I went to the library to check out one book. After skimming through the table of contents and a few chapters, i decided that book wasn't for me. So i scanned a few of its neighbors and found this title. Reading The Science of Self-Learning confirmed that this book was more to my tastes. It's a how-to for becoming a better autodidact. My favorite part was on methods to discover one's own blind spots. What follows are quotes from the book with my comments within square brackets.
An autodidact is, most simply put, a self-educator. They own the entire method of their instruction, from beginning to finish, from interest to implementation.
It's psychologically restrictive. You're expected to always be attentive and on point. Most if not all of your mental resources need to be applied toward the topics you're studying, to the extent that grabbing just a few minutes of free time could make one feel guilty or irresponsible.
It often uses fear as a motivator. If you don't study hard and achieve success according to the standards of your school or university, supposedly you'll have no future.
It limits or even destroys creativity. You do as you're told. Your course of study is chosen for you. Your texts are assigned. Your materials, lab experiments, and resources all come from prepared lists from which you can't deviate.
It makes you closed-minded. [It's about creating a social hierarchy.]
It actually hinders future learning. After 20 years of force-fed learning--tens of thousands of hours of lecture, reading, studying, accumulating facts--you're almost conditioned not to learn in any other way. You don't even imagine that there even *is* another way... Many are the students who've experienced so much burn-out from institutional learning that the last thing they want to do upon graduation is to learn *anything*.
You're told what to care about and how to think.
You can dive as deeply into a subject as you want. You can go at your own pace, and you are only limited by your own motivation and discipline.
You can set yourself up for lifelong learning.
You can study subjects with a different perspective.
You can develop self-discipline.
You can open up new and unique possibilities. [A friend told me that her career wasn't listed in the books. She created a new one.]
We call that reward-or-punishment framework /extrinsic motivation/: the compensation comes from an external source...
The opposite of this concept is /intrinsic motivation/. A person experiencing intrinsic motivation does an activity for how it will enrich them on an intangible level. The rewards one gets in this framework are self-generated: pride, sense of accomplishment, enjoyment, rising to a challenge. These kinds of rewards, quite simply, *feel* better and have a more personal meaning...
[Author Daniel Pink] described three different factors that make up intrinsic motivation.
Freedom is a big, driving impulse for everyone. Autonomy motivates us because we want to believe that... we truly affect our own lives.
There's nothing like the satisfaction of knowing you're doing something well, that you've worked and practiced hard to achieve your own standards of excellence. Mastery is a motivating factor because it gives us a sense of progress...
... there's also merit in the believe that we're doing something for the "greater good." That's what a sense of purpose delivers. We believe that what we're doing has a positive effect on more than just our personal lives...
During the course of self-learning, it will always help to orient your mind toward the internal rewards and improvements you're seeking.
American educator Francis P. Robinson developed a method meant to help students really get the most comprehension from... the subject they're studying. Robinson sought a way to make reading more active, helping readers by creating a dynamic engagement with books so the information stuck in their mind.
Get a general overview of what you'll be reading. It's just like taking a look at the entire map before you set off on a road trip.
Surveying means examining the structure of the work, the title, the introduction or preface, section titles, chapter titles, headings, and subheadings. You're setting up expectations for what you're going to be reading about and giving yourself an initial framework to structure your goals for the reading material.
Beyond books, you should survey all the important concepts in a discipline. If you can't find it within a structure like a book's table of contents, then you need to be able to create it for yourself.
You want to form a general outline of what you're going to learn.
You'll want to keep an eye out for phrases or concepts that appear in several different sources, since they repeat elements that come up often in your chosen field and might be things you have to know.
Then you'll organize these resources. You'll come up with a plan to study each one.
Take a slightly closer look at the structure of the book and form some questions you wanted answered or set up the objectives you want to achieve.
Because you've gotten the layout of the land and formed some questions and goals for your studies, you're a little more engaged when you finally sit down to read. You're looking for answers to the questions you've raised. [You] build /anticipation/ for learning.
Now you're being deliberate and paced about your reading so you can comprehend better. This means slowing down--a /lot/. Be patient with the material and with yourself.
Recitation is verbal and also in writing. Restate points /in your own words/.
Go back over the material that you've studied, re-familiarize yourself with the most important points, and build your skills at memorizing the material.
Review tactics:
Beyond memorizing the material, this step can help you see connections and similarities between different aspects that you might not have picked up at first and put concepts and ideas into greater context.
Self-explanation sounds simple, but there is a method to the simplicity. It's more than thinking out loud. It involves explaining and articulating information to establish a baseline of knowledge and blind spots.
Blind spots are when we don't realize what we don't know. But with self-explanation, you will quickly learn what you don't understand, and it might be far more than you expected.
/Elaborative interrogation/ is an effort to create explanations for /why/ stated facts are true [1].
Known as the "Great Explainer", [Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman] was revered for his ability to clearly illustrate dense topics like quantum physics for virtually anybody.
The Feynman technique is a specific application of elaborative interrogation. Remember, the goal is not to actually answer the questions; it's to see what you are /unable/ to answer--that is the information it provides. It has 4 steps.
Whenever you are unable to explain [in a simple way], this is a blind spot you must rectify.
Making analogies between concepts requires an understanding of the main traits and characteristics of each. This step connects new information to old information and lets you piggyback off a working mental model to understand or explain in greater depth.
The Feynman technique is a rapid way to discover what you know versus what you think you know, and it allows you to solidify your knowledge base. When you keep explaining and simplifying to yourself and discover that you can't, you've just discovered that you don't know as much as you thought you did.
Frankly, not all information is created equally, and this can be true even within sentence and paragraphs. There are some things that are destined to waste our time in reading, so we should learn exactly what is okay to skip, what to focus on, and how to manage all that. It's about saving time and being able to see through what's in front of you.
[I skipped this chapter.]
These days, information is extremely easy to find and accumulate. Every subject under the sun is well-represented by online resources and public libraries, and information is going to come to you both through your self-guided efforts and from out of the blue.
But all this information isn't going to /teach/ you by itself. All it will do is /present/ itself. The data you get doesn't necessarily explain its significance, its context, or meaning. When you're teaching yourself, you won't have a mentor always in place to explain the implications or value of what your learning, because the structure is all up to you.
So you'll have to be proactive about figuring out what all this new data means to your course of study.
Questions are the tools that you'll use to develop open avenues of perception and full comprehension of your subject--not just the surface details and dry facts.
This is commonly known as critical thinking, and it's the act of delaying gratification in lieu of accuracy...
The first few questions should address the structure of the conclusions, whether it comes from a sound basis in reasoning. A second set of questions addresses instead the quality of the conclusions and supporting arguments.
At this early stage of researching, don't be too discriminating. Get as much as you can from wherever you can find it.
A good source backs up its arguments and ideas with solid data, confirmable truth, and careful examination. A bad source is generally more interested in persuasion... and hyperbole and might rely on misleading or utterly wrong data to do so.
As you're viewing and reviewing all your source material, you'll begin to notice recurring topics, stances, and ideas. Here you'll be able to identify the major components of your topic and the most prevalent thoughts and beliefs.
Without knowing the full extent of opposing arguments, you won't have the complete picture you need to understand the issue.
Researcher Roger Säljö found in 1979 that we tend to view the act of learning in several ways, but it can generally be boiled down into two rough categories: /surface/ learning and /deep/ learning. Surface learning relates to gaining knowledge, facts, and memorization; deep learning refers to abstracted meaning and understanding reality.
/Concept learning/ entails pattern recall and integration of new examples and ideas.
Learning heuristics is very similar to the act of concept learning. Heuristics describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them.
People with the fixed mindset believe that talent and intelligence are inborn genetic traits.
Those with the growth mindset, on the other hand, believe that talent, intelligence, and capability can be developed...
[ I've repeatedly read about having a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. I have incredible resistance to this idea. For one thing it seems like an artificial dichotomy, kind of like arguing that something must be either "nature" or "nurture", when all scientific evidence points to a mixture of both.
Another objection is the terminology itself: growth is too close for comfort to the mythology of perpetual, limitless growth. The disconnect between this idea and our finite planet is causing great harm to everyone. On an individual level then, the idea that one can choose to ignore one's proclivities runs the risk of self-harm through pursuing unrealistic goals that one is ill-suited for.
From a dictionary:
talent (n):
1. natural abilities or qualities
Once i read a distinction between talent and skill. A talent is a gift, something that comes easy and naturally. Skill is developed, something you have to work for. The same accomplishment can be achieved either through talent and/or through skill.
Beyond talent and skill lies the important question of suitability. College level chemistry came easily to me and i got straight A's, but i hated it. I felt that chemistry would make a terrible career. ]