Beyond HolisticLearning 超越整体性学习

做一个高效能的学生，进行持续的自学

（一）The Productive Student

1)Manage Your Energy能量管理

I’ve seen the victims of poor energy management. These are the students completely burnt out from excess projects, requiring injections of caffeine just to function. Balancing courses and life isn’t easy, especially if you have a full schedule.Your body has fuel cells, both physically and mentally. You can’t run on empty forever.

Better energy management has two steps:

1) Increase your energy capacity.

2) Switch your schedule from a linear format to a circular format.

2)Don't“Study”不要“学习”

学习不等于你看书的时间

I never study. I’ll read my textbooks. I’ll review notes. I’ll finish assignments and do practice questions. But I never“study”. A big waste of your time is to spend time“studying”without specifically defining what you want to accomplish. At the end of the year, grades, not how many hours you“studied”are going to matter most.

Cal Newport, author of How to Win at College, claims he hates the word studying:

“It’s ambiguous, and for most students it’s entangled in all sorts of emotional baggage. They feel guilty if they haven’t suffered enough in the library. Student life, for them, becomes aconstant struggle—always trying to“study”more, yet always falling a bit short.

3)Nuke Procrastination拒绝拖延

If an assignment is due next Wednesday are you the type of person who starts

working on it:

(A) As soon as it is assigned.

(B) All in one session, some time between today and the due date.

(C) Tuesday night.

(D) Wednesday morning, ten minutes before class!

Unfortunately, most students I know would have to pick either C or D. Which is the best answer? It may surprise you that I don’t believe answering A is ideal either. AsI’ll explain, beating procrastination doesn’t mean just completing work earlier.

定额完成任务

The correct answer (in most cases) would actually be B. Completing an assignment in one go saves time by batching. In addition, if you complete the assignment using the Weekly/Daily Goals method, you can save yourself the stress and guilt of deciding when to do assignments.

4)Batch smaller tasks into groups.批量处理小事情

Batching involves taking a group of similar, small sections of work and doing them

at one time. Batching helps cut down studying time because you can focus completely

instead of switching between tasks.

5)Be organized.井然有序

1) Everything has a home. Tasks, assignments and due dates all get stored in a

proper location. Mess is the result of the homeless.

2) Carry a notepad with you at all times. Keep something to write on at all times of the day. This is invaluable for writing down tasks, due dates or ideas.

3) Maintain a calendar and a to-do list. Use to-do lists to store tasks and projects.

Use your calendar to store events and due dates.

（二）Self-Education

Self-education can be cheap, fast and rewarding but it also has challenges. Namely, it has less

structure and is more difficult than formal education. The main ways you can improve your ability

to teach yourself are:

1) Improve your habits

2) Overcome the frustration barrier

3) Set learning goals to track progress.

Structuring LearningHabits建立良好的学习习惯

正规的学校教育很容易帮人养成良好的习惯，而自学却很难。

A formal school structure makes forming the right habits easy. Show up to classes.Read your textbook. Take the tests. Take notes in class. All of these behaviors are notonly given by the instructor, but are reinforced by the hundreds of people who surround you in classes.

Self-education is harder to form the right habits because no role-models are easily available. The structure of what you want to learn isn’t handed to you on the first day.This flexibility can become a weakness if you don’t have the right learning habits.

Here are some habits to consider as keys to improving your learning ability:

1) Daily Reading每日阅读

Reading every day is one of the best ways to improve your understanding. I strive to read at least a book each week and 50-70 books each year. Books can’t teach you everything, but they form a solid foundation of ideas you can build any learning efforts from. By reading a large volume, you can structure your education more effectively,getting a wide variety of viewpoints on a subject instead of just one.

2) Daily Practice每日练习

By working on your projects and practicing your skills every day, you can enhance any understandings given to you through reading books. Practicing helps provide astructure for your learning, since it is the first time you will have a benchmark of your abilities.

3) Daily Goal Setting每日目标

Reading and practice aren’t enough if they aren’t directed. If your efforts are aimed at every subject imaginable, you won’t get into any useful depth into a subject. But by setting learning goals and breaking it into daily increments, your learning can be more useful to you by learning subjects fully instead of just in pieces.

Overcoming theFrustration Barrier克服挫折

自学和挫败感经常接班而行

Self-education and frustration often go hand-in-hand. Without an instructor who can show you what you’re doing wrong, or a guide book to tell you the next step, self education requires more patience than taking classes.

Here are a few tips for reducing the frustration barrier:

1)Write Down any Obstacles.写出障碍

If I encounter a programming problem I don’t currently know how to solve, I try to write down the problem in as much detail aspossible first. Writing obstacles out thoroughly makes it easier to think through problems.

2)Use Forums.利用论坛

There are online forums for just about any discipline, skill or subject. If you are having trouble understanding an idea, or are looking for books to explain it, online forums can be incredibly helpful.

3)Get How-To Manuals.获得“怎样做....”这样的工具书

If you are trying to teach yourself a skill (doing your taxes, programming, graphic design, etc.) how-to manuals are invaluable. For a tiny fraction of the price of a full course, they can be an excellent reference if you get stuck.

4)Attack From a New Angle.换个角度试试

If you hit a roadblock in your understanding, try coming at the idea from a different viewpoint. Spend time working on other concepts and come back to it after you have learned more.

Setting Learning Goals设立学习目标

One of the biggest challenges with self-education is that there is little structure.There are no goals, few plans and little direction. Although this loose format makes it easy to explore what you want to learn, instead of what are told you need, it also makes it harder to stick with. Without structure, it requires far more internal discipline to keep going through minor obstacles.

I’ve found it helpful to create learning goals to give yourself an extra push.

A few tips on setting your learning goals:

1)All Goals Need to Be Written.所有的目标都需要写下来

A goal that isn’t written down, doesn’t exist.Write down your goal as a few sentences, along with a deadline.

2)Make it Objective.要客观可量化

At any point along your progress, you should be able to easily decide whether you have achieved your goal.“Learning more”isn’t a goal, just a whim（n.奇想；幻想）.

3)Set Difficult, But Achievable Deadlines.设定合适的最后期限

Giving yourself deadlines forces you to take action instead of just procrastinating. If the deadlines are too easy, they won’t inspire action until you are too far behind. If the deadlines are too hard, you’ve just created a recipe for frustration.

4)Break it Into Daily and Weekly Actions.融入每日每周的行动中

Your goal should be broken into daily and weekly increments. A goal you need to complete today has more urgency than one due in a few months.

5)Review Your Goals Regularly.检查你的目标

Check over your goals at least once a week to see how you’re making progress.