Procrastination and Memory

My Course notes for Learning How to Learn.

1. Procrastinate

Learning well often involves bit by bit, day by day building of solid neural scaffolds. Rather like a weight lifter builds muscle with day to day exercise. This is why tackling procrastination is so incredibly important.

Why do we procrastinate

we procrastinate because the thing makes us a little bit uncomfortable. You think about something you don’t particularly like and the pain centers of your brain light up so you shift and narrow your focus of attention to something more enjoyable. This causes you to feel better. At least temporarily but sadly the long term effects of habitual avoidance can be nasty. When you put off your studies it can become even more painful to think about studying it. You can choke on tests because you haven’t laid the firm neural foundations you need to feel comfortable with the material.

Procrastination can be a single monumentally important keystone bad habit, a habit in other words that influences many important areas of your life. If you improve your abilities in this area many other positive changes will gradually begin to unfold. The higher you go in your studies however the more important it is to take control of procrastination. Habits that worked in earlier years can turn around and bite you. You should be making the decisions, not your well-meaning but unthinking zombies, your habits.

Importance to avoid procrastination

The reason that learning to avoid procrastination is so important is that good learning is a bit by bit activity. You want to avoid cramming which doesn’t build solid neural structures. By putting the same amount of time into your learning but spacing that learning out by starting earlier you’ll learn better. First things first.And you shouldn’t waste willpower on fending off procrastination except when absolutely necessary，because willpower uses a lot of neural resources.

Understand habit

Neuro-scientifically speaking, chunking is related to habit. Habit is an energy saver for us. You don’t have to think in a focused manner about what you’re doing while you’re performing the habit. It allows us to free our mind for other types of activities. You go into this habitual zombie mode far more often than you might think. That’s the point of habit. Habits can be good and bad. You can think of habits as having four parts.

1. the cue. This is the trigger that launches you into zombie mode. A cue by itself is, neither helpful nor harmful; it’s the routine. What we do in reaction to that cue, that’s what matters.

2. the routine. This is your zombie mode. The routine habitual response your brain is used to falling into when it receives the cue. Zombie responses can be useful, harmless, or sometimes harmful.

3. the reward. Every habit develops and continues because it rewards us. It gives us an immediate little feeling of pleasure. Procrastination’s an easy habit to develop because the reward, moving your mind’s focus to something more pleasant, happens so quickly and easily. But good habits can also be rewarded. Finding ways to reward good study habits is important for escaping procrastination.

4. the belief. Habits have power because of your belief in them. For example, you might feel you’ll never be able to change your habits of putting off your studies until late in the day. To change a habit, you’ll need to change your underlying belief.

Focus on process not product

When it comes to learning in general, you should realize that it’s perfectly normal to start with a few negative feelings about beginning a learning session. Non- procrastinators will put their negative thinking aside saying things to themselves like: quit wasting time and just get on with it, once you get going, you’ll feel better about it. If you find yourself avoiding certain tasks because they make you feel uncomfortable, you should know there’s another helpful way to reframe things. And that’s to learn to focus on process not product.

Process means, the flow of time and the habits and actions associated with that flow of time. As in, I’m going to spend 20 minutes working. Product is an outcome, for example, a homework assignment that you need to finish. The product is what triggers the pain that causes you to procrastinate. Instead, you need to focus on the process – the small chunks of time you need over days or even weeks to answer the questions or prepare for tests. Who cares whether you finish the homework or grasp the key concepts in any one session. The whole point instead, is that you calmly put forth your best effort for a short period.

Harnessing your zombie powers of habit to help you avoid procrastination

The trick to overriding a habit is to look to change your reaction to a cue. The only place you need to apply willpower is to change your reaction to the cue. Let’s go back through the four components of habit and re-analyze them from the perspective of procrastination.

1. the cue. Cues usually fall into one of the four following categories:

   1. Location
   2. Time
   3. How you feel
   4. Reactions either to other people or to something that just happened

   The issue with procrastination is that because it’s an automatic habit, you’re often unaware that you’ve begun to procrastinate. You can prevent the most damaging cues by shutting off your cell phone or keeping yourself away from the internet and other distractions for brief periods of time.

2. the routine. Your brain wants to automatically go into this routine when you’ve gotten your cue. So this, is the reaction clue where you must actively focus on re-wiring your old habit. The key to re-wiring is to have a plan. Developing a new ritual can be helpful. Your plan may not work perfectly at first, but just keep at it. Adjust the plan if necessary, and savor those victories when your plan works.

3. the reward. Remember that habits are powerful because they create neurological cravings. It helps to add a new reward if you want to overcome your previous cravings. Only once your brain starts expecting that reward will the important rewiring take place that will allow you to create new habits.

4. the belief. The most important part of changing your procrastination habit is the belief that you can do it. You may find that when the going gets stressful. You long to fall back into old, more comfortable habits. Belief that your new system works is what can get you through. Developing and encouraging culture with like-minded friends can help us remember the values that in moments of weakness we tend to forget.

Juggling life and learning

Learning for most people involves a complex balancing of many different tasks. A good way for you to keep perspective about what you’re trying to learn and accomplish, is to once a week write a brief weekly list of key tasks in a planner journal.

Try to write this daily task list the evening before. Why the evening before? Research has shown that this helps your subconscious to grapple with the tasks on the list so you can figure out how to accomplish them. Writing the list before you go to sleep, enlists your zombies, to help you accomplish the items on the list the next day. If you don’t write your tasks down on a list, they lurk at the edge of the four or so slots of your working memory, taking up valuable mental real estate. But once you make a task list, it frees working memory for problem solving.

let’s look at one of my daily task lists. As you can see here, there are only six items. Some are process oriented. For example, I have a paper due to a journal in several months. So, I spend a little focus time on most days working towards completing it. A few items are product oriented. But that is only because they are doable within a limited period of time. Note my reminders. I wanted to keep my focus on each item when I’m working on it. And I want to have fun. Notice my goal finish time for the day, 5 p.m. doesn’t seem quite right, does it? But it is right, and it’s one of the most important components of your daily planner journal. Planning your quitting time is as important as planning your working time.

Time after time, those who are committed to maintaining healthy leisure time along with their hard work, outperform those who doggedly pursue an endless treadmill. Of course, your life may not lend itself to such a schedule with breaks and leisure time. But however your life is going, try to squeeze a little break time in. And remember to eat your frogs first in the morning. Try to work on a most important and most disliked task first.

2. Diving Deeper into Memory

It may surprise you to learn that we have outstanding visual and spatial memory systems that can help form part of our long-term memory.

Two main memory systems

The first is long term memory, which is like a storage warehouse. You need to practice and repeat in order to help store items in long term memory so you can retrieve them more easily. Practicing and repeating, all in one day, is a bad idea. You want to extend your practice to several days. This is why tackling procrastination is important. It helps you build better memories because you start earlier. The second, is working memory, which is like a poor blackboard that quickly fades. You can only hold about four items in your working memory. When you master a technique or concept in some sense, it compacts the ideas so they can occupy less space in your working memory when you do bring them to mind. This frees your mental thinking space so that it can more easily grapple with other ideas.

Apply our visual memory and repetition

Part of the reason an image is so important to memory is that images connect directly to your right brain’s visual spatial centers. The image helps you encapsulate a seemingly humdrum and hard to remember concept by tapping into visual areas with enhanced memory abilities. The more neural hooks you can build by evoking the senses, the easier it will be for you to recall the concept and what it means. The funnier and more evocative the images, the better.

Focusing your attention brings something into your temporary working memory, but for that something to move from working memory to long term memory two things should happen: the idea should be memorable, and it must be repeated. Otherwise remember your tiny metabolic vampires, they can suck away the neural pattern related to that memory before it can strengthen and solidify.

Repetition is important. Even when you make something memorable, repetition helps get that memorable item firmly lodged into long-term memory. Remember to repeat not a bunch of times in one day but sporadically over several days. Writing and saying what you’re trying to learn seems to enhance retention.

Briefly repeat what you want to remember over several days. Perhaps for a few minutes each morning or each evening. Gradually extend the time between the repetitions as the material firms itself into your mind. By increasing your spacing as you become more certain of mastery, you’ll lock the material more firmly into place. Great flash card systems like Anki can often be helpful.