Final Considerations on 'Learning How to Learn'

Well, as the title of the blog obviously suggests, this blog will be a journal of the progress made in my months in Launch Academy. However, there is a Coursera class I'm taking on 'Learning How to Learn', and the final assignment was about how the information given in the course is being applied and it also needed to be written in either a PDF file or a public website, so I guess that, since the course is an important variable in my efficiency in learning stuff at the bootcamp, it was appropriate to post the assignment here.

The course helped a lot to understand certain brain mechanisms regarding the learning process, and by growing some conscience around them, I guess it will help to rationalize and improve this process. Not only knowing about the Pomodoro technique is also really useful and focused on taking the max out of a direct approach to a problem, but I've understand more or less how a diffuse thinking process worked. As it happened a lot of times during the course and outside it, sometimes the solution is right there, but the cognitive focus needs to iterate over a lot of possible solutions, some completely meaningless, some plausible, until striking into something that may work. Taking some short breaks to do 'useless' stuff while keeping the mind still a little at work is a very good strategy to improve the rational function efficiency.

Visualizing information in a 'representation engineering' way also make things easier. I used the term 'engineering' over there because it has become clear to me that engineering is the art of conversion and functionality, and representing a concept in ways like an allegory or with a visual, graphic representation are sometimes the difference between full-comprehension and plain old memorizing (which is also something very useful to full-comprehension, but you get my point). This website is a very good example of that, with a lot of gifs representing in a graphical manner some mathematical concepts that takes classes and classes to explain in an alternative, simpler and clever way.

Last but not least, procrastination. I've always postponed to tomorrow the time when I would finally try to see how the procrastination process works, but the course material covering it on a very objective, well-explained manner in a way that only specialists in the best ways to learn could do, I've taken conscience of some vices in my behavior. The biggest 'cling' I guess was on the 'Process X Product' part, I guess I've always focused on the product, tried to comprehend a whole lot of new concepts at the same time to try to finish something quickly and this approach did not always work really well. By focusing on the product, setting internal deadlines as personal challenges to myself and other strategies, I'm beginning to maybe manage to overcome the procrastination process, or at least know how to do it when the method is needed.

Speaking of which, I still haven't posted about the end of Week 2, but this was due to Internet-connection issues, I'm posting this from the house I'm staying right now and will do the same thing for the blog post, after all, when I'm inside the bootcamp's office, it is best to focus on the code to avoid procrastinating.