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Art of Learning
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Method of Loki
We can memorize a deck of cards in order by creating a visual story around each
card and creating a story in order

💡 Success is Persistent Learning

Principles
Obstacle
Your mind : “ You can’t do it “
You : “I am doing something worthy and I will keep going”.
Your mind: “You suck”
You : “Congratulations to me. I am doing something that others hesitate

Dip

Sometimes the path you have is wrong

know when to turn around and leave

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 Compound Learning

Every single day you learn small and be persistent.

20 mins is GREAT. This is Marathon

Failures don’t count

You don’t have to be successfull all the time

You can fail at interviews 100 times and still it won’t count

Choice Vs Chore

Shift Your focus to choice than core

chore is boring, choice is elevating

Pareto Principle

80% Value in 20% stuff

Eliminate 80%

Ask is this best use of my time

Skill Staking

Skills are valuable when you stack them

Being good at a list of skills when combined makes you valuable

Happiness Factor

Relationships make a person happy

Make a list of 5 happiness factor and monitor those

Productivity Time
Figure out my productivity time. Is learning at day or night makes you feel good

Self Learning Paradigm

To be a self learner, you have to choose your path

Lies about Learning

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 Follow your Passion
Book Ref : So good they can’t ignore you by Cal Newport

Passion is overrated

I am not passionate about software and coding but I enjoy the process of
improving

We don’t need passion

Craftsman mindset : work hard , yout your skills up.

You can avoid Risk

Risk is part of process. Enjoy the butterflies

Those who play safe are left behind

Take Risk. You will have to give up something to gain something.

Trust this 1 Person

Not every advice a person may give be absolute true

Each person give advice based on his experience.

Look for different opinions.

Form you own opinions, tactics and strategy.

There are pros and cons to everything

10,000 hour rule

Practice matters but not that much

Life is unfair but that’s life.

we have less control over our future

Efficient learning is the key.

Pillars
Everything is a game

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 We should have a growth mindset. Everything is trainable using right strategy

Fixed Mindset Growth Mindset

Will I look smart or stupid when doing this How might I grow from this challenge or
challenge learn from this challenge
When something difficult he says, “I am not
I am not smart enough to do it yet.
smart enough”

Locus of control

Degree at which people believe they have control over outcome.

High Locus of Control Low Locus of Control

I didn’t do well enough in Test. Teacher didn’t do enough

Blame themselves and take action Blame others. Idiots

Game

Believe that everything is a game

A player may fail many times and becomes successful few times. What
matters is now

Feyman Technique

To understand something, teach it like speaking to a child

Bring a concept to basic level

Big words or Jagrons hides us our knoledge. Avoid it

Speaking simply in simple terms makes you a better learner

Teach what you learn to someone with zero knowledge.

Trunk based knowledge

Instead of working on leaves start from trunk.

Learn the fundamentals.

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 💡 Leaves fall but root doesn’t . Principles remain for long time

Efficiency Trumps Grit

You don’t have to be hard worker

Being busy means lack of time management.

Without the right strategy or technique you don’t learn much. Its just quantity
and nothing else.

Science
Focus and diffuse mode

2 States of brain. Focus and Diffuse mode

Focus Mode Diffuse Mode

Your brain just doesn one thing Daydreaming, thinking of different things.

Activates prefrontal cortex Many areas are activated

e.g A Laser A Flashligh. Sleeping, Going for a walk

New connections are made

💡 How well you learn depends upon going back and forth between focus
and diffuse mode. You can only be in 1 mode.

Spend some time in focus and then some time on diffuse mode.

💡 Never Do Multitasking

Sleep

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 Sleep allows diffused mode of thinking which help make new connection.

Too much and too little is bad.

Brain Training

Everytime you learn, a new synapsis is created

Practice mode creates new connections through repetition

Learning new things increases neurons

If you don’t use it you will loose it.

💡 Exersice creates new neurons

Feedback

Learning requires feedback. Masters prefer -ve feedback.

Criticism is effective. Its important

positive feedback is important at beginning which is good to keep going. e.g if

someone says “you are good at Math”, it keeps you going

-ve feedback is important at Mastery. Without feedback we CANNOT learn.

Procastrination

When you learn something, your brain triggers negativity

Your brain switches you to something else that feels better. It managers
emotions as the task at hand is making us emotionally bad

💡 Trick : Take the initiative and start doing the task

A Group of people were shown a sad story and were told to

solve a puzzle. Another group didn’t and the first group couldn’t

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 solve it and procastinated. Procastrination is ur brain telling you ,
“Lets do something positive as the task is emotionally negative”

Procrastination Killers

1. Screw it! Lets do it

2. Deliberately Sloppy Start

3. Small Step

Long Term and Short Term Memory

Practice and repeating is what contributes to long term memory.

Short term memory is working memory which is prefrontal cortex. We can only
store 4 itmes in short term memory.

Repetition is what makes/written to long term memory

Making connection of long term memory with short term memory

Anything in short term memory is lost in a week.

Active & Passive

Active Passive

Active engagement like taking notes, practice assignment watching, listening lectures

Difficult & Retained Easy and Not Retained

Practice & Recalling Rereading

💡 ILLUSION OF COMPETENCE : We think in passive learning that we

have learned something which is just an ILLUSION

The more you repeat in a single session the less struggle to

remember like Note Taking, asking questions, writing summary,

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 recalling. So when you learn take notes, ask questions, recall ,
repeat, summarize

Motivation ( 2 Types )

Intrinsic Extrensic

Comes from within because of

who we are what we believe and e.g Money Salary , gift , present
is the most important

Rewards like money can decrease intrinsic motivation

e.g lets say you love piano and now it becomes your job
We need this.
, you will less likely play it outside your pianist job. Its
called OVER JUSTIFICATION EFFECT.

Steps for Intrinsic Motivation

1. Autonomy : We want to work on things that gives control of our life not
someone pushing us.

2. Mastery : Being recognized as Masters creats intrinsic motivation.

3. Purpose : How does it benefit others and people around me. e.g Teaching
Arabic to Swaluu can be turned to a Purpose like teaching kids or her
friends or in the masjid.

When starting off extrinsic motivation is good. Then after a while

intrinsic motivation is necessary

Association

If you learn something and if you can make association between

subjects/topics/anything then you are most likely to remember it.

Goals

Take small steps towards the goal

Never getting to a long goal makes us fear

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 Small incremental steps is the key

Small goals are going to compound

Making goals sooooo simple

Well defined specific goals

S.M.A.R.T Goal

Specific : “ I want to loose 10 pounds “ instead of “ I want to loose weight”

Measurable

Actionable

Relevant : Either too many goals or non relevant goals. Focus on low effor,
high value goals

Time Bound : I want to loose 10 pounds in 10 weeks

mt; We could divide the Arabic Course into Goals to be

achieved and put a time frame for swaluu

Busy Bandwagon

Being busy is not a good thing. It means lack of time management

Healthy leisuraly time is a ABSOLUTE must.

Being busy makes your brain weaker.

Chunking

Break things down into small chunks

Top down Learning : Its about having a birds eye view about the topic.

Chunking is making connection between different pieces of knowledge

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 How to solve Problems
2 ways to solve problem

Focus Mode : Sequencial problems

Diffuse Mode : Ideas, Intuition

Some problems need focus and diffuse mode

Deliberate Practice

Learning process is tough and frustration is OK

You start learning and there is a lot of improvement, then we reach plateu. Its
frustration. This is a point where we do deliberate pracice and move past that
plateue.

Deliberate practice takes going beyond comfort zone. It doesn’t feel good

Deliberate practice is uncomfortable

How to get Deliberate Practice ?

Push yourself to the edge

Immediate Feedback

💡 GOOD NEWS : As we move forward, as we push, it becomes enjoyable.

Spaced Repetition

Don’t cram. Don’t do stuff for a long period of time

Don’t spend too much time on same material repeating

💡 Repeating over long term actually builds long term memory.

Energy Saving with Habits

Habits are energy savers.

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 If you write down your todo list before bedtime, it helps you accomplish it the
next day

Just do 2 mins of what habbit you want to achieve.

Be Adventurous

When you seek new adventure, your brain goes sharper.

When you experience new, it grows your brain

Don’t shy away from new things. Experience new things.

Have an Endpoint

When performing a task, your brain needs to know an endpoint

It needs to know when its going to end. e.g I am going to stop at 5:00pm

Brain needs to know when and what are you going to finish helps your brain to
focus

Plan Your finishing time

💡 mt; we can tell swalu that we will end at say 5:20pm and we will finish say
Sarf

Be Bored

Being bored is very important, to strengthen neural connection, for creativity

Listening podcast, watching youtube is bad for our brain.

Boredom allows you to design your life, makes more human and helping others.

Techniques
Pomodoro

25 min Focused , 5 min Diffused.

Best way to tackle procastination as 25 mins is easy to achieve

Start with most disliked or hardest task

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 Chunk the Subject

Chunks are compact bits of knowledge

We can only hold 4 chunks in our working memory

When we see a big problem, divide and conquer

Lets say you want to learn spanish. Start with chunking.

Chunk 1 : Learn 100 most common words
Chunk 2 : Apply Spaced Repetition

It took many chunks of work for elon musk to get where he is .

Chunking is the reason why most learning websites have short videos.

Spaced Repetition

Overlearning is not good

Recall and repeat when you are just forgetting topic. Brain strengthens that
particular info

Recall is important

Deliberate Practice

Doint the things that is hard

Learning is not easy thats why its incentives is high

2 Steps for Deliberate Practice

1. Avoid easy stuff

2. we want to take on challenging stuff

Have a dedicated focus time

bit more harder than yesterday and become uncomfortable

Seek immediate feedback.

Write it down. Write about your progress.

When you have butterflies that means you are at your edge.

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 💡 mt; I can make a list of topics that need to be completed in Arabic for
swaluu and then make a checkbox list allowing her to check and make it
a little gamefy and challenging

Create a RoadMap

You need to know what to achieve and how

Do spent a good time about preparing the roadmap. The path must be clear

Figure of what industries say, what hot topic, find quality resources

Use coggle for creating roadmap/plan

Creating roadmap should have what skills you need, what you want.

Interleaving

Try different techniques e.g books

Have 3 sills to be switched

Different techniques over different period of time

You could use your learning of public speaking in your negotiating with your
manager

Einstellung (Attitude)

Its called Rigit mindset

Mind creates block. You create rigidity about ideas.

Integrative Complexity

It means willingness to accept multiple perspective on a topic to integrate

them

A prolific learner keeps his cup half full

Sometimes you need to unlearn and ask question “What is option C” thus
seeking novel and unique ways.

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 Importance of Community

You are not as smart as you think

A community can help you grow fast. e.g Chess community

A community gives accountabliity

💡 You are average of 5 people you are with.

Habits Revisited

4 things needed for Habit

1. Cue : Putting gym clothes

2. Routine : Cue is trigger. Routine is ritual.

3. Reward : Every habit should make us feel good. Even smoking is a habit
that gives reward.

4. Belief : Maybe you believe that this habbit is good for you. A lot of people
use will power to force a habit

💡 Willpower is Bad Strategy. Habits is Good Strategy

e.g If you want to run, then willpower is not useful, but if you put your clothes
besides your bed then its good.

4 Laws of Behaviour Change

1. Obvious : Is there a clear goal to achieve?

2. Easy

3. Attractive

4. Satisfying

Technique : Dont break the chain. Every single day form the
habit. Use calandar.

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 System Vs Goals

Goals are good but systems are better

e.g If you have 20mins to study its a system thats better than a goal of learning
programming.

Create System instead of goal. Pomodorro is a system.

Goals are rigid but systems are what you do regularly.

System allows us to adapt to new situations

Goals are good for a single day otherwise have a system

Career is system

💡 Don’t make long term Goals. Make System

The Power of Senses

Imagery helps us

Writing is better than typing

Visualization is the key

Stories are good for remembring things

The more you can hook on your senses to learning you remember it more

💡 mt; Make stories for swaluu for arabic. Make some sort of visualisation.
Like how pronouns are attached using a story or some gimmick

Humans are bad at remembering fact but good at remembering

stories.
e.g If you want to know how a computer works you can make
your story and add your joke to your learning.

Method of Loki ( Moon walking with Einstein )

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 Humans are good at spacial memory

Memory Palace is a physical location you know well.

So if you can give physical meaning to whatever you are learning, you can
rmember it.
e.g Those who memorize the deck of cards associate cards and numbers with
physical stuff like the stuff in their house. So spaces of king is associated with
say Cat sitting in Sofa.

Pareto Principle
80% of desired results comes from 20% effort. What are themost common
requirements in job. Don’t try to do everything. Try to remove unnecessary. Remove
the noise.

Parkinson’s Lay

You usually finisih a task based on how much time you are given

If you are given a week , you will take a week.

It states that the work expands so as to fill the time available for its ompletion

So having a deadline is important thats why to do work.

Deep work

Create a deep work strategy and we need to push our edge

You should have a practice regiment.

Stakes & Revards

we need small reward system

Stakes means what happens if I fail. What happens if i don’t achieve my goal.

Stakes is something on the line like you do job because you need to put food at
the table

If you have a goal announce it and have accountability

💡 Small rewards are perfect encouragement

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 💡 mt; We can give some reward to swaluu for arabic learning like an outing
or a broasted or something she likes. And we can have some sort of
accountability if she fails.

Concepts vs Facts

Concepts are important than facts

If you highlight a section and then return to the text try to recall

Recollection is important than recognition. You need to recall what you learn

💡 RECALL! RECALL! RECALL!

Concepts are valuable and facts are cheap

People who are respected in career because of concepts

Whenever you learn try to learn the foundation and ask why?

Test Yourself

Self testing is uncomfortable

Summarize your ideas and pause and ask what are the key ideas

re-reading, watching, listening is bad strategy

💡 mt; we could put swaluu to test by having a test of arabic every one a
week

First 20 hours

we don’t need to be masters at a skill

we can aquire it within 20 hours

pick your topic and plan what will you do in first 20 hours

e.g

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 1. I am going to plan

2. How I am going to test

3. Avoid overlearning

4. I will have a good feedback system

5. Deconstruct the skills to subskills

6. Learn the most critical skill

7. Put those in first 20 hours

💡 mt; We can plan the learning of the arabic lessons for 20 hours for swaluu
keeping it light and then stengthening along the way. Need to think if this
is a good strategy or not.

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