Part 1: Procrastination
我们拖延的，往往是让我们感到不安的事情。但是我们开始做后，痛苦就会随之消失。令人痛苦的是预感本身。对一项任务的恐惧会比这项任务本身消耗更多的时间和能量。
拖延也可以让我们的自尊心不受损伤。”我拖到最后一刻复习也拿了B!”以为这样可以让你显得聪明。（这让我想到心理学所学到的self-handicapped effect)
When you think of something you don’t like to do, it activates the part of your brain that feels physical pain. 拖延是很容易养成的习惯是因为大脑会如此迅速地奖励你。然后把注意力转移到更愉快的事情上面去。（这一点让我想起最近在读的另外两本书的观点：misbehaving里说人的不理性之一在于距离得到东西的时间会影响我们对其perceive的价值。同时，indistractable里说了我们motivation背后的唯一原因就是因为我们想要avoid discomfort/pain).
Procrastination Steps:
- Feel anxious/unhappy about something
- Shift and narrow your focus to something enjoyable
- Feel happy temporarily
Procrastination & addictions share similarities
- offers temporary excitement and relief from reality
- 可能会编故事来合理化自己的行为
Procrastination is like砒霜, if you have a very small amount of it you may even look healthy, but in the long term, it will hurt you and bring many bad effects. They are controllable.
“Zombie Mode” — Habitual Zone
Chunking is related to habit. Habit is an energy saver for us. It allows us to free our minds from other types of activity.
Four parts of habit:
- The Cue: the trigger for you to start the habit. 我们可以create new cues & remove bad cues (temptation)
- The routine: your brain responds to the cue
- The reward
- The belief: you have to believe that you will change your habit (this resonates with “Indistractable”, which showed that people who believe in the limitation of willpower usually get distractable from their original goals easily. People who do not believe this, will not.) Believe your new system works also help you to go through difficult times. Having a community is important. like a study group or friends who believe the same thing.
It is normal to feel bad at the beginning of learning even for subjects you like.
Positive self-talk helps.
Focus on process not product. Avoid concentrating on the product. For example, “I will spend 20 minutes on working” are process, and “I will finish xxx” is the product. Habitual zombies like process, it follows process without 动脑子
The product is what triggers the pain that causes you to procrastinate. focus on process可以避免你对自己的工作作出评价而更轻松地沉浸到工作进程中避免不必要的焦虑。
The whole point is to put forth your best effort for a short period.
许多小成就 =》 许多小奖励 =》 更加享受学习/工作
一次完成一个小任务来保持成就感。任何的reward都能帮助形成新的好习惯，甚至纯粹一种满足感也可以。习惯的强大之处在于它能够造成神经层面的欲望，只有当你的大脑开始期待奖励的时候一个习惯才是真的培养了。制定quit time也有帮助，这样你可以期待那个quit的时间。
用心理对照，想象自己成功的样子来让你觉得很激动。
早上尝试先工作/学习十分钟后再刷手机或者上网来奖励自己。
The zombie habitual part of your brain likes processes because it can march mindlessly along. It is easy to help with the process than with the product.
This helps you to allow yourself to relax into the flow of work. When a distraction kicks in, just let it flow by. Do not let it annoy you.
The cue has 4 categories: Location; Time; How you feel; Reactions
The routine: your brain wants to automatically go to the comfortable zone instead of dealing with the pain. This is where we rewiring our habits. The key to changing your reaction to cue is to have a new plan. for example, a plan like put the phone in your car.
The reward: turn this to be like a game. Once your brain starts expecting the reward, your craving starts to rewire.
The better you become at something, the more you enjoy.
在集中注意力的时候不要multi-task.否则你所学习的无法在脑子里形成很深的neural pattern,你的chunk也难以成型。multi task还可能会导致智商变低等。
如果你感到有去看短信的冲动，停下来审视这种感觉，承认它的存在，然后无视它。
当感觉脑袋空空或注意力无法集中的时候尝试做一些小锻炼。
平时在番茄工作法之类的微小压力下工作能够让你更好地handle考试之类的压力。
Practice makes you better, not perfect.
Practice is to experience failure.
爱迪生把它的失败命名为”一千种造不出电灯的方式”. Name your failure too!
Juggling Life and Learning
- Weekly List of Key Tasks
- Daily To Do list (do it the evening before the day) ideally before sleep. It helps because then it will take less of your working memeory so you will be easier to finish these tasks. Also, plan your quitting time! For Barbara, her finish time is 5:00 PM.
- Time after time, those who are committed to maintaining healthy leisure time along with their hard work outperformed those who doggedly pursue an endless treadmill. Try to squeeze some time for break.
- Work on your most disliked tasks first. (Eat your frogs first)
tip: you can use cleaning as your diffuse mode break. mixing other things with learning can help.
Part 2: Memory
Diving Deeper into Memory
- We have amazing visual and spatial memory system.
- Image helps you to remember hard concepts. The funnier the image is the better (but repetition is important). Even you imagine something memorable, you should still do spaced repetition.
- Speak out loud to start setting auditory hooks to the material.
What is Long Term Memory?
- Long Term Memory is those memories that are consolidated in our brain.
- whenever you recall a memory, it changes. This is called reconsolidation.
- When we learn new things, old memory also changes. Consolidation & Reconsolidation also happen during sleep. This is why spaced learning is more effective than bash learning.
Creating Meaningful Groups and the Memory Palace Technique
- Memory palace tech is grouping things you want to remember by using a familiar place like the layout of your house and using it as a visual notepad where you can deposit the concept images that you want to remember. Useful for unrelated items like a grocery list.
