Learning how to learn: my notes from the course everyone should take

There’s a free course on Coursera called Learning How to Learn, taught by Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski. It’s one of the most enrolled online courses ever made, and after going through it I understand why: it takes everything neuroscience knows about how your brain stores information and turns it into practical tricks you can use tomorrow.

These are my notes. I’ve polished them, reorganised a few things, and added some personal comments — but the core ideas are straight from the course. If you only read one thing about learning this year, make it either this post or the course itself.

Module 1: How your brain learns

Focused mode vs diffuse mode

Your brain has two fundamentally different ways of thinking:

Focused mode is the tight, concentrated attention you use when you’re working through a math problem or debugging code. It follows established neural pathways — things you already know.
Diffuse mode is the relaxed, big-picture thinking that happens when you’re in the shower, on a walk, or staring at the ceiling. It makes broad connections across different areas of your brain.

The best approach to learning something new? Start with diffuse mode. Get a high-level overview of the topic — skim the chapter, watch a summary video, read the Wikipedia intro. This helps your brain figure out where to put the new information and how it connects to things you already know.

Then switch to focused mode to add details, deepen relationships, and actually practice. The key insight is to alternate between the two. Bouncing back and forth lets you find new perspectives and broader applications you’d miss if you just stared at the textbook for six hours straight.

Procrastination (and why your brain lies to you)

Studies show that when you’re about to face a difficult problem, the area of your brain associated with physical pain actually lights up. Your brain literally hurts at the thought of hard work — so it finds something easier to do instead. Scrolling Instagram, reorganising your desk, suddenly needing to clean the kitchen.

Here’s the good news: the same studies show that the pain disappears once you start working. It’s only the anticipation that hurts. The actual work? Fine. Sometimes even enjoyable.

So you only need enough energy to get started. After that, momentum takes over.

The Pomodoro Technique

One of the simplest ways to trick yourself past that initial resistance:

Set a timer for 25 minutes. Work on the task — it doesn’t matter how much you get done, it matters that you started.
Spend 2-5 minutes retrieving what you just learned, without looking at your notes. This forces your brain to actually use the information and reveals what’s still fuzzy.
Relax for 2-5 minutes. And I mean actually relax — don’t pick up your phone and flood your brain with new stimuli.

The beauty of the Pomodoro is that you’re not committing to finishing anything. You’re committing to 25 minutes. That’s it. Your procrastinating brain can live with that.

An important note about patience

Learning hard things takes time. There’s no shortcut. Your brain needs sleep, repetition, and space between sessions to build strong neural connections. If it feels slow, that’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong — it’s a sign you’re doing it right.

Memory: RAM and ROM

Think of your memory like a computer:

Short-term (working) memory is your RAM — limited, fast, volatile. You can hold about four chunks of information at once before things start falling out.
Long-term memory is your storage — vast, slower to access, but persistent. Getting information from short-term to long-term memory is the whole game.

Practice makes permanent

The phrase is “practice makes permanent,” not “practice makes perfect.” Repetition physically strengthens the neural pathways — but it has to be spaced repetition, not cramming. Studying something four times across four days beats studying it four times in one afternoon, every single time. Same principle as training at the gym: you don’t do 20 sets of squats on Monday and skip the rest of the week.

Three bonus accelerators:

Sleep is when your brain consolidates memories. Studying before bed, then sleeping on it, is one of the most effective things you can do. If you want to dream about what you studied (yes, this helps), think about it deliberately as you’re falling asleep.
Exercise creates new neurons in the hippocampus — the brain region responsible for learning and memory. A 30-minute run literally makes you capable of learning more.
Review before sleep, then let your subconscious do the heavy lifting overnight. Your brain is weirdly industrious when you’re unconscious.

Module 2: Chunking

What is a chunk?

A chunk is a group of information bound together by meaning and use. When you first learn to drive, you think about every individual action: check mirrors, press clutch, shift gear, release clutch, press accelerator. After enough practice, “shift into second” becomes one seamless chunk. You don’t think about the pieces — you think about the whole.

How to build a chunk

Focus on the material (focused mode — no multitasking, no distractions).
Understand the basic idea and how it connects to what you already know.
Practice and repeat to strengthen the connections. The more you use the chunk, the stronger and more automatic it becomes.
Gain context — learn when to use it and when not to.

Consolidated chunks can become building blocks for even bigger chunks. Learning a new language works exactly like this: first you learn individual words (small chunks), then phrases (medium chunks), then you can hold a full conversation (large chunk built from smaller ones).

Understanding vs the illusion of understanding

Here’s a trap: watching a teacher solve a problem and thinking “oh yeah, that makes sense” feels like learning. It isn’t. You understood their solution. That’s not the same as being able to produce it yourself.

You understand something when you can do it yourself — with the book closed and nobody telling you how.

Following someone else’s solution is like watching someone do push-ups and thinking your arms got stronger. The “aha!” moment is the beginning of a chunk, not the end.

Top-down meets bottom-up

To truly master something, you need both directions:

Bottom-up (practice) builds and strengthens individual chunks through repetition and use.
Top-down (big picture) shows you where those chunks fit, when to use them, and why they matter.

Practical tip: when starting a new chapter in a textbook, don’t dive straight into paragraph one. First, flip through every page. Read the headlines. Look at the images. Check the summary. This 5-minute overview gives your brain the big-picture map before you start creating chunks — so you know where to put them.

The illusion of competence

One of the most important concepts in the course. The illusion of competence is when you think you know something but you don’t. It’s incredibly common and incredibly sneaky.

Things that feel productive but don’t work:

Re-reading your notes or textbook. It creates a feeling of familiarity that your brain mistakes for understanding.
Concept maps before your chunks are solid. You’re connecting things you haven’t actually learned yet.
Following along with a solution. The solution isn’t yours. You didn’t produce it, and you won’t remember why those steps were chosen.
Highlighting everything. If the whole page is yellow, nothing is highlighted. You just decorated your book.

Things that actually work:

Recall. After reading a section, close the book and try to explain what you just read. This is the single most effective study technique known to science. It hurts a little. That’s how you know it’s working.
Spaced repetition. Review material at increasing intervals — not four times today, but once today, once tomorrow, once next week.
Margin notes — write short summaries in your own words next to the text.
Testing yourself. Making mistakes is not a bug, it’s a feature. Every error is a signal that corrects your thinking.
Recall in different environments. If you always study at the same desk, your brain starts using environmental cues (the lamp, the chair, the coffee smell) as retrieval aids. The exam room won’t have those cues. Study in different places so your memory isn’t tied to one location.
Metaphors and analogies. Turn abstract concepts into something concrete you already understand. “An atom is like a solar system” isn’t perfect, but it’s a starting point your brain can build on. LLMs are surprisingly good at generating these — try asking Claude to explain a concept as a metaphor and even illustrate it.

What motivates you? The chemistry

Three neurotransmitters drive your learning:

Acetylcholine supports focused attention and long-term memory formation. It’s the “I’m concentrating” chemical.
Dopamine drives reward-based learning. It spikes when you get an unexpected reward, teaching your brain “that was worth doing — do it again.” When the expected reward doesn’t arrive, dopamine drops and your brain recalibrates its expectations downward. This is why small wins matter.
Serotonin shapes social behaviour and risk tolerance. Higher levels are associated with confidence and social engagement; lower levels with isolation and avoidance. Yes, it’s more complicated than this, but the takeaway is: social connection and well-being aren’t separate from learning — they fuel it.

Transfer and the library of chunks

Transfer is when a chunk from one domain turns out to be useful in a completely different one. The patterns you learned debugging SQL pipelines might help you troubleshoot a recipe. The mental model you built for compound interest might click into place when you study population growth.

The more chunks you accumulate across different topics, the bigger your library of chunks — and the more “whispers” and pattern-matches your diffuse mode has to work with. This is where intuition comes from. Most breakthroughs in science and engineering don’t come from grinding through sequential steps — they come from someone whose diffuse mode connected two chunks that nobody had connected before.

The Law of Serendipity: Lady Luck favours the one who tries. The more you put yourself out there, the more likely you are to stumble onto something valuable. This applies to learning, career, and life in general.

Overlearning, deliberate practice, and Einstellung

Three related traps to watch for:

Overlearning means repeating something you’ve already mastered. It’s useful for building automaticity (you want “2 + 2 = 4” to be instant), but doing it in a single session doesn’t help you understand it better or remember it longer. And there’s a sneaky risk: you keep practising the easy parts because they feel good, which creates an…
Illusion of competence — you repeat the parts you’re comfortable with and skip the hard bits. The thing that separates a good student from a great one is deliberate practice: identifying the material you find most difficult and spending disproportionate time on that.
Einstellung (German for “mindset” or “attitude”) is the tendency to get locked into your initial approach. Think of it like overfitting in machine learning — your first intuition might be wrong, and the longer you stick with it, the harder it becomes to see alternatives. The antidote is interleaving: once you understand a technique, deliberately practise different techniques on similar problems. Learn why some methods work in some situations and not others.

Module 3: Procrastination and memory (the deep dive)

Why procrastination is worse than you think

The cycle: you have an unpleasant feeling about a task → you funnel your attention onto something more pleasant → you feel better temporarily → but the task is still there, now with a tighter deadline and more anxiety.

It’s not just a bad habit — it follows the same neurological pattern as addiction. The temporary relief reinforces the avoidance, making it harder to break next time. Take it seriously.

The anatomy of a habit

Every habit has four components:

The cue — the trigger that starts the routine (a notification, a time of day, a feeling of boredom).
The routine — the automatic response (picking up your phone, opening Reddit, making another coffee).
The reward — the momentary pleasure you get.
The belief — the conviction that you can’t change (“I’m just a procrastinator, it’s who I am”).

The fix isn’t about willpower — it’s about engineering. Change your reaction to the cue and the rest falls apart.

Practical anti-procrastination strategies

Focus on process, not product. “I’ll study for 25 minutes” (process) is infinitely less intimidating than “I’ll finish all of chapter 7” (product). Your brain resists products because they feel overwhelming. It can handle a process.

Remove the cues:

Put your phone in another room. Not on silent — in another room.
Block distracting websites. Not “try to avoid them” — actually block them.
Plan your environment before you need willpower.

Design your rewards: Decide in advance what you’ll do after the work session. Knowing there’s a finish line and a reward waiting makes the process bearable.

Believe you can change. This sounds cheesy. It’s also backed by research. The “belief” component of the habit loop is real — if you genuinely believe you’re helpless, you will be.

Planning that actually works

Write a weekly list of key tasks.
Each evening, write tomorrow’s task list. Not in the morning — the evening before. This gives your subconscious overnight to chew on the problems, so you wake up with a head start.
Set a quitting time. “Everything done by 17:00.” This creates a deadline that prevents work from expanding to fill all available time, and it protects your rest.
Mix pleasant and unpleasant tasks. Alternate long study blocks with activities: cleaning, exercise, groceries. Your brain needs variety.
Eat the frog first. Every morning, start with the most important and most dreaded task. Get it done while your energy is highest. The earlier you finish it, the freer the rest of your day feels. (Personal note: this one alone changed my mornings.)

Module 4

(Still working through this module — notes coming soon.)

If any of this was useful, I’d genuinely recommend watching the full course. It’s free on Coursera, it takes about 15 hours, and the return on investment is absurd — you’ll use these ideas every single day for the rest of your life. Not many courses can say that.