ScotthYoung.com Members Area

Bootcamp: Day Three – Copy the mental hacks of a savant genius

Hey,

How do geniuses learn?

Do they learn the same way, just with neurons firing faster? Or do
they learn differently, using some shortcut normal people miss?

It’s hard to say for sure, but people like Daniel Tammet make me
suspect the latter.

Daniel is a savant. However, unlike many savants with highly-focused
areas of ability, Daniel’s skills range from hyper-rapid language
acquisition to supercomputer mathematical ability.

What makes Daniel most interesting, however, is that he is often
described as the “Rosetta Stone” of savants, because not only are
his abilities impressive (he knows π to over twenty thousand digits)
but he can describe how he achieves them.

Part of Daniel’s secret may lie in his ability to take abstract
numbers and calculations and represent them as visual images. For
example, he states that, “289 is ugly” and “333 is attractive”.

While Daniel’s mastery of visualizations may be difficult to
replicate, using imagery as a learning tactic is one of the holistic
tactics I teach in Learning on Steroids.

Today I’ll show how you can replicate a bit of savant-like genius.

—

How to Use Visualizations to Learn Better

Here’s an actual sample guide from Learning on Steroids, which
explains how you can do exactly that–use visualizations to remember
and learn better:

http://bit.ly/6Atecp (PDF Link)

In the guide I walk through step-by-step how you can create images
to make abstract concepts both more memorable and easier to
understand.

If you were having trouble with the metaphors tactic, this one can
actually be easier to start, since you don’t need to be particularly
creative all at once. You just need to start with a random sketch
then move up to better images.

This guide also forms the basis of more specialized tactics I teach
in Learning on Steroids for remembering vocabulary or formulas.

—

Creating Brilliant Metaphors to Make Learning Faster

Ask and you shall receive. I spent a good chunk of this morning
reading over the many replies I got to my request for metaphors.

The most important step is getting started, here’s what one student
wrote back to me after coming up with a metaphor:

“The last part of your message made me do this. I really didn’t
think I could do this.”

We’ve been labelled and told for so much of our lives whether we’re
“creative”, “math-people”, “visual” or “smart” that sometimes the
hardest step to learning faster is to break those labels and begin
thinking in a new way.

I really appreciate all the people who replied and took the first
step. If you haven’t yet, watch the video ( http://bit.ly/bNBc6e )
and then hit REPLY with your response.

—

Now that many of you have taken your first steps, I’m going to show
you how you can make your metaphors even more powerful.

First: It’s important to remember QUANTITY over QUALITY. Once you
start thinking in metaphors, you’ll naturally get better and faster
at them, so the first chasm to cross is inaction.

Going beyond that, however, there’s a big range in the power of
different metaphors to help learning. When I gave my spontaneous
challenge, the majority of answers were fairly weak metaphors or
what I’ll call “memory aids”.

Memory aids relate the words or arbitrary facts of an idea, but they
don’t connect the underlying concept. For example, with Pythagoras’
Theorem, many people gave metaphors such as:

“If you take a square and add a square of bees, surely the result
would be a square of the Sea.”

For the person who came up with this, you’re not alone and it’s not
a problem using this as a starting point. I can’t repeat enough that
quantity matters first.

However the reason this is a less powerful metaphor is that it tells
you nothing about the underlying concept. It’s simply a mnemonic
device which allows you to remember a formula without understanding
it better.

In the program, I try to offer deeper advice for making more useful
metaphors that are not only memorable, but greatly increase your
understanding.

Let’s look at a few ways to do that.

—

Dissecting the Mental Process of Great Analogies

The way to make stronger metaphors, and avoid just creating memory
aids, is to try to relate the underlying concept of an idea, not
simply the words or outer facts. (A notable exception is vocabulary,
where the word IS the underlying idea)

One way to do that is to ask yourself “what’s going on?” within an
idea, and from there try to relate it to other concepts.

Using my example from yesterday (the earth’s tilt creating seasons)
I started by asking myself what the concept was that underlies this
idea. I came up with two things:

1. Light is spread over a larger surface area closer to the poles.
2. The changing *relative* tilt of the earth changes the angle to
the sun and thus the level of energy as per #1.

Now that I’ve gotten at the underlying concept, I can make more
useful metaphors. I start by using the SIMILARITY approach and
asking what #1 reminds me of.

The only thing that comes to mind is a circle of silly putty being
spread over a dome. In the center, the putty doesn’t need to stretch
much to cover it, but in the edges it has to become thinner and
thinner to cover the same area.

Is it a bulky, less elegant metaphor? Certainly. But it’s a good
starting point for building a more powerful metaphor.

—

Let’s take the third example, that the English-speaking countries
use a common-law system and Latin countries use the civil system.

Again, most people started by creating memory aids, which linked
the systems by their words, not their underlying concepts. A good
start, but let’s see if we can do better.

Using the HISTORICAL method, I could do a quick Wikipedia search of
the two systems, and after a minute or two, I would discover that
the civil system stems from the Romans while the common law is based
on tradition.

This forms the basis of many possible metaphors. Since one is based
on tradition, and the other a unified code, it reminds me of how
French and Spanish have formal institutes officiating over their
usage, where there is no official English institution and it is
governed by tradition.

I could go for a slightly less relevant metaphor of comparing the
highly organized civil system in France and more organic system in
England to the difference between French and English gardens.

Would you necessarily have thought of these two possible metaphors?

Probably not. But that’s not the point. Just because I think of
the mathematical precision of French gardens and the codified
bureaucracy of the Académie Française, doesn’t mean you have to.

What makes these metaphors more useful is that they link to the
concepts (what IS the civil vs. common law systems?) rather than
just the words “civil” and “common”.

—

Mastering Images and Metaphors to Learn Faster

Both in Daniel Tammet’s genius mathematical displays and perfect
analogies, there’s a tendency to view the final product and feel
like it’s impossible to replicate their abilities.

The reality is that creating metaphors and visceralizations which
allow you to rapidly understand ideas takes a bit of practice and
the mental process has a few rough drafts.

For creating strong metaphors, a good step-by-step approach would
look something like:

1. Ask what the underlying concept is to an idea.
2. Use HISTORY, SIMILARITY or STORY to come up with a rough start.
3. Try expanding the metaphor to see where it fits and where it’s
weak. My silly-putty metaphor for seasons works for the first
underlying concept, but it doesn’t work as well for the second.

If this all seems too complicated and difficult, remember to start
with simple metaphors. As you get more practice, it will be easier
to automatically think of metaphors when you encounter new subjects.

—

There’s still a few hours left to submit your metaphor for the
contest to get a copy of my book, Learn More, Study Less. I’ll be
announcing the winner in tomorrow’s email.

If you’ve read this far and haven’t taken action, please hit REPLY
and give it your best shot!