This is the third lesson in a four-part series on how to design and complete a successful learning project. I’ve written it in the six-week course Quick Learner that reopened Monday. In my first lesson, I shared how to go from Beginner to Terminator. In the second, I share the key to effective meta-learning, or how to learn specific skills.
Today, I want to talk about actually doing this work. What separates the pleasant and fun process of learning from the endless grinding process? In other words, what makes those who are good at mastering it separate those who study and work?
Stream: Between boredom and depression
The late psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi pioneered the concept of process to define a pleasant state of absorption in spiritual challenges and meaningful tasks. Learning requires concentration and may have great significance, both of which require the generation of traffic states.
However, learning often produces the exact opposite: boredom and frustration. The boring attitude inspired our desire to escape–A constant glance at the classroom clock as we waited for the bell to signal the speech to finally end. Despite efforts, frustration occurs without progress. It happens when we work hard but feel completely stuck.
Process is important because if the joy of learning always outweighs the pain, we only learn the work of learning.
A study program may have high external rewards (better work, health, or relationships) or even delays inherent rewards (satisfaction, pride, new hobbies). But if its moment experience is highly negative, it will be difficult to maintain in the face of attractive low-cost alternatives such as gaming or social media.
Conversely, if the learning experience is pleasant (or at least not too unpleasant), you will be able to last longer. This is the secret behind tools like Duolingo, which learns languages more interesting than most alternatives.1
How to flow
How do you create and maintain a flow in your learning? The answer is simple: when the task is Not too difficult (Frustration) and Not easy (boring). Add this Clearly visible progress marks, Even seemingly ordinary activities can become addictive.
This is what game designers do when they want to create compelling games: Set the right difficulty and create continuous progress markers to maintain engagement.
The game can be fully optimized. However, a study project that is at least effective must also be designed to acquire the knowledge you actually need. Other purposes often have limitations on how you can maximize the process in your learning.
But, assuming you have a reason to learn is more convincing than simply filling in time, we don’t need to learn as engaging as video games to accomplish it. All we have to do is make sure it is convincing Enough Therefore, we do not have the difficulty of getting the job done consistently.
Typically, there are three tools you can use to improve the process in your learning project:
Flow Enhancer #1: Make boring parts more attractive
Boredom is a failure to flow. If you’ve been stuck while reading a boring textbook and find yourself falling off while rereading the same paragraph, you’ve seen how boring learning is.
Finding a more expressive lecturer or better author reading is a solution. But even if you can’t change the materials, you can make them more attractive by changing the techniques you use when reading.
For example, after summarizing each page by keeping a bunch of index cards and writing some symbol dots, you can do a completely passive activity and turn it into a more active activity. This helps with learning, but also makes the activity itself less boredom.
Flow Enhancer #2: Makes the Frustrating Parts Easier
Frustration is another way to fail. This happens when you deal with things beyond your current skill level, so you will encounter frequent negative feedback signals from your environment.
Although there is almost inevitable frustration in the study program, learning is not a necessary emotion for learning. The less frustrated we can in our efforts, the more we learn happily without sacrificing effectiveness.
For example, if you are solving a range of problems and solutions, you can dynamically adjust the difficulty level to keep the challenge challenging, but don’t be frustrating. If you can’t solve the problem separately, try prompting to fix it. If you can’t do this, try omitting one of the steps of the solution and see if you can fill it in. If you can’t do this, try explaining your own solution as you read. By adjusting the difficulty down to challenging but feasible places, you can increase traffic, reduce frustration and make it easier to stick to your work.
Flow Enhancer #3: Make progress more obvious
In addition to choosing the right difficulty, it also helps break down your learning into small units that can steadily improve. Then make significant progress in your study.
By providing you with an ever-increasing counter, “Learned Cards” can be displayed so that you can observe the progress you are moving forward. But you can do this for almost all progress-related variables:
- Number of problems solved.
- Page reading.
- Make a sketch.
- The exercise is completed.
- Rehearsals are carried out.
Choose a variable that always improves (setbacks are ~3 times as progress forward is useful), fine-grained enough to rise every time you learn, and reliably match the learning activity you are actually trying to complete. Then, make sure this variable is highly visible in your actual study. If you don’t “feel” it exists while you’re learning, it won’t motivate you.
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In my full course, fast learners, I will learn more than just how to complete the equations of learning, from the energy research of productivity systems, energy management and learning. On Monday, I will be opening a new course. In the next lesson, which is the final lesson in this preview series, I will talk about imagining a life dedicated to learning new things and why it is key, not only success but happiness itself.
footnote
- Long-term readers will notice that I have questions about whether these strategies are always effective in language learning, but it is undeniable that Duolingo is more interesting than studying textbooks.
