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I have finished the "Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects by Dr. Barbara Oakley, Dr. Terrence Sejnowski"  and I can assure you that it is great! I really hope that everyone else watch videos from the course. My own TLDR: When you read or learn - user recall. It is super effective! Use Pomodoro to focus Use Pomodoro breaks to go to diffusive mode to make more creative connections in the brain. Exercise - it helps your neurons survive and learn. It is good to trigger diffusive mode as well. Create your own metaphors and analogies (especially visual ones) Test yourself, reading everything like a novel is not enough (at least use recall). It is ok to learn something, drop it and go back to it after some time. Next time it will be easier.  Process over Product Two biggest takeaways from the course are: Stop reading books like novels, at least use recall after each page or chapter. I was reading books without re...

Yesterday I have started a new course at Coursera. This time about learning.  Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects by Dr. Barbara Oakley, Dr. Terrence Sejnowski One of the most interesting ideas come from a short list that is in the center of reading materials:  10 Rules of Good Studying . Idea that was also one of most important one in the newsletter of Scott H. Young . What is it? Use a recall. After you read a page tell to yourself what it was about.  When I think about it I know that I used this method at school at it worked wonders. Bad thing about graduation is that I lost most of the context, deadlines and subjects to learn that were given to me. Even after I went back to learning I forgot about my most important methods. Another simple and great idea form the course is Pomodoro. This simple technique makes it super easy for me to work. Without it, I procrastinate a lot. There is always email to check, ...

Around October last year I started learning:  upper-intermediate-english  course on memrise . It took me a really long time to finish it despite fast progress at first. Course is really long (962 items) and during learning you need to refresh words you have learned. It was really challenging to learn from half of course to the end. There was always something easier to do but finally I have finished it. Of course I still need to refresh those words, especially those I have learned recently but I really feel proud of myself. As of course itself it's obviously long. Good thing that most of words have attached pronunciation and a couple of times I was really surprised so it is useful. Sometimes explanations aren't clear enough so I know without remembering it exactly which from similar words suits which explanation. So I started to think what next. I have practiced bunch of words but they are just words, it's not that I'm using them. Some time ago I have added...

Pretty short and fun book about short skill acquisition. I recommend reading it as it's really short book and first part is really about method and rest are examples of using it so you can read only the ones you are interested in. Reminder for me: "Ten Principles" Research the skill and related topics. Jump in over your head. Identify mental models and mental hooks. Imagine the opposite of what you want. Talk to practitioners to set expectations. Eliminate distractions in your environment.  Use spaced repetition and reinforcement for memorization.  Create scaffolds and checklists. Make and test predictions. Honor your biology. I really like the idea of choosing one project for a month and learning new skill in the process. This is something I haven't tried and as an experiment I really want to finish most of my pending tasks and try it. Rating: 8/10  (but remember to not read it from cover to cover :)

Recently I found post at lifehacker.com about learning new language base vocabulary (1000 most common words) and they mentioned nice site to learn:  http://www.memrise.com/ Features that I think are awesome: Idea of planting a flower in your head when learing First learn then repeat. Memes created by users to help you Many courses Works fast and looks awesome :) source:  http://lifehacker.com/5962099/memorize-the-1000-most-common-words-in-a-language-before-immersing-yourself-in-it