Barbara Oakley Quotes

From your "due date" calendar, write down a weekly to-do list of twenty or fewer key items. Each night, create the next day's daily to-do list from the items on the weekly to-do list. Keep it to five to ten items. Try not to add to the daily list once you've made it unless it involves some unanticipated but important item (you don't want to start creating endless lists). Try to avoid swapping out items on your list.

You want your brain to become used to the idea that just knowing how to use a particular problem-solving technique isn't enough - you also need to know when to use it.

Focused problem solving in math and science is often more effortful than focused-mode thinking involving language and people.

Just focus on whatever section you are studying. You'll find that once you put the first problem or concept in your library, whatever it is, then the second concept will go in a bit more easily. And the third more easily still. Not that all of this is a snap, but it does get easier.

Habit is an energy saver for us. It allows us to free our mind for other types of activities.

reading - simply reading through books or

I tell my students they can procrastinate as long as they follow three rules: 1. No going onto the computer during their procrastination time. It's just too engrossing. 2. Before procrastinating, identify the easiest homework problem. (No solving is necessary at this point.) 3. Copy the equation or equations that are needed to solve the problem onto a small piece of paper and carry the paper around until they are ready to quit procrastinating and get back to work. "I have found this approach to be helpful because it allows the problem to linger in diffuse mode - students are working on it even while they are procrastinating." - Elizabeth Ploughman, Lecturer of Physics, Camosun College, Victoria, British Columbia

Learning organic chemistry is not any more challenging than getting to know some new characters. The elements each have their own unique personalities. The more you understand those personalities, the more you will be able to read their situations and predict the outcomes of reactions." - Kathleen Nolta, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer in Chemistry

Over the past decades, students who have blindly followed their passion, without rational analysis of whether their choice of career truly was wise, have been more unhappy with their job choices than those who coupled passion with rationality.

Einstellung effect (pronounced EYE-nshtellung). In this phenomenon, an idea you already have in mind, or your simple initial thought, prevents a better idea or solution from being found.

There is a deep connection between technical, scientific, and artistic creativity.

Internalizing problem-solving techniques enhances the neural activity that allows you to more easily hear the whispers of your growing intuition. When you know - really know - how to solve a problem just by looking at it, you've created a commanding chunk that sweeps like a song through your mind.

It's normal to sit down with a few negative feelings about beginning your work. It's how you handle those feelings that matters.

Remember, research has shown that the more effort you put into recalling material, the deeper it embeds itself into your memory.

Multitasking means that you are not able to make full, rich connections in your thinking, because the part of your brain that helps make connections is constantly being pulled away before neural connections can be firmed up.

Complex training environments such as action video game play may actually foster brain plasticity and learning.

The Law of Serendipity: Lady Luck favors the one who tries

If you are one of those people who can't hold a lot in mind at once - you lose focus and start daydreaming in lectures, and have to get to someplace quiet to focus so you can use your working memory to its maximum - well, welcome to the clan of the creative. Having a somewhat smaller working memory means you can more easily generalize your learning into new, more creative combinations. Because you're learning new, more creative combinations. Having a somewhat smaller working memory, which grows from the focusing abilities of the prefrontal cortex, doesn't lock everything up so tightly, you can more easily get input from other parts of your brain. These other areas, which include the sensory cortex, not only are more in tune with what's going on in the environment, but also are the source of dreams, not to mention creative ideas. You may have to work harder sometimes (or even much of the time) to understand what's going on, but once you've got something chunked, you can take that chunk and turn it outside in and inside round - putting it through creative paces even you didn't think you were capable of!

Here's another point to put into your mental chunker: Chess, that bastion of intellectuals, has some elite players with roughly average IQs. These seemingly middling intellects are able to do better than some more intelligent players because they practice more. That's the key idea. Every chess player, whether average or elite, grows talent by practicing. It is the pr

Remember, habits are powerful because they create neurological cravings. It helps to add a new reward if you want to overcome your previous cravings. Only once your brain starts expecting the reward will the important rewiring take place that will allow you to create new habits.

This approach [solving easiest problems first, during the test] works for some people, mostly because anything works for some people.

If you don't make a point of repeating what you want to remember, your "metabolic vampires" can suck away the neural pattern related to that memory before it can strengthen and solidify.

Attempting to recall the material you are trying to learn - retrieval practice - is far more effective than simply rereading the material.

Psychopaths know intellectually what is immoral they just don't have a feeling of immorality about it.

The biggest lie ever is that practice makes perfect. Not true - practice makes you better.

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This is precisely why one significant mistake students sometimes make in learning math and science is jumping into the water before they learn to swim.