Barbara Oakley

Try to touch again on something you’re learning within a day, especially if it’s new and rather challenging.

Chunking (right) is the mental leap that helps you unite bits of information together through meaning.

We’ll talk more about transfer later.

There is a bottom-up chunking process where practice and repetition can help you both build and strengthen each chunk, so you can easily gain access to it when needed. And there is a top-down “big picture” process that allows you to see where what you are learning fits in.9 Both processes are vital in gaining mastery over the material.

The chunking, which enlists long-term memory, frees the rest of your working memory to process other information.

the working memory holds only about four chunks of information.

I only knew how to tap one mode for learning—and the result was that I was deaf to the music of math.

one mode for learning

A good rule of thumb, when you are first learning new concepts, is not to let things go untouched for longer than a day.

however, it’s best that you first wrestle with the problem yourself before you talk to anyone else, because it can embed the basic concepts deeply enough that you become receptive to the explanation