00:05
So Barb, it was really helpful in the last video to hear
about these overarching
strategies to spacing sleep at night and exercise, but so
often when you're studying
you can come up against something that you really get stuck
on, you can't get
through and you can't solve it. So, do you have any
practical solutions, you know
what's happening in the brain when that happens and how do
you solve that?
Well, it's a great question Peter and the issue is before I
give some practical solutions
about how to solve that, let's step back and look at how the
brain actually
functions. It turns out there are 2 fundamentally different
modes that the brain
uses to learn with. The first mode I'll call focused mode
and it's hopefully what you're
doing right now focusing on the screen or focusing on me.
The second mode I'll
call diffuse mode and it's you're still thinking in this
mode but your thoughts are
much more random. Now, psychologist call focused mode the
task positive set of
networks while the diffuse mode is task negative networks
and neuroscientists call
that diffuse mode the default mode network. But for us to
better understand these
2 very different networks, we're going to use a metaphor and
the metaphor we're
going to use is that of a pinball machine. Now, if you're my
age which you
probably are not, you remember how a pinball machine works,
but if you're not my
age it's a very simple device. All you have to do is pull
back on the plunger of the
pinball machine and a ball will come bouncing around on
those rubber bumpers
and you keep it alive using those flippers but that's how
you score points. So, what
we're going to do is we're going to take that pinball
machine and we're going to
put it right on the human brain. Ready for it? There we go.
We've got a pinball
machine on the brain. Now this is our metaphor for the
focused mode of thinking
and you can see it's focused because those little rubber
bumpers are very closely
spaced with one another. Now what happens in this focused
mode of thinking is you
know some sort of skill or an idea or a concept and that has
laid patterns in your
brain by virtue of the fact that you've already learned
about this topic. So if I
ask you perhaps to multiply 74 x 25, you pull out a piece of
paper or maybe even
do it in your head but your thoughts would move right along
those pathways that
have already been laid because you've already learned how to
multiply. But let's
say that you are learning something completely new like in
our case we'll say
"You know multiplication, but you've never learned division
before." So, how do you
learn something new? I mean, you're going to lay pattern
somewhere but you
don't know where those patterns are going to be laid, you
don't know how to access
them. I mean how do you learn something new? It turns out
that what you often
do is you'll start to study something new and let's say
you're solving a new
division problem. So, it's a little bit of a difficult, your
first difficult division problem.
04:10
So what your mind will do is it will begin working on that
division problem,
but it can't help it, it slithers right back up into the
multiplication patterns because
they're much more familiar. So, what you do is you can't
solve the problem and you
can't solve it and you can't solve it and you find yourself
getting more and more
frustrated and finally you might close the book or turn off
the video and you walk
away, maybe have dinner or go take a shower or go to sleep
for the night. And
what happens then is it opens this very different pattern of
learning and that is the
diffuse mode. The diffuse mode is quite different. So, what
it's really doing is
it's allowing your thoughts to move much more broadly. You
can't think in that
careful focused way that you can when you're in the focus
mode, but you can at
least get to the new perspective you want to be in, in order
to solve that problem
or understand that new concept. Now, as you're learning, you
are often going back
and forth between focused and diffuse modes. And you can't
really be in both
modes at the same time unless you're taking certain forms of
mushrooms and I am
not advocating that here. So the thing is, what practical
insight can we gain from
this knowledge of the 2 different modes of learning of the
brain? That is the best
insight I can give you out of this is there is a fantastic
technique to help you use
both focused and diffuse modes. That is...tada...the
Pomodoro Technique. The
Pomodoro Technique is so simple, it was invented by an
Italian, Francesco Cirillo,
in the 1980s. All you need to do to do a Pomodoro is to
first turn off all
distractions. So no little ringing on your cellphone, no
text messages, nothing
popping up in your computer, then you set a timer for 25
minutes and then you
focus as intently as you can for those 25 minutes. Now, if
you're like me, what I'll
do is on time I start focusing, I'm walking away, sweats
pouring off my brow
you'd be so proud of me at how hard I'm concentrating and I
can't help it. I'll look up
at the timer to see how much I've done of the Pomodoro and
I've just done
2 minutes. My mind screams "I cannot do 23 more minutes" but
I just let that
thought slip right on by just kind of a zen sort of thing
and I return my focus to
what I'm working on because the reality is anybody can do 25
minutes. But then,
comes the most important part of the Pomodoro Technique.
That is to reward
yourself. Relax for 5 minutes. What this is really doing is
it's making clever use of
focused and diffuse modes. So, focusing for 25 minutes then
resting your brain for
5 minutes is an optimal way of helping you to learn
effectively without intrusive
thoughts that bring you out of that focusing mode. So, there
are many different
apps that can help people use the Pomodoro Technique so if
you just look online
you'll find Forest, for example, is a great Pomodoro app.
There are many others.
08:23
In Forest, if you plant a tree, you get a Pomodoro badge. If
you don't finish your
Pomodoro, you actually kill a tree, at least metaphorically
speaking. So, collecting
badges, gamifying things is a really great way to help you
concentrate on your
studies. Now, the one thing to remember is probably the most
important challenge
that learners around the world have is that they can tend to
procrastinate.
09:03
And procrastination is easy to do because when you even just
think about something
that you don't like or don't want to do, it activates a
portion of the brain that
experiences pain. So the brain naturally enough does
something like this, you
think about something you don't like, it immediately doesn't
feel good, so your brain
turns its attention to something else and the result you
feel happier almost
instantly. You did this once, do it twice, no big deal. You
do it very often and it
can have very serious long-term effects on your ability to
be successful in your
studies. So, a good thing to do is always keep in mind just
do a Pomodoro. And
what you want to really be doing is focusing on putting in
the time of the Pomodoro,
collect badges, collect numbers of Pomodoros that you done
rather than thinking
about "Oh no it's time for me to do whatever that study is."
So if you think about
the process that is putting in the time over the product
that is thinking about
a thing you don't want to do, it will avoid you activating
that feeling of pain and
you'll be more successful in your learning. Barb, what great
advice and it's so
practical but who would have thought that a tomato was the
key to success in your
studies, it's so interesting to see how this practical
advice has this basis in
neurobiology letting the brain rest and change your thought
processes. And I
know we're going to be talking more about those kinds of
processes in the segments
to come. And well, but one thing I should add is that when
you're taking that rest,
that 5-minute rest, if you really want that information to
percolate through your
brain, try not to focus on anything else. Don't go sneaking
off and focus on your
text messages, for example, because you'll be thinking "I'm
just peeking at my
text messages" and then before you know it you got a text
message and then
you're responding to it and that's taking you back into the
focused mode going
completely into that mental relaxation of the diffuse mode
by not doing anything
intensive. So like listening to a little music that you like
or maybe having a cup
of tea or something like that is what's really most helpful
during that all important
reward period or relaxing period of the brain. So Peter,
let's go have a tomato
sandwich. Sounds great Barb. Thank you.