Learning journal — Month 1 takeaways
This first month in the Nearsoft Academy, now Encora I have learned a lot, I may not have retained everything but I am about it.
Here I am going to talk about the assignments of the month, two books, one course and the weekly lightning talks. Before these books and lessons, I did not know how little I knew about how to learn effectively. The lightning talks teach me more about programming and soft skills
Beside the concepts, and topics I learned, I also have some personal outcomes on developing habits (exercising is great), talk, ask questions, share ideas and collaboration. It has also be awesome to get to know my peers and the Encora members 😁.
by Mayra Lucero García Ramírez
28/09/2020–26/10/2020
Learning how to learn
The learning how to learn Coursera’s course was a pleasant journey, I did not think it existed a course like this one. I have several takeaways from it and I did a lot of connections with weekly assignments.
For starters, the difference between the focus and diffuse mode of our brain. And how to use them to construct and retrieve patterns of information that we acquire or practice.
Everything is connected we have the capacity to unlock our potential, by learning by doing, through analogies, metaphors and other tricks that lead us to do chunks. The process of chunking consist of linking information through meaning or use, we connect the new ideas what we have already know. Doing this process through different subjects or areas also leads us to interleave.
Our memory is awesome, limitless in long term but we have to construct and use the patterns in our brain for that information stays and we don’t forget it so easily. It takes time, definitely, but spaced repetition (not everything in one day) and visual images (even more difficult to achieve) are great methods to reinforce our ideas and knowledge.
One of the things that are obstacles in learning is procrastination, something we all do. The origin of procrastination is to avoid, momentarily something unpleasant for us (like difficult homework). It has 3 stages:
- Feel unhappy
- Shift attention
- Fell happy (temporarily)
the ways to avoid procrastination can be resumed in:
- focus on processes and not products (do not focus on the long list but on work)
- plan your daily task and see this list the night before doing them
- avoid all interruptions (like the cellphone)
- dedicated time to work focused (Pomodoro technique)
Finally, the course gave some great tips on how to confront testing and how is not bad at all, testing is, in fact, one of the most effective ways to measure our knowledge and also to reinforce it by retrieving the information.
I found this course very useful, I understood a lot of things, and I identify with others.Also, I realized, again, the importance of habits and recall the first week’s lessons of James Clear.
Besides, I have been applying the tricks to avoid procrastination, planning daily tasks, avoid interruptions (cellphone 😅) along with the Pomodoro technique, they had helped help me a lot to focus on my responsibilities and improve my time management.
I realized that I did a lot of the tricks for testing, and that I do interleaving sometimes but I though it was a random/crazy thing. I also realized that I have a multitasking limit and if I tried more, I forgot everything.
🔗How to Build a New Habit — James Clear
🔗The Science of How Habit Works — James Clear
🔗Identity Based Habits — James Clear
The Ego is the Enemy
This book, written by Ryan Holiday has a lot of histories and examples of how the ego takes to undesirable outcomes and how the absence of it can take us to success and simple life.
The book exemplifies actions and outcomes through a series of histories. One of the first lessons is that success comes with a price, with frustration and to get into our heads, to take our egos beyond and this, at some point, could be the start of the loss. The bad outcomes happen because the ego tells us what we want to hear, so we, at some point, live in another reality.
Although I invite you to read the book by yourself I did a little review of each part.
The book is divided in 3 parts
- Aspire — self-motivated. This part talks mostly about actions, actions that we do not perform because we replaced them with words. The words take us to believe that we are achieving something even though it is false. How the ego, gets in our way to grow and has a little to be with talent. As we are talented, we attributed to that and not to work, this could be our enemy to grow. To avoid this we must find ourselves, what we want to do, what we seek and avoid what our ego wants, recognition, visualization, public credit, etc.
- Success — find a balance. Ego can lead us to think that we know everything, or that we don’t need others. Nevertheless to grow, to succeed we need to keep learning, and for this, we have to become students, learn, teach and socialize. This part emphasizes we need 3 persons in our life to grow. Someone better — to learn, someone equal — to challenge, and someone that knows less — to teach. In this part, it is also pointed out the importance to know what we seek for, to manage ourselves, to have a plan and something very important, to stay sober. To maintain sobriety refers to the situations where even when you have achievements, that you have got your goal you stay yourself, that do not let that success get in your mind, because when it happens, the ego takes place.
- Failure — resilient. We all get bad times, this part talks about being resilient, to confront situations and grow with them.
Maybe the lessons that I remember the most are about, living with purpose, always be a student, talk less, do more, resiliency and how actions, taking with the ego in the head can take us to undesirable situations and can affect a lot of people around us, through the reading I recall the video of the power of vulnerability because we have to accept us and move on, to succeed and grow.
Make it Stick — Mark A. McDaniel and Peter C Brown
Make it stick, is a book about education and learning. Through the book, it exemplifies real-life situations about how we learn. It is a very useful book if we consider that with every problem it gives options as solutions. This book has a lot to do with the course learning how to learn and videos of month like Peak: How to Master Anything — Kathy Sierra, the power of an agile mindset.
It takes us to reflect on how we learn, the environment, the methods, and gets to the concepts of spaced repetition, retrieval, mental images, memory palace, re-reading and testing. It also touches on concepts like stay a student and be responsible for our learning and improvement.In addition, it takes on the illusions of learning, and how to really measure our capacity and knowledge.
While reading I reflected on what I do to learn, I also connected ideas to the learning how to learn course. As I did the reflection I realized I had some good habits to learn, like space repetition but some not so effective ones like re-reading. Also, I realized that some of my teachers had really invested their time on learning/teaching techniques that helps us improve and in addition that I had a blast in their classes, I learned a lot.
Perhaps my favorite chapter is the final, make it stick, where all the “tricks” are put in hand to do a review (and retrieval of information) of what can you do to improve your learning and your memory.
Lightning talks
The lightning talks have as a goal “To improve our communication skills and public speaking since well-prepared speakers tend to earn leadership positions and important client contact roles” I had to admit I am not a fan of making talks, but I love to share about topics that I know and want to share. It was an adventure.
I had 4 topics
- SOLID
- OWASP — Top 10 Web Application Security Risks
- Unit testing
- Event loop
All the topics I chose taught me something new, and it was awesome to fill in blanks that I had because I couldn’t study them at the university. I also enjoy the lightning talks of my peers, always learned something new.
I consider I improved in some ways, of course, there is still a long way to go and as Eric Lladó said the next talk will be better. I thank my mentors to help me confront my fear to talk and to help me with the technical and conceptual knowledge.