Day 1

I've just started to read. It was a hard decision to start this book. When you know that something will push you to change your life style, you show kinda reflex to avoid this situation, till you make up your mind. Barbara Oakley is an interesting woman, I would like to befriend with her. She gives you motivation with the way she tells about her life. I got this motivation from the possibility of meeting such woman one day. Today it led me to change my view about the brain. Now I am kinda capable of changing modes manually. What I mean from this phrase is, you can control the change between Diffuse mode and Focused mode.

Greatest acknowledgment that I gained from this book today is: Diffuse mode is better for learning process, it allows you to see the big picture and find solutions easier. Focused mode is better when you already have basic knowledge of the concept and you have to solve more complex problems with it.

"Another way to think of the difference between focused and diffuse modes is to think of a flashlight. You can set a flashlight so it has a tightly focused beam that can penetrate deeply into a small area. Or you can set the flashlight onto a more diffuse setting where it casts its light broadly, but not very strongly in any one area."



You should train your brain to change between these both. Because if you want to improve the efficiency of your learning (basicly everything, but especially math and sciences), you should use the both modes of your brain.

Day 2

I woke up to a Monday morning, and reading a chapter of this book was my first action. I gave it this priority in my to do list because I believe having new perspectives in the beginning of my day would motivate me more and also give me some more tips to apply to my daily study plan after. So, I think it's a great choice.

Today I've learned more about Diffuse and Focused modes of brain. You should consciously distract yourself sometimes while working on a challenging problem. Like Thomas Edison and Salvador Dali did to increase their creativity and get inspirations easier. I liked this technique they used:

"When faced with a difficult problem, instead of focusing intently on it, Edison, according to legend, took a nap. But he did so while sitting in a lounge chair, holding a ball bearing in his hand above a plate on the floor. As he relaxed, his thoughts moved toward free and open diffuse-mode thinking. (This is a reminder that falling asleep is a good way to get the brain thinking loosely about a problem you want to solve, or anything you are working on creatively.) When Edison fell asleep, the ball bearing fell from his hands. The clatter woke him so he could grasp the fragments of his diffuse-mode thinking to create new approaches "



I agree that taking naps (not deep sleeps) is really important to be able to have better ability to solve problems, in various ways. Because when some parts of your brain is inactivated, some of them are activated. So It allows you to use your brain not only focused on one part of it, but completely. Best Diffuse-mode tools after a Focused-mode work is including these (I picked my favorites, there are more of them, also you can create your own!): Taking a nap, listening to instrumental music, eating something you like, checking the news around the world, going out for a short walk or at least inhale some fresh air from window, draw, watch some comedy animations, watch 10-15 mins simplified historical videos. But avoid the activities which will require to learn something new. Because you already have another problem to solve at hand, having more problems will cause frustration. Also there was an interesting experiment about Einstellung (getting stuck with thinking one way, and not being able to see the other ways) which is like this:

" Chess players who experience Einstellung truly believe they are scanning the board for a different solution. But careful study of where their eyes are moving shows that they are keeping their focus on the original solution. Not only their eyes, but their mind itself can’t move away enough to see a new approach to the problem."

In such case, best way to be able to see other ways to the solution is to distract yourself for some time. Let your brain work in the background on this problem. If you don't stop yourself in such moment, it will cause a lot of stress and consume your mental energy (willpower).

Also we should be aware that our short-term memory occupies a lot of place and it takes time to turn a knowledge into long-term memory. So we shouldn't be worried. Just manage your time, don't put too much pressure on yourself. No matter how hard you study, it will not change anything if you won't take breaks. Your brain is not capable to learn and master everything in a short amount of time. This is the reason why we are choosing professions. So make a good planning and keep your short-memory fresh, as long as you keep rehearsing the knowledge in your short-term memory, you will turn them to long-term and there will be more space for new ideas.

Day 3

It's so surprising to see how much it changed my perspective of looking at how brain works so fast. It's already day 3 and now I have more control over my learning, understanding. Last two days made me realize how I unconsciously change the modes of my brain from Focused to Diffuse and their importance. Also I finally learned the name of this problem which had a huge influence in my life, Einstellung. Now I'm not rushing to learn a concept, I give breaks more often and fully focus after. And today I've learned how to "chunk". Chunking means to understand and be able to use the knowledge that you've mastered. Memorizing is not chunking. To chunk an information completely, you should understand, practice, recall.

"Chunks are pieces of information that are bound together through meaning. You can take the letters p, o, and p and bind them into one conceptual, easy-to-remember chunk, the word pop. It's like converting a cumbersome computer file into a .zip file. Underneath that simple pop chunk is a symphony of neurons that have learned to trill in tune with one another. The complex neural activity that ties together our simplifying, abstract chunks of thought-whether those thoughts pertain to acronyms, ideas, or concepts-are the basis of much of science, literature, and art."



After you learn something new, you should be able to know where and when to use it. If you have questions about it, then you haven't chunked it yet. After you completely learn a concept, now you can use it as a tool to solve problems creatively. To do that you should combine Focused Mode thinking to create chunks and Diffuse Mode thinking to be able to see the big picture and use your chunks freely.
But when you start learning something , you can easily fall into illusion of competence. A lot of people make this mistake , not because it's easier , but they are not aware of other things which should be added to this technique to make it meaningful. Rereading. Rereading is important to recall and practice but if you reread a text over and over again for hours, it won't do any good. 1 hour of lecture would be much more efficient than rereading whole day. Of course we should peek our notes and rewrite them even, but only reading will not do us any good. We should test ourselves, try to recall without reading, and reread the text not everyday but with breaks.
There is a fun exercise to understand illusion of competence:

"Anagrams are rearrangements of letters so that one word or phrase can spell something different. Let's say you have the phrase "Me, radium ace." Can you rearrange it to spell the last name of a honorific famous physicist?It may take you a bit of thought to do it. But if you saw the solution here on the page, your subsequent "aha!" feeling would make you think that your anagram-solving skills are better than they actually are."

The answer is Marie Curie

<< So basically we should follow this pattern so far to make our learning better : Focus, understand, practice, rest and try to completely stop thinking the problem, come back to the problem, try more challenging problems, use not only one strategy but multiple, try to solve different types of questions, don't always rely on prepared solutions and try to solve by yourself, if you stuck find more sources to study from, don't forget to regularly practice and reread.

Day 4

Today I had a pleasant morning, did some household jobs and finally managed my time to read the book. The episode I read today was indicating my biggest problem. Procrastination. We procrastinate about things that make us feel uncomfortable. That is so true, whenever I feel like I can't solve a problem after a few attempts I feel a need to just procrastinate it , so I can distract myself with something more pleasant for a short period of time. But what happens after is, feeling completely disconnected from the topic after several days, have no motivation at all to start it all over again, forgot even the small things I've learned about it. Ofcourse if it's something that is essential for you to learn, you will feel really depressed at that moment. So If you don't want this to happen often, then you should act in the moment. If it's a challenging thing that you're facing with, you should keep going and enjoy the process. Sounds hard, but do you have any other choice? So the best knowledge from the first chapter I read is:

"Procrastination can be like taking tiny amounts of poison. It may not seem harmful at the time. But the long-term effects can be very damaging."


Now ofcourse we need to get rid o the bad habits which lead us to procrastinate. Habits have four parts:
The Cue: Trigger that launches you into "zombie-mode" (preprogrammed mode which includes your habits)
The Routine: This is the zombie mode.
The Reward: Habits develop and continue because they reward us.
The Belief: Habits have power because of your belief in them.
So, to change your habits you should start from recognizing your cues, what triggers your zombie mode. If you don't want to turn into zombie-mode, you should keep away the things that distracts you. For example, when you start messaging with people, you forget even how much time you spent on doing it. So you should cut it short and turn off your wifi, so it will be a good setup to be able to focus on your current task. If you keep doing this, day by day you will overcome the pain that it gives you after blocking the things which used to make you feel satisfied. So your new routine will be formed.
Many tiny accomplishments bring many tiny rewards and it causes gradually enjoy studies more. So you should reward yourself whenever you accomplish something, it will make you satisfied with the job you've done and motivate you for further achievements. But to do all these, you should BELIEVE that you can change this habit, that you don't need this habit. The most important approach here is "mental contrasting"

"In this technique, you think about where you are now and contrast it with what you want to achieve. If you're trying to get into medical school, for example, imagine yourself as a doctor, helping others even as you're preparing for a great vacation that you can actually afford. Once you've got that upbeat image in mind, contrast it with images of your current life. Imagine your clunker of a car, your macaroni and cheese dinners, and your mountain of student debts. Yet there's hope!"


"To prevent procrastination, you want to avoid concentrating on product. Instead, your attention should be on building processes-habits-that coincidentally allow you to do the unpleasant tasks that need to be done."


And the very last technique that I've learned today is Pomodoro technique. Pomodoro is a 25 minutes tomato shaped timer (Pomodoro means tomato in Italian). It's basically helps you to focus more efectively for short period of time that almost anyone can stay focused that long. Then if you have a deadline to complete this task, you have to give short breaks in every 25 mins, like 3-5 mins. But if you have time to complete this task, then you can rest even for 30 mins. Working under stress will help you to overcome the stressful situations easier after, such as exam days. Also you will feel a need to use every minute carefully, so you won't let yourself get distracted easily.

After reading these I'm also more aware of my problem. Not only during my studies but I procrastinate about a lot of things in my daily life. So it's day 4 of reading this book, let's see when I'll stop complaining about my time management.

Day 5

It's almost the half of the book, so far I have acknowledged a lot about how brain functions, how to improve learning, how to avoid Einstellung, how to avoid procrastination, how to chunk a knowledge and store it in long-term memory so you will have an active empty working-memory slots, how to improve study strategies, how important it is to take breaks and stop believing that rereading nonstop will do any good. These days my biggest problem is my sleeping cycle. I have some sleep problems due to mental problems and it causes me to start the day at 10-11 AM, and I cannot complete all my tasks before the sunset. When it starts to get dark , I feel less motivated and struggle a lot with focusing. So I should maybe see a doctor and take advice about what to do. But before that, let's review what I've learned from today's chapters.
As we already know what chunk is, today we will learn how to build a powerful chunk, step by step.
1) Work a key problem all the way through on paper. -First try to solve the problem by yourself to understand what you are doing right and wrong. Don't check the solution unless you completely make sure that you missed some parts of the concept and need to reread.-
2) Do another repetition of the problem, paying attention to the key processes. -Repetition is important till you fully understand the material. Try to solve as much as you can, don't give up till you do.-
3) Take a break. -Let your diffuse-mode control you. You will be more focused after a break.-
4) Sleep. -Before you sleep, work the problem one more time. Let your subconscious tell you what to do next-
5) Do another repetition. -Next day as the first thing, complete your previous task. Now you should see that you can progress in the problem much more easier than the other day. Keep your focus on the parts of the problem that are the most difficult for you.-
6) Add a new problem -Add a new problem when you chunk the other problem. So it will create a cycle of refreshing and refilling the working-memory. You will learn more and more.-
7) Do "active" repetitions -Do repetitions in motion, in different locations. This type of active rehearsal helps strengthen your ability to recall key ideas when you are solving homework problems or taking a test.-
So when you do all these, you successfully build and strenghten your chunks (interconnected web of neurons). This makes use of what is known as the generation effect. Generating (that is,recalling) the material helps you learn it much more effectively than simply rereading it.

THE LAW OF SERENDIPITY

Remember, Lady Luck favors the one who tries. So don’t feel overwhelmed with everything you need to learn about a new subject. Instead, focus on nailing down a few key ideas. You’ll be surprised at how much that simple framework can help.


Organizing your materials will make your chunking process easier. You will be more aware of what to do next.
Also testing is the most important key to make sure that you understood and can apply your knowledge in practice. Also it will help you to improve yourself more and strenghten your chunks. It's called testing effect.
Now there will be some tools ,tips and tricks.

"It's normal to sit down with a few negative feelings about beginning your work. It's how you handle those feelings that matters."


To avoid distracion, your location, situation and mental preparation should be ready. Choose a less distracting place if you are not comfortable in your current location. Do meditation (Barbara Oakley suggests reaing Buddha in Blue Jeans by Tai Sheridan). Also another important thing is to reframe your focus.

"One student, for example, is able to get himself up at four thirty each weekday morning, not by thinking about how tired he is when he wakes but about how good breakfast will be."


Self experimentation helps you to try something on yourself personally, so you will be more aware of what should be the next stage for your own benefit.
Also making a daily and weekly planning would cause you to focus on specific objects instead of not being sure what to do.

"Writing the list before you go to sleep enlists your zombies to help you accomplish the items on the list the next day."


I liked this phrase "Freedom of a schedule." Maybe it doesn't look like too independent, but in fact it is. When you plan your day and know when to do what, you will feel completely free and satisfied in the rest of the day after you complete your tasks and you can use this free time to do as you wish. But when you don't make schedules, you don't know if it's ever enough and the feeling of satisfaction comes too late , at that moment you are already exhausted and demotivated for a new day with lots of hard work again.

"It's important to transform distant deadlines into daily ones."

Day 6

Instead of going for underground researches, I had to stay home and complete my studies today. So I also had time to read the book in the morning. Today we will be talking about procrastination one more time and start techniques of improving your memory.

"Pausing and reflecting are key."

, not only in stopping procrastination but also in math and science problem solving. "Experts took an average of forty-five seconds to figure out how they would categorize a problem according to its underlying physics principles. Undergraduates, on the other hand, simply rushed right in, taking only thirty seconds to determine how they should proceed." So, you are not doing your best work under deadlines, you just make it faster. Don't try to rush and make daily plannings according to your deadline. Don't procrastinate till the last day. If you will do little but regularly, it will be much more effective than doing it in a hurry in several hours. The earlier you start, the more time you will have to chunk the information. Also if you will get used to making daily schedules to complete it in perfect time without rush, you will start to avoid procrastinating. Instead, you will focus your work everyday for several hours and then have a lot of free time to spend doing other activities, while you have all these new knowledges flowing in your brain. So, more you work a bit more on it everyday, more you will be ready and relaxed till the deadline.
Another thing that maybe leads us to procrastinate is saying "Just do it, because it feels right." We should rationally explain the actions we take, because we rely on them, we spend time on them and we should know the reason why we are doing them. Why are you learning math? For example, I am learning math to make more logical explanations to things in world and to use it to make something better, change the world, in future. What is your logical explanation for the things you do regularly?

"Over the past decades, students who have blindly followed their passion, without rational analysis of whether their choice of career truly was wise, have been more unhappy with their job choices than those who coupled passion with rationality."


So, according to my personal experiences, if I will tell you which of all these ideas that Barbara told us in this book to avoid procrastination have worked on me, I would say this: Make plannings every night, note down what you have to accomplish and set up your priorities. Know till what time you will be working on these tasks and when to stop and have free time for yourself. Don't continue unless if it's too necessary, stop what you are doing after it passes your working hour and continue the other day. When you start doing your tasks, do your priorities in the morning, even if it's an unpleasant task. Choose a place with less distractions. Use pomodoro technique during your work, both for studying and for the breaks. Don't let yourself get distracted between these 25 mins of working, take small breaks such as 5-10 mins and keep doing your work. You will already have bunch of free time after. Remind yourself your goals, so you will know why you are doing it for. Before you sleep, analyze your day and think about what you've done also what you are planning to do tomorrow to mentally prepare yourself. If you did good and completed your taks that day, you will feel satisfied and have a better sleep. But if you were like a zombie and couldn't complete your important tasks, then you will feel down but at that moment you should realize that if you don't want to feel worse the other night, you should do your tasks tomorrow. So you'll develop more and more if you follow this.
The other topic is enhancing your memory.

"The memory tricks used by both ancient and modern memory experts taps into these naturally supersized visuospatial memorization abilities. "


Visuals are the key to be able to memorize things easily. Such as months, when we were kid we've been thought to remember how many days in a month by counting our knuckles on hands. Maybe it would take a lot of time if you'd try to memorize it just by rereading, because it would feel like a really complex idea. So we are coming to the most powerful technique to improve your memory. The Memory Palace Technique.

"The memory palace technique involves calling to mind a familiar place—like the layout of your house—and using it as a sort of visual notepad where you can deposit concept-images that you want to remember. Let's say you are trying to remember the mineral hardness scale, which ranges from 1 to 10 (talc 1, gypsum 2, calcite 3, fluorite 4, apatite 5, orthoclase 6, quartz 7, topaz 8, corundum 9, diamond 10). You can come up with a memory sentence mnemonic: Terrible Giants Can Find Alligators or Quaint Trolls Conveniently Digestible. The problem is that it can still be difficult to remember the sentence. But things become easier if you then add the memory palace. At your front door, there is a terrible giant there, holding a can. Once inside, you find an alligator... You get the idea."


Also listening to some songs (especially well known symphonies are easily applicable to anything!) is a fun way to memorize things. For example I used to learn the first 20 elements of periodic table with a song.
So in general, if you want to improve your memory you should sync the ideas with familiar visual objects. When you see these objects often in your life, you will recall the ideas.

Day 7

Oh man.. I'm really tired after studying for 4-5 hours and reading the book after that. But personally, it was better to do it like this. Because when I read the book right after I wake up, I kinda lose my passion to study math. So as I learned from the book, do the most important chores in the morning. Then do the rest. So following this, I had quite a productive day. Today's topic is memory tips. How can we easily memorize and keep them fresh in our memory.
The more visual, the better. Create metaphors. A metaphor is just a way of realizing that one thing is somehow similar to another.

"If you're trying to understand electrical current, it can help to visualize it as water. Similarly, electrical voltage can "feel like" pressure. Voltage helps push the electrical current to where you want it to go, just like a mechanical pump uses physical pressure to push real water."


"In chemistry, compare a cation with a cat that has paws and is therefore “pawsitive,” and an anion with an onion that is negative because it makes you cry."


Metaphors are making connections with neural structions that are already there. So by doing this, you highly increase your chance of remembering. But there is a really important point. You have to UNDERSTAND the concept first. Because if you won't understand it, you cannot memorize it and keep it in your long-term memory. It will be just meaningless numbers and letters. So, first, understand the concept and be sure. Second, use the memory tips to be able to remember them easily.
Other point is, we, humans, can forget the unnecessary details easily. And it's a good thing in fact, because the more useless memory and information you remember, the less unoccupied place you will have to learn new things. It would make you feel really exhausted, like having a bigger brain than your body but not being able to move because of that. So, to remember important details, Repetition is the key! Spaced Repetition helps you to lodge ideas in your memory. And even better, writing the information while you are repeating! Don't write everything down but choose the most important points that you should make a note of, and write it several times till you chunk it completely. But don't do it hundreds of times for the same formula or paragraph, it will be a waste of time.
Also to make it more fun and long-term, you can create little cards. Write the question in one side, and answer in the other. Add more cards from different concepts over time to the same deck. And just randomly choose and repeat questions everyday. It's really effective to remember the older concepts and also practice the new ones in the same time. Like we already learned before.
Another point is making memorable group of sentences.

" Let's say you wanted to remember four plants that help ward off vampires-garlic, rose, hawthorn, and mustard. The first letters abbreviate to GRHM, so all you need to do is remember the image of a GRAHAM cracker. (Retrieve your cracker from the kitchen table of your memory palace, dust off the vowels, and you're good to go.)"


It really helps a lot and earns you time during exams. I personally use this way to memorize a lot of Physics formulas, and they stuck to my head for years even if i did not practice physics at all! (But again, yes i knew the formula of density BUT if you'd give me a question, I would probably fail. I would know that this formula should be applied to that somehow, but because i forgot the meaning and explanation of this I would fail to solve the problem.)
Actually, if you want to be able to apply all these memory techniques, you have to be healthy. Because without a healthy body, you cannot expect your brain to serve you 24/7. As in my favorite anime said: "We don't need bodies. It's just preventing our development. " (You can check my Lain page). Wish I could also sacrifice my body so easily knowing that I will be alive through neural network... But I have an exam to pass first... So! You have to be active, doing exercises regularly. Go out, take a walk, run if you can, ride bicycle, do some other specific sports you like, go to gym or so on.. Personally I like discovering historical places 1-2 times a week and even if i don't go out everyday, I do morning exercises. Some stretching and 5-10 pushups. Yeah maybe it's not the best way to build muscles but also not the worst, if you do it regularly. You don't need to push yourself to it's limits all the time, small but regular steps can bring good success too. Maybe even better because you improve it without exhausting yourself too much.
So summing it up: Memory tricks can help you become an expert more quickly. You won't waste too much time and you can use your time with doing more interesting things. You are already creative, you just have to use it. Now you know what to create, start saving your time before you become a granny.

Day 8

For the first time, I could read the book in metro. Normally, it's not possible to find a seat and I cannot read anything while standing. But it's another cool trick to do what you do regularly, in different places. If you do it regularly, you can focus and learn in any place in any situation. Today we will start with appreciating our talent, then move to "How to change the way we think" and finally developing the mind's eye.
When we try to do something that we already know how to do, we are not following any steps but directly do it. Like 10+10 is 20 and I did not need to add 0 to 0 then 1 to 1 and get the result after. But I just could do it without thinking because I know the logic of summing numbers and how to do it. So we can easily say that summing up 8-9 digit numbers from your mind also shouldn't be so hard, if we know and practice how to. Not only geniuses can do it, maybe people who dedicated themselves to learning math will struggle less than you but you can still be more creative and find your own way to do it. Creativity is not about how smart you are, it's about how you see the things. Genius people are more likely to be less creative because a good working memory can hold it's thoughts so tightly that new thoughts can't easily peek through. So it causes Einstellung.

"It is the practice-particularly deliberate practice on the toughest aspects of the material-that can help lift average brains into the realm of those with more "natural" gifts"


We all have talents in different fields. We just need to live more to find out and practice it. When we create the chunks, it all happens automatically after.
Now we will se an example of a man who changed the way he thinks and did a lot of important stuff for neuroscience.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal's crime had been to build a smal cannon and blow neighbor's new wooden gate into splinters. In rural Spain of the 1860s, there weren’t many options for oddball juvenile delinquents. That’s how the young Cajal found himself locked in a flea-ridden jail. He wanted to be an artist , his family did not support him at all, he thought that math and sciences were useless. Who knew that Santiago Ramón y Cajal would one day not only earn the Nobel Prize, but eventually become known as the father of modern neuroscience?


It's possible to change the way you think no matter how old you are. As long as you live, you will have a chance to change the world. Use it wisely, instead of thinking that you are useless and that's who you are so you can't change it.

"Good chunks form neural patterns that resonate, not only within the subject we're working in, but with other subjects and areas of our lives. The abstraction helps you transfer ideas from one area to another."

Basically, everything is connected to each other at some point. For example, you can't understand the high-math before you create chunks of fundamentals of math. If you still have problems with multiplying for example, don't dig deeper before you make sure you practiced enough. Because after you create good chunks, you can use them in any field of math and other sciences, naturally in real life too.

"Brains mature at different speeds. Many people do not develop maturity until their midtwenties."


Poet Sylvia Plath once wrote: "The day I went into physics class it was death." She continued:

A short dark man with a high, lisping voice, named Mr. Manzi, stood in front of the class in a tight blue suit holding a little wooden ball. He put the ball on a steep grooved slide and let it run down to the bottom. Then he started talking about let a equal acceleration and let t equal time and suddenly he was scribbling letters and numbers and equals signs all over the blackboard and my mind went dead.


Mr. Manzi had, at least in this semiautobiographical retelling of Plath's life, written a four-hundred-page book with no drawings or photographs, only diagrams and formulas. An equivalent would be trying to appreciate Plath’s poetry by being told about it, rather than being able to read it for yourself. Plath was, in her version of the story, the only student to get an A, but she was left with a dread for physics.
Thoughts can be visual as well as verbal.

"There are hidden meanings in equations, just as there are in poetry. If you are a novice looking at an equation in physics, and you’re not taught how to see the life underlying the symbols, the lines will look dead to you. It is when you begin to learn and supply the hidden text that the meaning slips, slides, then finally leaps to life."


So here there are some key ideas, try to make metaphors, try our your creative skills EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU DONT HAVE ANY, simplify and personalize whatever you are studying, think of it like something with a meaning and not just letters and numbers (art sounds just the same meaningles crap sometimes, when you just stare at it). So most of the times these books called "math for dummies" or smth for DUMMIES is actually a good way to understand the fundamentals of the concept. It won't make you stupid, but you will create good chunks that you can use a lifetime.
Equations are just ways of abstracting and simplifying concepts.
Also, multitasking is good to transfer what you are learning to other fields, but it doesn't mean that you learn deeply.

Day 9

Tomorrow I will officially finish the book. The topics I read today were quite matching with my situation. I quit highschool after first year, because of several reasons, and learned how to self-taught. It was a long challenging journey that I've made so far. Right now, it's been 5 years that I haven't been to any school buildings (at least in my country). So, today we will talk about autodidacts, teachers and avoiding overconfidence.

Persistance is often more important than intelligence.


A goal of learning the material is what leads you to mastery. You have to be persistent to make researches and not stucking with only one perspective. Having more than one source will make you think in different ways, more independently. Of course listening to lectures is important but learning the concept by searching and digging would allow you to understand deeply.
College isn't the only way to learn. There are a lot of people going to the college, but not everyone is being successful after graduation. Many people are unemployed or doing lower class jobs to earn money at least. If you want to be successful and make differences then you SHOULD be persistent to learn more and better by yourself.

Taking responsibility for your own learning is one of the most important things you can do.


Sometimes you luckily have a "great teacher". These people are mostly too busy to deal with your easy and not-well-planned questions. So if you have such great teachers around, don't waste their time and ask them right questions, which you really need a help of a professional to solve. With less important problems, try to deal it yourself or get help from people around instead of asking to the highest person.

"Truly great teachers make the material seem both simple and profound, set up mechanisms for students to learn from each other, and inspire students to learn on their own."


Also, always be open to the criticism. Because people are as competitive as they are cooperative. So especially in workfield, everyone is trying to be better than each other, and it's not a bad thing! You should use this situation for your own benefit, instead of thinking that all those people are wrong and you are right.

" Take pride in who you are, especially in the qualities that make you “different,” and use them as a secret talisman for success."


If you are a homeschooler like I was, so then it's even more important for you to make schedules of studying, keeping a track of fresh materials that people use in school, do your own examination, and always make sure that you are learning. Because sometimes I fall in a trap that I feel like studying and progressing, but actually I'm just too slow. So you have to push yourself and be in the same level (maybe even higher) with the people who are going to school. You have a lot of time to learn and discover yourself, less distraction around and extra sleep time!
Summing it up, be persistent to learn, know that you are not always right, listen to other people and make searches from different sources, be okay with criticism, learn how to learn better by yourself without a guidance.
Now our other topic is avoiding overconfidence. We are finally introduced with the term "left/right brain". At the end, we should be actively using the both and there is nothing like right-brained people or left-brained people. It's about how you think, you can change it.

"The right hemisphere, it turns out, is vitally important in getting onto the right track and doing reality checks."

Left-centered focused mode will help you to solve problems by recalling the knowledge that you already had. But it can ignore the fact that the conclusion we came does not make any sense.

"That's the problem with the focused, left-hemisphere-leaning mode of analysis. It provides for an analytical and upbeat approach. But abundant research evidence suggests that there is a potential for rigidity, dogmatism, and egocentricity."


Left-centered focused mode may cause you to make minor mistakes and still believe that you are right, question should be wrong! But if you check the answer and analyze it, you will see how silly mistake you've made and it looks totally nonsense.
Sometimes brainstorming is really helpful. Because when we discuss and oppose with some people, it makes us understand what we are defending, from different views. Sometimes we can end up changing our whole mindset or change others'. But brainstorming and group-projects should be held and planned good and tidy. Because if there will be some people messing around instead o focusing the topic, it will distract the others and cause a time loss. So choose right people to brainstorm and work with. With this way, you can be more open-minded and remember; when we explain something that we alredy know to someone with a poor knowledge about it, we will also improve our own understanding of that concept. So it's really important to interact with people and share our knowledge as much as we can.
Remember kids:

"It is easiest of all to fool yourself."

Day 10

Today I've finished the book after a really tiresome day. There is not much left to say about the book, it's just summing all up. But I'll make my last review about what it changed in my life.
At first when I started to read this book, I understood that it would be really easy for me to understand it. The way she wrote, words she chose, and the photos she used. It was too basic that made it easy to follow the ideas. Also the way the book was arranged was really fun and beneficial. It always reminds you to recall the ideas after each chapter, it sums up the main ideas and asks you some questions related to the chapter which will make you think and apply what you learned. Also "Now you try " parts were interesting (in the beginning it was much more of them, but then it's getting less) that makes you interact with the book. So the book, in general, was handy, fluent,simple and clever. Also there are a lot of small articles of successful people which are motivating you a lot. She always shows some "living example" for the ideas.
Before I started to read this book, I had these mistakes in my study plan (I knew that they were problems but I avoided the fact and kept doing them because of the fear of losing my way again):
-I was highlighting EVERYTHING in the textbooks. I thought that I had to memorize literally everything, to be successful. But I was failing in tests, even though i memorized everything.
-I was focusing on only one subject a day and getting stuck after 3-4 hours. It was too tiresome and I understood that it was slowing down my progression in other subjects.
-I did not take breaks at all. Till I see the end of it. And most of the time I couldn't see the end because of getting too exhausted and I left the rest of the work to next day. So, I slept that night with the fear of failing and forgetting everything I already learned, till tomorrow.
-I let the negative thoughts control me sometimes, like I'll won't succeed and I'm not studying enough (because I was studying wrong!).
-I thought I had to have a certain career goal, and I found it meaningless to study as hard, without a certain goal.
-I procrastinated a lot. I let a lot of things to disract me for short-time enjoyments. I was always changing my priorities.

But also I had some "good" techniques too, which I discovered myself by trying such as:
-I make daily plans everynight before I sleep.
-I know and believe that there is nothing I can't learn, I just have to know how to learn it.
-I try to understand the concept before memorizing it. I deeply question it, sometimes it causes a lot of time loss but it helps me to understand why I'm learning it.
-I valued science all the time, even though I failed or thought it was too hard, I knew that it's important and essential. So I never cursed it because I fail.
-I try. No matter how complicated or risky it is. I try if It attracts me.

And finally, what this book changed in my life:
-Now I realized how my brain works so I have control over it. I don't fool myself as much as I did before.
-I use Pomodoro technique which keeps me focused for more than 6-7 hours a day, without even realizing it. When you know your time is limited, you focus more effectively and try to do your best before giving yourself a prize.
-I'm not highlighting anything. My textbooks already highlights important points and I just handwrite which I find important. I spend more time in test solving.
-I study different subject each day and don't just stuck with one. It allows me to transmit the knowledge from one subject to another.
-I use cards and quiz myself more often. So I keep my knowledge fresh.
-When I feel overwhelmed, I don't push myself. I take a rest and enjoy.
-I leave some tests to solve later, spaced-repetition is far more effective than just rereading it once or twice and putting it to the top shelf, leave it in the dust.
-I don't let any distractions. Completely isolating myself and fully focusing. Sounds started to make me feel really uncomfortable.

Of course just reading a book cannot change your life. You should change the way you think, this book is just a guide to tell you that it's possible, as a human being you have such function! So, make something better than it is, have your own way, listen and read great people's works and let them inspire you, go out and take a walk sometimes and enjoy living this life. All your effort and everything you learn is a part of this universe, if you also want to invent something you have to find whats hidden. And to find it, you should search. So start digging it, maybe you end up in a hidden bunker or a 2000 years old stone someday. If you read it so far, I hope you also checked the book itself. I just wrote the main ideas in the book, but there are a lot of cool things in it, and visuals.

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