On: Wide or Deep?
Date: May 2019
Background; Journalist, author of “The Sports Gene” and “Range“.
- Making connections (conceptual) versus using procedures.
- Abstract ability to match “solving strategy” and “problems”.
- For information to stick and be flexible, helps to apply knowledge to new situations.
- Learning hacks – making information maximally “sticky” – making learning hard (not easy):
- Testing: before you are ready.
- Spacing: deliberate not-practicing, leave time between practices.
- Interleaving: mixing up the things you want to learn (match solving strategy and problem).
- When learning feels too easy, make it harder.
- Issues with grit (combined score of personal resilience and consistency of interest).
- Weak impact: typically fairly low predictive value (1-5%).
- Contained: usually researched inside a tight type range (high similarity of subjects).
- Short-term: grit not necessarily stable over time.
- “Failure” of grit may indicate lack of match; if there is a fit, people display grit.
- If-then descriptions are better signatures of someone’s personality.
- Innovation and creativity:
- Discovery versus replication.
- Many more ways to recombine existing knowledge.
- See other podcast (EconTalk).
Highlights more limited set of subjects than EconTalk podcast, but interesting discussion on learning and grit.