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the intro

Metacognition: thinking about thinking

If you really want to learn, and you want to learn more quickly and more I wonder how
deeply, pay attention to how you pay attention. Think about how you think. I can trick my brain
Learn how you learn. into remembering
this stuff...
Most of us did not take courses on metacognition or learning theory when we
were growing up. We were expected to learn, but rarely taught to learn.
But we assume that if you’re holding this book, you really want to learn how
to design user-friendly websites. And you probably don’t want to spend a lot
of time. If you want to use what you read in this book, you need to remember
what you read. And for that, you’ve got to understand it. To get the most from
this book, or any book or learning experience, take responsibility for your brain.
Your brain on this content.

The trick is to get your brain to see the new material you’re learning as
Really Important. Crucial to your well-being. As important as a tiger.
Otherwise, you’re in for a constant battle, with your brain doing its best to
keep the new content from sticking.

So just how DO you get your brain to treat
programming like it was a hungry tiger?
There’s the slow, tedious way, or the faster, more effective way. The
slow way is about sheer repetition. You obviously know that you are able to learn
and remember even the dullest of topics if you keep pounding the same thing into your
brain. With enough repetition, your brain says, “This doesn’t feel important to him, but he
keeps looking at the same thing over and over and over, so I suppose it must be.”

The faster way is to do anything that increases brain activity, especially different
types of brain activity. The things on the previous page are a big part of the solution,
and they’re all things that have been proven to help your brain work in your favor. For
example, studies show that putting words within the pictures they describe (as opposed to
somewhere else in the page, like a caption or in the body text) causes your brain to try to
makes sense of how the words and picture relate, and this causes more neurons to fire.
More neurons firing = more chances for your brain to get that this is something worth
paying attention to, and possibly recording.
A conversational style helps because people tend to pay more attention when they
perceive that they’re in a conversation, since they’re expected to follow along and hold up
their end. The amazing thing is, your brain doesn’t necessarily care that the “conversation”
is between you and a book! On the other hand, if the writing style is formal and dry, your
brain perceives it the same way you experience being lectured to while sitting in a roomful
of passive attendees. No need to stay awake.
But pictures and conversational style are just the beginning…

you are here 4 xxvii