Excellent general learning tips! I have a few myself that I feel are rather analogous to what you shared. In Body building there are 3 general principles of Muscle Growth. 1. Intensity of Effort 2. Volume 3. Frequency If we break down those criteria into learning a mental Skill we see that "working our brains" runs parallel. 1. Attention as you said, how focused and interested are you in what you are doing. I also in this category would link "emotion" because the valance of a particular experience is better remembered when there is a sense of enjoyment and or over coming of obstacles. 2. Volume is how much one needs to chew or ruminate on a particular idea or concept to help that concept sink in, we might call this repetition and maps on quite nicely to what you were saying about the "Woodpecker" method. Or in a linguistic context how many times you might have to say a certain word before you being to understand it. 3. Frequency, this is best understood as how many times do you need to reexpose yourself to the same idea over time to strengthen and maintain that memory. Or as I understand it "you don't use it, you loose it". After something is learned in a shallow way, the depth of the memory is created due to our repeated accessing of that particular memory or pathway in our minds. After the initial learning instances we require much more Frequency in the following days and weeks but as we extend the time horizon memories can be accessed less Frequently and still be strong. This is actually the essence of the "Gold Book" language learning method. I'd also like to share briefly my ideas on the Pursuit of any Goal. Which also has a Tripartite structure. 1. Define your goal as precisely as possible, Chess, maybe you want to reach some Elo in some set period of time (Within reason). 2. Motivation, deeply ask yourself why you desire such and such goal and what lengths you are willing to go through to achieve it. Motivation is the "Why" and is essential to discipline when we loose our will to continue or believe what we're doing is useless or impossible. So in this case, you believe Chess will make smarter or give you greater opportunities in life, maybe it will impress some girl you like or simply you believe life is more enjoyable with a stronger Chess skill. 3. The Plan, but together a daily regime how your going to consistently progress toward your end point. So maybe that's doing puzzles for 15min, reading for 15min and playing 1 or 2 games online, additionally on the weekends maybe you go to a class or club. With these three pillars in place, as you progress along your path you become more able to reaccess your goals, motivation and plan and as you go along are able to reliably track growth and see results, in any endeavor!!! Thank you for the video, it helped strength my own associations and gave me new insights. I hope some of what I said is useful or makes sense. I am trying to utilize the "Transfer" tactic and teach what I have learned.
Thank you very much for your words! I agree with most of what you say, I think everyone has a slightly different approach depending on their point of view but the main ideas are pretty similar (indeed, there is a vast literature about learning techniques, and it was not easy for me to decide what was worth saying, what is obvious and what you can find already on many other sources). I like that in your first point you link attention and emotion, and actually you might be right, they're very much connected. I understand your ideas on the pursuit of the goal but I think that for someone who started a certain journey only recently (as my video was mostly directed to those who don't have much experience in studying games methodically) they might be relatively less important. In the sense that, probably you don't need to set a specific Elo target or interrogate yourself deeply about the reason why you do it. The most common motivation is (I believe, but I might be wrong), trivially, a sense of joy and fulfilment from that activity, and as long as you can keep that going (I suggested through a comfortable environment), that is enough to see improvements. Of course at a certain point, once you are already at a more or less advanced level, you need to be more rigorous and regular if you want to see progress, and there you're totally right. Thanks again! :)
I think you may like these books written by PhD cognitive/educational psychologist which focus on general principles of learning theory: 1-Why don't students like school by Daniel Willingham 2-Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy by Daniel T. Willingham 3-Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Qarie Marshall, et al. 4-Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens by Barbara Oakley PhD, Laural Merlington, et al. 5- The ABCs of How We Learn: 26 Scientifically Proven Approaches, How They Work, and When to Use Them by Daniel L. Schwartz; Kristen P. Blair; Jessica M. Tsang Enjoy
