ever thought why is it too hard to learn new things?
me: why would you even think that? just see the reels i sent you. jeez.
ever had a feeling that you might be getting too forgetful?
me: don’t you have 27 memes to see and reply to? i’m waiting.
ever thought about multitasking and ended up doing nothing or all tasks badly?
me:okay, you need to stop!
*or worse
ever thought about what spending time on social media for an extended amount of time would do?
me trying to maintain my composure: you won’t listen. ok. let me build a strong case for ignoring your intuition and not care for learning anything ever and it is in your bestest interest.
don’t we all love that feeling when we forget (quite often) where we put our keys and it’s go time?
well, i am here to let you in on tips and tricks to keep your mind from being healthy, and don’t learn a thang. thank me later.
few things to cover before we dive right in:
our brains have two thinking modes (learning continues when you are relaxed):
- focus mode
- diffuse mode
focus mode is your undivided attention (i chuckled and almost spilled my drink writing this, we all know you don’t have any attention left switching from one app to another finding that temp reward) to a single task at hand.
diffuse mode involves relaxing your brain when you need to understand new concepts.
Source: Lillian’s Wonderland
next, we have two types of memory:
- working memory a.k.a short term memory
- long-term memory a.k.a memory warehouse
working memory is like when you have just read/watched/learned something new but after a while poof! it’s gone.
long-term memory is when you stick with a piece of information long enough understanding it thoroughly you don’t have to think twice. like driving. or like how you know where your favorite app located on your phone. i can get to reddit on my phone with my eyes closed and i am not kidding.
Source: ilslearningcorner.com
okay, let’s break it down.
first, everything starts with a plan. right? i made a mindset shift from product-oriented goals to process-oriented goals:
from i want that job that i refuse to put in work for
to
i will study for 30 mins/day.
from i don’t have any passion so im not gonna work at all
to
being patient and stick with it a good chunk of time.
boy oh boy i was getting somewhere, this just took the stress away from producing results to just trust the process and started making small steps.
it almost felt like my mind liked this process-oriented shift and wouldn’t urge me to check my phone mindlessly.
Source: Lillian’s Wonderland
so, watch out for that mindset. make that unreasonable goal making it easy to quit and go back to the social hole we crawled out from thinking we can do better. no we can’t.
our goal is to make our minds slave to temporary dopamine hits. after all real life is online.
second, do NOT use “pomodoro” technique at all. big no.
stay away from doing a focused task for a set amount of time and then reward yourself. for example: put a time for 15 minutes and then reward yourself by maybe checking those memes i sent you. dude! you haven’t replied yet!
the goal “*they say *“is do: high-intensity efficient study Vs less/zero intensity inefficient study but i can just sit in front of the book with my phone on the entire day/s. how is that not studying???
i used to do the following routine until i realized i was getting better at focusing:
- 20 min focused work
- 5 min break
- 20 min focused work
- 10 min break
- 20 min focused work
- 15 min break
instead, i just take breaks now. it’s not stressful.
third, sometimes do nothing, just sit with your thoughts. our brain needs to process the information we feed throughout the day.
ever heard of the phrase:
sleep on it
i don’t need any amount of research, blogs, or evidence suggesting if you stay longer with a problem you are working on and giving your mind a rest from it, maybe taking a nap, running, or something that isn’t feeding into your brain and let do your mind do its thang, you come up with ideas.
okay, we did establish early on (see #first) that we don’t need to work on anything let alone a problem, and then give our mind a break doing nothing?
Source: Lillian’s Wonderland
working on a problem or not, if you think to just sit in solitude without your phone or going on a bike ride without your headphones on, letting your brain process, coming up with ideas, solutions but hmmmm how about NO.
fourth, okay, this is getting crazy. you grow in discomfort. **ck that man.
i am too old and wise to cause myself discomfort. i just cause irreparable damage to my mind, body, and soul instead.
okay, we do know that procrastination, our beloved friend, comes into existence as soon as we encounter minor discomfort which also shares properties with addiction. what’s wrong with that?
a lot of nerdy folks who don’t have a life online (psssst loser) have talked a lot about how procrastination has 4 parts:
- the cue
- the routine
- the reward
- the belief
where cue could be mild discomfort, routine could be the bad habit as they call it, the reward is a temporary dopamine hit which “they say” are not good for us are actually the same credible sources that tell us not to drink excessively or do drugs. i mean why not drink till you black out, haan? what’s wrong with that?
“they say” you just need to work on a routine, let the cues come in, be curious and just use a bit of willpower to not activate the routine, instead have a plan new routine and then a reward. insane, right?
fifth, even if you go against all my advice and try to learn a thing, you better not come back to it and do what’s called a “spaced repetition”
someone somewhere said,
you can only connect dots looking back
but hear me out, if i am on my phone, i don’t have dots in first place let alone to connect them. haa who’s laughing now?
sixth, “they say”, flex your brain muscles. can you believe that?
- exercise your brain, try memorizing that shopping list or your partner’s birthday (lol good luck)
- even saying out loud helps (something related to how auditory senses help)
- build a memory palace*, *remembering stuff, associating to some familiar image (visual memory), and then attaching that to a familiar location (spatial memory).
to this, i say:
- how about you use your phone for everything, be dependent on your phone like a newborn is to her caretaker.
- how about i say out loud “i don’t care”. how’s that for your auditory senses?
- i would say build a bubble palace (you already have) and live in it (you already are) and in that bubble sit there and check the memes i sent you damn it!
seventh, make mistakes. (bias to action)
- our brains foster faster learning from memories of errors
- errors teaches brains to learn from them faster and it generalizes across different tasks. for example, if you make a mistake in maths, you brain learns faster how to learn from mistakes made in physics.
but……. if i don’t do anything and just be a tree, i won’t make any mistakes in the first place.
eighth, if you still go ahead and try to learn, up-skill, you better not test yourself, look away, and ask thyself what did i just read/listen.
or if you try to use flash cards to learn
or even worse if you **try recalling what you’ve learned in a place different from where you had initially learned **(maybe when you are showering unless you study when taking showers you werido), i’d just say you can delete my number from your phone. we no friends no more amigo.
if you want to be my friend (and trust me everyone wants to be, not to brag but king of nigeria emailed me asking for a personal favor, okay, that should say something), do this instead:
- highlight everything in your book, and trick your mind into that you’ve mastered it, now re-highlight to fool your brain
- just read the easy part again and again ignoring the hard parts, after all we don’t want to cause any discomfort (see #fourth)
“they” call it the illusion of competence, i say illusion of mind your own f**king business.
ninth, don’t follow the following tips help when you learn:
- analogy
- chunking (basis of learning)
- metaphor
- interleaving
- practice, practice, practice (ughh…i just threw my laptop on the wall, well it’s my work laptop)
- teaching it to someone else maybe write a blog
- deliberate learning, learning hard things
after all, our brains likes familiarity.
well i say, spending time on social media, seeing my life passing me by is quite familiar to me. so thank you but no thank you.
tenth, last but never do the undermentioned:
- physical exercise
- yoga
- eat healthy (omega 3’s…yuck, instead doordash that sugary dessert or cholesterol filled greasy food)
lastly, listen to that tiny voice in your head telling you to quit, eat junk food, spend more time online, ignore sitting with your feelings, ignore people around you, it knows better.
still gonna try freeing your mind from the shackles of addictive social media, not knowing how to begin or keep going, and learn new skills and keep your mind healthy?
Article Link: Here
signing off