Neuroscientist Dr. Lila Landowski suggests that the key components of learning are the following:

Attention

is the basic prerequisite, you have to fully focus your mind on the task given (duh!).

Alertness

• is a state of readiness to respond and goes hand-in-hand with attention
• most people can maintain peek alertness for about 8 -30 minutes in a row
• flows as a sinusoidal wave that peeks around every 90 minutes
• is improved by:
  • physical exercise
  • breathing techniques
  • stimulating substances like caffeine
  • a little bit of stress (strong emotions are actually like memory steroids but are usually accompanied with heavy stress --> PTSD)

Sleep

allows to transform short-term memories to long-term.

Repetition

is the mother of learning. Everything happens in cycles, the same applies to learning. Repetition signals to the brain that something comes up regularly and needs to be improved (memorized) for increased survival chance.

Breaks

• Long-term memories are the key building blocks for learning => brain needs sleep to form some
• short breaks give the brain chance to subconsciously replay new information, thus:
  • like 10 seconds between individual information chunks
  • like 10-20 minutes quiet rest after the learning session
• newly stored memories are unstable and may be corrupted by information overload => space your learning out over multiple days in small chunks

Mistakes

cause anxiety and stress => stimulates alertness. Mistakes are like an electroshock therapy induced by the body's chemical cocktail signaling: do this better.

Dr. Lila Landowski's TEDx Talk