Water wears away a stone
A long time ago I wrote an article on Habr called “Intensity is more important than thoroughness” about the fact that it is better to increase the number of attempts to do something than the duration of one attempt. Now I want to add this thought.
The basic idea: divide the work into working sessions in such a way as to increase the number of attempts to solve the problem. Instead of long work over six hours, it is often preferable to do three sessions of two hours each. Instead of three hours, sometimes it makes sense to do three sessions by the hour.
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To freely use new knowledge, you need to get used to it. A habit, as you know, is a matter of time. In the book Learning How to Learn (or on a wonderful course on Coursera) information blocks are called chunks, and the course is about their formation. It takes time, which in practice cannot be significantly accelerated.
First, we learn what natural numbers are, then integers, then rational, then real numbers. Then we study limits, then derivatives, then integrals, then topology, then analysis on manifolds, and so on. For each next step, we need to understand the previous one and take it as an information unit. When I say “diversity”, for me it is an information unit, and for a student it is an information googol: a Hausdorff topological space in which each point has a neighborhood homeomorphic to blah blah. I remember the moment when for the first time I was able to say out loud the “tensor work” without internal discomfort. It took me a long time .
Therefore, it is so important to divide the training into sessions. Give yourself time to get used to the new material. When we read a complex concept and try to immediately wield her mind, we are confronted with a lack of habit. The great John von Neumann said that we do not understand mathematics, we get used to it. (It is easy to believe if we recall that real numbers are often defined as equivalence classes of limits of rational numbers.)
This is one of the reasons why students are advised to go to scientific seminars at the academy. Even if they do not understand anything, they become accustomed to the use of words, to theorems and even surnames. And when a student reads in a textbook what he once heard at a seminar, he has an internal “oh, I am familiar with it!”, And it becomes easier to learn. In the absence of a habit, the new information looks alien, and we need even more time to absorb it.
Another worth noting is the role of sleep in organizing information. Given time, it is useful to divide the sessions on different days in order to take advantage of the brain's amazing ability to put in order the knowledge gained during the day during “a short coma with hallucinations and partial paralysis of the body”. The morning is wiser than the evening!
Another reason is the opportunity to take a fresh look at the tasks. After a break, rest, distraction, or sleep, we proceed to the task in a slightly different state, with a different set of thoughts, and we can see what we did not notice at an emphasis earlier. Surely everyone had a moment when the simple task of programming could not be solved for hours, and then the solution appeared for no reason.
And this is one of the reasons why it is so inefficient to do work on the day (the night?) Before the deadline. Working for 8–12 hours in a row on one project, we lose the opportunity to work on it “several times”, we have a glimpse of our eyes, and we miss the original solutions. Moreover, due to the general fatigue, we can make stupid mistakes and not notice them. In general, it is better not to do so.
Sharing work at sessions, and starting to work several times, we give the opportunity to express ideas to different people: to who we are on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday ... Moreover, while doing other projects, we will learn new things that can sometimes be unexpectedly apply in regular session.
Say, if you write a project, then go to reading the book “Perfect Code”, and then return to the project, you can fix the style and architecture in time before it is too late. And vice versa, reading a book will be more beneficial, because you use her advice with a specific example.
If you add a small number many times with you, the amount will exceed a large number.
Another reason for the effectiveness of the division of work into sessions is the availability of small parts. The following examples are stupidly simple, and I want to immediately reject them because of their banality, but they are extremely effective. Probably everyone can convince himself that he has 5 minutes of free time every day. After all, you can just wake up five minutes earlier!
A book of a thousand pages seems out of reach for many. However, if you read only three pages every day (10 minutes in the morning before breakfast), reading a book will take a year. I'm sorry, what? Long? Better long than never.
If every day you learn exactly one word in English, and during the day keep it in your head (or glue a sticker with a word on a laptop), 365 words will be typed in a year. According to my calculations, this is 365 words more than nothing.
Solve one problem, write one paragraph of text, watch one video on the Coursera, do ten repetitions on the press and so on. And then the Archimedes axiom will do everything for you.
Suppose you say that you do not have five minutes of time in the morning to read a book. Take two minutes or even one. Read the book while brushing your teeth. If we lower the bar to indecently simple, psychological discomfort will force us to perform this small portion. It’s better to read one page every day than not to read ten every day.
To make the article more applied, I suggest the following:
If you are a student, and you have homework in several subjects, do not allocate one day for analysis and another for algebra. It is better to devote half a day to analysis, and half a day to algebra. And on the second day also. Then you start the tasks twice, possible solutions will scroll through your head during sleep, and the next day it will be easier to solve the problems.
If you are working and you have several projects, work on deadlines. Having figured out by what time a project needs to be completed and estimating time for projects, it is possible to break up the work on them into separate sessions and work on several projects alternately during the day, which will make it possible to take advantage of the above-mentioned advantages. It is not necessary, if there are five projects, to divide each day into five parts, but it is quite acceptable to spend time every day on two or three different things depending on the deadlines.
If you want to read a book, but you do not have time for it, you may have time for it. Put the book on the phone or before the alarm before bedtime. When you wake up, take a book, sit away from the bed and read the 3 pages before you start your day. Most likely, another day you will read more than three pages or return to the book some evening. But even in this case, do not forget to read the new three pages in the new morning. Sooner or later, the book will end.
As an exercise, it is proposed to transfer these recommendations to your activities :)
PS These tips are applicable for understanding non-trivial material, organizing new concepts in the head and solving original problems. If for six hours you need to hand out leaflets, then this can be done in one sitting.
The basic idea: divide the work into working sessions in such a way as to increase the number of attempts to solve the problem. Instead of long work over six hours, it is often preferable to do three sessions of two hours each. Instead of three hours, sometimes it makes sense to do three sessions by the hour.
')
Information blocks (chunks)
To freely use new knowledge, you need to get used to it. A habit, as you know, is a matter of time. In the book Learning How to Learn (or on a wonderful course on Coursera) information blocks are called chunks, and the course is about their formation. It takes time, which in practice cannot be significantly accelerated.
First, we learn what natural numbers are, then integers, then rational, then real numbers. Then we study limits, then derivatives, then integrals, then topology, then analysis on manifolds, and so on. For each next step, we need to understand the previous one and take it as an information unit. When I say “diversity”, for me it is an information unit, and for a student it is an information googol: a Hausdorff topological space in which each point has a neighborhood homeomorphic to blah blah. I remember the moment when for the first time I was able to say out loud the “tensor work” without internal discomfort. It took me a long time .
Therefore, it is so important to divide the training into sessions. Give yourself time to get used to the new material. When we read a complex concept and try to immediately wield her mind, we are confronted with a lack of habit. The great John von Neumann said that we do not understand mathematics, we get used to it. (It is easy to believe if we recall that real numbers are often defined as equivalence classes of limits of rational numbers.)
This is one of the reasons why students are advised to go to scientific seminars at the academy. Even if they do not understand anything, they become accustomed to the use of words, to theorems and even surnames. And when a student reads in a textbook what he once heard at a seminar, he has an internal “oh, I am familiar with it!”, And it becomes easier to learn. In the absence of a habit, the new information looks alien, and we need even more time to absorb it.
Another worth noting is the role of sleep in organizing information. Given time, it is useful to divide the sessions on different days in order to take advantage of the brain's amazing ability to put in order the knowledge gained during the day during “a short coma with hallucinations and partial paralysis of the body”. The morning is wiser than the evening!
Different people
Another reason is the opportunity to take a fresh look at the tasks. After a break, rest, distraction, or sleep, we proceed to the task in a slightly different state, with a different set of thoughts, and we can see what we did not notice at an emphasis earlier. Surely everyone had a moment when the simple task of programming could not be solved for hours, and then the solution appeared for no reason.
And this is one of the reasons why it is so inefficient to do work on the day (the night?) Before the deadline. Working for 8–12 hours in a row on one project, we lose the opportunity to work on it “several times”, we have a glimpse of our eyes, and we miss the original solutions. Moreover, due to the general fatigue, we can make stupid mistakes and not notice them. In general, it is better not to do so.
Sharing work at sessions, and starting to work several times, we give the opportunity to express ideas to different people: to who we are on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday ... Moreover, while doing other projects, we will learn new things that can sometimes be unexpectedly apply in regular session.
Say, if you write a project, then go to reading the book “Perfect Code”, and then return to the project, you can fix the style and architecture in time before it is too late. And vice versa, reading a book will be more beneficial, because you use her advice with a specific example.
Archimedes axiom
If you add a small number many times with you, the amount will exceed a large number.
Another reason for the effectiveness of the division of work into sessions is the availability of small parts. The following examples are stupidly simple, and I want to immediately reject them because of their banality, but they are extremely effective. Probably everyone can convince himself that he has 5 minutes of free time every day. After all, you can just wake up five minutes earlier!
A book of a thousand pages seems out of reach for many. However, if you read only three pages every day (10 minutes in the morning before breakfast), reading a book will take a year. I'm sorry, what? Long? Better long than never.
If every day you learn exactly one word in English, and during the day keep it in your head (or glue a sticker with a word on a laptop), 365 words will be typed in a year. According to my calculations, this is 365 words more than nothing.
Solve one problem, write one paragraph of text, watch one video on the Coursera, do ten repetitions on the press and so on. And then the Archimedes axiom will do everything for you.
Suppose you say that you do not have five minutes of time in the morning to read a book. Take two minutes or even one. Read the book while brushing your teeth. If we lower the bar to indecently simple, psychological discomfort will force us to perform this small portion. It’s better to read one page every day than not to read ten every day.
Applications
To make the article more applied, I suggest the following:
If you are a student, and you have homework in several subjects, do not allocate one day for analysis and another for algebra. It is better to devote half a day to analysis, and half a day to algebra. And on the second day also. Then you start the tasks twice, possible solutions will scroll through your head during sleep, and the next day it will be easier to solve the problems.
If you are working and you have several projects, work on deadlines. Having figured out by what time a project needs to be completed and estimating time for projects, it is possible to break up the work on them into separate sessions and work on several projects alternately during the day, which will make it possible to take advantage of the above-mentioned advantages. It is not necessary, if there are five projects, to divide each day into five parts, but it is quite acceptable to spend time every day on two or three different things depending on the deadlines.
If you want to read a book, but you do not have time for it, you may have time for it. Put the book on the phone or before the alarm before bedtime. When you wake up, take a book, sit away from the bed and read the 3 pages before you start your day. Most likely, another day you will read more than three pages or return to the book some evening. But even in this case, do not forget to read the new three pages in the new morning. Sooner or later, the book will end.
As an exercise, it is proposed to transfer these recommendations to your activities :)
PS These tips are applicable for understanding non-trivial material, organizing new concepts in the head and solving original problems. If for six hours you need to hand out leaflets, then this can be done in one sitting.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/443640/
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