Focusing Your Unconscious Mind: Learn Hard Concepts Intuitively (And Forever) - 2022

Title : Focusing Your Unconscious Mind: Learn Hard Concepts Intuitively (And Forever) Author(s): Colin Galen Link(s) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm68uFy6gus

For now, I will link this note to good habits.

Intuitive understanding here is defined as the ability to accept a concept as a fundamental truth without justification.

When you see a problem, the first step is to generate as many insights as possible - thoughts into purpose and steps of different examples etc.

Steps:

• Start with big picture, to put everything into context. Think of a blackbox with whose function/purpose is clear but inner working details are unknown. (Imagine a link between the Big picture and the Black box)
• List details (concepts) and learn them - this involves choosing the detail, understand it in context (including how they relate to other details), understand it by itself, reinforce it, and repeat. This may also involve breaking the details down even further. (Details outside the blackbox should make sense independently of the blackbox)
• Care about the individual detail (concept). This is really important. This is often as a product of passion, or the ends you are aiming for, or personal prestige.
• To learn the concepts, first narrow down the point of it. What is it about? What does it achieve/describe? What does it do?
• Get a deep and insightful view of the problem first helps.
• To understand the solution itself, you could view it via the Big picture-Black box picture, alongside how it related to the big picture of the concept.
• Make an honest effort to try the problem.
• To internalize the solution, reinforce it. This involves:
  • Invent the concept
  • Practice it, to gain more insight. This means applying this concept wherever you can. Think about why it fits, and put it in context.
  • It is very important to practice the concept on actually hard problems progressively.
  • Explain the concept to others, if you get stuck there is something more to understand.
  • Explore - this means asking dumb questions and answering them, change parts of the concept and see if it works or does not, and why. Question intuitive assumptions being made.