metalearning

[metalearning]

Attention to Attention in the Age of Screens, by Howard Rheingold

[metalearning]

Metacognition refers to higher order thinking which involves active control over the cognitive processes engaged in learning. Activities such as planning how to approach a given learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating progress toward the completion of a task are metacognitive in nature.

Jennifer A. Livingston, Metacognition: An Overview (go and read more!)

[metalearning]

The more comprehensive the power of relating oneself to the world of objective being, so the more deeply anchored must be the “ballast” in the inwardness of the subject. And when a distinctively different level of “world” is reached, namely, the orientation toward the whole, there too can be found the highest stage of being - established in one’s inwardness, which is proper to the spirit. Thus both of these comprise the nature of spirit: not only the relation to the “whole” of the world and “reality,” but also the highest power of living-with-oneself, of being in oneself, of independence, of autonomy – which is exactly what has always been the “person,” or “personality” in the Western tradition: to have a world, to be related to the totality of existing things – that can occur only in a being that is “established in itself”: not a “what,” but a “who” – an “I,” a person.

Joseph Pieper, The Philosophical Act

[metalearning]

Focus matters more than time spent. Most tasks can be completed in a fraction of their normal time with complete focus. This is especially true for learning whereby the most efficient methods also tend to be the most mentally taxing. (...) Eliminating distractions is the most obvious way to improve focus. When I’m preparing to write an article, I’ll often sit in a chair with a blank document for 30-45 minutes as I think through possible ideas to write about. No music, no internet, no phone.

Scott Young, How to Focus

[metalearning]

When you’re faced with a cognitive challenge, part of dealing with a cognitive challenge is with the subject matter. How much do I know about this issue? Have I had experience in the issue before? Another part of it is knowing what it means to struggle, to have difficulty, to deal with a cognitive problem that you haven’t faced before, and how to work through it. That meta-sense, that metacognitive difficulty, or the meta-difficulty that is laid over that experience is something that you have to learn, and not only learn, but perhaps experience over and over again so that you become better at it.

Adam Alter at Edge. DISFLUENCY (via protoslacker)