Ultralearning: Retrieval

Retrieval is a key concept in the "Learning How to Learn" course in Coursera. I've "done" the course

twice. Ha ha.  Guess I'm not so great at learning.
In the course, they advocate trying to do practice problems at the back of a chapter before you read the chapter.  The act of trying to work on a problem with keys your brain to pay better attention when you read.
In Ultralearning by Scott H. Young, his chapter on retrieval makes some of the same points with the examples of the genius mathematician, Ramanujan and .  Both had limited resources, so they had to retrieve and work the problems in their heads.  Closed book, as it were. Ben Franklin tried to replicate essays he'd read.  This active effort to solve, or retrieve makes the material stickier.
In this chapter, Young has a few strategies for this.
 For actual academic subjects, the pretesting makes sense.
Flash cards and spaced-retrieval online apps can help. But there are many subjects or projects where the answers aren't so clear. 
For those types of projects, he reiterates the "directness"  or just going straight into the skill or project you want to accomplish can help.  It is uncomfortable, but that's kind of the point.  You immediately become aware of what your gaps are and can drill down on them.  I think, again, at least in my case, you need to ignore the inner voice that tells you that this just isn't something you're good at and urges you to do something easier.  I like to think that more things can be learned than we realize.
Another way to self test is to ask questions on a sheet of paper, instead of taking notes.  Just by putting the material in the form of a question it can help to make the brain work a bit.
Another strategy is to ask yourself "what is the bigger concept or question?"  To try to understand basic concepts, not just the facts.
The whole idea is to test before you're ready.  That lack of comfort and strain makes the learning process faster.

Ultralearning: Drilling

As with so many aspects of more efficient learning, the key is to concentrate on the hard things.  It sounds easier than it is.  When confronted with things that are hard, you have to battle your own fears of not being up to the task (comment mine), and the very natural tendency to avoid hard things.  The mind is slippery.  You have to stay alert and force the mind to concentrate on what's difficult. The distinction in ultralearning is to be extremely mindful and keep it difficult. Don't waste time on what you already know.
Some aspects of drilling.
Divide by time:  Particularly valuable for things like music or pronunciation.  drill the difficult aspect and skip the rest
Divide by cognitive components:  eg  pronunciation versus vocabulary
in, say, geography how countries relate to the whole, what are components within the country
Magnifying glass
This is to do 10 times the intensity on things that are hard for you.  His example was research.  He spent 10 X on researching something because he was having a hard time doing that.
Prerequisites
If you find you're lost and not getting something.  Go backwards until you find the step that you don't understand.

Ultra Learning: Focus

What has come up over and over again in learning and in getting the most from non-fiction reading is

pretesting and post reading summarizing.
In chapter 3 of the book by Scott H. Young called Ultralearning he deals with focus.
There are 3 basic impediments to focus.
Procrastination-  main strategies to help are to force your self to do 5 minutes, or the
 Pomodoro technique. In the course "learning how to learn" there is a segment by a highschool girl who noticed that if she just started, go through the first 5 minutes, then she could skate.  I've found this to often be true
Carve out scheduled time to work is also a technique.
 He provides the example of a highly intellectual and accomplished woman from the 18th or 19th century who was able to accomplish a ton in addition to having full responsibility for children and running a household.  She was able to immediately dive back into a task.
Leave something half done Though not mentioned in this book, the Hemingway technique would fit in here.  He would leave something midway so that he had an easy entry back in.


Inability to sustain focus
 External distractions These you have to manage
Internal distractions  Acknowledge and release.  The more you do this the easier it becomes.

Poor quality of focus
here is you're too hyped up you can focus on minuteea.  Sometimes laser focus is required.  Sometimes, for writing or problem solving,  a looser type of focus is required.
Interestingly when your arousal is low, loud sounds can help.  I need to try this since that is usually my problem.  Not enough "juice"
Interleaving, changing to different aspects of study can help here.
Sometimes it's easier to focus on videos, but you need to keep an awareness of your quality of learning.  That is why he is not a huge proponent of "flow".  I do see flow as more of a function of creativity, rather than study.  Study is hard.

Consistent improvement

This was an unusual take on self-improvement.  These are notes from a business guru who took a unique approach in the endeavor to broaden his mental models.  He took the last 12 years of Discover Magazine and read each of the 6 page in depth discussions of an author's topic.  For example "nanoparticles."  He admitted that if he had chosen which topics to read himself he only would have chosen 14. But the point of it was to read what he wouldn't normally read,  to "broaden" his thinking.
But one of the parts that I liked the best as a reminder was this. He talks about the need for constant increase otherwise, you lose the compounding effect of action.

"Whenever you interrupt the constant increase above a certain level of threshold you lose compounding, you’re no longer on the log curve. You fall back onto a linear curve or God forbid a step curve down. You have to be constant. How many people do you know that are constant and what they do? I know a couple. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Everybody wants to be rich like Warren Buffett Charlie Munger. I’m telling you how they got rich. They were constant. They were not intermittent."

There was also a great segment of the talk where he talks about the incredible value of being positive.  And that you should be the one to "go first" in being positive.  And why don't people do it?

For answering the question, why would people not go positive and not go first when there’s a 98 percent chance you’re going to benefit from it, and only a 2 percent chance the person’s going to tell you to ‘screw off’ and you’re going to feel horrible, lose face, and all the rest of that. And that’s real. That’s why we don’t do it. He said there’s huge asymmetry between the standard human desire for gain and the standard human desire to avoid loss. Which one do you think is more powerful? 98 percent versus 2!

further

Lou Brock set the Major League record for stolen bases with the St. Louis Cardinals many years ago. And he once said, ‘Show me a man who is afraid of appearing foolish and I’ll show you a man who can be beat every time.’ And if you’re getting beat in life, chances are it’s because you’re afraid of appearing foolish. So what do I do with my life? I risk the two percent. I was so proud the other day, I was reading Bono on Bono. Bono’s the lead singer of U2. He’s the only other person I’ve ever encountered in my entire life, and I asked all my cronies, ‘Has anybody else ever encountered this elevator model before?’ ‘No. No that’s yours Peter.’ And I said, ‘You know how I said 98-2? Guess who’s got the exact same model? Bono! Well he doesn’t have 98-2, he’s got 90-10.’