Mastering Learning: Balancing Theory and Practice in Skill Acquisition

you're constantly challenging yourself from different angles and different context the way that I think about it is

you're borrowing time from your future in order to become a master at this you have to be able to mix it and

match it anyway thank you so much for your time and I have learned a lot and I have a lot to think about now every

couple of months I find some members in our IC can study program who are active and supportive in our community and I

offer them some 30 minute free coaching sessions some of you do seem to really like my coaching sty content so I've

decided to record some of these and post them on YouTube before we jump in I'd appreciate if you give this video a like

and if you're interested in joining the full program yourself then you can check out iin study.com there's a link in the

description my name is Edgar cabera I'm from Mexico studying software engineer it's in the University of Las that's

about it I'm in ER I'm in second H second year of the career and I'm still I'm about halfway

through the career awesome and what's the main I suppose things that you would like me to help

you with yeah I think one of the things that I have seen a lot of focus and it's like I think it's very important it's

about the relationship between practice and what you learn in the course so what I want to learn is do I need to always

like during every single lecture or every single video do you always have to immediately go and practice those stuff

before advancing into any other stuff of the course or can I like I have this in mind and then I can continue like a few

lectures from their course and then practice like everything in bulk having the consideration that I need to keep

that relationship like one to five between theory and practice so whenever you learn any new technique or any new

skill you just what you're trying to do is prevent yourself from having overload so there always needs to be this Theory

practice balance right yeah so you you can technically go at any Pace that you want M it it just depends on the density

of the theory and your ability to convert that into practice MH and usually what I find is that the amount

that you'd need to know to understand how to use any new technique or any new learning strategy if we think about the

total amount that you can know about a certain technique um and if you know 100% of this technique that means that

you can do it perfectly accurately then the amount that you can know about a technique based purely on just a

theoretical understanding without any real experience or practice using it there's usually no more than 25% like at

a maximum this this is why I often say there's a 1 to five ratio at least because sometimes it's very it's it's

much lower sometimes it's only 2 or 3% this is really obvious when we think about other skills like you could

understand how to do go rock climbing yeah but the amount of actual practice You' need to not you know fall off and

die is much much more um and so this is the same thing here is that the amount of theory depends on the difficulty of

the technique and then it depends on how um how much of it that you've understood but the tricky part and this is the

reason why I usually tell people to be very conservative and just like learn one thing and practice practice practice

practice is because this is a relatively small percentage so what that means is someone that you know has you know

really really understands the theory of very deeply before practice at most they're going to understand like 25% of

it but if you understand less of it maybe you understand 10% less and maybe that means that you only understand 15%

now that doesn't seem like a very big difference 25% versus 15% but relative to how much You' need to know it's a big

difference right because the amount of practice that you need here this is now 1 to four in this situation whereas in

here here it's closer to like one to you know like seven to be able to do it which means that you need like almost

double the amount of practice to be able to gain the Mastery there so the other issue is that when you have skills and

techniques applied in the real world and the real world settings with like multiple curriculums and pressures and

you know assessments and things like that there are other variables that are then added on so let's say now we've got

two different techniques that are added on at the same time well now we have to try to practice two separate techniques

and understand the cause and effect relationship between the technique and the impact that it's having and then

even at just two techniques that can become you know quite challenging so one of the things that I would normally as a

rule recommend is first of all to just play it safe yeah because there's really nothing worse than wasting time on going

too fast yeah yeah which is counterintuitive but the second thing is that you can try to do more and try to

move a little bit faster but when you're doing the technique be really really attentive to two things the first is how

much concentration and mental effort does it take for me to just be able to do the technique not even thinking about

doing it correctly just doing it and then the second thing is how effective am I finding the technique and is that

aligned with how effective I'm told it's meant to be when I teach people techniques I'm I'm pretty clear about

how effective it's meant to be some of them are going to be like amazing some of them it's like it improves a little

bit so if I've said something improves a little bit and you try it and it's easy to use and it's improved it a little bit

and the amount of effort you need to spend to do the technique is is very low that's something that we call Germain

load was a complicated topic but if that happens then you can move on to add the new the next technique and if you add

the next technique and you now think okay it's still pretty easy then you can move on to the next one it gets harder

though because as you add more and more techniques the whole system also needs to function so you might be able to do

each individual technique very well but when you try to do all three simultaneously it might get much much

harder so what that would mean is you need to just slow down there but if you use a technique and you think okay I'm

getting the result that I'm told I should get but the amount of effort and concentration I need to be able to pull

it off is very high then you should not because as soon as you add another technique on it's going to be harder or

you think it's very easy to do it but I'm not getting the result that I'm that I'm meant to be getting that's even

worse because it means you're not even doing it right so the effort is not there because we're not doing the right

thing it's kind of like saying hey I think going to the gym and working out is really easy I don't spend any effort

at all lifting weights and then you see what they're doing and all they're doing is going inside and looking at

themselves in the mirror so it's like they're not even doing the right process yeah so that's usually what I look for

if I see that someone is using a new technique they're finding that it's relatively easy and getting the effect

that they're meant to be getting then they should be ready to move on and then when they add a new technique on then we

look again the whole system isn't working one of the things also that you have to be really really mindful is that

when we are building the techniques we have to build them like we're building the foundations of a house like they are

stacking and building on top of each other a lot of the time what will happen is that people will start using a

technique they'll be fine at it this is fine they're work they're using it very well mhm and then they'll add another

technique on and they're like okay that's fine they're using it well and then they'll come to add on a new

technique and because it's too hard to use all three at the same time they stopped using this one and now they're

using this one and then they add another one on and then you know this this one kind of forc through and eventually what

happens is that you know everything will sort of topple and it becomes a mess and the system is broken down and then they

start running into really fundamental issues really common example here would be like the really getting into the

mapping process and nonlinear not taking and they're doing that and doing that and doing that and they forgotten

completely about doing space retrieval yeah right so so it's it's kind of like a long answer to to your question but

did that answer it no no yeah yeah totally because I have like that um because when I started like H seeing

stuff through the course and through your YouTube channel and H because I already have like some notion on how

Lear happens and how to learn new skills and stuff because I I really like I really enjoy the process of acquiring

new stuff to do like being able to be the better version of myself so I have always failed in that process in the

process of practicing enough because I get so passionate about the topic that I just need to learn more and learn more

and learn more and if you do it just for the because you just like the topic and you are just interested about it I think

that that's okay but if you want to apply it you really need to practice it before going to the next thing because

it has happened to me for example with coding because when I started before I started ER going to University like in

high school and stuff I saw a lot of YouTube videos about coding and then when I tried to do it I realized that I

couldn't retrieve anything about what I have supposedly learned so it's just a something that I knew had a problem with

with retrieving stuff to actually apply it um but I didn't exactly know how to do it like how to patch that hole Yeah

another thing that I'll add on to that I just thought of when you were explaining is that you you have to make sure that

you challenge yourself properly before assessing that you're able to do it correctly and this is the idea of

interleaving right is that it's not enough just to say okay I can do it well in the simple direct method of practice

or execution that I've learned coding is actually really good example of this is that it's really really possible and

actually frankly very easy because there's so many courses and things out there that just teach you about coding

it's very easy to learn like a lot of theory about lots of different functions and then you can follow everything step

by step okay I've learned about this function okay can I write that line of code yes okay can I turn that into

something else yes all right like let's move on to the next one let's introduce some more variables can I like declare a

variable yes okay can I call the variable yes can I use it in a function yes and then you can continue to do that

you're able to do it simply and simply but until you actually step outside and say okay well let's try to use all of

these together in a different context outside of how I learned it am I able to manipulate and use this information in a

different way and still retain that level of Competency and this is the this is the way that it has to be trained you

take a piece of theory you practice it you can do it simply sometimes you can do it in this in one go sometimes it

takes a little bit more after after you do that you can add on the next thing you add on the next thing and then you

try to use it and then you try to mix it and then you try and can you still do it okay now you add on the next one so

you're constantly mixing and interleaving and challenging yourself from different angles and different

context with each new thing that you add on and the way that I think about it is you're borrowing time from your future

to do this like in order to become a master at this you have to do all of this anyway

you have to be able to mix it and match it anyway usually what people will do is they'll try to get a Mastery of the

things step by step first and then they'll try to mix it together to get the Mastery but by doing that they're

suffering because they're now operating at a lower efficiency right now so they're they're going to struggle with

actually being able to learn it properly right now because of the fact that their memory is not going to be as strong and

they're going to forget things and now they have to spend more time learning it and relearning I call this learning debt

right and so instead if we just use the time we were going to to spend anyway and we do it now then we can gain that

Mastery so that by the time we are at the bottom and we're actually properly done we also have a very very high level

of Mastery it also is much less stressful in curriculums or in an exam because when you get to the time of an

exam you know you're basically ready to sit the exam straight away there's nothing more that has to happen but you

know people generally tend to want to go fast and just cover as much stuff as possible and so yeah yeah I'm actually

like really guilty about that because see out of these YouTube videos that that is like learn JavaScript or learn

go or learn X language in five hours so in your head you think I just need to get through this course and then I'm

Gonna Know It And then I try to do something with the language and can't remember anything yeah when you have

finished like a semester of University and then the the the finals are coming up and then you realize that because of

trying to like free up time free of time by going as fast as possible you just have like yeah like you said you have

just stolen yourself from being able to actually learn properly from the beginning and it's less stressful if you

can do like this Tiny Steps From the Beginning than trying to recompile everything at once the other stuff that

I wanted to um ask about is I usually use obsidian obsidian is like the place where I have my most notes I first tried

to do settle casting I couldn't retrieve anything I because I had so many notes and because settle casting like didn't

work for me in the fact that my brain couldn't like remember what exact combination of words I use to retrieve a

note or something there is a plugin in obsidian where you can do mind PS so it's like this kind of nonlinear note

taking I think that the question is do you think there is like a connection between like the physical way of not

taking being like better or being like Superior in any way than having this like Digital Way of nonlinear note

taking that's a good question and something that I've experimented with a lot and I've read the research on and

the in the research space there isn't a definitive answer um if there is more of a conclusion it does lean more towards

doing it physically yeah but the reason that physical tends to be better is not necessarily because there's anything

wrong with digital it's probably because the tools that are designed are not cognitively optimizing enough so there

are some advantages with being able to do things physically and and I you know like the

way that I do it is like essentially a hybrid right you know using a a tablet and so it's it's digital but it's

freehand and the reason that I still despite having spent so many hours trying a different like room or

obsidian or like you know Lucid chart or many other different types of um nonlinear kind of mapping softwares and

I get emails literally every day from mindmapping software people that want to sponsor me in a video and I say no to

all of them because of the fact that I don't think there's actually a software that really does this well at the moment

here are some of the advantages that you get with freehand that you I just don't see happening with the digital the first

thing with digital it's too easy to just create relationships and just space and just like put things down and the fact

that there's no barrier means that the information is prioritized and processed less and I

think this is the same thing as to why we saw that research said that handwritten notes are better than typed

notes because with typed notes what what was found was that you tend to write more when you're typing which means that

there's less processing going on and so we know that longer word count is associated with poor performance when it

comes to note taking and I think it's same sort of thing is that yes you can create a relationship yes you can tag

the information and yes technically it's organized but it's organized in the software doesn't mean that it's actually

organized in your brain because the software do so much of the heavy lifting for you so that's the first thing is

that it's just too easy and it doesn't Force the prioritization the second thing is that a big big part in fact

probably 80 to 90% of the learning process when you're learning new information is just hypothesizing

structures rewriting them and like redoing it and trying to make that make that fit yeah it's not as easy to do

that when you're committing it to a software because often when you're creating the note actually creates the

record of it and so it's hard to actually then just delete it and when you create it there's like a certain

minimum amount you have to invest to creating that so it's harder to create sort of the scratch Pad experience where

you're just like committing revising dele leading moving uh and that sort of thing the third thing is that there are

many more ways of representing information uh freehand then there is usually buy software and if it is

possible a software there's so many clicks that it takes to be able to do that so for example like if I wanted to

if I wanted to like make some notes that we're saying like okay here's a line of text here and then this sort of thing is

related to this one here okay I could say I could then say that let's say that there is another thing here and another

thing here and another thing here and another thing here right so if this was an app probably the only way that this

can be done is like this boom boom and then maybe like boom boom boom okay maybe maybe like this and then this is

how it would end up looking yeah but this is completely different to for example something like this right yeah

yeah yeah so like this is just a single example and there's so many other combinations that we can we can create

from this that that if we just create it as a binary is there a relationship or not or not then

it it's just everything just becomes a line but when we think what is the characteristic the quality the

importance the um the weight the the spacing of that relationship in relation to everything else then it opens up a

lot of other things um and then the final benefit is that it's much easier to do visual anchoring which is to

visually make a certain concept appear more important and and have maybe imagery involved in it to actually

create like a little memory Landmark that our brain is going to find easier to to hold on to so for example I could

have like a right so now that becomes a visual you know landmark and if this was I don't know what this concept is but if

it's related to some plant and Mountain you know like that would be then yeah so for me I think freehand is still the way

to go I don't I maybe one day software will catch up to be able to do do this we're actually thinking about creating a

software ourselves because um there's lots of room for improvement um but at the moment I don't think it does a good

job I think obsidian is a really good app for second brain management yeah but second brain management is is used as a

reference tool it's a reference software it's not for primary encoding and so it's a completely

different way but you could have multiple you could have maps that are stored within obsidian and then Maps

could be Rel ated to other Maps as a conceptual Network that would work fine but the primary encoding I don't

think I would I I personally would not put it on obsidian and and I don't yeah yeah no I have like before everything

doing or like taking seriously like trying to learn as best as I can I I do try to like I have been using this Oben

as a prar in coding but I don't think I use it in a way that most people use it because like uh after watching a lot of

videos a lot of your videos actually and seeing the course I think that the best way like simplify a ton of information

like the ton of research that is into learning I think that you just need to be try to maximize your cognitive

resources to it with a less amount of of effort so that you can encode everything properly that you don't need to revise

things more often and that you don't get exhausted about doing the process people think about doing mind maps on obsidian

think people think about putting their mind maps on obsidian but you can also think about putting obsidian in your map

so for example you can have like a node coming out across here and you can just literally say like hash like yeah you

know like whatever the tag is and then all the detailed information like all the code stimets that might be related

to that particular function that's related there and so you've got this as a reference and then you've got obsidian

just purely as a second brain yeah so if we understand clearly what apps not just obsidian but like apps like obsidian are

really useful for but then where its limitations are then we can use it to its full effect but it's just like any

tool really when you try to make it do something that it's not the best for you will suffer for it thank you so much for

your time and you have helpful thank you for coming on and asking your questions I hope hope that helped yeah a lot

actually I have learned a lot and I have a lot to think about now [Music]