Retrieval is how you learn

You may encounter this situation, such as when you are watching the tutorials everything make perfect sense, but when you have to do something yourself, like in the challenge, all of a sudden it's like you had learned nothing at all.

So what's actually going on there?

Well, you know, one of the biggest problems is that when we are just watching things and we are sort of following alone with it, it is very easy to think, yeah, yeah, I get that, that's fine. But when you actually have to do something yourself, when you actually have to put it into practice, to solve a challenge or to build you own project, then all of a sudden you are using completely diffenent skills, right?

And you have to be able to conjure up how to do things and pull it out of your brain, which is every diffenent from just absorbing things in.

So one of the ways of combating this is to constantly do the pulling out, the retrieving of information, the retrieving of your skill. Try to look up exercises around the Internet or try to make up questions for yourself, quizzes for yourself.

Test yourself on variationsof what you are done in the tutorials,or even better, anticipate what the tutorial is about to do and then just do it beforehand.

Once you know what needs to be done, see if you can do it yourself.

That is fundanmentally diffenent from actually just listening, because, you know, we can all sit and listen to lectures all day long, but if we are not focused, if we are not using the skills we are learning, then it's as if we haven't learned at all.

So if you do more of this I promise things will become more within your reach and you will feel like you have a better grasp of the skills than if you had just sat and listened without trying it out.

So have a go of that and Keep going.

2020.08.31 night
Shanghai Erlian