith Stanech's model of Type
Speaker 1: one processes versus Type two processes. Type one processes are
Speaker 1: a wide range of things, from you know, automatic learned associations,
Speaker 1: to emotional intuition, gut feelings, to evolutionary evolved instincts, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, so do you think the
Speaker 1: learning of you know, to learn something at a really deep,
Speaker 1: meaningful level requires a Schmorgas board of processes? Yes, back
Speaker 1: and forth between them. It does seem. For example, when
Speaker 1: I was talking to Bob Builder at UCLA, I asked him,
Speaker 1: can you can you do focus mode thinking and diffuse
Speaker 1: mode thinking at the same time? And Bob was like, maybe,
Speaker 1: if you're an advanced meditation mounk, you might be able
Speaker 1: to do what There's some intimations that that might be possible.
Speaker 1: So what I'm really getting at is when you say
Speaker 1: a Shmortas board, yes, it does. It involves both modes
Speaker 1: of thinking, but not necessarily at the same time. You
Speaker 1: want to go back and forth alternating. So when you
Speaker 1: get really stuck on a problem, it's essential that you
Speaker 1: back away because that opens your mind to these other
Speaker 1: much broader neural networks that are apparent in the neural
Speaker 1: resting states. I love that There's an article which I'll
Speaker 1: be happy to link to in the show notes by
Speaker 1: Jack and colleagues called fmriah reveals reciprocal inhibition between social
Speaker 1: and physical cognitive domains. I don't know if you're familiar
Speaker 1: with that paper, but it supports exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: They did find that there was opposing reactions between the
Speaker 1: default mode, or what I like to call imagination brain network,
Speaker 1: which is very much tied to social cognition and social reasoning,
Speaker 1: and the brain regions associated with UH, spatial visualization and
Speaker 1: mechanical and mathematical reasoning. Wow. That sounds like a fascinating paper.
Speaker 1: I can hardly read it way too. Yeah, I bet
Speaker 1: I bet the listeners of this podcast can't wait to
Speaker 1: read it as well. Oh, they're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: fm IRA fields reciprocal in ambition between the default I
Speaker 1: bet they're very excited about this right now. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like I knew it. I just they're like, I suspected
Speaker 1: that for years, but no one will listen to me.
Speaker 1: No one would believe me. Yeah, no, so this is
Speaker 1: actually exactly exactly. So it's a really I really like
Speaker 1: in your in your book, how you talk about the
Speaker 1: importance of both modes of thinking, for for math and science,
Speaker 1: which is not typically a set of fields where you
Speaker 1: would immediately think your stuff. Oh, intuition is important. But
Speaker 1: but some of the greatest mathematicians Einstein, you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't one actual Actually Einstein wasn't one of the greatest mathematicians.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's funny cause I said some of the
Speaker 1: great mathematicians, even Einstein. I didn't mean include him as
Speaker 1: a class of one of the grast mathematicians, but including
Speaker 1: the class of some of the greatest scientific thinkers and
Speaker 1: mathematicians have talked about the importance of intuition right well,
Speaker 1: and in that regard it sort of tangential. Related to
Speaker 1: that is the idea that analogy and metaphor are super
Speaker 1: super important in mathematical and science. It's like literature claims
Speaker 1: first rights to anything to do with metaphor and analogy,
Speaker 1: and that that's really a literary sort of thing, right,
Speaker 1: it's actually so deep a part of math and science.
Speaker 1: And what I found I play this one trick. I
Speaker 1: went to rate my professors dot com, which is a
Speaker 1: very popular website if you're outside college. That what you
Speaker 1: do is you go to this website and you can
Speaker 1: go and see what people say about their professors and
Speaker 1: they rate them. And what I did was I looked
Speaker 1: up the top three hundred or so professors in it
Speaker 1: throughout the world in physics, math, engineering, chemistry, all the
Speaker 1: you know, and even psychology and really interesting and worthwhile disciplines,
Speaker 1: and I wrote to them and said, hey, would you
Speaker 1: be willing to look at the manuscript for this book
Speaker 1: that I'm writing about I learning math and science. And
Speaker 1: a shocking number of them said yes, I would. And
Speaker 1: then when I started hearing back from these people, one
Speaker 1: thing that just shocked me was how many of them,
Speaker 1: these top professors in difficult disciplines like engineering and physics, chemistry,
Speaker 1: used metaphor and analogy to help them communicate really effective ideas.
Speaker 1: And what was strange was they were embarrassed to reveal
Speaker 1: it to me, because hey, that's not heavy duty mathematical,
Speaker 1: you know, and sort of scientific approach, right, if we're
Speaker 1: using a football as an analogy for some sort of
Speaker 1: conveying energy or or anything like this, these kinds of
Speaker 1: fun imagery, it seems to make things less serious, and
Speaker 1: so people, really great teachers often use these techniques, but
Speaker 1: they don't really want to tell other people because they
Speaker 1: might be seen as kind of, oh, they're lightweight or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I have to say it was kind of funny
Speaker 1: when I first did the mooke learning how to Learn,
Speaker 1: I knew that metaphor and analogy and fun imagery is
Speaker 1: really important for learning and learning well. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: when the mook was first starting, there's not like a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of people out there saying, Hey, this mook
Speaker 1: is incredible, right, like actually is going on now, which
Speaker 1: still just boggles me. But there were people out there saymen,
Speaker 1: So some of the first people who watched the move
Speaker 1: were like, wow, this is just so condescending. She has
Speaker 1: these kind of little, cutesy, little zombie images and it's
Speaker 1: not a serious class. And of course, now with what
Speaker 1: nearly half a million people and the really a solid
Speaker 1: reservoir of great science behind this that's recognized by the
Speaker 1: people who are in it, and it still makes me laugh.
Speaker 1: Those first few people who were kind of like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: this can't be serious. And I think that's why professors
Speaker 1: who do use these great techniques like metaphor and analogy
Speaker 1: and fun imagery are really shy about saying it to
Speaker 1: other people because they do get oh, how you must
Speaker 1: be a lightweight, you know, and then that that's actually
Speaker 1: not true. Oh, I mean again, I keep going. I
Speaker 1: can't stop thinking about Einstein because he is he. I mean,
Speaker 1: he said imagination is more important than knowledge. And you know,
Speaker 1: some of these cogniprocities you're talking about right now relate
Speaker 1: to imagination. But you also talk in your book about
Speaker 1: the importance of creativity, you know, even going beyond you know,
Speaker 1: just mental imagery, importance of uh, you know, synthesizing things
Speaker 1: and and going beyond what currently exists, thinking about in
Speaker 1: the future. How important do you think do you think
Speaker 1: some of the do you think the most creative mathematicians
Speaker 1: have a great imagination. I think they have a fabulous imagination.
Speaker 1: What's interesting about scientific and mathematical imagination is versus literary imagination.
Speaker 1: The difference with literary each form has different types of constraints,
Speaker 1: and depending on what's going on, the more constraints you have,
Speaker 1: the more challenging creativity becomes. And so I think with
Speaker 1: math and science you have a lot of constraints, and
Speaker 1: so it becomes more challenging to be creative, and so
Speaker 1: people who are creative in math and science are enormously crazy.
Speaker 1: That's such a good point. Yeah, that's such a good point.
Speaker 1: I mean, some researchers have argued some creativity researchers like
Speaker 1: Stokes have argued that the creativity is more likely the
Speaker 1: more constraints you actually put on. I like that because
Speaker 1: and it does. In fact, I was just speaking with
Speaker 1: I was interviewing for the mook and in fact, I've
Speaker 1: got to get you on to get hopefully you will
Speaker 1: come on. That's right. We discussed that, didn't we discuss
Speaker 1: that a while ago? Yes, I think that would just
Speaker 1: be fantastic. And I was just interviewing a I was
Speaker 1: out in Washington, d C. And Bill Rice is the
Speaker 1: director of Education for the National Endowment for the Humanities,
Speaker 1: and he was mentioning that many people in the humanities
Speaker 1: sort of think that the humanities has got a lock
Speaker 1: on creativity, like they're the creative ones and the other
Speaker 1: ones are sort of like and I'm I'm he didn't
Speaker 1: use these words or anything, but I've heard these kinds
Speaker 1: of thoughts from people in the humanities and out here
Speaker 1: in the sciences or engineering. So you're just kind of
Speaker 1: a drone, You're just you just got to plug the
Speaker 1: numbers into some pre done equation. And it always makes
Speaker 1: me laugh when I hear that kind of thing, because
Speaker 1: it's that's the equivalent of someone saying, you know, learning
Speaker 1: language and learning a new language like French or Spanish,
Speaker 1: that's all you're doing is memorizing and plugging in uh words. Right,
Speaker 1: It's just so easy. It's just all you do is
Speaker 1: plug it. And of course that's completely untrue. If you
Speaker 1: study languages, you know how much, how how flexible, how creative,
Speaker 1: how intimately you have to understand differences in how people
Speaker 1: perceive reality in order to learn a new language. And
Speaker 1: it's the same way, the same thing if you're learning
Speaker 1: something like math or science. There's differences in how you
Speaker 1: perceive reality, and it's so exciting and so filled with
Speaker 1: the potential for creativity. Yeah, I could definitely see that.
Speaker 1: I think people, you know, people don't understand I think
Speaker 1: what real like not real, but what professional mathematicians, what
Speaker 1: their life is like. I mean a lot of us
Speaker 1: think math that we think of like the what we
Speaker 1: do think of the algebra one or the pre algebra
Speaker 1: class where we were taught to plug and chug. Although
Speaker 1: maybe a good free algebra class goes beyond that. But
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people, unfortunately their experiences in
Speaker 1: middle school and high school math really is primarily formulas.
Speaker 1: But I think that something that's very useful that you're
Speaker 1: doing is is making people aware of so many different
Speaker 1: aspects of the stuff that's much more exciting than what
Speaker 1: you remember in middle school and high school. Part of
Speaker 1: what I think is fascinating about math and science, but
Speaker 1: really about any kind of learning, is we're often told, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, follow your passions. That's where it's all at.
Speaker 1: You find out what you're good at, and then just
Speaker 1: get better at it. And that's such a I mean,
Speaker 1: to my mind, that's such a mistake and approach, because
Speaker 1: what happens is people people have things are good at,
Speaker 1: but some things take much longer to get good at.
Speaker 1: And so if you just write off immediately, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm only good at these things, and you don't take
Speaker 1: the time to get good at other things. And let's
Speaker 1: take women for example. Well, women, we know that developmentally, yes,
Speaker 1: women and men have the same potential underlying potential for
Speaker 1: for knowing math and science and language and all sorts
Speaker 1: of things, right, But what is that does that include
Speaker 1: spatial three D mental rotation? What's that? Does that include
Speaker 1: three D mental rotation? Well, I'm not looking at the
Speaker 1: specific studies. I'm speaking very very generally. Yeah, in terms
Speaker 1: of like actual achievement and right, but there are studies
Speaker 1: that show that women verbally have a little bit of
Speaker 1: an advantage early on. Right, they develop a little bit
Speaker 1: faster verbally. It doesn't mean they're slowed mathmatically, it just
Speaker 1: means they're advanced verbally. So what does this mean when
Speaker 1: they get a little older. Well, they've always been a
Speaker 1: little bit better verbally. Right, So, even though they're just
Speaker 1: as good as guys mathematically, when they're told, hey, follow
Speaker 1: your passion, what are they gonna do. Hey, I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit better verbally? That must be my passion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's such a good point, And so they end up,
Speaker 1: even though they have the capability, they think they should
Speaker 1: follow their passion off into Sometimes disciplines are that maybe
Speaker 1: temporarily fast satisfying, but long term they don't lead to
Speaker 1: as good a job prospects. So I always say, don't
Speaker 1: just follow your passions. Broaden your passions, and your life
Speaker 1: is so enriched if you do that. I think that's
Speaker 1: an excellent point. I don't know if you're familiar with
Speaker 1: Calen Newport's book So Good, they can't ignore you. I
Speaker 1: love cal Newports What skills trump passionate in the question
Speaker 1: for a work you have? It seems to be in
Speaker 1: line with a lot of what you're saying. Let me
Speaker 1: let me like unpack some of this, because I am
Speaker 1: I think a lot of I think it's you're making
Speaker 1: some excellent, excellent points and how can we how can
Speaker 1: we combine optimism with realism? So not everyone is going
Speaker 1: to be suited to be a professional mathematician proper you
Speaker 1: know that that does take it, you know, to really
Speaker 1: like to be have a get a PhD in mathematics.
Speaker 1: I think we can honestly say not all minds are
Speaker 1: gonna find that enjoyable, you know. So, I, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, I completely agree that we should we shouldn't
Speaker 1: prematurely judge potential. I mean, that's the whole point in
Speaker 1: my book of Gifted, right, is that we really stop
Speaker 1: judg prejudging, and if someone does have the passion and
Speaker 1: interest for something, we should have more of a go
Speaker 1: go go attitude. You know. Then Oh, let's see what
Speaker 1: your iq is and stuff like that. With that said,
Speaker 1: not everyone should be encouraged to go to math, right, Oh,
Speaker 1: I think you're you're making a good point. But I
Speaker 1: think it's important to differentiate between high level being a mathematician, yes,
Speaker 1: an ordinary number sense absolutely, and most jobs, like let's
Speaker 1: say engineering. And I'm not suggesting that everybody should become
Speaker 1: an engineer, or that everybody should be a chemist or
Speaker 1: that ever. But what I am suggesting, however, is that
Speaker 1: the world of twenty twenty almost fifteen now is quite
Speaker 1: different than the world one hundred years ago, and there
Speaker 1: is a far greater demand for technological know how and skills.
Speaker 1: And so it is great to have a passion for
Speaker 1: learning languages and for culture and for all sorts of
Speaker 1: humanities and social science sorts of things. But because the
Speaker 1: world is what it is, it's also important to add
Speaker 1: to that, to broaden with some kind of number sense,
Speaker 1: some kind of a technical ability. If you're a well
Speaker 1: educated individual, it's just going to be really helpful for
Speaker 1: you to be broader than the typically sort of unilateral,
Speaker 1: monodisciplinary person of even twenty five years ago. Absolutely, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And the development of skills, as you note, is not
Speaker 1: all grounded any talents. You talk a lot about active learning,
Speaker 1: active work, and you know something very interesting or active
Speaker 1: learning strategies and how important they are for problem solving
Speaker 1: and learning. I mean, how can we instill the benefits
Speaker 1: and enjoyment of active learning and students in the United
Speaker 1: States in such a standardized, testing based environment. Well, that's
Speaker 1: a great question. I mean, if you if you really
Speaker 1: put just started denovo, you would. I think the most
Speaker 1: important thing that it could possibly be in any student's
Speaker 1: life is to have great teachers. And any system that
Speaker 1: doesn't promote really great teachers and doesn't enhance having great
Speaker 1: teachers is a system that's hamstringing people. So I think
Speaker 1: one of the best things we could do is really
Speaker 1: look carefully within and say, are we supporting systems that
Speaker 1: are supporting the best teachers? And so that's another thing
Speaker 1: that I think is important is we often think that,
Speaker 1: especially to get somebody in math and science, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: let's get them out there and get the excitement of it,
Speaker 1: get their hands on it, let's have fun, let's drop
Speaker 1: eggs off buildings, let's do all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And then these kids who have grown up through this
Speaker 1: hit college, hit calc One hit some of the harder,
Speaker 1: tougher and they it's like what one university professor called
Speaker 1: the mass science death March. You know, they hit it
Speaker 1: and it's like, wait a minute, this isn't fun. You know,
Speaker 1: everything we've been led to believe until this point is
Speaker 1: it's really fun. And then we get here and it's
Speaker 1: this part isn't. And I think part of what we
Speaker 1: should also be doing, particularly in the younger grades. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying let's just force wrote learning down kids' throats,
Speaker 1: but what I am saying is that having a saw
Speaker 1: understanding of fundamental facts I mean fundamental facts and how
Speaker 1: to swiftly draw them to mind and solve problems with
Speaker 1: him is really important. And we don't really give students
Speaker 1: a lot of practice. We give them lots of fun stuff,
Speaker 1: we give them all sorts of exciting, but we don't
Speaker 1: just have them sit there and do short amounts of
Speaker 1: solid practice. A great methodology that does do this is
Speaker 1: the math study program known as Kuman Mathematics. And in
Speaker 1: that program, and I put my own daughters in that,
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, I get one after school
Speaker 1: activity that's mine. You know, as a mom, I get
Speaker 1: to force down their throat. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: a tiger mom and have them doing all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: Maybe it would be better. Now my daughters are like,
Speaker 1: you know, I wish you had made us take music,
Speaker 1: you know, take a play, And I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: I was trying hard not to be a typer mom.
Speaker 1: But one thing I did do was given math. And
Speaker 1: they had about twenty to thirty minutes of practice a day.
Speaker 1: And now one is just wrapping up med school and
Speaker 1: the other one is an artist, but she took calculus
Speaker 1: for fun and aced it, you know. And so I
Speaker 1: think one thing that we don't do enough of is
Speaker 1: a little bit a practice each day with math, just
Speaker 1: as they would practice a musical instrument or a sport
Speaker 1: or something like that. I agree, But how can we
Speaker 1: motivate that practice. You talk a lot about the procrastination
Speaker 1: in your book. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the
Speaker 1: common problem. So many people procrastinate and then they say,
Speaker 1: see I don't have that, I didn't have the talent
Speaker 1: for it. Now, oh, yes, how can we You know,
Speaker 1: I agree with a lot of what you're saying, And
Speaker 1: how can we enlighten people to know that it's not
Speaker 1: because it's because they're lazy. It's not because you're stupid, right,
Speaker 1: a lot of it, at least some people are. I'm joking, Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know about the fourteenth time I get asked
Speaker 1: you what's for dinner? I'm like, okay, that's one of
Speaker 1: those stupid questions. But the thing is with why why
Speaker 1: do students I don't know, let's see, let's see, can
Speaker 1: you can you rephrase that? Just a lits midget. I'm
Speaker 1: just wondering how we can motivate students to want to
Speaker 1: practice math. How can we have them see the joy
Speaker 1: and love in this stuff. That's going to be tough
Speaker 1: to do if you don't have a good teacher. And
Speaker 1: so part of part of the whole what's going on
Speaker 1: now is we have a really, really imperfect system, and
Speaker 1: how can we change it to improve it? Sometimes there's
Speaker 1: just no way to do that. What you can do
Speaker 1: is seize the day individually with the few people who
Speaker 1: sort of kind of, for whatever reason, happen to look
Speaker 1: sideways and notice that, wait a minute, there is something
Speaker 1: I can do here. And I think that's what the
Speaker 1: mook was really about. One thing that I did was
Speaker 1: I volunteered in a local inter urban school district for
Speaker 1: five years to help bring them a math program. And
Speaker 1: what I found was the kids were incredible. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were just really wonderful kids. And the teacher is
Speaker 1: on the other hand, sometimes they would use the twenty
Speaker 1: minutes they had only twenty minutes to have their kids
Speaker 1: study math, they would use that entire twenty minutes to
Speaker 1: hand out the materials so that by the time they
Speaker 1: were all done, they didn't have anything to fiddle with,
Speaker 1: right because the students didn't have time to do anything.
Speaker 1: So it was really a demotivator for me in that
Speaker 1: I looked at what was going on, and I didn't
Speaker 1: see the problems at the student level. I saw that
Speaker 1: at that teacher level, particularly in schools for disadvantaged individuals,
Speaker 1: And that's part of why I wanted to work on
Speaker 1: the mook, was to try to reach to teachers themselves
Speaker 1: and also to directly to students to try to show
Speaker 1: them that there are much easier ways to approach their learning.
Speaker 1: When I was see what happened was I had trained
Speaker 1: myself as a linguist, and I loved language, I loved culture,
Speaker 1: I loved all those kinds of things. And then when
Speaker 1: I was twenty six or well, I got a of
Speaker 1: the I graduated from high school, and there was only
Speaker 1: one way at that time that I could study language
Speaker 1: and actually get paid for it, and that was due
Speaker 1: join the army. So I joined the army, and I
Speaker 1: learned a language. I learned Russian, and I ended up
Speaker 1: working as a Russian translator on Soviet trollers up in
Speaker 1: the Bering Sea and all sorts of fun things. So
Speaker 1: that's what I was saying, I said, Selesio is not
Speaker 1: but that's it's things to tell me all the time,
Speaker 1: which is you know too much, it's time to kill you.
Speaker 1: But for the record, you said that in the free interview,
Speaker 1: so the listeners wouldn't have heard that the first time,
Speaker 1: were right, right, But at any rate, So when I
Speaker 1: got out in the military, though, I saw that really
Speaker 1: there there's just it's kind of funny, but there just
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be a big call for people who
Speaker 1: know Slavic languages and literature. And so I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just I love travel, I love adventure. I mean,
Speaker 1: I ended up working at the South Pole station as
Speaker 1: a radio operator. That's where I met my husband. So
Speaker 1: I always say in the earth, to meet that man.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I just loved having seeing new perspectives
Speaker 1: and looking at things in new ways. And then I thought, huh,
Speaker 1: you know, why can't I do that with me? I mean,
Speaker 1: if I really want a new perspective, why don't I
Speaker 1: try on for size whether I can actually learn math
Speaker 1: and science? Because there could have been nothing more alien
Speaker 1: to me than learning something like that. And when I
Speaker 1: first started trying to do it, I made every mistake
Speaker 1: in the book. I would sit there and I would
Speaker 1: beat my head against them, literally against the wall. I
Speaker 1: just sit there and I get so upset. And there
Speaker 1: if you look at my old books, there's like little
Speaker 1: holes where I'd take my fork and stab the book.
Speaker 1: I get so frustrated. And I didn't know things like, hey,
Speaker 1: you got to back away when you get stuck. You're
Speaker 1: thinking yourself into a corner and you're using a tiny
Speaker 1: little set of neural networks, and you got to back away,
Speaker 1: go into resting mode, you know, diffuse states and look
Speaker 1: at things from a new perspective, and that will allow
Speaker 1: you to solve the problems. I didn't know that. And
Speaker 1: there's lots of other tricks for example, you brought up procrastination.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so easy to put things off. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that there was a simple trick. Just set
Speaker 1: a timer for twenty five minutes and then practice focusing
Speaker 1: just for that twenty five minutes, and then when it's done, relax,
Speaker 1: because it's important to relax and use those neural resting
Speaker 1: states learnings continuing. You're not conscious of it, but it's
Speaker 1: going on in the back. I didn't know these kinds
Speaker 1: of things, and so I wanted to with the mook
Speaker 1: communicate some of these very very simple ideas about learning.
Speaker 1: And I was so lucky of my My co instructor
Speaker 1: in the mook is doctor Terrence Sinowski. He's the Francis
Speaker 1: Crook Professor of the Salt Institute, and he's a fallible progressive.
Speaker 1: He's like he's so he's such a wonderful human being.
Speaker 1: He's actually a member of the National Academy of Sciences,
Speaker 1: the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Institutes of Medicine.
Speaker 1: That's one of only ten living human beings who's like that.
Speaker 1: And if you met him, you probably think he was
Speaker 1: pretty smart, because but he's one of those people that
Speaker 1: what I love about his intelligence is you probably know
Speaker 1: this too. There's a lot of super smart people out there.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not super smart like Harry, but they're
Speaker 1: they're pretty smart, but they're not flexible in their thinking,
Speaker 1: Like they'll jump to conclusions and then if you try
Speaker 1: to like say, hey, you know there's this like obvious
Speaker 1: fact that you're missing or something like that, they do
Speaker 1: not want to hear it. So I define intelligence. In
Speaker 1: my dissertation my PhD, I present a dual process theory
Speaker 1: of intelligence that argues that intelligence. You're going to love this.
Speaker 1: My dope theory is that intelligence is neither controlled nor
Speaker 1: diffuse or autonomous thought spontaneous thought. It is that flexibility
Speaker 1: to go between the different modes of thought depending on
Speaker 1: the test constraints. So in my view, you know that
Speaker 1: it has no meaning to say they're super smart people
Speaker 1: that aren't flexible because for me, that flexibility is intelligence.
Speaker 1: So you're not smart if you don't have it. So
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as a super smart person who's
Speaker 1: not flexible. I think it does depend because I think that,
Speaker 1: for example, you can have a programmer. Uh and and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm aware I'm stereotyping here, but a programmer who's
Speaker 1: really really gifted and really good at what they do,
Speaker 1: and yet if you ask them about to think about
Speaker 1: something that's related to Hey, you know you just said
Speaker 1: something really rude to your wife. Yes, it like doesn't click,
Speaker 1: you know. There, So there are there's flexibility and intelligence,
Speaker 1: and I do think that there can be types of
Speaker 1: intelligence inflexible. It's just that I don't like to hang
Speaker 1: out with those kinds of people as much. Well, do
Speaker 1: you know Danielle Bassett. She is She won the MacArthur
Speaker 1: Award for her career work in sort of quantifying mathematically
Speaker 1: people's ability to learn. And she's at the I think
Speaker 1: she's at the University of Pennsylvania, and she is like
Speaker 1: the coolest. Her work just seems really cool. It's quantifying
Speaker 1: in a hard science way the kinds of things that
Speaker 1: we're talking about. And she talks about intelligence as the
Speaker 1: ability to maximum to for when they're imaging the brain,
Speaker 1: how it can when you're learning something new, the brain
Speaker 1: reconfigures itself, yes, and that people who are better learners
Speaker 1: or faster learners reconfigure themselves more swiftly. Fascinating. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: is in the engineering school at penn just look that up. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's just her work is amazing. Yeah. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: you have a background, you got you did your doctoral
Speaker 1: training and systems engineering. How is systems engineering? What is
Speaker 1: systems engineering? And how to like influence you in terms
Speaker 1: of how you see sort of the big picture in
Speaker 1: your own work today. Oh, what a great question. I've
Speaker 1: never been asked that question before, and I think I've
Speaker 1: been waiting for it all my life. First off, what
Speaker 1: is systems engineering? It it Let's say that you are
Speaker 1: a mechanical engineer and you learn a certain set of
Speaker 1: mathematics related to how do how does the spring and
Speaker 1: the dash pod in your car? How does it bounce
Speaker 1: back around between the mass of your car and the
Speaker 1: inertia of it and the sort of the these kinds
Speaker 1: of inertial factors, and how do you quantify all of
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So, so then you have electrical engineers,
Speaker 1: and electrical engineers deal with things like inductance and capacitance
Speaker 1: and resistance, and what people don't realize is there's actually
Speaker 1: a very deep relationship mathematically between capacitance and elastance, probably
Speaker 1: boring people to tears, I'm sorry, between resistance and like
Speaker 1: a dash pod in mechanical engineering. So anyway, what it
Speaker 1: all comes down to is, hey, guess what. There's these
Speaker 1: very different disciplines. One's dealing with little circuits and others
Speaker 1: dealing with your car and things like that, but mathematically
Speaker 1: there's this deep essential similarity between them. Well, systems engineering
Speaker 1: gets at that mathematics and kind of says, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: guess what. There's lots of underlying relationships between seemingly different disciplines.
Speaker 1: And so what systems engineering does is try to kind
Speaker 1: of tie systems together, often mathematically, to better understand what
Speaker 1: the deep essential commonalities are. So I think that that
Speaker 1: perspective has flavored all of my work, and for me,
Speaker 1: I almost have to laugh because one thing I've noticed, like,
Speaker 1: I did an interview with this wonderful guy. His name
Speaker 1: is Benny Lewis, and he goes by the nome diplume
Speaker 1: of Benny the Irish polyglot, and he just speaks a
Speaker 1: lot of different languages, a good jazz musician. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: well he's like us, he started. Well, yeah, but I
Speaker 1: wouldn't quite put it that way, at least not when
Speaker 1: I was speaking with him. Oh that's a positive thing
Speaker 1: in my book. Oh, well, he is definitely a very
Speaker 1: interesting person. Interesting, let's go with interesting, Let's go with interesting.
Speaker 1: But what he he was an engineer and he complete
Speaker 1: wash out with language, just was always flunking it and
Speaker 1: couldn't pass it, couldn't learn it. Moved to Spain, took
Speaker 1: six months of Spanish lessons, was the loser in the class.
Speaker 1: He was flunking it completely. And then he sort of
Speaker 1: realized that, hey, you know, how I'm learning language is
Speaker 1: really bad. It doesn't work for me to learn it
Speaker 1: in the conventional way, and so he reconfigured his approach
Speaker 1: to learning. And now he speaks I don't know, something
Speaker 1: like eight ten, twelve languages, a lot of different languages,
Speaker 1: and he travels the world learning languages and having fun
Speaker 1: doing that. And so Benny is is a perfect example
Speaker 1: of like, when I'm looking at Mook's, I'm like, why
Speaker 1: isn't there a mook on general language learning? And I
Speaker 1: mean not that I know, maybe there is, but I
Speaker 1: mean if you go to a you know, you'll see
Speaker 1: classes for linguistics, but language for like, how do you
Speaker 1: swiftly pick up a block? What are the common kind
Speaker 1: of meta learning techniques for learning language? Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that Benny teaches. I will burn,
Speaker 1: I will tout his book here, which is fluent in
Speaker 1: three months. And but that's what Benny does. And I
Speaker 1: started to notice this. It's like academics get so set
Speaker 1: in their discippointments. For example, a French teacher speach teaches French,
Speaker 1: and you go up through the the whole academic discipline
Speaker 1: and you becoming get your doctorate in French or something
Speaker 1: like that, or engineering, you get your doctorate. It's always
Speaker 1: towards a pinnacle. But there most of the time people
Speaker 1: who are more broad ranging, like Benny, who knit together
Speaker 1: different things. They're not an academia yea. And yet academia
Speaker 1: needs these kinds of approaches absolutely absolutely, There needs to
Speaker 1: be more more creativity in academia across the board. Well
Speaker 1: we kind of, yeah, we kind of make sure that
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen. We went so focused on their own
Speaker 1: little question there is. There's not a lot of systems
Speaker 1: thinking going on in academia. But how did you slip
Speaker 1: through because I never got an academic job. You are
Speaker 1: so smart? No I should say that, but yes, I've
Speaker 1: been on the outskirts of my jobs. Have been like
Speaker 1: you know, in the periphery of you know, like tenure track,
Speaker 1: but not actual tenure track. And you know, staying away
Speaker 1: from that I think has increased my creativity. I think
Speaker 1: it really can. Because also another thing that happens is
Speaker 1: getting grants is it's becoming such a huge financial game.
Speaker 1: And if you are in any of the disciplines that
Speaker 1: has the potential for bringing in money, the new intellectual
Speaker 1: resources are often really tied up is writing grants, writing grants,
Speaker 1: writing grants, and you're not that doesn't give you. It's like,
Speaker 1: have you ever read about the old system in England
Speaker 1: of how they used to teach mathematics at the highest levels.
Speaker 1: It was the if I remember correctly, it was called
Speaker 1: the Wrangler system, and what they used to do they
Speaker 1: had a big test and then your score on that
Speaker 1: test sort of determined how sort of the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. Right, if you were the first Wrangler, you're
Speaker 1: going to get your pick of the prestigious positions in
Speaker 1: mathematics professorships in England. Second Wrangler is download. You know,
Speaker 1: it goes down. But there was a lot of complaint
Speaker 1: after a while that people that young at that time,
Speaker 1: it was young men were devoting some of the most
Speaker 1: creative years of their life up to like age twenty
Speaker 1: two or something like that. So it was like the
Speaker 1: years when Einstein was dreaming about writing a photon were
Speaker 1: the time when these people are just sitting there preparing
Speaker 1: for this test. And so it actually just locked their
Speaker 1: minds and didn't allow them to have the time for
Speaker 1: the creativity. And sometimes I wonder that it is kind
Speaker 1: of like that in math and science in academia. Now,
Speaker 1: such a good point. I think it is like that.
Speaker 1: I think it's a shame. I would like for the
Speaker 1: remaining time we have here in our podcast, can we
Speaker 1: can we get a little bit of practical advice for
Speaker 1: people on how to learn you. In your book, you
Speaker 1: list four components of building mental habits. Would you mind
Speaker 1: talking about what those four are? Well, first, let's go
Speaker 1: back to what happens when you see something that you
Speaker 1: do not want to do? Yes, Like, let's say that
Speaker 1: you look and you see you see your math textbook.
Speaker 1: What happens when you get your math textbook or see
Speaker 1: that math textbook, As it turns out, you actually experience pain.
Speaker 1: Like the part of your brain that experiences pain, the
Speaker 1: same part that like you hit your thumb with a hammer. Yes, no,
Speaker 1: now my question, I'm I'm good at neuroscience jeopardy. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you've got those facts down right. And so what happens
Speaker 1: is you there's two ways you can handle that. You
Speaker 1: can work through it or and after about twenty minutes
Speaker 1: that pain will go away. So if you work through
Speaker 1: your math after about twenty minutes, you'll start to maybe
Speaker 1: start getting into the flow of it and it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem so bad. But there's another way that you can
Speaker 1: handle that much more quickly, and that is you simply
Speaker 1: turn your attention away from the math book. Right. If
Speaker 1: you switch your focus of attention, the pain instantly disappears.
Speaker 1: So that's great, But that's also kind of like an addiction.
Speaker 1: And because because you do it once, you do it twice. Right,
Speaker 1: it's like the short term, hey I feel better, Hey,
Speaker 1: I feel better. It's no big deal if you do
Speaker 1: it a couple of times, but if you keep doing it,
Speaker 1: it ends up having a terrible long term effect your
Speaker 1: life on your life, just like any addiction. Right, So
Speaker 1: what can you do to handle this? The first thing
Speaker 1: is when you get that little cue that's painful, that
Speaker 1: is a that's a queue. And so what you want
Speaker 1: to do is for me, I'm imperfect. We're all imperfect,
Speaker 1: but I kind of say, there we go. But I
Speaker 1: enjoy the perfect people that I do need. I'm perfectly imperfect.
Speaker 1: I like that. Well, what happens is you you want
Speaker 1: to kind of start keeping an eye on when you're
Speaker 1: starting to avoid things and sort of this metacognition of oh, hey,
Speaker 1: guess what, that's my procrastination cue. And when that happens.
Speaker 1: The best thing to do when you finally become aware
Speaker 1: of it, and you also are aware this could create
Speaker 1: a problem for me long term if I let it
Speaker 1: keep going. What you want to do is try to
Speaker 1: stop yourself as soon as you reasonably can and get
Speaker 1: a timer. And you can get any timer you want,
Speaker 1: like a physical timer, or you can have a timer
Speaker 1: loaded on your computer or whatever. And you want to
Speaker 1: take this timer. You want to turn everything else off,
Speaker 1: so nothing on your cell phone, you know, you turn
Speaker 1: that so there's no sounds, no beeps on your computer,
Speaker 1: close your email programs, everything gets shut off, so no disturbances,
Speaker 1: and you set your timer for twenty five minutes, and
Speaker 1: all you have to do is work as efficiently and
Speaker 1: diligently as you can focusing for twenty five minutes. Now,
Speaker 1: sometimes I'll catch myself be like, wait a minute, am
Speaker 1: I really focusing here? I can't be doing my focus
Speaker 1: on my work because I'm focusing on my thinking, so
Speaker 1: I and then I gently just push that thought away
Speaker 1: and I just keep trying. And the whole idea is
Speaker 1: just to work as efficiently as you can for that
Speaker 1: twenty five minutes. When that twenty five minutes is done,
Speaker 1: then what you want to do is you just want
Speaker 1: to relax for just a little bit, and learning is
Speaker 1: also taking place or cogitating. Mental thinking about what you're
Speaker 1: working on is also taking place. You're not consciously aware
Speaker 1: of it, but it's also taking place during this sort
Speaker 1: of relax process, whether you want to go and just
Speaker 1: kind of surf the web a little bit or whatever.
Speaker 1: So when you get the queue and you're aware of it,
Speaker 1: you're aware of it, it's creating a problem. Then set
Speaker 1: your palm. This is the Palmodoro technique, and it was
Speaker 1: invented by a Italian name is Francesco Sidilo in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties and it's really effective. And that's that's about
Speaker 1: the best way you can practically approach and then you
Speaker 1: know and then sort of. Don't think you're going to
Speaker 1: rewire your entire life. Just start building in a few
Speaker 1: of these little palmondoros and it makes an incredible difference
Speaker 1: in your productivity. The only other thing is try to
Speaker 1: do try to eat your frogs first. So like one
Speaker 1: thing in the morning, do one thing you've really been
Speaker 1: kind of putting off, and only do it for twenty
Speaker 1: five minutes. Frogs are quite tasty. Well they tell me
Speaker 1: they taste like chicken. But everything always tastes like chicken
Speaker 1: so much, but frogs are delicious. I'm choking. So what
Speaker 1: is red? What is renaissance of learning? Renaissance learning is
Speaker 1: is like to I want to be a good renaissance owner.
Speaker 1: It just sounds sexy. It does. And what I really
Speaker 1: meant by that I took as my riff point Santiago Ramonicohol,
Speaker 1: who is just one of the most incredible characters in
Speaker 1: the history of science. And he was he was just
Speaker 1: this loser. I always loved loser dropout types who were
Speaker 1: really in trouble and couldn't learn anything, and he was
Speaker 1: the perfect example of that. He ended up in jail
Speaker 1: when he was eleven years old, and it was in Spain,
Speaker 1: in like the eighteen sixties, so it was really a
Speaker 1: rotten jail full of fleas and straw and all sorts
Speaker 1: of terrible things. And his father was at his wits
Speaker 1: end because here his father worked really hard to try
Speaker 1: and drag him up, himself up out of complete poverty,
Speaker 1: and his son is going directly back there and was
Speaker 1: hard headed just he couldn't handle his studies at all,
Speaker 1: flugged out of got thrown out of all these schools.
Speaker 1: And then he turns out around his late teens early twenties, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm going to rewire my brain. And he did, and
Speaker 1: he became known as the father of modern neuroscience, and
Speaker 1: he won the Nobel Prize for his discoveries in neurophysiology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so said, he exemplifies a renaissance learner to me,
Speaker 1: someone who really just sort of came out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: And what he said was, and I think it's true.
Speaker 1: He said I wasn't a genius. He says, I've worked
Speaker 1: with geniuses. He wrote this wonderful autobiography. But he said
Speaker 1: that that a lot of times. The problem with geniuses,
Speaker 1: in fact is that they jump to conclusions and they're
Speaker 1: really inflexible in their thinking, just like you had said. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he and he said, if there's anything that's good
Speaker 1: about me, it's a I'm persistent and be inflexible. Somebody
Speaker 1: shows me that I'm doing something wrong, hey I'll adjust.
Speaker 1: And a lot of intelligence. That's intelligence there. But a
Speaker 1: lot of the people who worked with couldn't do that.
Speaker 1: So I guess all of that kind of thing is
Speaker 1: that renaissance learning? Is that renaissance? What I think is
Speaker 1: you're already there. Well, I don't know about that. I'm
Speaker 1: halfway there because I am. I'm open to it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, let's leave here today. Can you give any
Speaker 1: practical strategies to increase your memory? Or warning or warning
Speaker 1: anything you want to say to our listeners who are
Speaker 1: like their head is about to explode after all this
Speaker 1: discussion of math, and they're like, how what can I
Speaker 1: do practically to increase my memory? Take take to t
Speaker 1: and call me in the morning. Yeah, just take a
Speaker 1: tiny little thing. That's what you want to Don't think
Speaker 1: about everything you want to learn or need to learn.
Speaker 1: You just take a tiny little thing and just work
Speaker 1: on that. And another thing is just the importance of
Speaker 1: visual visual aspects of memory and what this is is
Speaker 1: it or funny things? It helped the visual centers through
Speaker 1: your brains. A brain is enormous, right, These are really
Speaker 1: large areas of your brain. So if you can get
Speaker 1: something in there visually, you've got sort of in some
Speaker 1: sense more neural hooks to hang your memories on. And
Speaker 1: so so try to make an image or try to
Speaker 1: try to just come up with some kind of a
Speaker 1: funny thing, like if you're trying to remember a that
Speaker 1: duck is pto in Spanish, well, poto, How am I
Speaker 1: going to remember that? It doesn't even sound like duck.
Speaker 1: But the duck sits in a plato of water and
Speaker 1: it paddles around, So then you can kind of think duck,
Speaker 1: What is a duck? Oh? Yeah, yeah, it's in a pato.
Speaker 1: That's it. And at first when you do this, you
Speaker 1: make these funny little analogies to help you remember. It's
Speaker 1: really time consuming and slow, but the more you practice,
Speaker 1: the faster you get at it. But you'll find that
Speaker 1: once you make of something vivid like this, it actually
Speaker 1: sticks really well in your memory and you can use
Speaker 1: it not just for language learning, but if you're trying
Speaker 1: to learn pharmaceutical names as a physician, you can use
Speaker 1: it for all sorts of different things, but always try
Speaker 1: to and the stupider and actually the more risk gay
Speaker 1: whatever you come up with, the easier it is for
Speaker 1: you to remember. So that's one quick flick trick to
Speaker 1: help your memory. Thank you so much, Professor Barb Oakleigh
Speaker 1: for being on my podcast today and in part of
Speaker 1: your knowledge for all of us, it's a pleasure. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott Barry Kaufman.
Speaker 1: I hope you found this episode just as informative and
Speaker 1: thought provoking as I did. If you don't like to
Speaker 1: read the show notes for this episode or here past episodes,
Speaker 1: you can go to the Psychology Podcast dot com.