Original subtitles

How do you become a software engineer, how can you program a robot, how do you solve this extremely

difficult problem?

Now, we learned up until now that we have this idea of focus, of focus, mode of thinking where we're

so focused on a task.

That's where we start gaining that knowledge and then we combine it with the diffuse mode of thinking.

Now, when we focus on something, we create chunks of knowledge, that's what we're doing when we learn

something, we're creating neural patterns and connecting them with pre-existing patterns in our long

term memory by focusing when we're learning something, we don't have random things popping in our head.

We focus on those four chunks that we're able to store in our working memory, and then we create chunks

with our focused attention.

By understanding and practicing a topic.

For example, if you're learning how a car works, you're not going to learn how a car works right away,

you're going to break down how each part of the car works and then combining the missing pieces to create

the whole system to understand how the whole system works.

If you want to become a rocket engineer, you need to form different chunks of knowledge and combine

them to actually learn how everything works together.

And this is the idea behind chunking.

You need to understand how chunks in your brain relate to one another.

For example, we all remember math class.

A lot of us learned math and found it extremely confusing.

Calculus, for example, seem like we were creating graphs and charts without really understanding why

we're learning something.

It seemed like we're just learning a little puzzle that doesn't really apply to real life.

How does it apply to your life?

That's why math sometimes is so hard for people, because it just seems like we're playing games that

are unrelated to everyday life.

And we learned an active versus passive learning that we have to actually do things, actually practice

to create these chunks of knowledge.

Now, this idea of chunking, of breaking things down into different chunks is sometimes called bottom

up learning.

And that is this idea that we start from the bottom and go up.

We combine different chunks of knowledge and we connect the dots between these chunks.

We create a mind map.

This is why I introduced the mind map, the beginning of this course, this idea of these are the different

pieces of knowledge that we're going to combine to create this overall understanding of efficient learning,

of learning how to learn.

This demonstrates chunking.

We're breaking down into each lecture, this idea of efficient learning.

Now that's bottom up learning.

What we also need is something called top down learning.

That's something where we start with the big picture.

What is this big landscape of learning?

What is the big picture here?

And by combining this top down learning of what is the big picture, how do you connect the dots with

the Bottom-Up learning of what is this individual chunks of knowledge and how can I use them can create

really strong long term learning.

This idea of chunking is actually described in Barbara Oakley's book, Learning How to Learn.

If we form different knowledge and chunks, it's all great.

But without having also the top down of connecting the dots, seeing how each chunk relates to one another,

then we might have these tools, but we won't know when to use that tool.

The idea is to gradually build chunks in our minds.

And these chunked mental libris will create different patterns, and when you learn how to connect them,

how you can relate concepts to different things using diffuse mode to connect far distant chunks.

It's what creates knowledge this idea of connecting the dots is absolutely instrumental to long term

learning.

So start with the chunks of chunking, different piece of knowledge, then look at the top down.

How do all these chunks connect and let your brain work towards connecting these chunks?

This is why the trunk based knowledge we talked about in the pillars is so important.

We need to have these foundations and principles so that we're able to connect these chunks, these

different leaf's to one another.