Speaker 1: You will leave something is true, and then you've proven
Speaker 1: to be wrong, You're far more likely to retain that information.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Alric Boser,
Speaker 1: a best selling author and senior Fellow with the Center
Speaker 1: for American Progress. Before the Center, Alric was a contributing
Speaker 1: editor for the U. S News and World Report. His
Speaker 1: work has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: and The Washington Post. In February two thousand nine, HarperCollins
Speaker 1: published his book The Gardner Heist, which examines of a
Speaker 1: dozen masterpieces from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and his
Speaker 1: new book is Learned Better, Mastering the Skills for Success
Speaker 1: in Life, Business and School, or how to become an
Speaker 1: Expert in just About Anything. Hi, friends, there's a couple
Speaker 1: of other ways to feed your good wolf in addition
Speaker 1: to just listening to this show. One is that you
Speaker 1: can support us on Patreon and that will allow you
Speaker 1: to get additional bonus content as well as a mini
Speaker 1: episode for me each month. You can do that by
Speaker 1: going to one you Feed dot net Slash Support. And
Speaker 1: the other thing that you can do is join our
Speaker 1: Facebook group where we have discussions about the episodes and
Speaker 1: other ways that people feed their good wolf and deal
Speaker 1: with challenges in life. And that is it One you
Speaker 1: Feed dot net Slash Facebook. And here's the interview with
Speaker 1: al Rich Boser. Hi, Aleric, welcome to the show. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for having me. I'm happy to have you on.
Speaker 1: Your book is called learn Better, Mastering the Skills for
Speaker 1: Success in Life, Business and School, or how to become
Speaker 1: an Expert in just About Anything. And I love this
Speaker 1: book because, as you mention, and we'll get into it
Speaker 1: a lot more detail. Learning how to learn, or knowing
Speaker 1: how to learn, is such a critical aspect of life,
Speaker 1: and most of us don't get taught how to do it.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited to work through this with the listeners.
Speaker 1: But let's start like we always do with the parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandfather is talking to his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second. He looks up at
Speaker 1: his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and the work that
Speaker 1: you do, which you are wonderful and powerful parable. When
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the parable and as it relates
Speaker 1: to learning, I actually had in my head a different parable,
Speaker 1: or a different expression, and that is better off teaching
Speaker 1: someone how to fish rather than simply give them a fish.
Speaker 1: And it relates to this sense that I feel like
Speaker 1: learning to learn, how to get better at getting better
Speaker 1: is is really when it comes to this powerble Really
Speaker 1: it's sort of like how do you feed yourself? Right?
Speaker 1: How do you feed what is good? How do you
Speaker 1: feed experience? How do you feed sort of wisdom and
Speaker 1: expertise and the ways that sort of feeding yourself at
Speaker 1: least it comes to kind of knowledge and skill and
Speaker 1: dispositions in more effective ways. And that's really what I've
Speaker 1: really been along fascinated And how do we do that?
Speaker 1: How do we feed ourselves better? Yeah? I love that
Speaker 1: teach a man to fish idea. It's so powerful. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about the learning process. So it's one of
Speaker 1: the most important predictors of learning is whether you actually
Speaker 1: know how to learn. You say that out of a
Speaker 1: bunch of different studies shows that learning methods dramatically shifted outcomes.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing I love this phrase you say,
Speaker 1: learning to learn is what expert it's called the ultimate
Speaker 1: survival tool, one of the most important talents of the
Speaker 1: modern age. So let's talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: learning process. Is there a lot of different ways to learn?
Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about what you think
Speaker 1: is the best learning process and the importance of having
Speaker 1: the process. Sure. One thing to keep in mind is
Speaker 1: that there's just a lot of folk wisdom and conventional
Speaker 1: ideas around learning, and a lot of it is is
Speaker 1: frankly wrong. So there's this idea that people have learning styles, right,
Speaker 1: that some people are auditory learners and some people are
Speaker 1: visual learners. Is really no evidence for that. There is
Speaker 1: a lot of people who love to use highlighters, often
Speaker 1: see people using them, whether it's at work or at school,
Speaker 1: and there's no research behind them either. What we do
Speaker 1: now have evidence for is, you know, certain approaches, certain
Speaker 1: processes is in learning are far more effective than others,
Speaker 1: and it's really important that people figure out exactly what
Speaker 1: they want to learn, make sure they're generating that learning
Speaker 1: in other words, that they're really sort of mentally doing
Speaker 1: and reflecting on it. You know, how can you think
Speaker 1: back on your learning? And when people really take this
Speaker 1: type of approach, they learn a lot more. And it
Speaker 1: sounds like a lot of what I got from the
Speaker 1: book is going to be very actively engaged in the
Speaker 1: learning process. And so, you know, highlighters are interesting because
Speaker 1: I think most of us think if we highlight something
Speaker 1: in a book, then we might remember it. The only
Speaker 1: way I've ever found that useful when I want to
Speaker 1: go back later and find what it is I want
Speaker 1: to spend more time on, I'm able to do that,
Speaker 1: which is kind of how I arrive at questions for
Speaker 1: the show and all that is. I'll read the book
Speaker 1: and I'll take a ton of highlights, and then I'll
Speaker 1: go through those and go through another round of work
Speaker 1: with those till it's a smaller group and keep sort
Speaker 1: of iterating through it. But it's this active engagement more
Speaker 1: so than the passive taking in of information, even if
Speaker 1: you passively take it in multiple times. Yes, so the
Speaker 1: way that most people use highlighters is different the way
Speaker 1: that you described, and I really like the way that
Speaker 1: you are using them, and I'm seeing research on that specifically,
Speaker 1: But I would suspect that it's effective if the way
Speaker 1: most people use highlighters right, that they're just they think
Speaker 1: if they highlight something like that material is going to
Speaker 1: train sort of their head. And it gets to this
Speaker 1: bigger idea that we really often think that our brains
Speaker 1: are like computers. Right, if there's information that comes at us,
Speaker 1: we're just going to know it right. It's just sort
Speaker 1: of like day that comes in and gets sort of
Speaker 1: stored somewhere in the back. But that's not really how
Speaker 1: the brain works. We need to make meaning out of
Speaker 1: something and when we make more meeting out of it
Speaker 1: or far more effective. My favorite example of this is
Speaker 1: like visiting that researcher and Florida, and he asked this question,
Speaker 1: what is the capital of Australia. Actually, let me ask
Speaker 1: the question of you, eric, capital of Australia. Any guess
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess mel Born, But that's probably not
Speaker 1: right yet, so it's not right. You want to go
Speaker 1: for option number two? You have a second guess. That
Speaker 1: was I either guess Melbourne or Sydney myself, but you
Speaker 1: have a second guess. You know. I ran through like
Speaker 1: basically every city that I knew in Australia. I was
Speaker 1: like Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne. And then when he told me
Speaker 1: the answer, which is Cambera, I was like, no way,
Speaker 1: Like that's that's crazy, Like I've never heard of Canberra before.
Speaker 1: UM and researchers call this idea that or described this
Speaker 1: idea of a hyper correction EF fact if you will
Speaker 1: leave something is true, or at least you think that
Speaker 1: you should know it. In my case, I really thought
Speaker 1: that I should know the capital of Australia, right, and
Speaker 1: it seemed like some that like basic trivia, that that
Speaker 1: people should know. And then you've proven to be wrong,
Speaker 1: You're far more likely to retain that information in the future.
Speaker 1: And I give us example right, because I think it
Speaker 1: helps us understand how to bring Really isn't a computer right?
Speaker 1: I mean, then this hyper correction effect example one, making
Speaker 1: the error actually makes us learn more right by guessing incorrectly.
Speaker 1: You know, you said Melbourne, you're making an error and
Speaker 1: it's going to help you learn the len Then that
Speaker 1: moment of kind of like shock and surprise, We're like,
Speaker 1: holy can't it's you know, Camba, I've never heard of that.
Speaker 1: It's really forcing you to kind of engage in some
Speaker 1: sense making and kind of finding meaning. You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: why don't I know this? And um, I think helps
Speaker 1: us understand, you know why when we're using highlighters, we're
Speaker 1: just sort of passive, like not really thinking that much.
Speaker 1: That feeling that so often happens. Right, But you've read
Speaker 1: a whole page of texts and at the end you're
Speaker 1: not really sure what you're learning. As opposed to asking
Speaker 1: yourself questions, coming back to information, looking for connections one
Speaker 1: more effective ways to retain knowledge. Yeah, you talk about
Speaker 1: that in the book Multiple Different Places, Which is that
Speaker 1: idea of if you think about the information and meaningfully
Speaker 1: and you ask yourselves questions about it, or you think
Speaker 1: about it, you look at it from different angles, is
Speaker 1: a lot better. And it makes me think of you know,
Speaker 1: one of the early episodes we had you Know, and
Speaker 1: probably the first ten episodes, was a guy named Todd Henry.
Speaker 1: We had him on subsequently, but the thing he said
Speaker 1: that you Know has stuck with me so much since
Speaker 1: that early episode. He said, if most of us were
Speaker 1: to change the way we consume information, for every hour
Speaker 1: of information we consume, we spend an hour of information
Speaker 1: processing that you know, which we that we read, asking
Speaker 1: ourselves questions about it, thinking about how it applies to
Speaker 1: our lives, trying to apply to our life. He's, you know,
Speaker 1: our lives would change. And I think that is so
Speaker 1: very true because just consuming more and more information, which
Speaker 1: is what most of us do, doesn't necessarily make us
Speaker 1: any smarter or more knowledgeable. Would be a better way
Speaker 1: to say it. I think that's a great way to
Speaker 1: look at it. If we want that information and want
Speaker 1: to use that information to solve problems at a later point. Right,
Speaker 1: if we want that information so we converted into expertise,
Speaker 1: we need to give our brain that time to make
Speaker 1: sense of it. It's so easy for our brains to
Speaker 1: get overloaded, so we need information in smaller chunks, and
Speaker 1: we also just need time to have these types of reflections,
Speaker 1: these moments of understanding. One bit of researcher I find
Speaker 1: it's really fascinating that I think puts Todd's point in
Speaker 1: a somewhat different line is someone did research a number
Speaker 1: of years ago looking at what sort of pause and
Speaker 1: instructor or speaker should have if they're really delivering important information.
Speaker 1: And they found in the study that, uh, the audience
Speaker 1: learned more, right, they retain more if if there were
Speaker 1: long pauses and pauses of three seconds. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to subject your listeners to three seconds because it's awkwardly long. Right,
Speaker 1: it's like a moment, you know, if you know, you guys,
Speaker 1: edit this if it was a three second long pause.
Speaker 1: But like that's that's gotta go. I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: Chris would trim that right out, and that's why right
Speaker 1: of us are learning anything. So good job, Chris, Thanks Chris.
Speaker 1: We're grateful for it. But if you listen to like
Speaker 1: speakers and whatever your politics are, you know, Barack Obama, Um,
Speaker 1: he speaks so slowly and and you know, I think
Speaker 1: that's part of what makes him such a great speecher. Right.
Speaker 1: These pauses are are allowing the audience to really sort
Speaker 1: of engage makes sense of that material. Uh, And I
Speaker 1: find that fascinating. Um, it's a it's a somewhat different
Speaker 1: spin on that same idea. But you know, even in conversation,
Speaker 1: even when we're kind of teaching or learning or having
Speaker 1: even a simple conversation like we're having and we need
Speaker 1: that moment to process. I was trying it for three seconds,
Speaker 1: You're right, that is a long time. I was trying
Speaker 1: to give it three second pause before the next one
Speaker 1: came up. But you are probably just about to go.
Speaker 1: You still there on the tip of my tongue, like
Speaker 1: there's something there's something wrong here. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's a great finding. The other thing that I
Speaker 1: found really interesting about it was the criticality of understanding
Speaker 1: relationships between things. You know. It goes on to say
Speaker 1: identify cause and effect and to see analogies and similarities.
Speaker 1: But I love that idea of relationships. One of the
Speaker 1: ways if I'm trying to learn something new that that
Speaker 1: I like to do it is to try and consume
Speaker 1: a lot of information, but try and get it from
Speaker 1: three or four different people. So ask the same three
Speaker 1: you know, or ask three or four people about the
Speaker 1: same thing, and there's something about the way each of
Speaker 1: them says it's slightly differently that allows it after a
Speaker 1: few times of hearing it slightly differently, it clicks into
Speaker 1: focus in a way for me that it doesn't if
Speaker 1: I only hear it from one person. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: so glad that you asked about relationships, because when we
Speaker 1: think about that makes them so powerful? Is is also relationships? Right,
Speaker 1: it's it's well, let me actually approach this from a
Speaker 1: slimly different angle and then and then come back from
Speaker 1: the parable if it's if it's okay, And that's you know,
Speaker 1: when we really want to learn something, we want to
Speaker 1: be able to learn that something in different situations. So
Speaker 1: if you learn three plus five equals eight, you know,
Speaker 1: you can vary up the surface features of it, so
Speaker 1: you can change it into a word problem. You can
Speaker 1: see it numerically, um, you can use it in different
Speaker 1: like situation and maybe one it's like a little stressful
Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out, you know, what you should
Speaker 1: leave on a tip on your first date. Now, when
Speaker 1: we vary those surface features, we know that deep features
Speaker 1: really what it means to add three plus five in
Speaker 1: a richer way. And we do this kind of all
Speaker 1: the time, right when we're skiing. If you want to
Speaker 1: get better at skiing, you know, you want to vary
Speaker 1: where you can ski so you can figure out different situations.
Speaker 1: And what I find fascinating about this is it's really
Speaker 1: about relationships. It's about analogy, taking one thing and figuring
Speaker 1: out the ways that things time to together. And it
Speaker 1: really changes the way that I think about learning. Right.
Speaker 1: So I recently took a wine tasting class. I want
Speaker 1: to know a little bit more about wine. And you know, ultimately,
Speaker 1: what manners to me about wine isn't like do I
Speaker 1: know where the most like Bordeaux is produced? What I
Speaker 1: want to know is like what wine tastes good with
Speaker 1: certain foods? And so I took a wine pairing class,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I learned so much more, right,
Speaker 1: I learned why the cannons in a red cut against
Speaker 1: the fattiness of of cheese. I learned about, you know,
Speaker 1: why sat wines go with spicy food. That type of
Speaker 1: learning is so much richer. And uh, the idea of
Speaker 1: a parable is really the same thing, right, Like we
Speaker 1: can use that same idea like what is the one
Speaker 1: you feed in so many different situations, and it gives
Speaker 1: us a richer understanding of the underlying theireness of feedingness.
Speaker 1: So it's if that's any idea, And here's the rest
Speaker 1: of the interview with al Rich Boser. The idea and
Speaker 1: I think I won't get the words exactly right that
Speaker 1: you use in the book is that the advantage of
Speaker 1: analogies or you know, of looking at relationship is that
Speaker 1: it's easier to remember something new if you can hang
Speaker 1: it on something old that you already know. So you've
Speaker 1: already got this one memory or understanding or idea, and
Speaker 1: you're more likely to get the new one if you
Speaker 1: can kind to you know, I like that analogy of
Speaker 1: just sort of hanging it on it as a way
Speaker 1: to remember the new things. That's exactly right. And when
Speaker 1: you hear people talk about, oh, we now need an
Speaker 1: uber for babysitting or an uber for haircuts, you know
Speaker 1: it only works if you uber right, you're you know,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, okay, I know uber is, and
Speaker 1: so uber for haircuts, like how would that work? Or
Speaker 1: were for childcare? You know, how would that work? But
Speaker 1: if you need to know that uh initial thing, well,
Speaker 1: and then it allows you to use what you know
Speaker 1: to understand something. One of the ways why these types
Speaker 1: of analogies can be so powerful. Yeah, and so in
Speaker 1: the book, you've got a systematic approach, and I thought
Speaker 1: it would be useful just to kind of walk through
Speaker 1: the various steps in learning something. Um, I'll just read
Speaker 1: them real quick and then maybe we can just take
Speaker 1: a spin through each of them briefly and you can
Speaker 1: help us understand what each of these is. So the
Speaker 1: first one is value, then target it, develop, extend, relate,
Speaker 1: and rethink. So let's start with value. What is the
Speaker 1: role of value in learning? It's very hard to learn
Speaker 1: something if you don't know anything about it. So how
Speaker 1: can we find value in something and try and delve
Speaker 1: deep into what that means? But what's really important about
Speaker 1: motivation and it's it's a one way street, you know.
Speaker 1: So often we're like, oh, if the topic is interesting
Speaker 1: to me, other people are going to find it interesting.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you've ever had this experience
Speaker 1: area where you know someone is just like, oh, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about statistics when I mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: justin Bieber or something that might be of interest to
Speaker 1: other other people. That's not really it works. You know,
Speaker 1: Motivation is a one way street, and it goes from
Speaker 1: the person to the material. And when we think about learning,
Speaker 1: just that idea is is really important, right. You want
Speaker 1: to find meaning both in the motivational sense but also
Speaker 1: in the understanding sense. So I have to value it
Speaker 1: in order to actually learn it. It's not going to
Speaker 1: do me any good if I don't. And so this
Speaker 1: idea of basically what's wrong with a lot of school,
Speaker 1: right is that our children don't value what they're learning.
Speaker 1: It makes it very difficult for them to pay attention
Speaker 1: or to learn if they don't see the value in it.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. If you're not able to see the
Speaker 1: value in it, you're not gonna want to learn about it.
Speaker 1: What the research says I'm finding value is is that
Speaker 1: it is this one way street. And one way we
Speaker 1: can do that is just to ask people. You know,
Speaker 1: sure you're gonna learn about statistics. You're probably not waking
Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night wondering about you know,
Speaker 1: Stata or sps S or P squares, but just writing
Speaker 1: or taking a few moments to yourself being likely and
Speaker 1: why is this going to be valuable to me? How's
Speaker 1: this going to improve my career, how's it going to
Speaker 1: improve my family life? Makes people a lot more motivated
Speaker 1: to learn. Ye, So the next stage is to target.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? What's important about target
Speaker 1: is two things. One, our brains get very easily overloaded,
Speaker 1: and at the beginning of the learning process, you want
Speaker 1: to learn in small chunks. So you know, people often
Speaker 1: are like, oh, I you just have to do hands
Speaker 1: on learning. Uh, and the hands on practice and getting
Speaker 1: your hands dirty really important. But at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the learning process, you know, just take things in small
Speaker 1: bites because it's it's a much more effective way to learn.
Speaker 1: And like, think about something like riding a bicycle. You know, um,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't just sort of go out there and and
Speaker 1: you know, just jump on. And if you didn't know
Speaker 1: how to ride a bicycle, let's helpful to know you know,
Speaker 1: what are the breaks, do how to balance? And so targeting,
Speaker 1: especially at the beginning of the learning process, just figuring
Speaker 1: out exactly what you want to learn and the best
Speaker 1: way to learn it becomes very very important. So the
Speaker 1: next one is developed. Practice is so key when it
Speaker 1: comes to learning, and there are better ways to practice
Speaker 1: one what is central to to practice is getting feedback
Speaker 1: and anyway that you can get feedback is really crucial.
Speaker 1: So there are some basic ways you can ask get feedback.
Speaker 1: Videotaping yourself is a great way if it's a performance
Speaker 1: of some sort, and then there are other ways to
Speaker 1: get feedback where you just make sure that whether it's
Speaker 1: your colleagues or your friends or your family, that you
Speaker 1: create that norm that they should give you feedback and
Speaker 1: they need to give you critical feedback. Uh So tremendously important.
Speaker 1: So this aspect of the learning process is really just
Speaker 1: sort of practicing, developing and getting better at at that
Speaker 1: type of practicing and that type of developing. And then
Speaker 1: the next one is extend. This goes back to what
Speaker 1: we described a little bit earlier you want to start
Speaker 1: using your knowledge in different areas and and really start
Speaker 1: taking it out for a spin. And when we think
Speaker 1: about learning at this stage, creating arguments. Building arguments is
Speaker 1: a wonderful way to create new knowledge, to extend what
Speaker 1: you know and really sort of developed that expertise. Another
Speaker 1: example of this is is just elaborating on something a
Speaker 1: great way to learn. If you're learning about Russian history
Speaker 1: or biology or Microsoft Excel, just elaborating on it shows
Speaker 1: a lot of evidence in the research. Yeah, it makes
Speaker 1: me think of one of my favorite books of all times,
Speaker 1: Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, And in
Speaker 1: the very beginning he encourages, you know, very strongly, like
Speaker 1: you know, turn around and start teaching this to somebody else,
Speaker 1: like immediately, because that that idea of being able to
Speaker 1: teach it to somebody else drives it home so strongly,
Speaker 1: and it makes us think about how to present the
Speaker 1: information back in an understandable way. Yes, so when you
Speaker 1: think about elaborating, right, it's that idea. And then plus
Speaker 1: when you teach it to someone else, if you're doing
Speaker 1: it in person, you have that experience of looking at
Speaker 1: a person's eye and realizing, oh, I didn't explain that
Speaker 1: how well? Right, And so it can be more iterative
Speaker 1: and more social. Um. I find that there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of research that I find wonderful where just talking
Speaker 1: to yourself while solving problems, um is another way to
Speaker 1: do this. When you're elaborating, you're also slowing down. And
Speaker 1: there was a study this was a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago that found it's the same as having a ten
Speaker 1: point increase in your i Q. So talking to yourself
Speaker 1: while you're solving problems again the same type of thing
Speaker 1: of of teaching someone else or elaborating this core idea
Speaker 1: is the same as you know, having a very significant
Speaker 1: boost in your gro intelligence. Wow, that's that's interesting. We've
Speaker 1: got two more to go here. Relate is the next one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about this a little bit earlier, but analogies
Speaker 1: um as a number of researchers now believe it is
Speaker 1: the essence of thoughts. We're always thinking in categories and
Speaker 1: it's a powerful way to learn to relate things to others.
Speaker 1: So a very simple example, you know, what does it
Speaker 1: mean exactly? The definition of a dog? Right? And one
Speaker 1: way to to learn is just to relate all sorts
Speaker 1: of different dogs to each other. You know, if you
Speaker 1: look at the schnaus or German shepherd or mass if
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, you start relaying them, figuring out what
Speaker 1: the category is and helps you learn a lot more
Speaker 1: about saying dognus. But we can use this in so
Speaker 1: many different areas. You want to learn more about the oceans.
Speaker 1: It's not important to know sort of you know, what's
Speaker 1: the average temperature of the ocean. What's important to know
Speaker 1: is uh, the temperature of the ocean goes up. You
Speaker 1: can relate that to the fact that water expands, and
Speaker 1: this helps us understand, you know, why climate changes can
Speaker 1: be so hazardous to island. So when you're learning something,
Speaker 1: you know, it's so important to to relate it to others.
Speaker 1: We talked at the beginning of you know, learning the
Speaker 1: capital of Australia and as alone it's like an interesting fact,
Speaker 1: but you know, why is it that many nations, the
Speaker 1: US and included, to have these kind of obscure places
Speaker 1: as their capital. And we could go on a whole
Speaker 1: riff about that. It says a lot about the political process.
Speaker 1: It says a lot about kind of financial and political
Speaker 1: power and the nature of geography um and and that
Speaker 1: actually helps us understand at a much richer level issues
Speaker 1: of politics and geography and history, much more so than
Speaker 1: just having that isolated fact, so relating them to each other.
Speaker 1: And our final stage is rethink so important when we're
Speaker 1: learning to take that time to process information. And there
Speaker 1: are a couple of reasons for it. When we forget,
Speaker 1: we forget at a regular rate, and we're widely overconfident
Speaker 1: about how much we remember. So just taking time to
Speaker 1: recall what you know about something, to revisit material forgetting
Speaker 1: in many ways is your friend. It allows you to relearn,
Speaker 1: to rethink, and we should do more to take advantage
Speaker 1: of that in all forms of learning. And also ultimately
Speaker 1: you learn to gain perspective to develop richer insights, and
Speaker 1: so taking that time for learning is so crucial. Talk
Speaker 1: to me about medic cognition. You you brought up i
Speaker 1: Q a couple of minutes to go, and there's studies
Speaker 1: that show that people who are good at this meta cognition,
Speaker 1: which you're going to walk us through here in a second,
Speaker 1: are able to learn better than people who even have
Speaker 1: you know, way higher i q s. So what is
Speaker 1: metic cognition and why is it so helpful in helping
Speaker 1: us to learn better. Metic cognition is a fascinating thing
Speaker 1: and researchers really talk about it as thinking about thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, what are you? What do you understand about?
Speaker 1: What you understand? One issue of metic cognition is that
Speaker 1: people are often wildly overconfident. So my favorite question on
Speaker 1: this veryans do you know how a toilet works? There's
Speaker 1: a question for you. I read the book, so it's
Speaker 1: not a fair question, but I would say that no,
Speaker 1: not very well. You do uh well, you read the books,
Speaker 1: so it isn't a fair question. But if you ask
Speaker 1: the public and locks most people and I often do
Speaker 1: this in talks, are like, sure, I know how it
Speaker 1: a toilet works. But then you really start, you know,
Speaker 1: pushing them like why is it that if you put
Speaker 1: a little bit of water into a toilet bowl, you know,
Speaker 1: doesn't flush, but if you put a lot of water
Speaker 1: into it, suddenly it'll flush. And you know, why does
Speaker 1: it have that weird little s tube that's on the
Speaker 1: side of This is really an issue of meta cognition.
Speaker 1: We spend a lot of time on on toilets, and
Speaker 1: so we think we know how they work, but really,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the engineering of them, we just
Speaker 1: simply don't know what we really know. And so meta
Speaker 1: cognition really at this basic form is an argument that's
Speaker 1: at the heart of the book. It's at the heart
Speaker 1: of this learning process. What do you want to learn?
Speaker 1: How are you going to learn it? How do you
Speaker 1: know that you know it? Um And asking yourself questions
Speaker 1: at a very basic level when you're reading or watching
Speaker 1: a Ted talk or listening to a podcast is like
Speaker 1: do I really get this? Can I explain us to
Speaker 1: a friend? Will kind of connect and and then reflecting
Speaker 1: of like what can I do to to learn this better?
Speaker 1: Is is a really powerful tool for UH learners of
Speaker 1: really in the age. Another of metic cognition that you
Speaker 1: talk about in the book is that when people are
Speaker 1: upset or they are stressed, they are unable to learn well.
Speaker 1: And so another way to use metic cognition is about
Speaker 1: being aware of what our emotional state is and working
Speaker 1: with our emotional state allows us to actually learn better.
Speaker 1: This is something that's really fascinating to me, and you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people, including you guys, have talked about this.
Speaker 1: But let's sort of drill down this idea a little
Speaker 1: bit more. I think it's just so important when we
Speaker 1: so often think that cognition and emotions are too totally
Speaker 1: separate things, right, like our thoughts and our feelings are,
Speaker 1: you know, just totally independent, But really they're they're intermixed,
Speaker 1: like how we feel and how we think. You know,
Speaker 1: they really kind of rolled to together, and we really
Speaker 1: underestimate that when it comes to learning, and they're really
Speaker 1: wonderful examples of this. You know, if you encourage people
Speaker 1: to think about their asked, right, do you know, tell
Speaker 1: them to start thinking about their childhood bedroom and and
Speaker 1: their first grade teacher, you know they'll they'll start to
Speaker 1: lean back, that has been shown in a number of studies.
Speaker 1: And tell them about retirement, how they're gonna move to
Speaker 1: the Bahamas, they start to lean forward. And it's a
Speaker 1: very clear, very concrete example of the ways that are thinking.
Speaker 1: Our body work together. And you were asking about meta
Speaker 1: cognition and feelings. What's important here is that we need
Speaker 1: to feel sort of calm, We need to feel ready
Speaker 1: to learn, We need to feel safe when we want
Speaker 1: to learn, because our emotions and are thinking are feelings
Speaker 1: and are learning that they're not two different things that
Speaker 1: they they are often the same thing, and so having
Speaker 1: that feeling of safety makes us far more able to learn. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So we're nearing the end of time, but I want
Speaker 1: to hit a couple of things that we have covered
Speaker 1: a little bit, but I want to I want to
Speaker 1: call them out as as sort of key points, and
Speaker 1: then you can bring up any key points you think
Speaker 1: we've missed. But one of the big ones over and
Speaker 1: over is digestible parts, right, break it down into smaller parts,
Speaker 1: learn less at one time. You know, there's a study
Speaker 1: in their shows of after about ninety minutes, adults are
Speaker 1: kind of done. And so lots of this breaking it
Speaker 1: into small parts was one big one, definitely, it's a
Speaker 1: really big one. You know. For a long time, we
Speaker 1: thought short term memory could take five to seven items.
Speaker 1: That's where our telephone numbers are the length that they are.
Speaker 1: But increasingly we realize that we can't even take that
Speaker 1: much into into our brain at one time. And companies
Speaker 1: have realized this on their on their own right, and
Speaker 1: this is why like nine, one, three, one, one, really
Speaker 1: important numbers are so short. So digestible parts, it's the
Speaker 1: way to go when it comes to learning. Yep. The
Speaker 1: next is active learning strategies versus being passive things like
Speaker 1: self whizzing or self explaining or describing it in your
Speaker 1: own words. But but really going from just consuming something
Speaker 1: and hoping you remember it. Even old flash cards make
Speaker 1: an appearance in this book, right that they actually are
Speaker 1: useful because you're quizzing yourself and you're you know, you're
Speaker 1: forcing yourself to recall versus just shoving things in. It's
Speaker 1: a great example. It's so important tests have a terebratle reputation.
Speaker 1: They deserve them in many ways. But like low stakes
Speaker 1: pop quizzes kind of brain dumps really are very effective
Speaker 1: ways to learn. My favorite study when it comes to
Speaker 1: this is a researcher gave people, uh, some text. Some
Speaker 1: people read the text once and then took a test.
Speaker 1: Some people read the text twice, right, So they read
Speaker 1: it once and they reread it took a test. The
Speaker 1: people who read the text once and then put it
Speaker 1: away and then just started writing everything that they knew
Speaker 1: about it, creating some connections and associations learned any percentage
Speaker 1: points more so, and they took the same amount of time. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't take longer to to necessarily do
Speaker 1: that type of bring them than it takes to um,
Speaker 1: you know, reread the material. So just quizzing yourself in
Speaker 1: both ways of recalling facts is a great way to
Speaker 1: make sure those facts are in your head. But also
Speaker 1: just like why did this happen? Engaging in recall, just
Speaker 1: summarizing material great way to to make learning a lot
Speaker 1: more active. Yeah. Another technique you call out is called hypotheticals,
Speaker 1: which you know, the examples you've given the book are
Speaker 1: you know, ask what would happen if living things didn't
Speaker 1: evolve over time? Or if you're studying Shakespeare, you know,
Speaker 1: consider what would have happened if if the young Lovers
Speaker 1: had not died in the play. You know, just pose
Speaker 1: hypotheticals about what you're learning. Yeah, and encourages these types
Speaker 1: of why, these types of elaborations as types of different
Speaker 1: angles of of looking at something that create that richer
Speaker 1: sense of of understanding. So any other sort of short
Speaker 1: hitters that you would add to that that list of
Speaker 1: like if you're gonna learn three or four things in this,
Speaker 1: here's what i'd take away. Anything else that you'd add
Speaker 1: in there that I missed so easily we forget so
Speaker 1: much we should incorporate that into our learning. What does
Speaker 1: that mean practically speaking? If you're going to, you know,
Speaker 1: take a Spanish class tonight, start early so that you
Speaker 1: have time to forget build in uh time in which
Speaker 1: you know that there's just going to be moments where
Speaker 1: you're not thinking about that material. Anything you can do
Speaker 1: essentially to stay away from cramming is very very effective. Excellent, Well, Ulrich,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for taking the time to come on
Speaker 1: the show. And the book was really interesting to me,
Speaker 1: And um, I've always thought of myself, as you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things I'm good at is learning pretty well.
Speaker 1: And reading the book, I was like, okay, well, I
Speaker 1: think you know that I do do most of that stuff,
Speaker 1: which is probably, but I definitely picked up a few
Speaker 1: tips that will be helpful to me moving forward. That's great. Um,
Speaker 1: really glad to hear that, in part because I've learned
Speaker 1: so much from the show. So thank you so much
Speaker 1: for having me on. Yep, it's been a pleasure, Take care,
Speaker 1: Thanks again, bye bye. If what you just heard was
Speaker 1: helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the
Speaker 1: one you Feed podcast. Head over to one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash support The One You Feed podcast would
Speaker 1: like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.