Types of thinking

There are two kinds of thinking, one of extreme concentration, where the brain focusses on a subject and tries to solve a puzzle.
There is also another kind of thinking, one which is diffused and is more at a wider grander scope and view.

Both these types of thinking has their merit and their place in learning things.

Ideas and thoughts can be understood as patterns of neural paths that represent it. There are millions of billions of neural synapses that can interconnect with each other to represent an idea or a thought.

Types of memory

There is the working memory which has limited ability in terms of the number of things it can hold. Its understood there is about four items that can be held by a brain at one time. One way to supercharge it is if there are chunks of ideas that are formed, which can abstract out the detail and feel like a single item.

There is the long term memory that holds information as patterns in long term storage.

key points

The change from working memory to long term memory needs to be conscious and practiced. There are other texts that imply that a emotional idea or thought can trigger this movement - part of the reason why advertising tries to appeal to a certain emotion.

These working memory are patterns that are understood. These paths are often more solid as these memories are triggered or used multiple times.

Care needs to be taken that these are no so firmed up that it blocks any new connections or patterns. This is a trick and maybe a super power since I am no expert on anything.

The way to trigger and retrieve these ideas and patterns need to be trained of the brain. This is where attempts to retrieve the ideas help the brain learn.

On finding New Ideas

Particularly when finding new thinking, ideas or thoughts, the diffused mode of thinking is where the brain plays backs thinking and ideas and forms or jumps to surprising connections and conclusions. These jumps are the basis of new ideas and new thinking.

There is an understanding that one learns more quickly when the brain oscillates between focussed and diffused thinking. When thinking in a focussed fashion on a problem, and allowing the brain to slip to diffused thinking, the brain retains these thoughts and ideas and plays back new connections and ideas.

Creatives often have interesting ways by which to retrieve such ideas, since they are not in conciousness and are lost unless retrieved. Dali an impressionist painter used to hold a bunch of keys that fell on the floor as soon as he relaxed and dosed off, allowing him to grasp the ideas and thoughts that he had. Edison held ball bearings for the same reason. The professor of neurology was shown to run and exercise to get the brain into the diffused mode. There was a New Yorker article referenced that talked about gym and weight lifting, walking and drive trips that triggered such diffused thinking.

On Concentrating or Learning

For any task that the brain perceives as unsavoury, the brain triggers chemicals that stimulate a feeling of pain. This causes the brain to help change the subject of concentration to something else so that the pain is removed.

This is the basis of procrastination. As the life saying goes, you can do anything, but not everything. How do we get the brain to do the unsavoury but necessary task at hand?

  1. There is the Pomodoro technique.
    Focus with one task.
    Remove distractions.
    Limit to 25 mins - use the timer.
    Stop with a reward on successful completion.

  2. Recall Thinking back on the subject matter and trying to remember what was read and understood is a technique. The same reason this is being written down.

  3. Spaced Repetition - testing Creating cue cards with questions and ideas that are tested to ensure that the idea is understood and remembered.

Chemical and the Brain

Dophamine - in response to an unexpected reward Serotocotin - risk taking behaviour - high on alpha males Acy something - relates to thinking deeply

Need to get the names right, but essentially, these trigger in relation to certain physical or perceived actions.

Chunking

I understand it as an abstraction technique.
Where an idea or a chain of ideas are constructed in the brain for certain tasks or puzzles.

How do we trigger chunking?

  • By studying the material and thinking about it
  • Deliberate practice - conscious practice that involves ideas and study of things that are harder
  • Understanding the material
  • Understanding the material in the context of the larger scheme of things
  • Knowing when to use and when not to use these ideas

In the larger context, we learn by trying things out. The material that is read and learnt need to be applied. Changing the strategies and experimenting and interrogating how these ideas work allow for better understanding - which in turn allow for better chunking of ideas.

The key to effective chunking is to not have an isolated bit of information, but having information with the metadata understanding of how it can interact.

This is very similar to the design patterns that we have in software architecture.

Other thoughts

The working memory of the brain often rely on such chunks or ideas in the long term memory to solve and sort puzzles.