Sometimes coming up with visualizations is easy, and sometimes it is very hard. When we deal with abstract and professional terms, names and languages the visualization process suddenly become complex. There is only so much time we can allocate to visualize and remember everything while reading. How do we deal with such situations? The easiest …
Is it possible to read 10,000 wpm?
Is it possible to read 10,000wpm? Not sure… Depends on what we define as reading… There is a reaction speed limit of eye and brain which can be measured, defining the shortest saccade we can handle. Then there is a visual span, defining width and height of this saccade, and there is some sort of …
Learning fights depression
Some of our students get depressed. Depression is a very common problem, and we can address it here. Meditation/sports, good sleep and practicing gratitude can partially fight depression. This article shows that learning is also an effective tool to fight depression. How? Sense of purpose Some people claim that happiness is a combination of pleasure …
How to remember a dense book 1000 pages long?
How do we remember a dense book 1000 pages long? This is not a trivial question and it is asked quite often. Obviously, we need a good strategy. As always, everyone can make his own strategy. Quite often I change my strategy based on the content. Let us discuss one possible strategy, and you can …
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Dealing with emotional texts
Reading is a sort of conversation, and like any conversation, it can be stressful. If you disagree with the author and his arguments, will you be able to consider them openly? If reading the text strikes some old wound in your soul, will you focus on the text or your own pain? If you are …
Immersion methods to learn English faster
This is a guest post by Lucy Adams. Lucy Adams is a professional blogger and essay writer. She stumbled upon my blog and offered to write a post about English language and essay writing. Since she has written many essays for people who struggle with English, she offered a perspective on learning English as a …
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Noticing your progress vs measuring it
To which extent can we notice our progress and to which extent do we need to monitor it? Our mind is full of biases and not to be trusted, however if we focus entirely on measurements we may loose something precious that forgot to measure. I will tell tales of two students and then we …
For programmers: QA and testing
QA and testing deal with the system after all the technical team feels confident with the product features and before the customer get the product. Experienced testers know too well that if anything can go wrong it will go wrong, and it is their job to make sure nothing goes terribly wrong. The biggest issues …
Mental math
We have powerful computers, why do we still do mental math? Part of it has to do with building intuition and checking for errors, part of it has to do with the speed of decision making, some of it is a great brain practice and yet a bit of it is a magic. Whatever the …
Do mental math
Read about Trachtenberg system for mental math. Now choose a random number. Start with 5 digits, with time try to upgrade to longer numbers. Do mental computations. Expected effects: faster and better working memory access, improvement of mathematical tasks. No program or tools required: everything can be done in your head. Beginner level Multiply by …