1

Video 2 - 1 Week 2 Introduction

0:00

[MUSIC]

0:11

This week, we're going to be doing a little brain excavation to learn that focusing intently isn't
always the best thing for optimal learning and mind shifting. We'll discover other valuable
methods to enhance your learning. And we'll see some unbelievable feats people can
accomplish using these techniques. We'll also warn you about popular learning approaches
that research has shown are actually harmful. Perhaps most importantly, we'll give you tools
to help slip past your inner procrastinator and other proven tools to help you reframe and
reduce stress. All this and more in this week's Mindshift. [MUSIC]
 2

Video 2 - 2 The Value of a Poor Memory

0:00

[MUSIC] We sometimes fool ourselves about our good attributes with relation to
learning. We think they're bad. We saw that with the race car brains verses the hiker
brains. Being a slow hiker type thinker can give you an advantage because you can be
less likely to jump to conclusions and more able to flexibly change your mind when
you're wrong.

0:34

But there's another advantageous attribute that we often think is bad, and that is a poor
memory. The reality is that a poor memory has a valuable side to it. Let's review the key
idea. We know that the prefrontal cortex has roughly four slots of working memory. This
means we can hold a maximum of about four neural chunks of information in those slots
when we focus our attention. Chunks can be simple, like those related to numbers, the
notes that form a musical chord, or words or phrases in a foreign language. If we've
practiced enough, we can build more complex neural chunks that we can easily pull into
working memory and work with. The neural chunks are kind of like ribbons of thought.
These neural chunks can also relate to more complicated ideas, like longer portions of a
song, or a more complex equation. As you can see, these neural sort of chunks, ribbons,
can, with practice, involve incredibly complex activities. Experts have lots of well
practiced neural chunks that they can easily bring to mind. The key idea here is that
when you first look at something to try to figure it out, your working memory in your
prefrontal cortex is working very hard. But once you've understood that something and
practiced enough with it to form a solid neural pattern, you've created a neural chunk.
That's like that ribbon that you can easily draw into one slot of working memory, leaving
the rest of your working memory free for other processing. And this is why, once we've
practiced enough, beginning since we were toddlers, as adults, we can think a single
thought, like walk towards the door, and walk, which is actually a very complex
 3

maneuver, without even continuing to think about it. Some people have working
memories like steel traps, whatever ideas come before them can be easily retained in
their working memories. This can make it easier for them to understand complex topics
and solve complicated problems. But other people, like say, me, have not so good
working memories. They may get something in mind, but then, shiny, they get distracted,
and then some of what they were thinking about falls out their minds. But when that
something falls out, something else comes in. And that's where creativity comes to play.
Those new ideas that come willy nilly into your mind can be the source of creative new
thoughts. And in fact, as we know from research, those with poor working memories are
often more creative. Do you have to work harder to keep up with the steel trap memory
types? Sure, but you wouldn't want to trade the asset that your poor memory gives you,
that is your creativity. But digging deeper, a poor working memory means something
else. As it turns out, a poor working memory gives you an effective tool to figure out
simpler ways to do things. It may take you a while to figure those things out, but when
you do figure them out, you can sometimes see elegant simplifications and brilliant
shortcuts [LAUGH] that a person with a strong working memory just doesn't have the
motivation to figure out. There's more. Andrew Wiles, for example, is a mathematical
legend who, after 358 years of efforts by some of the world's leading mathematicians, at
last proved Fermat's last theorem, has pointed out that you often need forgetting, as well
as remembering, to help you solve problem. Forgetting helps you get past previous
mistakes you might have made. Andrew's less than perfect memory, in other words,
helped him to solve one of the world's most difficult problems.

4:43

Remember, if you do have a poor working memory, you'll want to use memory tricks like
the memory palace or learn to associate. For example, you can associate people's
names with memorable images. In English, it turns out that we have the name Wanda.
You can remember Wanda's name by imagining a magic wand. Or the name Phil, which
sounds like the word fill in English, can be more easily remembered if you fill Phil's head
with fizzy water. Putting motion into your visualization helps make things stick better in
memory.
 4

5:21

Mental tricks can be very powerful tools. We'll cover some more mental tricks in the
videos to come. But just a bit of insight now. Whether you have a good, or a not so good
working memory, get yourself into the habit of making mind dumps of information that
you do not need to keep online in your working memory. Every time you think of an
errand, or something you need to remember, rather than holding it in working memory,
commit to writing it down in a notebook or any other trusted inbox. [MUSIC]
 5

Video 2 - 3 Meditation and Mindfulness – What to Look

for

0:00

[MUSIC]

0:12

We hear a lot nowadays about meditation and mindfulness. So inquiring minds often
want to know what effect meditation can have on learning. First, let's back up a step.
What is meditation? It's really just a way of bringing about different modes of
consciousness using a variety of different techniques. For example, meditators may
close their eyes and repeat a mantra, control their breathing, or deliberately cultivate a
certain emotional state.

0:43

Scientific research on meditation is still in it's infancy. But researchers can sometimes
classify meditation techniques into two different types that seem to be fundamentally
different [SOUND]. Focused attention and open monitoring. Given what we've learned
already, my guess that these two types of meditation relate to the two different types of
basic modes of the brain uses to perceive the world, focus and diffuse. And you'd be
right. Focus attention types of meditations such as mantra, sound or chakra meditation
appear to help enhance focus mode type thinking, this kind of meditation sometimes
seems to make people feel better. It can help reduce feelings of depression and anxiety,
even while it builds concentration abilities. In contrast, open monitoring types of
meditation such as, vipassana and mindfulness, appear to improve diffuse imaginative
thinking. With open monitoring, we don't just focus on one thing. Instead we keep our
attention open to all aspects of experience without judging or becoming attached to our
thoughts. Now we know that diffuse mode thinking is worldwide ranging, your thoughts
[SOUND] can bounce pretty much anywhere. Daydreaming happens in the diffuse mode,
 6

daydreaming not only gives rise to more random thoughts and connections that under
pin creativity. It also helps you plan for the future, send your thoughts tend to wonder
towards what the future might bring, sounds great, right? Well, not entirely. The diffuse
mode is also affiliated with anxiety and depression. Think about it this way. If your mind
is bouncing all over the place, it can get drawn into worry [SOUND] about, whoa, things
that might go wrong. [LAUGH] Part of the reason that building your focusing abilities
may help make you feel happier. Is that it appears to suppress the diffuse mode, while it
builds the focusing mode. So what does all this mean? It means that meditation can
have surprisingly different effects, depending on the type. It's all very complex, and
researchers are far from sorting everything out yet. In the end, practices that encourage
focusing can be a great benefit for learning. But having some daily time where your mind
relaxes and wanders freely is also very important, particularly if you want to encourage
creativity. From a particle stand point then if you are a meditator you might try to avoid
feeling you should always be stirring your thoughts back into focus. If you catch your
mind wondering outside meditation sessions. This might be why people find the
pomodoro technique so useful for combining creativity with productivity. It's a sort of
working meditation. Up next, we'll look at some of the deeper aspects of the pomodoro
technique. [MUSIC]
 7

Video 2 - 4 The Pomodoro Technique as Working

Meditation

0:00

[MUSIC] A common challenge to making a mindshift is something so simple we almost

forget to think about it, procrastination. Of course, in our previous MOOC, Learning How
to Learn, we all ready learned about how procrastination can arise. When you even think
about something that you don't really want to do, it activates the brain's pain centers.
The brain, naturally enough, tries to stop that negative stimulation, so it turns its
attention to something else, anything else. The result? You feel better almost instantly.
But you've also just procrastinated. We learned, as well about, the Pomodoro Technique
to help you tackle procrastination. Italian Francesco Cirillo devised this fiendishly clever
method in the 1980s, and it's spread around the world since then. To do a pomodoro,
just turn off all distractions, no little ringy dingies from our cell phones or computers
and then set a timer for 25 minutes. Then you hold your focus on your work as intently
as you humanly can for those 25 minutes.

1:20

We're all human, and distracting thoughts will inevitably arise when we're doing a
pomodoro. For example, sometimes I'll set the pomodoro timer for 25 minutes. Great, I'm
all happy. And then 5 minutes into the pomodoro, I'll look up and suddenly realize that
I've got 20 whole minutes left to do. My mind goes, I just can't do 20 more minutes! But
what I do is I let that thought go right on by and then I return my focus to my learning or
my work. If I catch myself absently checking my email, I gently stop as soon as I've
realized what I'm doing. In fact, I'll often close my email program, and other programs,
just to make it a little harder to check them.

2:11
 8

None of us has perfectly obedient minds, thank goodness, which means it's inevitable
that distracting thoughts are going to arise. The thing is when you're doing a pomodoro,
you don't want to try to push those thoughts away or tell yourself not to think those
thoughts. Instead, you just want to acknowledge the distracting thought and let it go by
as you return your attention to whatever you were focusing on. We've mentioned the first
three components of the Pomodoro Technique, but there's actually a fourth. Once you're
done with the pomodoro it's reward time. [SOUND] You get to switch your attention for a
while to whatever you want. You might listen to a favorite song, go to your favorite social
media, watch a funny dance video, do a funny dance yourself, chat online with a friend.
Or do something where you move around a little bit, straighten part of your room, walk
to the kitchen to get some coffee or tea. The whole idea is to get your attention off
whatever you've just been focusing on. In fact, you want to give the part of the brain
you've just been using a bit of a break. This means the reward shouldn't involve similar
types of tasks. For instance, if you've been writing a report then you don't want to go to
Twitter or Facebook and continue writing, even if it's about a different subject. That
would be kind of like taking a break from lifting heavy barbells instead by lifting boxes of
books. You're still doing heavy lifting either way, which means you're not getting much
of a break. And at the end of the day you'll find yourself getting much more tired. A great
approach is, if you're doing mental work, try to instead do some kind of movement
during your breaks, something where your brain can relax and your mind can do some
wandering. All of this is very important because in the past we've always thought that
learning only took place when we were focusing our attention on something. But we now
understand that an important part of learning takes place when we're not focusing on
something. In fact, to truly understand something we often need periods where we've
switched our attention off the material we're trying to understand, because that's the
time when we consolidate and make sense of the material. We're not consciously aware
of this process, which is why we often don't realize how important this consolidation
process is for learning, memory, and long-term creativity. We've heard from tens of
thousands of learners in Learning How to Learn about how much they loved the
Pomodoro Technique. People often ask, well, why 25 minutes?
 9

5:01

Remember that pain in the brain that pops up when we think about something we really
didn't want to do? It seems that when we decide to go ahead and work on that task
despite the pain, that pain often lasts about 20 minutes. In other words, doing a
pomodoro helps you just get past the pain and into the flow of the work. I do have to
admit, if I really get going and into the flow, I don't necessarily make myself stop at the
end of a pomodoro session. I just keep going as long as it feels good, which, of course,
is fine too. People often also wonder about how long the break should be between
pomodoros. Well, this depends on you, and what you've got going on. Maybe it's final
examination time, or you've got a massively important presentation to prepare for. In this
case, you may only want to have maybe 3 to 5 minutes between pomodoros. But if
you're not in such a crunch time, perhaps you can take 10 or 20 minutes. Some people
set a pomodoro timer as a sort of, worst case I only have to do 25 minutes, sort of
motivator. The pomodoro helps them to get started, but if they get into the flow, and are
liking what they're doing, they won't necessarily quit at the end of the 25 minutes.

6:25

You might also ask, how do I get myself restarted doing a pomodoro once I've taken a
break? This also depends a lot on you. Everyone's motivated differently. One motivator
is to download an app onto your phone that gives you badges for each pomodoro you
finish. People often enjoy collecting these badges each day, and you can set a goal for
yourself, perhaps two pomodoros for work related to one topic, maybe three related to
another, and so forth. There are also other motivators you can use. We'll talk about them
in the next video. And you'll be learning a lot more about all of this in our Productivity
MOOC. The Pomodoro Technique is, in reality, a powerful and actually enjoyable type of
meditation through work. Smart learners make great use of this. [MUSIC]
 10

Video 2 - 5 Getting Past Procrastination

0:00

[MUSIC]

0:12

The Pomodoro Technique is a powerful tool to help guard against procrastination. But it
can also help to take a bit of a step back when you catch yourself procrastinating, to
look at the bigger picture. Researcher Piers Steel has analyzed many of the different
motivators and demotivators of procrastination, which he's written about in his book,
The Procrastination Equation. Basically, Steel has found to get yourself motivated to
perform a task, say, to write a report for work, or to prepare for an examination at the
university, when you expect a reward or success. So you want to do what you can to
increase the expectancy of success and the certainty of being rewarded. You also get
motivated when you value the task and the task is pleasant. So you want to do what you
can to increase the value and the pleasantness of the task, but on the other hand, you
get unmotivated to perform a task when you get distracted or lose focus, when you are
affected by impulsiveness. So you want to do what you can to remove distractions and
maintain your focus. Steel's ideas were combined into a very helpful flow chart by
program management analyst, Alex Vermeer. Basically, to get a handle on
procrastination, you want to notice when you're procrastination. Be specific about what
your avoiding, and to get motivated, you want to focus on one of the three areas we just
mentioned. To increase expectancy, to increase value, or to decrease impulsiveness. So
how would you, for example, increase value? Well, one way is to find a greater meaning
in what you're working on, and you do that for example, by setting and reviewing your
major life's goals and asking yourself how they connect with what you're doing. You
might also find a way to get into the flow with the material. Make sure that what you're
doing is not too tough or too easy. And sometimes it helps to create a sense of
 11

competition. You can compete against yourself, against your colleagues, or you can just
turn what you're doing into a game in whatever way you'd like.

2:39

There's a lot more to Vermeer's chart, of course. It's important to keep energized. Maybe
by moving around a little, splashing some cold water on your face. Putting on a little
low-key music. And, again, it's also useful to create a reward for yourself. More
generally, do what you can to keep your brain healthy, add accountability, and find
passion in what you're working on. Now, to increase your sense of expectancy,
remember that if you don't do anything, it guarantees failure. But this means you should
pat yourself on the back when you succeed. It's also important to be inspired and be
sure to plan ahead as much as possible. Another helpful strategy is to log your
procrastination habits and check your mindset. Have you inadvertently told yourself you
just don't have the talent instead of telling yourself you can develop the talent?

3:40

You can also work to reduce your impulsivity. The key here is to set a realistic goal and
break it down into tiny, little doable pieces. When you're working on one of those pieces,
set a timer. If you can't do a 25 minute Pomodoro, just start with five minutes. Eliminate
temptations and distractions, like your phone or social media. Set up helpful routines
and habits. Use goal reminders and make your goals visible, perhaps by putting them on
your mirror so you can see them every morning. Stop trying to suppress distracting
thoughts that pop up. Instead, acknowledge them and let them go right on by. And of
course, keep track of your progress so you can feel good about your accomplishments.

4:33

There's one more thing with relation to procrastination. When you're learning something,
especially if it's new and difficult, it's not a good idea to procrastinate. Although you can
sometimes really focus under the stress of impending deadline, that stress can also be
uncomfortable and counterproductive, making it harder to learn something difficult.
 12

More than that, it takes time to grow the new neural synapses that form the foundation of
any learning. This is why, as we've noted before, it's important to space out your
learning, doing a little every day, rather than trying to cram it all in on one short deadline.
Your brain can only grow so many new synaptic connections in a day, and you also need
many days of learning and accompanying nights of good sleep in order to effectively
consolidate the material you've been learning. If you try to cram your learning, you're
laying a poor foundation. When the learning's easy, like at the beginning of a course
you're taking, it can seem okay to procrastinate and cram. But gradually, as the course
goes on, your weak foundation will start showing itself. You'll start to think you just
don't have a knack for understanding the material when it isn't that at all, you actually
just haven't put the time into properly understanding and learning it.

6:05

Sometimes however, procrastination can be productive. This often relates to tasks

where you're synthesizing information. For example, when I was writing the book Mind
Shift in preparation for doing this MOOC, I was doing a lot of travel around the world,
meeting learners and talking with researchers. If I'd started writing too early, I wouldn't
have given myself the time I needed to properly gather enough information. I had to give
myself time to make sure I collected enough of the right data, before I started drawing
conclusions. Believe it or not, some learners' biggest challenge is that they want to dive
right into writing a report or solving a problem without doing proper preparation. So this
kind of productive procrastination, where you're gathering your knowledge base, is very
important. In the end, if you feel overwhelmed by everything you've got to do, just focus
on one thing and keep track of what works best. Finally, remember to use the
information in Alex's full flowchart and Piers Steel useful book. Happy mind shift.
[MUSIC]
 13

Video 2 - 6 The Value of Procedural Fluency and

Deliberate Practice

0:00

[MUSIC]

0:11

So I have to tell you about a former student of mine. He came up, stuck out a red marked quiz
that he just flunked and he said, I just don't see how I could have done so poorly. I
understood it when you taught it in class. Here's the problem. In Western education, at least,
we've gotten so wedded to the idea that conceptual understanding is the golden key to
learning, that we've ignored the fact that practice and repetition is an equally vital aspect of
learning. It's that repeated banging away at it that ultimately can structure knowledge.
Students themselves, including my former student, are fooled about how to learn effectively.
In the past, for thousands of years the only way people thought learning happened was
through memorization. People showed their learning mostly by just regurgitating what they'd
memorized. Now, it's not like this didn't work at all. Otherwise, we'd never have the wonderful
advances in the arts and sciences that we've seen in the last millennia. But of course,
memorization isn't everything in learning.

1:22

As a reaction to that extreme sort of learning equals memorization idea, in the last 100 years
or so, a new approach has gradually arisen in Western ways of teaching. This approach says
that conceptual understanding, not rote learning or memorization, is the key to learning. But
in the West, at least, we've now gone off on to the other end of the extreme. We've gone so
far overboard in emphasizing the unique importance of conceptual understanding that we've
lost sight of the fact that some memorization in practice, especially deliberate practice that
focuses on the hardest parts of the material, is also important in any kind of learning. In fact,
practice and repetition, not to mention memorization, don't just reinforce your understanding,
they can actually lead to a deeper and richer understanding, as this paper shows. Poets often
say, memorize the poem and you will understand it more deeply. But why should we in other
disciplines let only the poets have all the fun? Memorizing an equation, for example, can help
you understand that equation more deeply, especially if you're trying to understand what's
going on with that equation as you're memorizing it. Unfortunately, you'll sometimes hear
even advanced educators and educational psychologists in the West saying, it doesn't
matter, you can always look it up, in regards many forms of learning, especially in math and
science. But that's really not true. Would you know the French language, for example, if you
had to go look words up every time you needed them? Would you know how to properly
design an engine if you hadn't spent time memorizing some of the equations, or at least
working enough with them such that they flowed fluently in your mind? Would you really
want your doctor to breeze through medical school without memorizing any of the hundreds
 14

of thousands of facts doctors are typically asked to memorize during their preparatory
studies? Psychologist Anders Ericsson's work has shown that all expertise develops through
building strong, well practiced mental representations. That is, large libraries of solidly built
neural chunks that can be easily drawn into working memory. The main point of this video is
that practice, including some memorization, can help you to chunk key ideas and procedures,
a vitally important part of learning. Remember how when you're first trying to figure
something out, the working memory of your prefrontal cortex is going a little crazy? Of
course, once you've got that concept chunked, that is, understood and practiced, you
basically have the equivalent of a nice, smooth ribbon that you can easily bring into working
memory whenever you need to, leaving the other slots of working memory free to process
other related chunks to hook them together to form more advanced thoughts. This is a key
idea. If you want to see true procedural fluency, that is brilliantly chunked expertise in action,
take a look at Mr. Kazuyuki Takayanagi, the president of USA, which is actually located in
Japan, as he works with two young children who are learning to add numbers incredibly
quickly in their heads using a technique called. It's almost impossible to believe that anyone
could add that fast, much less young children, but add they can. What this means is that the
rhythms of quickly practicing addition have formed fundamental neural structures that these
children can access rapidly, easily, and largely subconsciously, which means that their
conscious working memory can be working on more advanced ideas that build on the
simpler ideas of addition. Some children can actually play verbal games while they're doing

5:40

because the verbal processing uses a different part of the brain. I sometimes have students
come to me saying they suffer from test anxiety. Test anxiety does exist. I suffer from it
myself. But after decades of teaching, I've come to realize that those who claim test anxiety
often simply haven't studied well. Of course they feel anxious when they sit down to do a
test. It's just that they haven't studied the material. Only when the test is put in front of them
do they look deeply enough to realize that they didn't understand it, it's too late, and they
panic. So remember, conceptual understanding is important, but equally important is practice
and repetition enhanced by a healthy dose of memorization. I'm Barbara Oakley, happy
Mindshift. [MUSIC]
 15

Video 2 - 7 Bad Grades and Barb's Hands – The Value

of Mental Tricks

0:00

[MUSIC]

0:12

So it was at age 26 when I started to try and retrain my brain from being a linguist to
becoming more technical. I worked very hard at this, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to
keep having adventures. A couple years into my brain retraining exercise, I had the
opportunity to go to the Bering Sea and work as a Russian translator on Soviet trollers. And
then the unexpected opportunity arose for me to work as a radio operator at the South Pole
Station in Antarctica. Exciting times, except for one thing. All this meant that I took about a
year off from the electrical engineering program I just worked so hard to be accepted in to.
The semester I finally returned to the university after my adventures, it might be no surprise
to learn that I struggled. I'd lost some of my newly acquired fluency with math and equations.
After all, I'd been away for a year. When I got to my end of semester grades, I was distraught.
In fact, I was so disappointed in myself, that I kept feeling upset and stressed for weeks. Have
you ever noticed my hands? They've got, let's say, a kind of interesting twist to them. This is
because when I let stressful emotions take over my life, I open myself up to disease. I was
only 29 years old at the time, but right in the middle of my stressful reaction to bad grades, I
acquired rheumatoid arthritis. Allowing yourself to react inappropriately to stressful events
can open the door to serious disease, including not only rheumatoid arthritis, but even
cancer. It's not like it's just a temporary thing. Obviously these kinds of diseases can affect
you for the rest of your life or even shorten your life. Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel
Kahneman makes a vital point when he observes nothing in life is as important as you think it
is, while you're thinking about it. This is a very useful thought to keep in mind to help put
your life into perspective. Unfortunate things happen to everyone. But if you react badly, you
can end up making those things even worse. At that time, I just didn't have the cognitive
tools I needed to be able to handle stress better. I didn't realize that simple mental tricks can
be invaluable not only in reducing stress but also overall in helping me to be more effective,
productive, and happy in my life and my learning. So what kinds of mental tricks am I talking
about? First, let me give you a little background. Let's say your visiting a zoo and you see a
snake in a cage. No big deal right. But now let's imagine that you see that snake outside the
cage slithering towards you, very different. You see, the context with which you view
something makes an enormous difference. If you learn to put a mental cage, a better frame,
around your stressful thoughts it can help you move forward in a positive way. Anyone can
learn and develop mental tricks to help them reframe negative thoughts in a more positive
way. In the next video, we'll learn some of the most powerful of these tricks.
 16

Video 2 - 8 Learning to Reframe – Put a Label on It!

0:00

[MUSIC]

0:12

So what could I have done in reaction to my personal setback with my grades, or with
any kind of setback that could have made for a healthier outlook? Putting a label on your
feelings, in other words, putting your feelings into a few brief words is one of the most
helpful mental tricks you can use when you find yourself being emotionally upset.
Applying a label forces you to put your emotional feelings into words. And moving
feelings into words helps you shift your thinking from the emotional centers of your
brain to the more rational parts of your brain, which automatically begins to tone down
your emotions. Fortunately, a field called cognitive therapy has developed a checklist of
common emotionally-based distortions of thinking. This checklist provides an automatic
set of labels. You can look at these brief descriptive words that I'm going to give you and
see which ones fit the emotions you might be feeling when you're upset. Once you've
found the words for your feelings, voilà, you're already beginning to move your thoughts
from emotions to more rational cognitions. Not only does this labeling start helping to
calm you down, it also helps you to more easily see the distortions In your thinking. Here
I'm going to give you some common cognitive distortions based on the list developed by
Dr. David Burns and his great book, The New Mood Therapy. It's worth copying down
these distortions and using them as labels to reflect on when something upsets you.
Basically, when I felt badly about my grades, I was using every common cognitive
distortion in the book. Let's review them one at a time.

2:00

First, I was using all or nothing thinking. I felt if I didn't get good grades, I was a total
failure. I mean, really. The reality was that I wasn't a total failure by any stretch of the
 17

imagination. Even if I'd flunked out of the university, I wouldn't have been a total failure. I
was exploding the significance of that semester of poor grades. The reality was that
even if I'd flunked out of school, and hadn't been successful at changing my brain to be
able to effectively study math, I likely would've found a way to go on and have a
successful and happy life.

2:39

And then there's overgeneralization. I saw one semester's failure as part of a series of
failures in my life. Sure, I'd done badly that semester, but I've done badly before. As
when I'd been a failure as a signal officer in the military. But previously, I'd also done
well at some things, like studying Russian. When I thought I was a failure, I simply wasn't
looking at the bigger picture. I was overgeneralizing in thinking I'd always have bad
grades. Remember Nobel Prize winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman's point? Nothing
in life is as important as you think it is while you're thinking about it. At that time, I felt
like my life was a complete failure. I was obviously wrong. I was also using a mental
filter. I was focusing on my one semester's poor grades and obsessing on them and
forgetting about everything else. Here were all these good and beautiful things around
me everywhere, and I was ignoring them. I was also discounting the positive. I'd worked
hard and previously been able to get good grades. I had a wonderful husband who I'd
met at the South Pole station in Antarctica. I had my good health. I was also jumping to
conclusions. Somehow, in my mind, I was predicting that things would go badly from
then on. The reality was that I didn't really know what was going to happen from then on
out. I was also mind reading. Thinking that others were going to think badly of me. I
really had no idea what other people, like my family, would think. I was falling victim to
my own emotional reasoning. I assumed that just because I felt negatively about what
had happened, that is really was a negative thing. Actually, my feelings had little to do
with what was happening in the real world. The whole incident was equivalent to me
feeling terrified of the airplane flight, and the flight was actually perfectly fine. I was
telling myself I should have done better. Shouldy kind of thinking, these kinds of
statements just aren't helpful. They lead only to guilt, anger, and frustration. I was also
using pejoratives of myself. I was telling myself I was stupid, I was an idiot, and that
 18

what happened was absolutely terrible. This kind of name calling does no good at all. In
fact, it makes you feel bad about yourself and also leaves you feeling angry and
frustrated. What happened was unfortunate, but it wasn't terrible. In fact, getting a few
bad grades really wasn't a big deal at all in the greater scheme of how my life unfolded.
Sometimes we take blame and assume responsibility for errors we didn't make. Or we
inappropriately blame others. In my case, I blamed myself for my bad grades. After all, I
was to blame for getting away from my studies for a year. But did I really need to drag
myself under the bus for having undertaken some great adventures? So we've gone over
a list of labels you can use to move yourself from an emotionally based framework to a
more rational, calmed down part of the brain where you can more carefully analyze and
reason away the distortions in your thinking. In the discussion forum, you might want to
mention something, anything that's been bothering you. Then describe what cognitive
distortion or distortions you may be using. It might be many of them. Finally, look
logically at the distortions you're using. What is the reality when you put things into a
greater life perspective just as I've done with that past episode of my own life. Whenever
you find yourself growing despondent, sit yourself down, think about what's really
bothering you, go back through those labels, and see how your mind is tricking you.
Then develop a rational response. You'll be surprised at how much better this can make
you feel. There's one more trick you can use to help positively reframe. And that is to
find positive ways to think about a negative experience. For example, if you failed at
business, think of it as a great learning experience that many ultimately successful
entrepreneurs have also had. If you didn't get the job you wanted, well, that's leaving you
open for a better job ahead. And meanwhile, it's a great signal for you to upgrade your
skills. Did poorly on an exam? Well, maybe that's a clue to examine your study habits.
Your best friend dying of cancer? Well, maybe you want to focus on trying to improve
the quality of the life your friend has remaining.

7:39

Positively reframing isn't just mental trickery. It extinguishes negative emotions that are
arising from that fight or flight center of the amygdala. It seems that consciously finding
a way to change the meaning of what's being experienced reduces the flood of
 19

stress-related neurotransmitters that are released by the hyper-vigilant amygdala. You

might wonder what positive thing could possibly have come from my having rheumatoid
arthritis? Simple, if it helps give you a visual reminder you can call to mind to help calm
yourself down and reframe in the face of the stress that will inevitably arise in your life.
I'll be back. [MUSIC]
 20

Video 2 - 9 Integrate All Your Senses Into Learning –

The Pitfalls of "Learning Styles"

0:00

[MUSIC] There's a lot of misinformation out there about the concept of learning styles.
To help keep you on track with your learning, I'd like to give you some quick insight into
what researchers have found and what it means for you. People receive and process
new information in different ways. Pretty much all researchers agree with that idea. But
what supporters of learning styles theory propose is something more. That people learn
best when information is presented in a person's preferred learning style. Visual learners
for example would recall and understand better if they can see the material as opposed
to audio learners who would recall and understand the material better, if they can hear
the material. But here's what researcher Beth Rogowsky and her colleges had found
when they carefully analyzed some of the most common learning styles. If you take a
standardized adult learning style inventory that shows you're a visual learner, you
actually don't do any better when you're reading the words, than if you hear the words.
Likewise if you test out as an auditory learner, you don't learn any better when you hear
the material as opposed to when you can see it. In other words, there is no statistically
significant difference when it comes to the relationship between a learning style
preference and instructional method for your ability to comprehend the materials. Not
only has research shown then that targeting your best learning style, doesn't appear to
help you learn better, it seems like relying on your preferred style weakens your ability to
learn using other senses. For example, if you think you're an auditory learner and you try
to focus on learning by listening, what that means is you're getting less practice with
reading, using your eyes. But being able to read well is an important skill in today's
world. In fact, if you're an auditory learner, that's what you think you are, and you
catered to your supposed need for auditory materials, then you're actually undercutting
your ability to learn using one of the most common and important ways that most people
 21

receive information, that is, using visual means. How are you going to do well on typical
standardized test, for example, if you don't practice the highly visual art of reading.

2:32

It seems we often learn best when we can integrate what we're learning using a lot of our
different senses including hearing, seeing and perhaps especially being able to feel with
our hands, like what you're hopefully doing right now, seeing me, listening to what I'm
telling you and maybe even taking notes of it with a pen or pencil in your hand. And
feeling the paper on your notebook.

3:00

Learning styles forms a big industry. Authors and companies make a lot of money from
the tests they devise, administer, and teach workshops about. So there's a big push to
the idea that teaching to learning styles is important, even if there's a lack of scientific
evidence for these claims, and even if teaching to learning styles can actually be
harmful. So, a word to the wise, whenever you're learning something, try to take
advantage of all of your senses. Don't characterize yourself as just having one preferred
learning style. Instead think of yourself as an all inclusive type learner, you'll learn so
much better as a result.
 22

Video 2 - 10 Can You Try to Learn Too Much?

0:00

[MUSIC] In this video, we're going to explore a question that many educators find a little
bit uncomfortable. Can you try to learn too much? Ana Belen Sanchez-Prieto, professor
of medieval manuscript studies and archive management in Madrid gives interesting
insight about this. Ana had her doubts about online education, but when she was given
the opportunity to teach a MOOC, she decided to do some exploration to get a better
understanding of the online world. Since Ana was going to create an online class, she
wanted to try one out herself first. >> I took the MOOC, Archaeology's Little Dirty Secrets
And I loved it. It gave me a lot of ideas for my own online class. But I also learned that I
had a lot to learn about effective teaching, so I enrolled in another MOOC, Foundations
of Teaching for Learning. Then I took the complete specialization. Then I took every
education-related MOOC I could find. But then, I began to discover that I could take
MOOCs on things I wondered about but have never had the chance to learn, such as
computers. Dr Chuck's classes on the Internet and Python were fantastic eye openers.
Then I started taking classes on HTML and other tools for web development. Then I
started working my way through math with Khan Academy. I'll be honest, I got carried
away.

1:44

It caused real stress because I also have my own classes. My social life began
vanishing. Finally, I have to face it, I was addicted to MOOCs and what is worse? I often
wasn't really learning because I was focused more on finishing and getting the
certificate. In the end I realized that many things can be interesting to learn about, but I
had to choose.

2:11
 23

>> A few months after her cold turkey withdrawal from MOOCs, Ana went back to
MOOCing but this time she took a more balanced approach. She started sitting in on a
MOOC on game design so she can apply gaming techniques to improve her classes.
She's planning to repeat the gaming class again before formally enrolling, so she really
learns the material. Ana's objective now is simply to learn but not to be overwhelmed
and in the end Ana's MOOC, Deciphering secrets:The illuminated Manuscripts of
Medieval Europe finally launched.

2:49

But Ana's path to balance inner life and her learning be a guide for you. Happy balanced
mindshift.
 24

Video 2 - 11 Your Social Brain

0:11

Who you hang out with strongly influences who you are. You will behave with more
decorum in a group of serious scholars than with a group of drinking buddies. A
colleague at Oxford University married a Danish woman once, and he told me his
relationship with his wife changed once he learned Danish. They fell in love with each
other speaking English. He wanted to learn Danish so he could get to know her better.
When he spoke to his wife in Danish, he discovered she was a different person, and they
fell out of love. Different languages, different personalities. Google once did an in-depth
study to find out what factors went into making a successful team. Were the best teams
made up of people with similar interests? Did it matter whether everyone was motivated
by the same rewards? How often did teammates socialize outside their office? Did they
have the same hobbies? Were their educational background similar? Was it better for all
teammates to be outgoing, or for all of them to be shy? They started Project Aristotle to
find out, and what they discovered was that none of these factors predicted success. For
example, some successful teams had similar backgrounds, but others came from
different backgrounds. Finally, they hit on one factor that predicted how well teams
innovated. They called the factor "psychological safety". What was important was that
the members of the team felt comfortable taking risks and sometimes failing. This
encouraged team members to have interpersonal trust and to mutually respect
everybody, feeling comfortable being themselves. The most successful teams had the
most empathy. If you want to be successful working together with others, seek out those
who are socially sensitive and can empathize with each other. Empathy can be enhanced
by chemicals that affect brain chemistry. Ecstasy is a popular psychoactive drug taken
at parties to enhance sociality. It produces a sense of well-being and happiness,
including feelings of closeness with others, increased emotionality, enhanced sensation,
and a sense of inner peace. Ecstasy causes a massive release of serotonin in the brain.
Serotonin is one of the major neurochemical messengers found in the brain of every
vertebrate, including ours. Neurons in the brain stem that manufacture serotonin project
 25

widely, influencing billions of neurons in the cerebral cortex - the most highly evolved
part of the human brain. But there is also a downside to taking Ecstasy. Ecstasy releases
most of the available serotonin in the brain and you become withdrawn, less social, for
weeks that it takes to fully replenish your supply of serotonin. Prozac, a drug that is
effective in treating some types of depression, also increases serotonin activity in
humans by blocking the re-uptake of serotonin by neurons. Even many who do not
suffer from clinical depression find that it lifts their mood, making them feel
self-confident and more sociable. In contrast to Ecstasy, however, those who take
Prozac only begin to feel better about themselves after many weeks of taking it, and the
effects last much longer. Ecstasy, by contrast, alters serotonin levels very rapidly and
depletes its stores, whereas Prozac causes a slower and longer term buildup in
serotonin activity. Brain serotonin levels depend heavily on the environment. Lack of
maternal care in nonhuman primates leads to reduced levels of serotonin, greater
aggression, more alcohol consumption, and more anxiety-like behaviors during
adolescence. Low levels of serotonin in stressed brains can make for a chemical tripwire
for extreme and unpredictable violence. Low serotonin levels also spark a cycle of
aggressive behavior and social illiteracy that sets up a child for school failure and peer
rejection. Inmates in jail for violent crimes have some of the lowest levels of serotonin
activity in society. Your social brain is swimming in a sea of neuromodulators, like
serotonin, that affect your temperament. The set points are determined during
development, and depend on early experience, but they can be changed by moving to a
new environment, where you are surrounded by different people. Choose friends and
coworkers who have aspirations that fit into your goals.
 26

Video 2 - 12 Week 2 Wrap Up

0:00

[MUSIC]

0:12

We've had a lot of fun this week going deeper into what's needed to learn effectively. We
reviewed some useful tricks like the Pomodoro Technique to help you keep your focus on
what you're trying to learn or accomplish. Increasing your expectancy of success, your
feelings about the value of the task and removing distractions are also important ways of
improving your ability to retain focus. But we also found that, perhaps surprisingly, you don't
always want to keep your focus on your learning. In fact, a valuable part of any learning
process involves stepping back after periods of intent focus. Allowing more diffuse mode
consolidation to take place involving whatever you're trying to master.

1:02

We can also better prepare our brains for the type of discovery we want to do in our lives by
choosing the appropriate form of meditation. Focused attention types of meditation enhances
our ability to focus and can calm our brain. While open monitoring types seem to enhance
our creative abilities. Gaining expertise at anything doesn't just involve understanding the
concept, it also involves, practice, repetition, and yes, even some memorization. You want to
feel so comfortable with key concepts that you don't have to even think about them, you can
just use them. This kind of understanding means building neuro chunks. That is, well
connected neural patterns that you can draw to mind when you need them, much like
computer sub-routines. This approach to learning can lead to extraordinary results.
Procrastination can be productive, if you're using that time to synthesize information you're
gathering or have already gathered. But don't fool yourself into thinking that procrastination
is quite all right when you're learning or trying to understand something new, especially if it's
difficult. New thinking involves growing new neural connections and that takes time.

2:28

We also learned that restricting yourself to one preferred learning style is a bad idea. Try to
learn using many approaches. Your eyes, your hearing, your hands, and of course, your
imagination through metaphor. It's also a good idea to use common sense in your learning.
Don't take on too much or it can suck the joy from the experience. A great way to make
learning and actually anything you do, more fun, is to hang out or work with the right group
of people who will support you in positive ways. Mental tricks can be invaluable in helping us
to reframe seemingly bad occurrences so that we can minimize our stress and reduce the
bad effects that stress can have not only on our mental health but on our physical health.
Putting a label on your feelings is one of the most helpful mental tricks you can use when
you find yourself emotionally upset. We learned many of the common ways that our mind can
mentally distort the reality of what's going on. Reframing to put a better light on whatever's
 27

causing you stress in your life isn't just mental trickery. Reframing extinguishes negative
emotions arising from the fight or flight center of the amygdala. That sums things up this
week in mindshift. Next week, we're on to learning and careers. Whatever stage you are in
life, whether starting out, mid career, or in retirement, you'll find there's a lot there for you.
And as you'll see, sometimes your worst traits can be your best traits. [MUSIC]