Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware, Andy Hunt
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- Ссылка на mind map: [2]
- Ссылка на конспект: [3]
Dreufus model
Stages
- Novices
- want to know exactly how smth is done
- little/no experience
- not sure of the outcome
- don't want to learn
- want to accomplish an immediate goal
- Advanced beginners
- no holistic understanding
- little context
- Competent
- develop conceptual model
- plan deliberately
- base on past experience
- have troubles to decide what to focus on
- Proficient
- need big picture
- learn on expertise of others
- learn on how they've done and revise
- know where to stop following rules
- Experts
- primary source of knowledge
- apply it in the right context
- work from intuituion
- have problems to articulate expertise
- rules ruin them
Become an expert
- Deliberate practice
- 10 years
- challenging but doable tasks
- with feedback
- with ability to repeat and correct errors
- 3 phases of learning
- Imitate (Shu)
- Assimilate (Ha)
- Innovate (Ri)
Brain
L-mode
- what like
- von Neumann-like
- linear
- slow
- characteristics
- verbal
- analytic
- symbolic
- abstract
- temporal
- rational
- digital
- logical
- linear
- for
- working through details
- for white-collar information-based workers
R-mode
- what like
- non-linear
- fast
- pattern-matching
- characteristics
- needs whole picture
- intuitive
- makes insights
- non-verbal
- non-rational
- synthetic
- analogic
- intuitive
- hollistic
- non-linear
- for
- intuition
- problem solving
- creativity
- long term memory
- relating things together
- not controllable directly
- stores everything, but not everything is indexed
- you can recall when needed
- works asynchronously
- needed for becoming an expert
only one has the access to the CPU (brain)
Right Mind
Capture insights
- capture all ideas to get more of them
- how
- pen and notepad
- index cards
- smartphones
- voice memos
add sensory activities
- activates more neural pathways
- engages more of your brain
- use cross-sensory feedback
- write down in usual form
- draw a visual metaphor
- describe it verbally
- your mind is hungry for these stimuli
R-to-L flow
- ideas
- R-mode - source of ideas
- L-mode - verification
- Metaphor
- act of creating analogies
- where L and R meet
- links abstract notions to concrete
- random juxtaposition
- take a word and connect it to unrelated one
- the further ideas are, the harder to join them
- cultivate humor
- have you seen my fishbowl?
- yes, it's just got a strike!
learn to be comfortable with uncertainty
- perfectionism may be dangerous
Think outside the box
Harvest R-mode clues
ideas from R-mode are hard to verbalize
Image Streaming
- pose a problem/ask a question
- close your eyes ~10 mins
- for each image that you see
- try to see as many details as you can
- describe it out loud
Free-Form Journalism
- write as much as possible
- blog posts/letters/everything
- first thing in the morning
- while L is still sleeping
- write 3 pages
- by hand, no computer
- do not censor it
- do not skip a day
Fieldstone Method
- don't plan ahead
- just walk around and pick up good-looking stones
- eventually you'll collect a pile
- when it's time, find in the pile ones you like
- and use them
- once you have a pile, it's easy to build a wall
Harvesting by Walking
- do something that bores L-mode
- so R-mode frees up
- dump everything on paper
- free up your mind
- walk and don't think
- as soon as you focus, L-mode dominates
- you don't want it
- so, step away from the keyboard to solve hard problems
change your viewpoint
- look at smth in reverse
- turn the problem around
- instead of debugging for problems
- try to cause the bug
- exaggerate
reconcile unlike patterns
- 100 oblique strategies
- statements that force you to draw analogies
- "what else is this like?"
- Shakespeare's Brain Teaser
- new words, phrases
- unusual context for words
- unusual part of speech
- fundamental shift - makes you think
Debug
cognitive biases
- anchoring
- fundamental attribution error
- "rarely" doesn't mean never
- Black Swans
- need for closure
- closure: we need to eliminate uncertainty
- defer closure
- the more you know - the better
- be comfortable with uncertainty
- confirmation bias
- exposure effect
- hawthorne effect
- false memory
general affinity
- types
- risk taker vs rick adverse
- individualism vs teamwork
- stability vs freedom
- family vs work
- Mayer Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
- Extravert (E) vs Introvert (I)
- Sensing (S) vs Intuition (N)
- how do you obtain information?
- S - based on the details at the moment
- N - imagination, intuition
- Thinking (T) vs Feeling (F)
- how do you make decisions?
- T - based on rules
- F - base on emotional impact
- Judging (J) vs Perceiving (P)
- J - early closure
- P - don't like making decisions
- The combination defines your temperament
personal tendencies
- trust intuition, but verify
- if you feel smth, prove it
- create a prototype
- run unit tests
- benchmarks
- get the feedback!
- unittest your intuition
- how do you know?
- says who?
- how specifically?
- how does what I'm doing cause you to ... ?
- compared to what/whom?
- does it always happen? are there exceptions?
- what would happen if I did (didn't) ...?
- what stops you from ... ?
- get statistics
- expect better
- "it's by logic we prove, it's by intuition we discover"
hardware bugs
- most of out brain is primitive
- knee-jerk reaction - faster than brain
- let yourself think before act
Learn
Learning
- ability to learn - most important element of success
- random approach without goals and feedbacks tends to random results
- "the body of knowledge" isn't the most important part
- more relevant
- models you build
- questions you ask
- your experience and practice
Setting goals
- "I want to be fit" - vision, not a goal
- a goal needs a series of objectives
- goal - desired state
- objective - smth you do to get closer to your goal
SMART
- (S)pecific
- narrow down to something concrete
- "I want to be able to write a webserver in Erlang that dynamically generates content"
- (M)easurable
- how do you know when you done?
- take small bites and measure steady, incremental progress
- you have to see only 2/3 feet ahead
- (A)chievable
- need to be realistic
- attainable from where you are _now_
- (R)elevant
- are you passionate about it?
- it needs to matter
- (T)ime-boxed
- knowledge portfolio - your skills and talents
- manage it as you would manage your financial portfolio
- relating learning to "free" time is a recipe for failure
- be deliberate about it
- allocate appropriate time
- use this time wisely
- be more effective in learning
- PIP
- have a concrete plan
- be SMART
- different goals over time
- planning is important
- "The planning is more important than the plan. The plan will change." Eisenhower.
- diversify
- don't put all eggs into one basket
- consider risk vs return value
- eg. .NET - low risk (mainstream technology), but low return on investment
- Haskell - high risk (not mainstream), but may be the next language, and may go nowhere
- always valuable
- but knowledge investment always brings value
- it may impact the way you think
- how you solve problems
- so everything you learn is valuable
- make active (not passive) investments
- have feedback
- ensure you can evaluate your plan
- you may want to revise your plan as you go
- make regular investments
- dollar-cost averaging
- sometimes you pay too much
- sometimes you get a great deal
- it smoothes over time
- invest a minimal amount or time
- on regular basis
- on average it will bring good results
- reevaluate your plan periodically
- what changed?
- what doesn't work?
- what will you do?
Learning modes
- how _you_ can learn?
- types of perception
- Visual
- need to see material
- picture, graphs
- Auditory
- have to hear
- lectures, seminars, podcasts
- Kinesthic
- learn by moving and touching
- need to physically experience the material
- Three-part mind
- meta-level component
- performance-based component
- knowledge-acquisition component
- assimilating new information
- each component is independent
- Frames of Mind
- Intelligence is a combination of
- Kinesthetic
- sports
- do-it-yourself projects
- Linguistic
- storytelling
- reading
- writing
- Logical/Mathematical
- Visual/Spatial
- diagrams
- plans
- sketching
- paintings
- Musical
- Interpersonal
- Intrapersonal
- self-reflectoin
- dreams
- relationships with others
Enhance
- Study groups
- informal
- just agree to read through a book
- and discuss
- formal
- deliberate steps:
- select a proposal and its leader
- buy books
- schedule meetings
- SQ3R
- Survey
- scan the table of contents
- see for overview
- Question
- note every question you have
- will I learn technology X?
- Read
- Recite
- summarize
- take notes
- rephrase
- invent acronyms to help you remember
- Review
- reread
- expand notes
- discuss with colleagues
- Mind maps
- diagrams that shows topics and how they are connected
- notetaking
- raw notes - while listening
- then transfer to "official" notes
- should be hand-written
- start with messy mind-map
- then reorganize and redraw
- exercise
- take 4-5 items bullet list
- draw a mind map
- wait a day
- enhance it with colors
- review a week later
- good for
- brainstorming
- exploring
- collaboration
- Documentation
- documenting may be more important than documentation
- mental preparation
- turns on your attention
- gets insight
- you may take time to create a screen cast
- Learn by teaching
- clarifies your own understanding
- try to explain it to smb
- even if it's an yellow rubber duck
- constant retrieval of information is very effective for learning
- preparation is also very important (see documentation)
Experience
you have to learn by doing
play in order to learn
- explore and build mental models
- constructivism
- we build to learn
- not learn to build
- don't be afraid of mistakes
- make a game out of learning
problem?
- can you break it down into smaller meaningful parts?
- is it like others?
- can you adapt other situations to match it?
- i.e. leverage existent knowledge
- danger: beware of differences
failures
- after a failure
- we study what happened
- what went wrong
- learn how to fix it
- it's important to get it right _last_ time (first is not that important)
- ensure safety
- freedom to experiment
- ability to backtrack to a stable state
- ability to demonstrate progress
- 2 types of failures
- we can learn from them
- we cannot learn from them
- allow failures
- pressure shuts your mind down
- your vision narrows
- so give yourself permission to fail
- you don't necessarily have to make errors
- create "failure permitted" zones
Imagination overrides senses
- that can improve your perfomance
- always be the worst
- be in the company with smarter people
- you'll mimic others
- groove your mind for success
- scaffolding
- make smth help you do smth
- you'll adjust to higher speed/etc
- unscaffolding
- then it'll be easier to handle under usual circumstances
- work in C++ after ruby and then get back
Focus
focus and attention
- attention - act of focusing in
- your attention - a short supply
- when we say "we don't have time" we mean "we're running out of attention"
- meditation
- allocates attention
- Vipassana meditaion
- you're aware
- but don't render judgements
- and don't making responses
- technique
- find a quiet spot
- sit in a comfortable posture, with a straight back
- become aware of any tension and let it go
- close eyes and focus on breath
- be aware of the rhythm of your breath
- focus on nothing else but breath
- if you wander off, let thoughts go and focus back
- learn to pay attention
knowledge
- information - raw data
- knowledge - meaning for the information
- manage your knowledge
- input (raw data)
- processing
- output
- processed and transcended
- you need to work with the material
- organize
- develop
- coalesce disparate
- refine
- from general to specific
- exocortex (external support)
- book collection
- notes
- etc
- personal wiki
- knowledge and information management
- good wiki feels like a mind map
- by organizing your ideas you'll get more of them
- wiki gardening
- rearranging/refactoring your wiki
optimizing the context
- context - things you're focusing on at the moment
- context switching is very expensive!
- 20-40% of productivity eaten by switching contexts
- manage interruptions deliberately
To do
Effective change
- convince your brain that it's important and do it
- you have to care
- practice makes permanent
- keep a beginner's brain
Possible actions
- Keep something with you for notetaking
- Make more metaphors
- how can you describe your current project?
- See connections between unconnected things
- Do morning pages (at least for 2 weeks) Утренние страницы
- Write down concrete goals, long-term and short-term
- Add 2 new areas into your portfolio, diversify
- Experiment with different learning models
- Next time you read, use mind maps
- Start a study group
- Experiment with meditation, 20 mins a day
- Use virtual desktops
approach
- start with a plan
- keep track on what's done
- retrospect
- take some steps
- cultivate new habbits
- just start!
Books
- Tools of critical thinking: Metathoughts for Psychology
- Dan Pink, A whole new mind
- Drawing on the right side of the brain, B. Edwards
- The Einstein Factor: A proven new method for increasing you intelligence
- Process Patterns for Personal Practice: How to succeed in developing without really trying
- Relating Work and Education, VF72
- Knowledge and Competence, BW90
- Knowledge Hydrant: a pattern language for study groups
- Effective Study, Rob70
- Beyond Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
- How to Solve It: a new aspect of mathematical method; How to solve problems
- Consciousness explained: David Dennett