80% of work is done by 20% of the people. 80% of sales comes from 20% of the customers, and so on. This rule can have a huge impact on all aspects of our lives. When you realise that you need to study only 20% of a subject to achieve 80% proficiency in it, learning suddenly seems so much simpler—if you don’t care too much about the remaining 20%.
If you want to learn a new language, here is some more good news. Most languages have around 250,000 words. However, to understand 50% of the language, you need to know the meanings of just about 1000 words. Mastering 2000 to 2500 words means you have acquired 80% proficiency in that language. This means you need to know a mere 1% of the words of a language to have an astounding 80% proficiency in it!
These 1000-2000 words can easily be learned in about six months. Of course, there are diminishing returns after this, and to have greater proficiency levels in a language could take years. The question is whether you really require that high a level of expertise.
Before you embark on your learning adventure, you will have to decide how deep you want to go down that figurative rabbit hole, and how much of your schedule you can devote to it. Be realistic about your goal and the amount of time you need to pursue it.
If you want a working knowledge of Ayurveda, enough to give a speech at a Rotary Club event, one to two hours daily for two or three days will suffice for your study. However, if you would like to treat common ailments using Ayurvedic medicines, you would need a lot more time, possibly an hour or two a day for a few months, along with expert guidance.
2. Graze
Once you have decided how much you want to learn about a particular subject, gather the material you think you would require to accomplish this. It could be a few books, some online resources, your own notes or someone else’s. Skim over all the material you have collected doing a cursory read. You are getting a rough idea about what you are getting into. Once you have done this, go back to step one to redefine your scope if required, and graze again.
3. The Initial Mind Map
Draw out a mind map including whatever you know and remember from your grazing, referring to your material minimally. This step will set the stage for further learning.
4. Fill in the Blanks
Go back to your study material and do a more detailed survey of it. You are still skimming, but this time paying more attention to elements such as chapter titles, paragraph headings, diagrams, summaries and whatever else catches your attention. Keep adding these as branches or nodes to your Initial Mind Map. Don’t worry about being neat and organising things. You only have to capture your scope into your Initial Mind Map. Get it all down on that paper.
5. The Foundation Mind Map
Tidy up the mind map from step 4. Organise all your information into relevant nodes. You will have created your Foundation Mind Map. It defines the scope of what you need to work on. You would mostly stay within the confines of this mind map for the remainder of your studying.
Phase II: The Focused Mind Map
This is the part where you will do detailed studying of your subject. Phase I will have provided you with what and how much you need to work on.
1. Detailing
Work on the nodes of the Foundation Mind Map. Study from your source material, this time doing a more thorough reading. Make notes. Gather your facts until you have detailed each node and its branches with as much information you feel you require.
Sometimes a node could be complex enough to become a mind map by itself. Other times, a node would be easier to work with as a separate mind map because that information could be the basis of many other nodes or mind maps. Work through your study material and create all the mind maps required.
Your Foundation Mind Map will have transformed into a Focused Mind Map(s). It should ideally give you a bird’s eye view and a worm’s eye view of your subject at once. If you have followed all the steps above, you will have created a fantastic pictorial representation of your subject. It will guarantee a logical collection of your thoughts and a thorough understanding of the topic. In times to come, you will be able to recall your work with minimal effort. It will allow you see in a few glances almost everything you need to know about your area of study.
2. Beautify
Now that you have more or less finished studying your subject, tidy up all your mind maps and beautify them keeping the 6 Cs in mind: Central idea, Conciseness, Curves, Colours, Cartoons and Craziness.
You may think this step should be optional. After all, isn’t this just cosmetic? Instead of ‘beautifying’, think ‘cementing’. Bringing the 6 Cs into your mind map will reinforce all that you have studied and embed them into your memory. Perhaps you may even get some amazing insights into your subject that never crossed your mind before.
3. Go Public
Use your knowledge and mind maps to write a blog post (or a series of posts) about what you learned.
4. Diving Deeper?
Optionally, if you feel you want to explore your subject further, go back to phase I, redefine your scope and repeat the steps above.
If what you have learned is important to you, reviewing it is critical. When you have finished Phase II to your satisfaction, revisit your mind maps and notes once a week for a month.
Apply the Feynman Technique to the knowledge you have acquired. Write out what you have learned, eliminating all jargon, so that even a novice can understand it. Better still, teach what you learned to a friend who has little or no idea about your subject. If you keep teaching what you have learned to others, you will be pleasantly surprised at how much you can remember.
It’s easy to fall prey to the illusion of competency—make sure that you redraw your mind maps from memory after a week, a month and a year. See how much you can recollect. Review everything: your original mind maps and notes, with a focus on what you may have forgotten.
After this, revisiting and refreshing your work once a year would be enough to cement this knowledge into your long-term memory.
AN EXAMPLE
Here is how I wrote the chapter on Memory using focused mind mapping. Please come back and re-read this section once you finish the chapter on Memory. It might make more sense.
Phase I: Creating the Foundation Mind Map
1. Scope: My target was around 5000 words on Memory, with a few techniques on how to improve it.
2. Grazing: I browsed through many books and online resources on the subject. Next, I spoke to Rajesh Krishnamurthy (Myla), a memory expert and a dear friend. He taught me the Memory Palace technique, the Spaced Repetition System (SRS) and ANKI. I practised these myself and taught the basics to a few friends. I experimented with other memory techniques such as The Link method, Mnemonics, The Journey or Story Method and The Major System which I picked up from the internet.
Rajesh gave me a stack of books to refer to. I researched about them and other books and finally picked three books: Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It by Gabriel Wyner, Brain Rules by Dr John Medina and The Memory Book by Harry Loryane and Jerry Lucas. I also referred to How to Memorise Anything by Aditi and Sudhir Singhal.
3. My Initial Mind Map (tidied up): This combines steps 3 and 4 together.
4. The Foundation Mind Map: I began writing a first draft of the chapter, simultaneously doing more experimenting with the memory techniques I had learned. I confined my reading to the nodes and topics on my Initial Mind Map and made a few decisions. The part on Memory and Sleep had to go. I had talked enough about sleep earlier in the book. I loved the Memory Palace technique and SRS. The other techniques were great, but there are many books out there detailing them. I could point my readers to good books on the subject.
I needed to create some interesting hooks and stories for my content. My Foundation Mind Map looked like this:
I was going to stick within the confines of this Mind Map as I wrote out the chapter, unless I came across something really compelling that I felt I just had to include.
I was read
y to move on to Phase II and start the actual writing of the chapter in earnest.
Phase II
1. Detailing
I couldn’t figure out how to start the chapter and hit a writer’s block for a few days. What to say first so I could draw my readers into the fascinating world of the Memory? I finally decided on the ‘walk in the jungle’ story that establishes the role of Memory in our survival as a species—this is how you are here, and alive, and reading this book! From there on it was fairly smooth sailing.
I put in the facts after that. Those facts needed to be there because I wanted people to realise that they forgot a lot by the time they got to the end of the chapter. I was confined to bed for almost a month because of a back injury while I was doing this part of the book. I had insane fun finding those facts on the internet and then spouting them out at all the people who came to visit me.
Kim Peek is a Memory Hero. His story just had to be there. I watched many YouTube videos on him to create those few paragraphs.
The search for where memory is in the brain was quite intriguing. I presented a quick snippet.
A bit about how memory works went in next. I could have done a book on this as many people have; I resisted the urge to write more, simply writing enough so I could establish that better memory = more neural connections. And more neural connections happen when what is happening is relevant to you. I added a paragraph about the preference of the brain to remember things that are out of the ordinary. Dinesh and his tsundokoing story went in here.
The Memory Palace technique was next on the agenda and took a long time to write. It’s so easy to teach, but to put it down in words and make it readable was quite a challenge. I hope you enjoy this section. It’s a lot of fun when you can make it work for you.
Then, I went on to talk about Forgetting: Hermann Ebbinghaus and the Forgetting curve. And how to get past the natural tendency of the brain to forget things using the SRS technique which I described very briefly, considering there is vast online data available about how to use it. I talked about the amazing software ANKI that almost flawlessly implements SRS and gave a nod to its generous developer Damien Elmen.
2. Beautifying (Editing?)
As I revised the chapter, I felt it needed one little goad to make it complete and that’s the section on the Test. It tied in beautifully with what I had talked about in the Brain chapter and our earlier book Ready, Study, Go!. It made perfect sense to introduce it here. Nothing better to drive home the point that dendrites grow for exactly what you do—something I feel we need to be constantly reminding ourselves about.
My final mind map looked like the image on p. 235.
I didn’t feel any need to beautify or add any more detail to this mind map. It served its purpose. I could write out and finalise my chapter. I must admit that I got caught up in writing that chapter, and many finishing touches on this mind map were done after I had finished writing it.
It is apt that we use mind maps, which are a fantastic tool for memorising, to remember things about the Memory!
3. Diving Deeper and Going Public
I didn’t feel the need to delve further into this subject for now. I had written 5278 words on Memory, exactly what I set out to do. I was satisfied with my effort. For going public, I asked a few people to read the chapter, and they loved it. More of the going public phase would happen when you read this book.
Chapter 10
MEMORY
It’s a few thousand years ago. You are walking along in the jungle, and out of the corner of your eye you spy a suspicious movement. Your attention is drawn to it and suddenly your body is on red alert. Your brain releases its cocktail of chemicals to get you ready for fight or flight. We talked about all this in the chapter on the Brain. Ever wondered why the brain releases those chemicals? Why would that movement in the bushes make it happen?
The brain remembers similar incidents and their consequences. The last time a movement like this had happened, there was a hungry predator intent on making lunch out of you. You had managed to escape. Your brain remembers this and reacts accordingly.
Memory just saved your life, and made sure you didn’t become some sort of a genetic mistake—and our species went on to rule planet Earth.
Some Cool, Random Facts
‘Ane’ is the French word for donkey, ‘Punae’ is cat in Tamil, and ‘Perro’ is Spanish for dog.
The stapedius is the smallest muscle in the human body.
Tsundoku is the act of acquiring books without reading them.
If you had a Premature Extraventricular Systole, it means your heart just skipped a beat.
Queen Elizabeth II is a trained mechanic.
The Russians showed up 12 days late for the 1898 Olympics in London because they were following the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian one.
An average dog can understand up to 250 words.
If you had an Autosomal dominant Compelling Helio Opthalmic Outburst (ACHOO), you sneezed on seeing light.
A banana is a berry.
If you force a sneeze with eyes open, your eyeballs could fall out.
The plastic bit on the tip of a shoelace is called an aglet.
By the time you finish reading this book, chances are that you will have forgotten almost all of these facts. What would be the point of learning something new if we are simply going to forget it?! My biggest frustration in the process of learning stemmed from my memory not behaving itself. Many times, I would remember useless bits of information and forget critical things. For any sort of learning to happen efficiently, we need to understand how memory works. Figuring out how and why we remember stuff will help us remember stuff better.
Meet Kim Peek
The undisputed King of Remembering was a man called Kim Peek and nothing written about memory would be complete without a mention of him. The blockbuster film Rain Man was based on a fictitious person like him. He was a savant and had one of the most incredible, prodigious memories recorded in recent times. He remembered everything. Forever. He would read eight books a day. And remember every single word of every single line. He would read two pages at a time, one with each eye. He would go to the public library in his hometown of Salt Lake City and sit and read and read and read. He knew every single postal code in the US, every single street name. He knew historical and geographical facts that would put Google to shame. He knew the lyrics to thousands of songs. He was a repository of all the scores of every single baseball player of the last few decades. If you told him your birthday, he could tell you in an instant what day of the week you were born. I can go on. . . but you get the drift.
Kim was born deformed. His cerebellum was damaged. The corpus callosum in his brain was missing and there was almost no connection between the left and right hemispheres of his brain. The neurosurgeon, who saw his reports as a baby, took a cursory look at them and advised his parents to give him off to an institution and forget about him, remarking that he was late for his game of golf.
Fran, his father, didn’t listen to the doctor and brought him home. Fran took care of Kim for more than 30 years. Though Kim had a phenomenal memory, brushing his teeth, taking a bath and other simple motor skills were beyond him. Fran helped Kim with all these daily tasks of life.
When Fran was asked in an interview about what it was like to take care of Kim, he replied it’s like working 30 hours a day, 10 days a week! It’s a testament to a father’s indefatigable love for his son that the world got to witness the power that a human memory can have. Kim died in 2009. During the last years of his life, he acquired many abilities that he shouldn’t have had, being a savant. Scientists from many universities in the US are still figuring out what was going on inside Kim’s head—as well as in ours.
Memories Are Connections
Scientists began the search for where memories are stored in brain cells in the early 1940s by doing some fairly brutal experiments on rats. The rats learned how to navigate a maze. Then the scientists cut off parts o
f the rats’ brains to see if the rats forgot the maze, hoping that they could therefore pinpoint where the rats were storing information. No matter how much of the brain was cut away, the rats still managed to find their way through the maze. This approach was abandoned by 1950.
It was then that the search for memory went to the junctions between the cells rather than the cells themselves. We saw in Brain 101 that learning something is simply making sure that a certain bunch of neurons and their dendrites fire their synapses in a particular sequence forming a neural circuit. This circuit represents that bit of information.
Remembering that bit of information is getting all those neurons to fire again in the same way.
The maze was all over the brain of the rat. There is no central place in the brain like the hard drive of a computer where memories are stored. Data related to every experience is spread across the brain.
The Vitamix is a powerful blender with the motor of a small bike. Its blades move so fast that through sheer friction, it can heat up water to boiling point in a few minutes. Imagine putting several chunks of an assortment of fruit in a blender like this. Leave the lid open and switch it on at full speed. Pause for a bit and picture the mess. . .
Incredibly, our brain does much the same thing when it encounters new information. It slices, dices and splatters bits of information all around itself.
Most of what we experience involves many or all of our senses.
Just reading this line will involve your visual, tactile, olfactory and possibly your aural ability. Your eyes are processing the letters, your hands are feeling the book or reading device you are reading this line on. Your nose smells that new book/old book smell, and your ears are detecting noises around you. If you are munching on something, then the taste and smell of that snack are added to the mix. The processing of all these senses happens all over the brain. Even for each particular sense, processing of specific bits is done in different parts. The vertical lines of a picture are in one place, the horizontal in another. Colour occupies yet another. And so on. . . The brain takes whatever we encounter and chucks it all over the place, to make sense of it for us.
Happiness Express Page 16