Key takeaways in one sentence: this section introduces the 4 pillars, the foundational concepts of learning science and techniques.

  • Everything is a game

    • View everything as a game so that you can care more about growing and less about failures.

    • Growth mindset: everything you learn can be learned. intelligence can be developed with effective strategies.

      • I’m not smart enough yet when facing challenges. How might I learn and grow from this challenge?

    • Fixed mindset: intelligence is fixed. Intelligence is born.

      • I’m not smart enough when facing challenges. I can’t do this.

    • Locus of control: To what degree people believe they have control over outcomes and events on their lives.

      • Internal locus of control: they tend to blame or praise themselves for the outcome and events.
      • External locus of control: they tend to blame and praise others other than themselves for the outcome and events.

    • Brains like muscles can be trained and adapt.

  • Feynman Technique

    • This was invented by Richard Feynman who could explain things to beginner very well.
      • If you want to understand a topic or know it really well, you need to be able to teach it in simple terms that even a child with 0 knowledge can understand. This can help you not only learn but also test your knowledge.
    • Some people might like to use jargons to explain things and pretend they are smart and hide what they do not understand behind the big words. If you cannot explain a concept in simple terms, you need to go back to learn what are missing from your understanding.

  • Trunk Based Knowledge

    • Trunk based knowledge is the fundamental principles and mental models (explanations of how something works) of one or more subjects that can last long time. It is contrast to leaves/details that is based on it and always updates quickly.
    • To learn a subject efficiently, we need to first grasp the trunk based knowledge so that we could learn the subjects(leaves) based on it quickly and better adapt the frequent updates of some forms of knowledge.
    • This article has a detailed explanation of trunk-based technique.

  • Efficiency Trumps Grit

    • Being busy or working very hard is not the only factor to learn something efficiently. Instead, we should learn to optimise our learning skills.
    • Using good strategies and right methods will be more likely to enable us to spend our time in an optimal way and achieve the same or better result.