the intro
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brain into submission
So, we did our part. The rest is up to you. These tips are a starting
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what doesn’t. Try new things.
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on your refrigan ick it
erator.
✄
1 Slow down. The more you understand, 6 Drink water. Lots of it.
the less you have to memorize.
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Don’t just read. Stop and think. When the Dehydration (which can happen before you ever
book asks you a question, don’t just skip to the feel thirsty) decreases cognitive function.
answer. Imagine that someone really is asking
the question. The more deeply you force your 7 Talk about it. Out loud.
brain to think, the better chance you have of Speaking activates a different part of the brain.
learning and remembering. If you’re trying to understand something or
increase your chance of remembering it later, say
2 Do the exercises. Write your own notes. it out loud. Better still, try to explain it out loud
We put them in, but if we did them for you, to someone else. You’ll learn more quickly, and
that would be like having someone else do you might uncover ideas you hadn’t known were
your workouts for you. And don’t just look at there when you were reading about it.
the exercises. Use a pencil. There’s plenty of
evidence that physical activity while learning
can increase the learning. 8 Listen to your brain.
Pay attention to whether your brain is getting
3 Read the “There are No Dumb Questions”
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That means all of them. They’re not optional surface or forget what you just read, it’s time for a
sidebars—they’re part of the core content! break. Once you go past a certain point, you won’t
Sometimes the questions are more useful than learn faster by trying to shove more in, and you
the answers. might even hurt the process.
4 Don’t do all your reading in one place. 9 Feel something!
Stand up, stretch, move around, change chairs, Your brain needs to know that this matters. Get
change rooms. It’ll help your brain feel something, involved with the stories. Make up your own
and it keeps your learning from being too captions for the photos. Groaning over a bad joke is
connected to a particular place. still better than feeling nothing at all.
5 Make this the last thing you read before 10 Type and run the code.
bed. Or at least the last challenging thing. Type and run the code examples. Then you can
Part of the learning (especially the transfer to experiment with changing and improving the code
long-term memory) happens after you put the (or breaking it, which is sometimes the best way to
book down. Your brain needs time on its own, to ÅO]ZMW]\_PI\¼[ZMITTaPIXXMVQVO5W[\WN \PM
do more processing. If you put in something new code, expecially long examples and Ready-Bake
during that processing time, some of what you Code, are at P\\X["WZMQTTaPN2I^IGMGM`IUXTM[.
just learned will be lost.
you are here xxix