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Ass-Kicking Email – Invent Your Own Learning Tactics

Hey,

In this email:

1. The importance of knowing how to learn
2. Inventing new learning tactics
3. New implementation guides

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The Difference Between Knowledge and Knowing How to Learn

One of the principles I try to teach in this course is that learning
is not a mystical task that you either “get” or you don’t. Rather,
there are specific strategies you can use, that work with your
mental hardware that make learning anything a whole lot easier.

All of the tactical implementation guides, videos and books I offer
here are designed to help you with that problem–once you know what
needs to be learned, how do you know how to actually learn it?

—

The problem is that learning tasks are incredibly varied. Beyond
vague and rather unhelpful advice to just “link ideas together” and
“practice tough problems”, the key to learning success comes from
recognizing types of problems and devising strategies to handle
them.

I offer these tactics in this program, but perhaps a more valuable
skill isn’t just the tactics themselves–but knowing how to create
your own tactics. That way if you encounter a learning challenge
that I haven’t covered in the now dozens of guides and videos, you
can still learn it rapidly.

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How to Invent Your Own Learning Tactics

Most of the tactics I cover in these guides are manifestations of
a few universal principles of learning. The universal principles
are somewhat obvious, but with practice you can learn to apply them
to almost any situation.

A few of those principles include:

1. Ideas are remembered by being linked to other ideas
2. Analogy and simplicity are the root of understanding
3. Practice is most effective on difficult, yet solvable problems
4. Vividness improves memory

There are many others, and I devote the first full half of my book
to exploring some of these general principles.

The key to developing your own learning tactics is to:

A) Define the learning challenge
B) Manifest the general principles in a way that will efficiently
and effectively handle that challenge

Although doing an extensive amount of research has been a part, this
process of “inventing” specific methods from universal principles is
how I’ve been able to write so many tactical guides on the process.

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Reaching a mastery level, where you can see the structure of a
learning challenge, and quickly develop a set of specific methods to
handle it may take time. (In the mean time, I’m always happy to
offer advice)

However, you can start practicing by learning the universal
principles and asking yourself questions about whatever challenge
you face.

Ask yourself questions like:

1. Am I learning ideas or skills?
2. Am I learning concepts or facts?
3. Do I need quantity or quality?
4. Do I need quick association or creative thinking?
5. Do I need solutions or better questions?

All these sorts of questions can expose what kind of methods will
work well and which will be slow and inefficient.

Using the peg method for remembering formulas, when there are only
4-5 formulas in the class and they are provided with the exam is
wasteful. Since the peg method creates quick, shallow associations.

However, using deep linking, visceralization or the 5-year old
method may be superior, offering deeper understandings.

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Apply First Method and Constructing Mental Highways

Those are the two new implementation guides for this month, and you
can grab them under CONTENT and MONTH 10.

The apply-first method shows a strategy I’ve used to learn things
more deeply by learning them backwards than the order they are
normally taught.

The second section talks about how you can build creative links
between ideas to foster inventive thinking and lateral intelligence.