- Hey everyone, Benny Lewis from Fluent in 3 Months
and today I am with Dr. Barbara Oakley
and she has written a very interesting book called
Mindshift and I wanted to ask her some questions
related to that.
So we've kind of got mirror image background, in a way
because I studied engineering and I got into languages
as an adult and I kind of had this very big shift
in directions.
And Barb has actually come from more of a languages
background and gotten into the technical engineering
side of things.
Looking back now, would you say that these language
skills are transferrable and they do help you
in what you're doing right now, or in general for people
has language skills helped them in other parts
of their life?
- Language, my language skills have been invaluable
I the whole rest of my life.
I'm so lucky that I have them.
And, although my Russian is a bit rusty now,
unless I have a little bit of Vodka it comes right back.
Learning a language is like one of the best learning
skills, I think, around.
Maybe the only one, well learning a musical instrument
is a little bit similar,
but learning a language you can talk to other people
which is really fun.
But either one has advantages.
But the big thing for me, I think, as an engineer
nowadays is that I think in terms of both the visuals
that are often behind the engineering approach,
but also in terms of metaphor and that sort of metaphor
from humanity's bringing--
I learn ideas by taking,
by using these sort of metaphorical approaches that I
think I got from language learning originally.
And I think language learning is highly transferable,
even to learning in math and science,
where you'd think there'd be no transferable skills at all.
And plus, a lot of technical skills.
They're looking for people who can communicate well
and if you're a language speaker,
that tells you right there if you speak several languages
that you have a little better leg up on being able
to communicate well.
- No, absolutely.
After I got my degree as an engineer,
it was a little tricky to get work because there was
just so much competition with other engineers.
But after I acquired a few languages,
enough to a professional level, I had to turn down work
as a translator of engineering documents.
So combining that with a technical thing is something
not enough people do so there's a lot of great
opportunities out there, for sure.
Based off the kind of things that you wrote about,
what would you say to somebody who feels that
they want to get into languages, but they don't think
they have an aptitude for it?
- Well, to be honest, I'd refer them to your website.
But the reality is that if you start small,
that's the key.
Because you can be overwhelmed thinking about all the
words you need to know to learn a language and so forth
and it's scary.
So don't think about that.
Just think about, I'm going to learn a few vocabulary
words, that's all.
And practise with those words, just have a little
fun with it, pretend you are a jackjaw,
just a bird who is mimicking things and repeat those
words, try to listen really how they're saying it.
And it's kind of fun, it's almost like singing a song.
And when you do that kind of thing and then you
(mumbles) the memory tricks that you use,
you can remember those words and it's really encouraging.
Just little tiny small wins and start adding them
together and that's the way to go.
Don't think, "I've got to learn all this stuff,
"in just a month," or something like that.
- And ultimately you're never going to feel that win.
And if you say to yourself, "I want to learn Spanish,"
there's not a point that you actually reach where
you say, "Now I'm done, I have finished learning Spanish."
And those little wins, just being able to have that
first basic conversation or being able to conjugate
a verb or know how to ask where the bathroom is,
whatever your goal is, you feel that sense of achievement
and you have to be proud of that.
- You do.
And I think that little pat on the back,
we don't do enough of that.
We tend to say, "I didn't finish this today,"
instead of, "Oh, I did do this."
And starting to have this sort of positive reinforcement
is really helpful.
- Yeah, so in other words, make sure your language
is half full instead of half empty.
- Exactly.
- Okay so when we talk about learning languages,
for a lot of people it's like just follow your passion,
follow your passion.
But some people, they need to learn a language
and they don't feel that passion for it.
So do you have any kind of words of guidance
for people who are in that situation?
- Oh sure.
The issue is that passions develop about what
you're good at.
And if you're not already speaking a language,
you haven't already gotten started in a language,
it's pretty hard to feel like you're good at it.
And sometimes it just helps to get started.
Have those small wins again.
And once you get started, you've learned a few words,
and you start feeling like, "Hey, I can say this sentence,
"I can say a few sentences, I can actually interact
"with someone," then you start getting better at it.
And you start feeling better.
So the passion comes with getting a little better at it.
So you have to kind of start out small and you
may not feel like you like it, but if you're being
forced into it by your work, well, it can grow
if you just keep working at it.
- Yeah, a quote someone gave me once that I really like
is, "Try to suck a little less every day."
(chuckles)
- That's a really good approach.
- Alright, so next question, how old would you say
is too old, the cut off point, you can no longer learn
anything new?
- I would say probably your death bed, right?
So anything younger than that.
Let's say that you're a spry 95,
you can be learning something new.
Learning new things, actually, it almost provides this
kind of trellis that your new neurons can hang on.
If they don't have that, they'll just die.
So language learning, as it turns out,
is a powerful boost to the very parts of the brain
that tend to sort of deteriorate as you age.
So it's almost like this brain booster.
And you can learn language at any age.
We've seen it in some of your friends who learn
when they're older and they do very well.
So I strongly encourage it because it's healthy
for your brain.
It helps you to maintain your mental acuity
and it helps you live longer.
- Yeah, definitely.
And it's like we were saying earlier,
that you've got to look at the positive out of the negative.
And I feel too many people, they see children learning
things like languages and they look at that as proof
that adults can't.
Rather than seeing the adults who are learning a
language as proof that they can.
So a lot of it is that kind of perspective and
how you're filtering what you're seeing in the world.
'Cause it's not something that there's any kind of
cut off point.
- That's right.
If you look at a three year old,
I remember looking at three year old Russian kids
and going, "They speak better Russian than I do."
But on the other hand, I'd only been studying
for like a year and these kids had been emersed in it
for three years.
So adults can do very well when they're really
putting their attention on to it.
- Yeah, for sure.
Okay so if somebody's learning a skill,
whether it be language learning or anything,
what would be the simplest changes they can make to,
not necessarily guarantee, but ensure a higher likeliness
of success as they're doing it?
- I think one of the best techniques is to use the
Pomodoro technique, which was invented by Francesco Cirillo
in the 1980s.
But often what we tend to do, especially when we're
first beginning a study of something that we're not
very good at it and it's almost a little painful
to think about it, actually that's literally true.
When you think about something that you're not quite
sure of maybe you're not even sure if you like it,
it activates a portion of the brain that experiences pain.
So what does the brain do?
Naturally it says, "Hey, let's switch attention to
"anything else."
So often you go to Twitter or whatever.
There's a way, though, to trick your brain back in
to paying attention, and that is to quit thinking
about what the task is.
You stop that and you, instead, just turn off anything
that could interrupt you.
So your littler ringy dingys on your cell phone,
take all of those little notifications off your computer,
nothing comes up to interrupt you.
And then you set a timer for 25 minutes and then
just focus as intently as you can for 25 minutes.
Now, if you're like me, you'll go,
"Now wait a minute, what time is it?
"Oh, I've just done two minutes, I can't do 23 more
"minutes of the Pomodoro."
And I let that thought go right on by and I just return my
attention to what I'm working on.
And then, and this is the key part is when you're
done with the 25 minutes, you just do something different.
Taking that little break, what it does is,
there's two main different neural networks in your brain.
That is the task positive networks,
that's what turns on when we're focusing on something,
and the other is more diffuse type broader networks,
that's the default mode and associated resting states.
And when you get your attention off and just relax
a little bit, you're opening these other networks,
these more diffuse mode networks.
And what that allows is, it allows your brain to kind of
consolidate, organise, the information you just
put into your brain.
So by taking these little breaks, you're giving your
brain a chance to sort of make sense of what it's
just put into it.
- Yeah.
- Now, do you have to do a reward at 25 minutes?
If I'm really in a flow I might not necessarily do that
but it's a good idea whenever you're really focused
intently for a while, take a break, get your mind off it,
and that learning continues to take place
during that time.
So the Pomodoro technique is very powerful,
in part because you're not thinking,
"I'm gonna sit down and do this," you're thinking,
"Oh, I've gt 25 minutes, I'm gonna work on this thing."
You're not even labelling it as,
"I'm going to study Spanish," you're just thinking,
"I've gotta work for 25 minutes, I don't care about what."
And that doesn't activate the pain centres and you just
start working away and you can get into the flow
more easily.
So it's actually a very perceptive neuro scientific
trick you're playing on your brain.
- It's the only way I was able to finish writing
my first book.
Usually my five minute break would be stare out the
window at birds tweeting or something.
Just anything, and it's amazing that five minutes.
Initially I thought, "But that's wasting time,
"that means there's 10 minutes out of every hour
"I'm not getting this done."
But it really makes the vast majority of the rest
of the time so much more honed and you're more focused.
It's amazing.
- Exactly right.
And one thing you don't want to do that was,
whatever you're doing, like if you're conjugating verbs,
you're using verbal parts of your brain,
do not go to Twitter and start using verbal parts
of your brain.
You want to, during that break, try to do something
that won't involve the part of the brain that you've
been using before.
- Interesting.
- So it gives it a nice little break.
- Yeah, I never thought of it that way before.
It's a good thing to keep in mind.
Regardless, if you're doing something technical,
maybe don't go read another instruction manual
or something on your break.
- That's right.
- Very good, okay.
Okay so in your new book you talk about how we could
actually think of some of our weaknesses as strengths.
Could you maybe give an example or two to illustrate
how this might work?
- So let's say, some people have total steel trap
working memories.
You give them a problem to solve and they could
put this here, this here, this here,
they work with it all and then they come out
with the solution very quickly.
And other people, like me, have not so good working
memories.
So they've got four things, they're holding it in mind,
they've really got it, and then, "Ooh, shiny."
Like something falls out.
- Yeah.
- But when something falls out, something else comes in.
And that's where creativity comes from.
So you would not want to trade that, actually.
It turns out you're sitting there berating yourself
because you have a poor working memory,
or a poor memory in general, and you're often,
I mean research has shown that there's a nice
correlation between, or counter correlation between
working memory and having good creativity.
So do you have to work harder to keep up with the
intellectual Jones', so to speak?
Yes you do.
But on the other hand you wouldn't want to trade it.
And if you use some of those memory tricks that
you're a master of teaching about,
those can really help you get passed and keep up with
the others who do have steel trap working memories.
So I was thinking, whenever you have a bad trait
and you're berating yourself about it,
realise that there's a flip side to it.
Even if you are, let's say that you're kind of a
slow thinker, you learn slowly,
so that's a bad trait, right?
Not necessarily because some people have like
race car brains, they can get there really fast.
Other people have like hiker brains.
But hiker brains, hikers they can reach out,
they can touch the leaves on the trees,
see the little path of the rabbits
and smell the air, the pine in the air and they hear
the birds.
Completely different experience from the race car driver,
but in some ways richer and deeper.
So the interesting thing is, the race car driver
does get there faster, but because they think so fast
they're often also used to jumping to conclusions
and then they're not used to changing their minds
when they're wrong.
So if you have a slower way of thinking,
maybe more used to making mistakes,
you can turn out to be more flexible.
So it's persistence, actually, that's the key,
not genius.
And so having a slow way of thinking,
you can contribute, sometimes, just as much as the genius.
- Very good point, yeah.
So very interesting answers there.
Thank you very much for that.
And it's been a pleasure to have Barb her,
Dr. Barbara Oakley and you should definitely
check out her book, Mindshift.
It's got a lot of the kind of stuff we've been
talking about today.
I think a lot of people should get great inspiration
if they want to consider changing careers and see
if the book's for you by checking it out.
Fi3m.com/mindshift.
- And don't forget to check out Benny's books too,
they're fantastic.
It's so great to meet you at last.
- Yeah, I'm so glad, it was great to finally meet you,
thanks for stopping by New York and I'm sure I'll be
seeing you again soon.