how to REALLY learn

“If you don’t use it you lose it.”

The brain changes in response to how we use it. Long gone is the old idea that the brain is like a giant computer made of meat which gradually disintegrates as we get older. In fact it is humming buzzing hive of potential connections, billions of conections, more like the internet than a single computer- so if one ‘centre’ goes down a new route is found to other areas of processing. I was in Cairo when all the phone cables under the Mediteranean were recently cut. The internet slowed to a crawl- but it still worked- messages finding their way out via the Far East and beyond.

The brain is a plastic organ- it changes remarkably in accordance with how you use it. Chess players have different structures to meditators to tennis players to people who watch a lot of television.

We know this now because of recent advances in brain scanning technology. It is possible now to actually monitor thought happening. To view the growth in neuronal activity in any area.

From the study of people with massive brain injury we have discovered how plastic the brain is. Previously it was thought a few functions could migrate to different brain areas. We now know they all can. People born with only one hemisphere are able to cope with a reduced abstract reasoning ability but a massively compensatory ability to recall concrete detail. Their peripheral vision is impaired on one side but their superhearing makes up for it.

The strangest case of neuroplasticity comes from sea gypsies of south east asia. They have rewired their brains to see underwater without goggles. Brain maps show that an enlarged area of the visual cortex is aiding this new skill.  They also have a greater awareness of environmentally changes akin to dolphins and other super sensitive mammals. When the tsunami of 2006 struck no sea gypsies died – they had long ago heeded warnings to move inland or out to sea- unlike ordinary Burmese fisherman who were killed in their thousands.

Brainscans show that different areas of the brain are used when one is reading compared to listening. So comprehension is a moveable concept- not situated at one spot in the brain- each method of data input plasticly creates its own interpretation site.

When cochlear implants are inserted in the ear of previously deaf people the brain rewires itself to interpret the electrical output of the device.

(By the way- if you want to go more into this there is a superb book on it by Norman Doig entitled "Your everchanging brain" from which some of these examples are drawn.)

Learning is crucial to any human enterprise. It is central to Lifeshifting. Any new direction is a new learning experience. But what brain plasticity teaches us about learning is surprising. We discover that much of the brain’s learning effort goes into ‘learning how to learn’- re-wiring the brain so that a new task can be absorbed and remembered. It seems that while activating the pleasure centre, which was discovered in the 1950s, increases brain plasticity at that moment, through large releases of dopamine, actual increases in neuronal growth and connectivity is best achieved through very sustained and close attention to a subject. Obviously pleasure can be a motivator- but one side effect is we quickly get used to anything that provides pleasure and need to increase the stimulation. This is not the case with paying sustained attention- this is positive feedback  loop- the closer we pay attention the more and quicker we learn.

Recovery from Strokes

A great deal about brain plasticity has been learnt from stroke victims. People who had been written off as crippled have, under intensive programs of exercise, regained the use of their limbs. The brain when mapped shows a shift in function from the damaged area to a new area.

Mice when raised for only 45 days in an enriched environment of toys and treadwheels showed a 15% growth in brain size and neuronal activity compared to mice raised in an empty cage.

Born with only half a brain- no left hemisphere developed- Michelle Mack’s capabilities all migrated to the single hemisphere so that she was able to learn to speak, walk and calculate at lightning speed. Though her peripheral vision is impaired on the right side brain plasticity has compensated with an extra powerful sense of hearing.

The Hidden Key- the Nucleus Basalis

The part of our brain that allows us to focus our attention and learn is called the nucleus basalis. It is switched on during a critical period, typically from 2-18 months and allows the child to remember everything, laying down all the important neuronal circuits. BTNF, the hormone that switches it on now disappears and the child learns at a more normal rate.

However research has shown that nucleus basalis can be switched on later in life by forced focussed concentration.

Dr Mike Merzenich, the world’s leading neuroscientist in the field of plasticity says, “Everything that you can see happen in a young brain can happen in an older brain…the changes can be every bit as great as the changes in a newborn.”

The problem is, as we hit middle age, the nucleus basalis gets used less and less. We are comfortable with what we know. We experiment less. Instead of adapting to fit the world we meet we now try and change the world to fit what we like.

Partly this is exacerbated by the roles we are supposed to be living: as parents, bosses, leaders we are supposed to know already. Our mental posture is one that tends to exclude inputting new data.

One source of stress in the middle aged is the conflict involved when the strategies that support the switching on of the nucleus basalis have totally atrophied or are seen as juvenile. For example on one TV program I watched an elderly football manager try to learn French. He couldn’t focus. He had to interrupt and have ‘his say’. He also rushed in to fill the gap with any words, even if they were wrong- because in his career he always had to have ‘an answer’.

When the nucleus basalis is starved of acetycholine it no longer works optimally. You find it hard to remember new skills and information. To generate a flow of acetylcholine to the nucleus basalis you need to pay forced, focussed attention- even if that means unlearning all the ‘superior’ boss type traits that you need in everyday life.

The stressed boss is one who has to learn new things to survive in this fascinating fast changing world we live in but cannot because he’s too busy acting in a way that inhibits learning. The result is rising anxiety- the same sort of anxiety you’d feel when confronted by the impossible task of running through a muddy field wearing a white suit you are forbidden to get dirty. And stress hormones actually kill brain cells in the hippocampus, thus further inhibiting rapid learning. Fortunately these are cells that can regenerate when in a calmer environment.

Mezernich also says, “We don’t want to kick a dead horse with training.” He means that an adult who has neglected learning shouldn’t be overwhelmed at first with too much to learn. They focus instead on building the tools for learning that may have atrophied. One of these Mezernich has discovered is the attention we pay to something we want to learn. We aren’t actually fully aware of it. By building awareness you are increasing the ability to focus which aids learning.

“The quality with which your brain see and hears has a direct relationship with how quickly you think, how much information you take in and how well you remember.”

Mike Metzernich runs a company PositScience which supplies brain training programs.

After the critical period of childhood is over the nucleus basalis can only be switched on by something important, novel, surprising or by paying close attention. But of the most important for plastic change is the last- paying full attention to something.

It is no accident that many ancient systems of learning everything from martial arts to calligraphy put so much emphasis on paying full attention to what you are doing. They put more emphasis on this than ‘getting it right’ which tends to be the focus of modern educational systems. Once the student ‘get’s it’ they move on to a higher level. But this neglects the consolidation necessary for real learning to take place, consolidation that can only occur when the full blast of attention is turned on a subject.

I witnessed this ancient method first hand when I studied Aikido in Japan full time for a year. Many times a lesson involved doing the same exercise over and over for an hour. The strange thing is that the more you concentrate on being aware of doing he exercise the less boring it becomes. This method of repetition aids what we know about plasticity- neurons that fire together a lot simplify and rationalise so that greater refinement can take place. Gradually fewer and fewer neurons are needed to do the basic movements and more are liberated to perform the subtler refinements of the movement. It is neuronal version of ‘chunking’ – when several pieces of data are remembered as a whole- for example, to remember a long number, memory experts give each digit a picture and then imagine a little story to connect the pictures- in other words reducing the multiplicity of information down to a single bit, the story. This enables them to remember great strings of information. Our brains do the same when we perform activity with the great concentration needed to open the nucleus basalis to aid plastic changes.

Another aikido training technique is ‘hajime’ which means ‘begin’. In this one is forced to do a technique, a lock, takedown or throw, with a partner again and again as fast as possible. The result is utter exhaustion- but total concentration is needed to perform at such speed so the technique seeps deep into the brain.

After studying aikido I found it easy to pick up dance steps and moves from one demonstration – something I had never been able to do before. I had grown more neurons and better  connections in the realm of physical learning. The same thing happens when one learns a language- one simultaneously improves one’s ability to learn any language.

Dr Stanley Karansky, at ninety years old, describes himself as a lifelong self-educator. But rather than dabble, each new interest becomes an engaging passion. In an interview with Dr Norman Doidge he says, “I became interested in astronomy five years ago and became an amateur astronomer. I bought a telescope because we were living in Arizona at the time and the viewing conditions were so good… I’m willing to put pretty intense concentration and attention into something that interests me at the moment. Then after I feel I’ve gotten to a higher level at it, I don’t pay quite as much attention to that activity and I start sending tentacles to something else.”

This powerful focussed learning pays dividends in health. Though Dr Karansky has had two heartattacks- one at 65 and another at 83 he completely recovered. His parents who did not share his proclivities for learning died young- his mother in her 40s and his father in his 60s.

He also does exercise- a workout followed by using an exercise bike for half an hour three times a week. Exercise stimulates the production and release of the neuronal growth factor BDNF- so there is much wisdom in the traditional idea of balancing mind and body in harmony.

A lifeshift is by definition a massive learning experience. It is structured so you focus fully on it- this enables maxmimum learning and brain plasticity. You are therefore assured of the best chance of success. As former baker Alex Spanos, now the California billionaire property developer put it, “I didn’t know anything about the construction industry but I thought I can try and I can learn. It was a business I intended to master as quickly as humanly possible.” Years later he owned the biggest apartment building construction firm in the US.

The nucleus basalis holds the key to rapid learning. If you are forced to do a very intensive fulltime immersion course your chances of learning a language are very much higher than doing an hour a week for a year. The state department trains hundreds of linguists this way. John West, computer entrepeneur, studied at the celebrated Ars Technica college where a four year computer science course was taught in a year from 9am to 9pm. He reported it was actually ‘easier that way once I got over the shock.’ I studied an intensive martial arts course also for a year- with five hours training on the mats each day. I could see myself improving in a way that would have been impossible under more laid back circumstances. The key to massive rapid change is totally focussed intensive learning that switches on the nucleus basalis just as it was permanently switched on when you were a baby learning everything you perceived.

this is spiral thinking

Forget lateral thinking.

Forget vertical thinking- whatever that was.

The new way to get the best out of your tired old brain is spiral thinking.

The spiral, as only a microsecond of reflection will reveal, is the basic unit of the dynamic and ever changing multi-verse (hell, why stick with one?). Two dimensional static strength is provided by a triangle (no I am not getting weird here this is interesting) , 3-D strength is the tetrahedron, but if you keep adding tetrahedrons together (do it with one of those ball bearing and stick magnet kits) the lowest energy structure is…a spiral. What that proves I don’t know but if you make one it’s darned interesting to see it evolve from the tetrahedrons…all right I’m getting right back to spiral thinking very soon having established as swiftly as I can (DNA, snail and sea shells, plughole water flow) that spirals are key to our existence.

So what is spiral thinking? Well you do it anyway- well some do, spiraling is how we approach any subject when we are relaxed. When we aren’t relaxed we circle it if we’re lucky and stare at it without a clue if we aren’t. But circling without feedback and improvement is not much good.

Spiraling is circling and feeding back off a subject, adjusting to it.

Above all it is keeping moving.

Lateral thinking was great but it always felt like you had to half know the solution already. With spiral thinking the emphasis is less on the RESULT and more on the process.

Think of software- it gets kicked out and it’s full of bugs but over time it gets better and better. Spiral thinking is all about getting into a PROCESS of thinking that will deliver the results you need down the line.

Brain storming and lateral thinking are too direct- they want you to get to the solution ASAP. But I have found that when the problem is starkly and fully defined the solution is more obvious than a third breast on the voluptuous figure of Angelina Jolie.

Mostly we don’t live in a world of problems that are unsolved, we live in a world of pseudo-problems and poorly defined problemettes and vaguely hinted at real problems. Or even problems that can only be stated in terms that the majority object to.

The joy of Spiral Thinking is that you are not trying to solve the problem at hand- oh no- way to crass!

You are simply trying to keep your distance from the problem while moving around it in a spiral. Eventually you will spiral right into the problem you will be that close to it and then you can spiral out until the problem looks insignificant.

But you aren’t just scaling in and out like that marvelous film of a person being bitten on the hand by a mosquito while rowing and then the camera pulls back and then zooms in- from outer space down to the microscopic- as well as pulling back, keeping your distance, you are turning the object in your hand or going around it.

Or you are spiraling all over it.

But the process is generating not new solutions but new ways of looking at the problem.

A list of selves of differing detachment and energy. Look at it through different eyes. Look at it with your artist persona on and then your business head.

Draw the problem and mark the differing positions you can look at it from. What does it look like from underneath? From the middle? From right out left?

Spiral in from different positions and ‘selves’.

Never stop- the spiral is dynamic.

At this point I should say that spiral thinking is very different from Spiral Dynamics which is a whole program of self-actualisation. Spiral thinking is very humble in its ambitions: one of several tools in your creative thinking toolkit.

What’s the main barrier to true as opposed to forced creativity?

THE RESULT.

THE GOAL.

THE MONEY.

You become so fixated on the result that you forget to play.

Play is what produces the best ideas. Bar none. But as we get older, greyer, more stressed, less childlike, play, becomes more difficult without the power assistance of a few drinks and a new, special exotic location. Also play can be silly, unproductive, it all depends on the people you get to play with.

What spiral thinking does is SIMULATE the conditions of play anytime anyplace.

It does this first by liberating you from the end result. You don’t have to achieve anything , solve anything. All you have to do is spiral the subject unpacking it to its full, de-implicating it (if that makes sense), noting of course any ideas that occur – points on the spiral- and then continuing to weave this spiral encasement of THE SUBJECT- getting closer and closer to it from every angle.

You can use the spiral to jump start ideas: imagine the shape of the thing and being opposite it looking from another perspective. Or spiraling around it like a spaceship in orbit, or spiraling into its core like a probe landing on Mars- all these images can liberate your thinking.

Play is continuous. Watch kids playing. It stops when it stops. Mostly it keeps going, seguing from one play situation to another. Play is dynamic. Which means it is always in balance. Imagine walking one step, stopping, walking another step, stopping. Balance is constantly wobbly- and this is very hard to achieve- any ballerina will tell you stopping and starting and then stopping is the hard thing- just as landing on the spot is the hard part of a gym routine- balance- as we know from riding a bicycle- is all about maintaining momentum AT ANY COST.

Spiral thinking allows you to maintain thinking momentum because there is always something to unpack, some new perspective you can take on a problem, some new self whose eyes you can view it through. You only stop when you are tired- not when you are JAMMED.

The net has given us a whole lot of new metaphors. Think of those bots, crawling through the information world, picking up hints, twisting and turning, always moving. Spiral thinking is like setting a think-bot free over the problem. It’s picking stuff up, anything that registers, going here and there, weaving a web, a spiral web all over the subject.

Think of spiraling as a way of generating perspectives.

You see the big SECRET of problem solving is we do it naturally anyway. You’re already a genius except you don’t know it. What you have to do is REMOVE all the stuff that has accreted that STOPS your natural problem solving ability. Mankind has survived many millennia. It did so through being a great problem solver. There was no Brainstorming in ancient Greece or Bronze age Tartary but they managed just as well without it.

Spiral thinking aims to remove the barriers to your natural problem solving ability. Ever wondered why when you are relaxed and couldn’t care a damn you have your best ideas? Because nothing is in the way. So Spiral Thinking sets up that situation so your own problem solving abilities can work- without any conscious forcing. It’s the forcing that makes for bad ideas.

Spiralling a subject you are simply BREAKING all the set ideas you have about it and seeing it as nakedly as you can.

how much talent have you?

We hear a lot about it taking 10,000 hours to master a skill though I did have a bizarre conversation with someone (a photographer- always a bit touchy on such subjects as we all know there’s nothing to it but pressing a button…I jest) that it was really 15,000 hours. Hmm. Whatever- a long time, 10 years if you do ‘your thing’ 4 hours a day 250 days a year.

It can’t all be hard work though. There must be some place for talent in there.

Maybe we need less talent than we think though.

Paravicini, a noted autistic savant, and a professional pianist, achieved excellence by playing ‘as if his life depended on it’. Aged four he just banged a keyboard with his fists and  elbows- his teacher, who tutored him from this primitive state to concert standard, said of the boy's efforts: ‘to me it’s mainly hard work’.

In other words- talent is more about motivation than talent. Those with natural talent get more feedback than others and therefore have more incentive to practise. But autistic children are different- they have an innate motivational drive to practise as if it is a means to survival- so they become excellent too.

Stephen King wrote: “talent is as common as salt, talent is a blunt knife- it’s how much pressure you bear down with that is important.”

One feature of autistic children who acquire great skills be they linguistic, musical, mathematical or artistic is ‘an eye for detail’. It may be that if you can improve your ability to home in on details from time to time your overall talent will improve. Certainly if you focus greatly on a single line of a poem from time to time, your overall poetry writing ability will improve.

Entrepeneurs typically display the opposite tendency- an eye for the whole, the big picture, rather than focusing on detail. Many top people are not ‘detail freaks’- they want the wider context.

The main thing is: practise as if your life depends on it. The original impulse to learn is a survival instinct. You learn in order to survive better. Therefore if you can con yourself somehow that your very survival is at stake then you will learn very much faster. One way is to do it intensively, focusing to the exclusion of everything else.

sitting stones

The leftover stones are man-made, machine–made, the size of a book but hexagonal,

Small paving stones that link together to make a fancy paved piazza floor.

These three Sudanese who squat here everyday,

Waiting for friends or a bus somewhere,

Have built small stools from the spare stones- a pile made by sideways stacking and then one flat on top.

Sideways-on the hexagons look pleasing.

Each sits on a pile, each of a different height. No rules here.

They sit, jet black in tracksuits in the sunlight, waiting.

When they are gone the stone stools

Look like art

Or standing stones from a smaller world.

great gear #1: desert boots

Designed in WW2 by serving officers in the eighth army in Cairo, the original desert boot is made of suede with a crepe sole and low heel. My own pair, a cheapo version, have some kind of rubbery plastic version of crepe but they are similar enough. You can buy a classier version from Clarks. Today I wore mine for the first time in Wadi Digla, a rocky canyon where I go to recharge my energies- it’s only a ten minute drive from where I live on the edge of Cairo. Every day now it’s in the 40s and any kind of normal boot or shoe feels really hot and sticky. Mostly I wear sandals, leather because it absorbs sweat best, but with Teva type adjusters so they are really comfortable. But while sandals are best by far for sand and gentle paths, they are a bit slidey and unstable for steeper surfaces, not to mention banging your toes when you clamber over rocks. This is where the suede desert boot is brilliant. It feels like a moccasin, much better than the chunky soled Merrill all terrain trainers I usually wear- with the desert boot you can feel the rock through your feet and it smears on flat surfaces well too. In fact I did some scrambling and boulder moves today and the desert boots were great, even with the overhanging welt.

There are modern army type desert boots out there but mostly they are simply jungle boots made of suede. Except they have to have cordura on them to look modern so these bits make your feet sweat. And they are way too high- mostly you only need a boot to just go over the ankle. While the classic desert boot is probably a bit low for going over lots of dunes- sand will get in I should think- they are so cool to wear if you are doing mixed desert travel- driving and walking or even walking and riding camels I should think they would be excellent. Especially in the summer, when any walking will always be short distances.

However for a multiday hike in winter you may still be better off with the walking boot type of desert boot made by Meindl and Altberg but not the ludicrous Oakley boots used by some military forces- these are waterproofed- the very opposite of what you need! On a multiday hike I‘ve found that if you wear trainers or sandals your feet take more of a beating than if you wear boots- simply because the boots spread the load around, and hi-leg boots spread it around even more than low leg. Sweat causes blisters so you need to get rid of moisture as much as you can, so if the boot has no lining that’s great. Wear two pairs of wool socks to sop up whatever is left and change your socks over every four hours of walking if you can. If your feet are really hard and used to long distance walking you can take more liberties by wearing smaller boots and thinner socks- it’s just that I’ve found after long experience that roomy boots with thick wool socks are the most comfortable.

cairo dawn taxi ride

Cairo. Dawn. Feral dogs roam in cowardly packs through the litter of the night before. No taxis: and I am late to a rendezvous about 3km away for a trip going to the desert. After a ten minute wait one lada hoves into view but I write it off as the front seats are both occupied. But it screeches to a halt and then backs up some. A black African in a suit with sweaty shirt and wide undone tie, cigarette smoking in his hand bids me to get in. It’s his ride but he’ll drop me off first he says with a magnanimous wave of the hand.

Hey thanks I say.

He says: I’m picking you up because you are foreigner not because you are white.

I see.

If you were Egyptian I would never pick you up. Never.

So where are you from I ask brightly.

Congo. Said so quickly I suspect he is really from Sudan but wants to keep it quiet.

Ok. We trundle along in silence, the driver, a middle aged Egyptian man stares straight ahead. He seems more foreign than the African for some reason and it is not just the language. I ask the Congo man- so what do you do?

Do you see me asking you what you do man? He replies.

No, sorry.

pause

I’m an ‘ustler. He says.

pause

So do you hustle women? I ask.

No, man no not that. Never.

pause

He offers me a cigarette. I decline. I realize he’s been drinking all night.

So you wanting me to ask you what you is doing here? He says with effort.

No. not really.

Ok man that’s good.

pause

That’s good. This said almost to himself.

More trundling along in silence- getting close to my destination now. He asks: What’s your number?

I give him my mobile number with some trepidation. He sees this and laughs.

Can’t come and get you through your phone in your pocket- not yet anyway anyhow!

See you then- thanks for stopping. He waves this away with drunken langor. Then says:

Remember I pick you up cause you is foreign to this town like me not because you is white.

something in the air

Yes, today there was something in the air so it seemed appropriate to offload a poem...

I cannot say what I want to say

The world is all wrong

School is a rotten con

Companies are corrupt

Governments stink

People are slaves if they have real jobs

I cannot say all this all the time

Because I send my kids to school

I work for a company

I voted for the government

I have a real job.

So I say it part time instead.