Learning How to Learn - Week 3

Procrastination

• a keystone habit that influences many aspects of our life
• Arsenic analogy on procastination

In tiny doses, arsenic doesn't seem harmful. You can even build up an immunity to its effects. This can allow you to take large doses and look healthy even as the poison is slowly increasing yourrisk of cancr and ravaging your organs. When you procrastinate, you feel better--but only temporarily. In this, procrastination shares common features with addiction.

Habits

1. Cue
2. Routine
3. Reward
4. Belief

Focus on Process not Product

• Product is what triggers the pain
• Non-procrastinators tell themselves to just get on with it and quite wasting time whenever they start a task
• Stop judging self with the progress

The Habit loop

1. Cue
   1. Categories
      1. location
      2. time
      3. how you feel
      4. reactions
2. Routine
   1. Key to rewiring/change
      1. have a plan
3. Reward
   1. why are you procrastinating?
   2. Remember that habits are powerful because they create neurological cravings. It helps to add a new reward if you want to overcome your previous cravings. Only once your brain starts expecting that reward, will the important rewiring take place that will allow you to create new habits.
4. Belief
   1. belief that your new system works

Recommended Solutions

• Brief Weekly list of key tasks
• Then each day at night write down a to do list
• Plan your quitting time
• 1 pomodoro as soon as you wake up
• Law of Serendipity
  • lady luck favors the one who tries

Memory

• outstanding viusal and spacial memory system

• 2 things should happen to move things from our working memory to our long-term memory

• must be memorable

• must be repeated

Hippocampus

• hippos - horse
• campus - sea monster

Reconsolidation

• occurs during sleep

Astrocytes

• provide nutrients to neurons
• maintain extracellular ion balance
• involved in repair after injuy
• have a role in learning

Learning Techniques

• Mnemonics
• Memory Palace