Welcome to

The Iron Yard

^ Thank everyone for being here.

Work Hard and Be Excellent to Each Other

One Rule To Rule Them All

How to Learn

^ There is research suggesting that teaching the mechanism of how the brain grows when it's challenged increases performance.

This Is Your Life Now

^ Also enable Do Not Disturb mode

^ Working just beyond your comfort zone is proven to be a better learning environment.

Research based principles for how to learn

^ These are mostly from the book "Make It Stick"

Effortful learning is longer lasting and more versatile.

Learning is built on the shoulders of hobbits

^ Learning new concepts requires prior knowledge

Be aware of cognitive biases.

Test yourself.

^ There is research suggesting that we are terrible at knowing when we are learning.

Be aware of falsely perceived fluency.

^ There is research suggesting that certain study strategies make us falsely believe we are gaining mastery. Rereading and massed practice are a waste of time.

Retrieval interrupts forgetting and strengthens retrieval pathways.

Make retrieval harder with spaced repetition and interleaving.

Try to solve problems before you're taught how.

Learning styles are overrated.

Always aim to extract principles and rules.

^ This skill can be learned through interleaved and varied practice, and elaboration

Elaborate on newly gained knowledge

^ "If you're just engaging in mechanical repetition, ... you quickly hit the limit of what you can keep in mind. However, if you practice elaboration, there's no known limit to how much you can learn. Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know."

Build a mind palace

^ Put new knowledge into a larger context ^ People who learn to extract the key ideas from new material and organize them into a mental model and connect that model to prior knowledge who an advantage in learning complex mastery.

Intellectual ability isn't fixed.

^ Mindset, and learning, changes the brain

Stay Calm

^ Stress -> glucocorticoids, which decreases neuroplasticity.

How To Learn

• Stay out of your comfort zone
• Learning is built on the shoulders of hobbits
• Be aware of cognitive biases. Test yourself.
• Be aware of falsely perceived fluency.
• Retrieval interrupts forgetting and strengthens retrieval pathways.
• Make retrieval harder with spaced repetition and interleaving.
• Try to solve problems before you're taught how.
• Learning styles are overrated.
• Always aim to extract principles and rules.
• Elaborate on newly gained knowledge
• Build a mind palace
• Intellectual ability isn't fixed.
• Stay Calm