How to practice a skill more scientifically

With the pandemic effectively getting rid of most of our travel plans, some of us are starting to use the extra time on our hands to pick up new skills, or to get back to learning something after a break. What does neuroscience tell us about how we can learn and practice a skill more effectively? And how can we apply some of these findings to our own lives?

To be quite honest, I had some trouble starting to write this article, because as the pandemic rages on, and more and more people are starting to experience its financial and health effects, it seemed a little frivolous of me to write a something aimed specifically at those few of us who are fortunate enough to have the free time (and mind-space) to pick up new skills.

This article, however, is not to make light of people’s serious problems, but is rather an attempt to explain a little bit about how the brain works in general, and how we can make changes to the way we learn to make the learning more effective.

A couple of months ago, I decided to shake the dust off my old music book and started practicing classical vocals again after many years. It took me a couple of days just to get my voice warmed up, and a week or so for the voice to start ‘moving’ across notes gracefully. But a couple of weeks into this everyday practice, I started noticing something amazing – not only were my classical vocals improving, but so was my voice across multiple genres and types of songs.

Adult brain: Learning and memory

Although to most of us, it seems like the brain stops “growing” after a certain age, nothing could be farther from the truth. Studies have shown that new neurons do form in certain regions of the adult brain in response to experience. Also, learning something and committing it to memory causes new growth in parts of neurons that communicate with each other. These neural connections, called synapses, not only increase in number but also in strength when two neurons repeatedly fire together.

There are several factors, of course, that influence how effectively our brains store the information we learn. Motivation is somewhat of an obvious candidate here. I never absorbed in any meaningful manner any of the classical music I learned as a child, because after a long day at school, the motivation to focus during music lessons was usually quite hard to find. Motivation itself influences the degree of vigilance and concentration we pay to a certain subject while studying it, which in turn has a direct impact on how well we will remember it.

Human memory is essentially an associative process, so we have a better chance of learning and remembering something well if we learn it in context. Rather than just memorising, for instance, that Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in the year 1948, I’d do better if I knew already that India attained its independence in the year 1947 and he was killed just a year later.

Since memory is so associative, it is prone to some flaws as well. It is this feature of the brain that causes us to get confused when we see a workplace acquaintance of ours at a restaurant. The brain is so used to associating that face with the workplace environment that it must work harder to identify the face outside of the familiar context.

Focused and default modes

Barbara Oakley, in her excellent Talk at Google on how the brain learns (I’d suggest everyone who has the time to watch this video, which speaks more in detail about some of the points I touch upon here), coins the term “focused mode” for the parts of the brain that are activated when challenged with a familiar problem. In “focused mode”, she says, many of the neural connections are already made. But when we start to learn something completely new, another mode of the brain, the “default mode”, comes into play. The default mode network comprises a range of brain regions that are active when a person is at rest. These are probably the regions at work when we say “I don’t know how that idea came to me while I was washing the dishes. I wasn’t even thinking about the problem at hand!”. Given that it comprises of diffuse brain regions, the default mode network can be useful at associating seemingly unrelated concepts or ideas.

This is one of the reasons why sleep is so important to learning. Studies have shown that sleep is essential for a few reasons – for one, the process of consolidating short-term memories to long-term ones happens in part during sleep. It has also been demonstrated in mice that sleep drives clearance of by-products of neural activity from the brain, leading to a possible restorative effect.

While taking short breaks to activate default mode networks of the brain is important, it is critical to do so in a measured and conscious manner. Digital distractions have made it almost impossible to concentrate on a task for a prolonged period, and for people who are prone to procrastination, it can be a never-ending spiral.

Learning techniques

Experts have suggested a simple technique for us to overcome procrastination and be more productive during the time we have available to us. It is called the Pomodoro technique, and it involves working for a stretch of 25 minutes, followed by a short 5-minute break. This break is important, as we have discussed, to get our minds off the problem and activate different regions of the brain from those we were using while we were focused on the task. This not only provides us an opportunity to get more creative, but also keeps our temptation to get distracted in check.

I’ve tried the Pomodoro technique and can attest that it works. The day I tried it for the first time, there was an advertisement for toddler clothes in the webpage of the article I was reading. Under normal circumstances, it would have taken me no thinking at all to click on the ad and squander more than a few minutes flitting from one website to another. But because I knew that I had a Pomodoro break coming up, I resisted the temptation and concentrated on my reading. Experts suggest that rather than get overwhelmed by dividing up a large task into chunks, it might be a better idea to just focus on doing concentrated work during the 25-minute work slot and slowly ease into the technique.

Many of these learning techniques can help kids with their schoolwork as well. One of the best ways to commit something to memory, experts say, is not simply to underline or write notes while studying, but to look away from the page and see how much you can recall from what you read.

While memorising content at the last minute without understanding it might help with passing an exam, the best way to ensure something goes into our long term memory is by spaced revision. Study something on Monday and revise it every day of the week. Without spaced revision, we tend to forget information we have learned pretty quickly. Revising periodically also ensures enough “default mode” time for the brain, and sleep time to ensure that all the short term memory is converted to long term memory.

Finally, it can be a great idea to try and explain something so a ten-year old understands. Many scientists and engineers can be so caught up in the nitty-gritties of what they do that they lose sight of the bigger picture. Explaining so a child understands is not as difficult to do as it sounds, and the payoffs can be excellent. If Einstein himself could say that one only understands a topic if they can explain it to a six-year old, then I think the rest of us could take courage from his statement.

At the end of the day though, most of us are running on depleting mental resources due to the pandemic and its effects, and it is important to be kind to ourselves if our productivity is not at its maximum. One thing that we could all take away from this article, however, is that the brain is indeed a fascinating organ, and one that we are still discovering so much about.

(Aditi Subramaniam is a neuroscientist turned writer who is fascinated by the workings of the brain and how we can ‘rewire’ it to our advantage. She enjoys writing about the neuroscience of everyday life, and its practical implications for parenting)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.