Barbara Oakley, PhD, PE

Professor of Engineering, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan

Visiting Scholar, University of California, San Diego

How did you do it?

Philip Oakley

Focused mode Diffuse mode

Focused Mode Diffuse Mode

It takes

time

Weight lifter Sultan Rakhmanov, RIA Novosti

Focusing intently in ONE

session to figure

something out can be the

worst approach possible

Team up

Explain focused versus diffuse mode

Now You Try!

Procrastination

Insular Cortex!

Procrastination

Procrastination – A Habit

• Do NOT focus on finishing a task

• Turn off all distractions

• Set timer for 25 minutes

• Focus

• Reward!

Xie, Lulu, Hongyi Kang, Qiwu Xu, Michael J Chen, Yonghong Liao, Meenakshisundaram Thiyagarajan, John O’Donnell, et al. "Sleep

Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain." Science 342, no. 6156 (2013): 373-77.

Sleep

Yang, G, et al. "Sleep promotes branch-specific formation of dendritic

spines after learning." Science 344, 6188 (2014): 1173-1178.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

Working memory

Focused mode

Focused mode Diffuse mode

Is Background Music

Okay?

Café Mélange, a coffeehouse in Vienna, by Sandstein.

It’s good to change location when studying

Working memory

Long term

memory

Practice Makes Permanent

Qin, S., S. Cho, T. Chen, M. Rosenberg-Lee, D. C. Geary, and V. Menon.

"Hippocampal-Neocortical Functional Reorganization Underlies

Children's Cognitive Development." Nat Neurosci (Aug 17 2014).

Working

memory and

chunking

Raw information Information is chunked

and understood

Focused thinking

Diffuse thinking

Creative!

Poor memory

“Slow” thinker

Maryam Mirzakhani

Illusions of competence in learning

Flashcards are your friend.

Tests are the best!

Hard start, jump to easy

Recall

Passion