📝Learning How to Learn

Shortly after graduating from the University of Waterloo, I ventured on to the world of online courses looking to learn new materials that interests me. I believe continuous improvement and the ability to develop new skills are essential to personal growth.

A friend of mine mentioned a course called Learning How to Learn by Dr. Barbara Oakley from Coursera during his journey in becoming a developer. The course is based from her book called A Mind for Numbers . I read the book at my own pace since I have already enrolled in multiple online courses for other materials and want to reduce staring at my computer for longer than I would have to.

I wanted to learn how to learn because I want to be able to make the most out of my Pomodoro's which are only 25 minutes of intense focus. I have confidently been able to break my time up into these blocks but now I want make them more efficient. If I had read this book earlier, I probably wouldn't have struggled as much as I did in post-secondary!

There are many topics covered in this book; I realized I had used some of the techniques but couldn't explain why they worked until now. I also discovered many new techniques that I know would have been much more effective for certain courses.

Now that I'm done school, I kind of wished I had read this before undergrad. I'm actually using these techniques to learn new materials, especially in computer science and in programming. I remember having these weird moments in programming where I'd solve a problem in my dream, the book considers this a "diffused" mode of learning.

Our brain didn't come with an instruction manual, but definitely has a lot of amazing abilities that this book talks about. A Mind for Numbers cover many effective learning techniques that takes practitioners years to learn. I'm excited to finish Dr. Barbara Oakley book and apply it to future learning prospects.

The book is simply for people who do not excel at math or science or for professionals who have a background in STEM education that can benefit from learning new techniques to greatly improve existing skills and learn new ones. Lastly, it is also for those looking to learn as the book covers the simplest, most effective, and most efficient techniques that researchers know about how to learn.