A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)

During sleep, your cells shrink, causing a striking increase in the space between your cells.

Attempting to recall the material you are trying to learn—retrieval practice—is far more effective than simply rereading the material.

you become stuck in one way of looking at a problem and can’t step back to see easier, better ways—Einstellung.

two major memory systems:

think most clearly when I’m driving.

This thinking mode is useful when you are learning something new.

learning takes place in two ways. There is a bottom-up chunking process where practice and repetition can help you both build and strengthen each chunk, so you can easily gain access to it when needed. And there is a top-down “big picture” process that allows you to see where what you are learning fits in.

Once you are distracted from the problem at hand, the diffuse mode has access and can begin pinging about in its big-picture way to settle on a solution.

understand the basic idea you are trying to chunk,