Barbara Oakley

So that got into some areas of psychology and politics, psychopathology and politics.

But nothing was really as extensive as Lobachevsky's and nowadays like in the past i'd say in the past 15 year or 15 to 20 years there have been five or six books um mainstream books published in you know with big publishers that that deal with these topics but again they're not very you know they're not super well known they haven't really filtered totally into the the mainstream consciousness like there was barbara oakley she's an uh an engineer um And she, she wrote a book dealing with these topics back in like 2008 or something like that.

And so there have been a few, I quote, I reference all of them in the, in the introduction.

So people can get an idea of, of what has been published recently.

It can kind of be a hack or a shortcut that helps you to build back up your attention span.

That's something Barbara Oakley recommends as well.

She's the author of the book Learning How to Learn, and she talks a lot about focus mo- mode and diffuse mode.

So actually, we do need those distractions.

You're forcing your brain to retrieve the information, which strengthens those neural pathways.

Dr. Barbara Oakley puts it perfectly: "The most powerful learning technique is simple.

Close the book and see what you can recall." Most people avoid this because it feels harder, but that difficulty is exactly what builds strong neural pathways.

Here's how to implement this immediately.

It's not only dry, uh, but it's, it, you know, it also has cognitive scientists involved in the, the writing process, um, as co-authors.

So I've read multiple books, you know, by Barbara Oakley and other folks on, on various learning things.

E- every single one of 'em mentions certain ideas in there over and over that are shown to be things that work, and some of those ideas I've always felt like I was dropping the ball on, both in my training and Python Morsels.

And some of it's just inherent in the sense that, you know, if I work with a team, almost always team trainings are structured as you go in for a week, and then you leave.

I loved that episode y'all did.

I lo- I, you know, I tag her often.

I'm gonna have to tag her back in this and say that there was a shout-out to Barbara Oakley.

So if you've never read her books, that is a must, especially as a dad.

For instance, one well-known study found that physicists and writers had their aha moments when their minds were wandering.

That's because psychologists and learning experts like Barb Oakley distinguish between two mental modes.

Focus mode, that's when you're concentrating, analyzing, executing.

And diffuse mode, that's when your mind is wandering, relaxed, and open.

for those of you about to write books, to define what you're talking about.

By the way, just, you know, there is a book called Pathological Altruism that a philosopher by the name of Barbara Oakley wrote.

I don't know if you've ever read it, but that would be...

I came across it while researching this book.