Day 10: Optimal Learning Environment

The final element to our learning plan is going to be creating the optimal learning environment for the maximum amount of focus, engagement, and is distraction-free. We discuss why this is important and how to setup your environment externally and internally.

Resources for this lesson:

• Transcripts
• Worksheet
• List of Scientific Resources

Summary

What is the Optimal Learning Environment?

The final element to our learning plan is going to be creating the optimal learning environment for the maximum amount of focus, engagement, and is distraction-free.

• External environment: the place that you would actually be sitting in when you were studying or learning something
• Internal environment: the things that you can do for your brain and body to make sure that you're in the most optimal state for learning.

Why is an Optimal Learning Environment Important?

Distractions often come in three forms:

• Your environment: phones, people, music and other surroundings are all sources of distraction. Be aware of what environment you work best in and test out different environments.
• The learning task: certain activities due to their nature are harder to focus on than others. Use learning resources that engage you the most or modify them to make them more engaging.
• Your mind: negative emotions, restlessness and daydreaming can be some of the biggest obstacles to your own learning and focus. Practice of mindfulness, where you acknowledge the feeling, be aware of it in gently, adjust your focus back to your task and allow the feeling to pass.

The optimal learning environment creates a better quality and direction of your attention.

Two variables must be in balance in order to find the right amount of alertness to maximize our learning: arousal and task complexity.

• Arousal is your overall feeling of energy. So when you're sleepy, you have low arousal. When you're exercising, you have high arousal.
• Arousal influences attention. So when you have high arousal, you have a real keen sense of alertness with a fairly narrow range of focus, great for focusing and concentrating on tasks.
• But when you have too much arousal, your focus can start to suffer. It becomes very easy to be distracted and you may have a hard time holding on to focus on any particular one thing.
• High task complexity, like solving math problems or writing essays, tend to benefit from a more relaxed kind of focus which is larger and more diffused.
• If you're trying to do something extremely creative, you may benefit from no focus at all.

Find a goldilocks spot where you have enough arousal to be focused, but not too much where you're getting distracted.

• When trying to learn something new, you want to make the difficulty  such that you're getting things right about 85% of the time [1] that you're making errors about 15% of the time.

How to Setup Your External Environment

The following elements should be considered when setting up your external learning environment.

• Create a distraction free environment, a quiet location, like a library or an isolated location away from others is going to be ideal.
• If you have to work in noisy environments, you can use things like earplugs or earmuffs or noise canceling headphones to allow you to focus.
• Use the notification settings on your devices and disable audible, visible and vibrating notifications. Use website blockers, that can be downloaded through things like Chrome extensions.

Be wary of multitasking:

• As you switch tasks you leave something called attention residue, which is leftover attention from your previous task. That means your attention isn't fully on the new task.
• Frequent task switching increases susceptibility to distraction, causes more errors, slows down your learning, makes your writing worse, and diminishes the task at hand.
• One study showed [2] cognitive performance fell by 30 to 40% when participants switched between tasks instead of completing one task before moving onto the next.

Avoid using your phone during learning breaks because it doesn't actually allow your brain to recharge as effectively.

• One study found [3] that students who were not using their phone during learning wrote down 62% more information in their notes.
• They also were able to recall more detailed information from the lecture and scored a full letter grade and a half higher on exams then students who actively used their phone.

Create a ready to resume plan: how are you going to bring your focus back to what you're  learning when distractions arise?

How to Setup Your Internal Environment

Optimize your sleep:

• Being awake creates toxic products [4] in our brain, but when you sleep, your brain cells actually shrink and fluids flow through the neurons to clear out these toxins for you.
• During sleep, our brain engages in the diffuse mode of thinking and allows the brain to organize more important things and create connections with different parts of our brain
• In "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker he describes how sleep allows us to sometimes come up with new and novel solutions to problems that we have in our life.
• So it's absolutely crucial that you get quality and sufficiently long enough deep sleep. Here are some resources to optimize your sleep.

Engaging in exercise:

• Researchers have discovered [5] that exercise produces a chemical called BDNF, brain derived neurotropic factor, a protein that promotes sprouting of dendritic spines on neurons.
• Having spines available means it's easier to make new neural connections.
• Even just one single exercise session can raise BDNF levels, but regular exercises raises them more.

Optimize your diet for brain health and performance.

• Here are some resources and more resources to get started with this.

When sitting down for a learning session, prime your focus.

• Remember to balance your arousal level in combination with a task complexity. When you start learning you want to be alert in order to trigger neuroplasticity.
• One simple way to become more alert is to do 25 to 30 deep inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth and then exhale your air and hold your breath with lungs empty for 15 to 60 seconds.
• Then you can inhale once and hold your breath, but you don't need to force the breath. Hold start to breathe normally immediately, once you feel the impulse.
• This protocol is very similar to the Wim Hof method or fire-breathing.
• If you're too aroused, then you become distracted. So what we want to do is to help our mind to get focused on the learning task at hand by focusing our visual system.
• Stare at a point on the wall or screen or object for 30 to 60 seconds before starting the task.

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Activity

Create a checklist for yourself for both your external environment and internal environment and what will be best for your learning situation.

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Skill Lesson Mastered

Demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson by applying it to the above activity. If, and only if, you have a full understanding and have mastered the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson, select the next lesson in the navigation.