Final Project: Learn by teaching others how to learn
Overlearning,
Choking, Einstellung, and Interleaving. Learning and Habits.
Foreword
My main concern in Learning how
to learn is to better understand how the learning process works in Human
beings.
As an English Teacher and Ontological coach I have of late observed that
in my preparation as a Coach, the learning/teaching process per-se was somewhat
overlooked. Save in our first year where we were taught about neurosciences, we
had later on, little formation as to how we functioned and why we behave the
way we do, hence my interest in Learning
how to Learn.
What I expect to be able to do with
the knowledge gained is to begin to apply it as a High School teacher, and both
as a Professional Ontological Coach and ultimately enter the world of Sports
Coaching.
Overlearning, Choking, Einstellung, and Interleaving
In his Book “The Pressure Principle”, elite performance coach Dave Alred
explains how rugby or soccer players have to re-learn about body balance and
posture; not only that, but how their legs should follow through when kicking
and most importantly, what statements to
make about their future performance before a World Cup final or the final round in a golf competition. They write
these statements down, in their neural nets, new belief systems are firmly set
in place, getting ready for elite competition.
Overlearning, Choking, Einstellung, and Interleaving are all notions that
are taken into consideration.
Alred knows about and performs practice
focused learning but is also aware of working on chunks. Chunks are pieces of
information bound together through meaning or use. In training sessions jumping
from one activity - focusing on them like with the Pommodoro system- but then jumping from one to the other will prove to be
much greatly effective. This is a structured repetition of small chunks, for example, if
Alred were to work on getting more distance on the kicks, this would be
chunking applied, working for a set period of time on acquiring the knowledge
in an specific area.
But for how long to work on each
task?
https://cdn2.coachmag.co.uk/sites/coachmag/files/styles/16x9_540/public/2016/04/dave_alred_jonny_wilkinson.jpg?itok=P0rbjVih×tamp=1461141589
As was mentioned in the course:
The reality is, once
you've got the basic idea down during a session, continuing to hammer away at
it during the same session doesn't
strengthen the kinds of long term memory connections you want to have
strengthened.
Overlearning
Overlearning, some say is a positive way to obtain mastery but it can be
misleading.
When Overlearning there may be gray
areas, aspects that need to be perfected and remain unseen, in short,
overlearning can lead to the idea that mastery
has been acquired, an illusion, that it has “all” been mastered when
what has actually been mastered is just the easy stuff. What will bear greater
fruit is focusing on that which is found to be more difficult.
This then is Deliberate practice, focusing on the more difficult
material will allow fopr greater progress and covering all areas of knowledge
required for true mastery of the content. Neural nets are strengthened, the
information in our brains is no longer fuzzy and apt to disappear but rather
solid and fixed.
What then?
Once this focused learning or
overlearning does lead to true mastery, once those neural connections have been
strengthened, there are other factors to consider, namely putting all the
pieces into action.
An example of this is performed in Rugby. As a team, rugbiers perform the
Captain's
run, the training session on the day before a big game.
A Captain's
Run is a training session which is led by the team captain rather than by a coach. Traditionally, it takes place the day
before the game. The Captain's
Run is an important element of the build up for
the squads. Captain's runs are never seen as that important - as they are a short
session to experience the stadium and the field - but they do set a tone. Here, training is different to the focused training sessions; the
captain puts into practice what was learnt in prior training sessions and it is
quite informal. Allowing the activity to
flow stress free.
How productive is it?
What it does help to prevent is Choking: entering the
stadium the day before, imagining it full of people, entering the field,
touching the ball, all these previous experiences avoid the choke.
What is
Choking?
Call it stage fright or anxiety, choking is the
moment when the brain tends to shut down, get stuck and paralyzed. Everything
around us seems to narrow down, get slightly darker, noises are more distantm,
we hear our hearts, we don´t know what to do.
What to do?
How to deal with this?
Train for it, find focused solutions, work in
different ways and with different perspectives.
Einstellung
A good example of this is also found in Alred´s book where he explains
how he trained kicker Johnny Wilkinson and corrected his body posture
assuming a “Posture of Command”, a
different posture to Wilkinson´s, an
upright posture, balanced and centered which allowed him to move differently.
Einstellung is ,simply
put,like a roadblock that stops you from seeing a new, better solution.
Einstellung is the blockade that
Wilkinson overcame, by creating this new neural pattern
Wilkinson developed a better
solution to his effective, but not superior, performance.
A less tiring , more effective
,greater distance producing kick, for example.
If not for his coach, Wilkinson would have done a solely focused activity,
repeating the same style of kick over and over, falling into a rut that would
prevent him from finding something more effective.
He would basically have been stuck in a mindset (Einstellung) a zombie-
like, behavior let´s say- without ever creating a change. The key here for both
Alred and Wilkinson was to unlearn, to deconstruct certain thinking routines
and even physical behaviors and move on to new, more effective ones.
.
Interleaving
We mentioned previously,
the Captain´s Run and rugby training sessions, where different forms of
training are applied. Interleaving is also used during sports training,
where jumping back and forth between
specific training activities, such as line outs, or tackles, or scrums helps
reach more effective and productive results.
These activities require different techniques
or strategies; the coach proposes different problematics that call for different solutions from the players, the
idea is for the brain to get accustomed , to learn apply different problem solving techniques, helping for a
deeper ,more effective style of learning.
As was stated in the
course
“Although practice and
repetition is important in helping build solid neural patterns to draw on, it's
interleaving that
starts building flexibility and creativity It's where you leave the world of
practice and repetition, and begin
thinking more independently.”
thinking more independently.”
“When you interleave within one subject or one
discipline, you begin to develop your creative power within that discipline.
When you interleave between several subjects or disciplines, you can more easily make interesting
new connections between chunks in the different fields, which can enhance your
creativity even further. “
This is the reason why
sports coaches observe other coaches form different disciplines, they develop and
bring in expertise from different fields, acquiring new ideas and enriching the
team´s know- how and increasing their problem solving abilities.
This interdisciplinary
learning keeps you creative, passionate and youthful, all very positive and
healthy for the brain.
But what if we can´t
get off the couch?
Distractions,Procrastination, why
generate good habits
Essentially the school of Chilean Biologist Humberto
Maturana teaches us in his Autopoiesis that:
The term autopoiesis (from Greek αὐτo- (auto-), meaning
'self', and ποίησις (poiesis), meaning 'creation, production') refers to a
system capable of reproducing and maintaining itself. The original definition
can be found in Autopoiesis and Cognition: the Realization of the Living (1st
edition 1973, 2nd 1980):[1]
Page 16: It was in these circumstances ... in which he
analyzed Don Quixote's dilemma of whether to follow the path of arms (praxis,
action) or the path of letters (poiesis, creation, production), I understood
for the first time the power of the word "poiesis" and invented the
word that we needed: autopoiesis. This was a word without a history, a word
that could directly mean what takes place in the dynamics of the autonomy
proper to living systems.
Page 78: An autopoietic machine is a machine organized
(defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation
and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and
transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes
(relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a
concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the
topological domain of its realization as such a network.[2]
On the other hand,In his Blog,
Dr. Joe Dispenza tells us:
“Knowledge and information. If we’re not taking the time to contemplate what we want,
to write things down and learn new information, then how do we know what’s
possible? If we’re not filling our brains with knowledge, then
we won’t know the dream job exists…, or create something out of nothing—and
therefore, we’re not even aware of the possibility. Knowledge and information
are the very raw materials of creation.”
“You’ve heard me say knowledge is the precursor to experience. Put in
other words, knowledge is the foundation that allows us to dream bigger. The
more knowledge we gain—the more we read or learn about people who have done
what we’re setting out to do—the more inspired we are to make the possibility
become a reality.”
(Neuroscientist
Joe Dispenza, … received
his Doctor of Chiropractic Degree from Life University in
Atlanta, Georgia, graduating magna cum laude. His postgraduate education has
been in neurology, neuroscience, brain function and chemistry, cellular
biology, memory formation, and aging and longevity.)
Here
then is when it all gets more
interesting.
We
find that we are:
Beings
that have the faculty of Autopoiesis: ”
…organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production
(transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions
and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of
processes (relations) that produced them”
That when something is made manifest, ideas come
into the world not only by oral manifestation but become realities in our
brains, we create new neural paths and thoughts, concepts upheld by Echeverria
from the world of Philosophy and Ontological Coaching, as well as Dr.Joe
Dispenza in the world of Neuroscience.
It
seems then that we have much at hand but we are unable to harness al this power
we have.
Distractions,Procrastination,not
knowing the essentials of our own (well) being, how we operate, not knowing how
to hack into our own systems, ultimately generates frustration and sadness, even
depression.
As a
result, putting all these elements together makes us more powerful human
beings, more dynamic, more able to understand ourselves and do that one thing
which leads us to a better life, the one thing that we human beings cannot do
without: progress.
Progress
leads to positivity to optimism, to a
better world and there can be none of this without learning.
We are
unable to put any of these “SuperPowers” to good use if we cannot deal with
Procrastination, if we cannot get ourselves up from the couch or focus for the
right amount of time to learn something new, to generate these new pathways,
these new positive Routines that will spur us on to new, improved realities.
HABITS
As we observed, the 4 parts involved in creating these new habits
involve
1.The cue
2.The routine
3.The reward
4.The belief
Especially in a world with more and more screens and distractions,
getting into a state of flow will become increasingly difficult, hence adopting
routines that help focus rather than increase distraction, become fundamental.
In his Ted talk,(
https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en)
Hungarian-American Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains how this state
of Flow works, how we enter a heightened sensorial state and deep concentration
where our brains are super-performing; but we cannot reach this level if we
cannot elaborate the proper routines prior to entering the state.
The Cue is that which impedes taking those first steps,
these are the prior, habitual steps which we regularly take as part of our
procrastinating routine.
The Routine
We may
decide to watch another episode of
“Swat” before tackling a paper we have to write, knowing this will take
us all the way into dinner time, and
having to prepare it and only having a few minutes left before going to
bed-because our system starts to shut down- hence having very little time left
to write the paper and leaving it, once again, for tomorrow. This is the Zombie
mode, the routine, the numb unproductive flow of things that we fall into
automatically and get us back -or rather keep us- on square one.
The
solution would be to not even get close to the T.V. and head straight for the
computer. Prior to that, getting a glass of water, some cookies or crackers and
going to the toilet before getting started, all typical “excuses” or “tricks”-the different cues- the brain
might resort to in order to get us out of doing what we really should be doing,
getting our buttocks onto the chair.
The Reward
A new
stimulus surges in the brain, a new pathway, the neural nets find pleasure in
something different. Before, “Swat” was the reward for a long day at the office
but now, the pleasure of getting things done and short-in between rewards- make
us feel good too.
The
Pommodoro technique, by which we assign a time for full- on focusing, -once a 25
minute lapse, another of maybe 20 minutes-, allows us to now get things done in
stints, getting chunks of information into our brains.
After
these 20/25 minutes, a chocolate, a stroll even, with some time off, the brain
can now change modes, de-contract and get ready for another short round of
Pommodoro to get things done.
These
short occasional stints are much more effective than an all- out,5 hour study
session de day prior to examinations where memory cannot withhold information.
The belief (and the other books I have on my desk)
Finally the Belief.
I have on my desk “Legacy” by
James Kerr, “Catching the Big Fish” by David Lynch, “The Creative Spirit” by
Daniel Goleman, “Emotions and feelings” by Daniel Lopez Rosetti, “Titans” by
Tim Ferris, “Leadership” by Sir Alex Ferguson and my favourite, “Brave New
World” by Guillem Balague/Mauricio Pochettino.
An assortment of books that deal with transformation of individuals, in
one way or another involving the same
topic.
They are all dealing with human beings, they are or have been leaders or
in touch with leaders, or have led themselves, be it in the arts, in sport, in
medicine.
They have all learnt about or created routines that have allowed them to
make movies, successfully lead teams, train managers and treat patients. They
are or have been more or less capable of learning and teaching others. They
have understood that beliefs can be transferred but they have believed in
themselves before anyone else did.
Dr Oakley states:
“Habits have power because of your belief in them. Finding ways to reward good study habits is
important for escaping procrastination.(But) good habits can also be rewarded.
To change a habit, you'll need to change your
underlying belief.”
In order to learn, be it through diffused
or focused learning, to better tap into our creativity as Dali or Lynch
would do or to remember the facts we need for our science paper, or to
concentrate before a penalty kick, we previously need to create new routines,
good habits that will get us somewhere new.
The possibility of learning, of improved learning allows us to reach for
someplace different, it will ultimately allow us to keep up our good spirits,
to stay us positive and believe that something better, a different future, is
possible through learning.
What seems crucial to all of the above is then only one thing.
Belief.
