Top Highlights

• As long as you’re focusing on a particular topic, you’re blocking the activities of your diffuse mode on that topic. It’s only when you get your focus off that topic that your diffuse mode can go to work on it. But you must first focus hard on your learning challenge for the diffuse mode to then be able to work its magic.
• EXAMPLES OF HOW TO EXPLOIT YOUR DIFFUSE MODE Start a difficult essay before dinner, so that diffuse mode can work in the background while you’re eating. Begin a difficult problem set right before you take a break. Read difficult passages before going to bed—continue the next day. Rework an especially tricky or important problem before taking a show...
• WRITE OR DIE Write or Die, an app by Dr. Wicked, allows you to set the number of words you want to write per minute and has various irritating options, including sounds and visuals, that kick in if you start falling behind your goal. There’s even a “kamikaze mode,” where your writing will unwrite itself if you’re too slow. Oddly enough, the app can...
• When your study involves intense memorization, as with vocabulary or anatomy terms, it can be helpful to study in a quiet environment. But when your studies involve more conceptually difficult material—for example, trends in history, bridge construction, or grasping a difficult analytical concept—it can be better to study in an environment that occ...
• At the heart of active learning lies something called “retrieval practice.” In other words, you want to see if you can pull information from your own memory, or work with it in your own mind, rather than simply looking at the material. The more you retrieve the material, and the broader the set of contexts you retrieve the materials in, the stronge...