The Brain Behind the Business of Teaching Brains How to Learn
Whether you want to be successful at anything in life, from your career to your hobbies, it is clear that having talent is not enough. You also need to have a good learning strategy, one that will allow you to master the skills and knowledge required for success. After all, our brain is at the heart of everything we do. In this article, brain science and Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, tell us that the right approach can make all the difference.
Learning to Learn
Take a moment to think about how you learned something new lately. Chances are, you read about it in a book, took a class or watched a tutorial online. And while there's nothing wrong with any of those methods, they're not exactly the most efficient way to learn something new.
Why?
It's not enough just knowing information. You have to be able to apply that knowledge in order for it to make an impact on your life.
And the people who have figured this out already seem like they’re gifted and talented, but the truth is, anyone can learn how to learn.
Does that sound like music to your ears?
It’s advice from our guest in this article, Gregg Goodhart, a music teacher for over 13 years who turned his love for studying musical notes into helping people take note of their mental capacity to learn in all aspects of their lives.
So, keep reading to learn how the brain behind the The Learning Coach made it his work to teach us about how our brains work.
Interview with Gregg Goodhart
Be Helpful:
You have an interesting perspective about learning to get better by doing less. Can you talk to us about that?
Gregg Goodhart:
Yes, I'm working with stuff that people have been struggling with for weeks or months and couldn't get, and now in 20 minutes, we fix it.
We can do the same thing with all sorts of academics, all sorts of processes, and anything that you need to learn, like memorizing as much stuff as you need. It's totally out there for anybody. And I go through this stuff and people are amazed, but when left to their own devices, human beings don't like to concentrate.
“There are plenty of people who are disciplined enough to sit down and ‘do the work.’ They think, ‘As long as I'm doing something unpleasant that I'd rather not be doing, I must be doing the work.’ But what I come to find is that human beings need to be tricked into focusing.”
Let’s say you want to memorize a speech. How about memorizing every other word?
Now, why won't people do this?
Because we believe that if you get worse at something, it means you're not learning. Learning is only indicated by getting better at stuff, which leads us to do mass repetition, one after another, which looks like we're getting better. But, the benefit isn't there the next day because all you're doing when you're doing mass repetition of something is using your working memory, which only holds seven to nine pieces of information at a time. You're using your working memory to inform the next repetition that you do. So, the next day, it’s not going to be in your working memory. What you've actually done is stored it in your long-term memory and you need to work on getting it back out. It's called retrieval practice. Our education system is pretty good at getting stuff in but terrible at getting stuff back out.
And to do that you actually have to do less work.
If you really want to memorize something, you have to get it to a point where you kind of have it, and then repeat it, even if it is with errors. There's something called the testing effect that shows if you know something and you repeat it, even if you get it wrong, your likelihood of getting it right the next time, even if you don't do any other studying, goes way up.
“To leverage the testing effect means making mistakes- which we were taught is an indicator that we're not learning-but it's not true, and that's where learning occurs!”
Just like with weightlifting, when you're at the gym and you’re struggling and you “feel the burn.” It's that burn in your muscle that is unpleasant, but it isn't an indicator that you're being injured, it’s an indicator that you're getting what you want.
So, we have all these sayings like, “Feel the burn, comeee onnn, etc.”
“Well, I am convinced there is a burn of learning. I always say, Feel the BLEARN!”
And it's not just a marketing catchphrase. You really have to remind people of that when they're struggling because they say, “Gosh, I suck. I’m terrible. I’m stupid.”
And I say, “No, You're not! You're learning.”
Be Helpful:
I'm curious. You've made the discovery that you have a passion for music. You kind of made that discovery through your role in teaching and tutoring and realizing that the way we learn is ineffective. So, where did the business come in?
Gregg Goodhart:
So that's interesting. This is what I call becoming a forced entrepreneur.
I realized in the last couple of years, while I loved the teaching part and I loved some of my colleagues and working in teaching, there were lots of things that weren't all that fun. But I couldn't get out, because I thought, ‘What am I going to do? How am I going to make money?’
So, this was kind of evolving, and I realized slowly that I can do this on other instruments that I didn’t know how to play at all! That's when it started to dawn on me.
In fact, if you look at my practice class videos or things online, I'm doing the classical guitar, that's what my degrees are in. But, I found that I could go on any instrument, without knowing what they're going to play or how they're going to do it and that it all works the same.
Then I realized, hey, this can apply to all academics!
“It was a Captain Obvious moment; I'm reading books about cognitive science and academics and applying it to music, so maybe the academic research applies to academics!”
So, I started having what I called, The Light Bulb Club and it was for other faculty who just wanted to come out to the band room every two weeks to discuss these things, and it started working really great.
And then I ended up at a conference. I was doing some pre-conference things for guitar; it wasn’t a guitar thing, it was a music thing in general. And I saw someone give a talk on just this. She was good, except I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I would have added so many things to that!’
And I realized that I was just having so much fun doing research and getting results with my kids. I mean, I was really enjoying this. I remarked to one of my colleagues a couple of years into this, ‘I'm getting scared. I'm starting to like this more than music!’
“And by the way, anything done at a high level is an art form. I don't care if it's football or business. That's what art is; art is when you've mastered the basics and you can become creative with what you have. And so, I started getting enjoyment out of the cognitive science of teaching and that always just barely eluded me in music, where I was good enough but never as good as I wanted to be.”
So, I said, ‘I'm going to apply for this conference next year, what the heck!’
And I did and I got a spot!
So then I was like, ‘Gosh, what am I going to do?’
I couldn't sleep one night, so I ended up around the corner at a cigar store, and I don’t even smoke cigars! It was the only thing that was open in Providence. And I wrote what is now the core of my basic presentation, which I still use to this day when I talk to athletes or when I talk to anyone!
“And it gave me this moment. Everyone must have this moment when it just dawns on them, ‘Wow, I'm actually really good at something!’ Or, ‘Wow, I actually got something that others don't have,’ which people chalk up to talent, but my whole lecture was called If Talent is Overrated, and There's a lot of Evidence it is, What Should We Be Doing to Get Better, Better, Best?
So, I very sheepishly did the presentation and apologized for talking too fast and being too excited. It wasn’t well attended, maybe 15 to 20 people were in this huge room, but so many of them came up to me afterward and said, ‘That was amazing. Nobody's doing this. You need to hit the road and get out and start going to colleges and talking about this stuff!’
And I remember saying, ‘Well, hire me!’
At that point, I would do it for expenses! I was willing to go out and talk about my favorite subject to everybody.
And someone else said, ‘You need to write a book.’ And I said, ‘Find me a publisher!’
So, I realized that I had something viable.
Then out of the blue, I lost my job.
I'm sure there are more than a couple of entrepreneurs who have this type of story too. So, I was basically forced into, ‘How do I figure this out some sort of traditional way?’
But I really didn’t have that many traditional options. I put all my eggs in this basket and it was never going to happen with me doing that other job and so I was forced into this other thing. And it was horrible for like six years. There was no template. What I'm doing, almost nobody else is doing. And the people who say they're doing it when I talk to them always say, ‘Oh, I never thought about that.’
“This is really needed but I realized I'm on the tip of the wave.”
And so that's how I got to this point. I was forced into it. I was forced to make that work because I didn’t want to be locked into never doing anything else but being at a high school and having to rebuild the music program.
And I will tell you- because I'm sure this is going on with people who listen as well- I was THIS CLOSE to giving up. I finally got to the point where I put enough time into it. I had given it my best shot. I knew I could do it. But I knew I’m too old to wait another 10 years for it to happen.
Thank goodness my wife has made enough money to support us plus the little bit I was making on the side. I thought it was time to step up and say good try!
“But, I kept thinking, ‘Isn't this where the miracle happens? Isn't this like the stories you hear about where they were at the end of the rope?’ And then I thought, ‘You only hear about the ones that work out good!’ No one tells you the story about being at the end of the rope and finally letting go!”
I was ready to go become a checker at Trader Joe's or something like that- do a good job for a couple of years and become a regional manager or something like that. Or maybe if they would listen to me, I could help them streamline processes and train their employees, but it's not what I wanted to do.
And then the miracle happened.
Brain Power
Whether we achieve our goals or stumble along the entrepreneurial path ultimately depends on how we view ourselves, our abilities, and the world around us. And this mindset has everything to do with how we approach learning.
By focusing on how we learn rather than what we learn, we can pave the way to true success in every area of life.
In other words, the power to change our minds about learning is metaphorically in our hands and quite literally in our brains!
To learn more about learning techniques that will change your brain and your life, head to the full interview with Gregg Goodhart here.
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