How I easily study insanely difficult subjects - Ivy League math major

imagine being one of those people who are able to pick up any advanced science textbook turn to a random chapter you've never seen before and understand everything it means intuitively I graduated from Columbia University with a math and engineering degree so many people assume I'm one of these people but actually I'm not born with a natural talent for this I remember trying to learn equation solving and my math teacher will be so frustrated to the point she would scream each rabbit has four lacks you counted eight LS how many rabbits are there what the rabbits have to do with this now I'm very good at repits and many other things now I'm pretty comfortable with teaching myself any math or science topics in a way that's easy and digestible and the learning process itself it's even kind of fun dare I say it so in this video I'm going to share with you my simple learning system to learn any hard topic let's get into it ever since I was a kid I loved arts and creativity but I really struggled to understand any technical Concepts and here is how I would learn a heart topics back then I would open the textbook read the first sentence and have no idea what it means so I would read it again and after a couple of times I still didn't understand so I just to move on I read the entire paragraph after 30 minutes of reading and Googling back and forth I still feel like I don't understand anything I get frustrated and don't know how to continue learning because I'm stuck there's no way it's going to be enjoyable for you if you keep getting stuck and here's the system that I use now and it actually works instead of just jumping into start learning the actual content I will first look at the big picture and found some keywords and course Concepts then I will directly go and look at the goals I want to achieve such as questions I need to solve or the project I need to complete this way I will see what stuff I will need to know and get a hint at how and where the knowledge will be relevant from there I will reverse engineer what I need to know to answer that question or complete that task and make a list of topics that I need to understand then for each of those topics I try to make a list of things that I need to understand in order to understand those topics then I dive into each one of those topics from the start if I really struggle to understand the topic or it seems like I need to learn a lot of out of scope things to understand that topic I will consider that to be something I need to memorize for now but know how to use it to solve my problem after I have been through all the topics I will make sure I can completely explain out loud how to use the starting topics to get back to my end goal so here's my reason why this system works for me so well if I show you this picture and let you figure out what is it you might be a little bit confused but if I show you this first and then let you figure out what this is it's way easier to identify is actually Spider-Man's eyes right because in your mind you have things to relate that subject to so when learning hard concept the first step I would usually do is to have a big picture of what stuff I need to know this way later when we dive into each individual details we already have a big picture in our mind that we can relate that details too if we just jump into the first thing and start reading and learning it's actually very easy to get overwhelmed so before you actually jump in and learn the details just to have a sense of what is this subjects about what are some key words that appears very often or what are the Core Concepts here also before you start learning it's so important to prepare yourself in a mindset which you truly believe that you can learn this when I was in high school I actually was really bad at math and science everyone was telling me that girls are not normally very very good with them subject turns out I actually do have the ability to major in math and Engineering at ivd College once I believ that that I can learn some really difficult subjects it truly helps me so much in focusing understanding and just learn better I realized that my mood and my mindset plays such a big role in my performance actually this has continued to be the case since I left the school and started my YouTube channel and one unexpected thing that has helped me a lot is actually my therapist for this reason I'm so excited to share with you the sponsor of this video better better help is a mental health platform that provides online therapy and connect you with a licensed therapist I used to think that therapy was only for people that have severe mental health issues in which case can be really life-changing however I have come to realize that therapy is really for anyone that just want to live a healthier and happier life as you should take care of your mental health just like your physical health over the past a few months my therapist has been helping me to visualize my goals we have been discussing any negative feelings like self-doubt or anxiety and helping me recognize and manag my emotions so I can make better decisions it has genuinely helped me to achieve my goals in a way healthier and positive way to get started with better help you fill all a questionnaire to assess your specific needs you will be able to schedule therapy sessions at the time that's convenient for you if the therapist you initially matched with doesn't feel like the right fit you can easily switch to a new therapist with a click of button in your setting I personally switched my therapist twice before I found the right one with better help you can have your therapy session as a phone call a video chat or messaging if you prefer that over 4 million people have used the better help and they have over 30,000 therapists in their Network so if you think you might benefit from therapy because they better help click the link in the description box or visit betterhelp.com hun jungle to get 10% off of your first months of better help thank you better help for sponsoring this video and thank you for making therapy more accessible okay now back to [Music] learning one thing I learned from all those years of self-taught is that if I don't care or I don't know the reason why I'm learning something I'm never going to learn well if I don't care about something no matter how many times I'm reading it information is not going into my mind and it's very hard for us to care about some random concept that we've never even seen or heard before but we do have a reason why we are choosing to learn this either I want to do well in my homework or my exams or I want to finish a product or a project that I can use so if we start from our an go and reverse Engineers us to figure out what we need to know to complete this task or answer the question we can make a list of topics that we need to understand to achieve this then for each of those topics make a list of things I need to understand to understand those topics so now we can start from the most basic and easy to know topics and gradually work toward over end goal this not only create a learning plan for us but also we know learning all those informations are necessary steps to lead to our end goal we're not just wasting time on some random information that we never seen before I'm actually a huge believer that for technical subjects do as little memorization as possible and try to understand everything but only memorize the logic and not the promises and let me use an example to show you what are the logic and promises that I'm talking about in the Spider-Man movie Spider-Man defeated Dr Octopus that's because he has stronger powers than Dr Octopus and that's because he has spider-like superpowers the reason he has superpower is that he got bitten by a radioactive spider to this point we we basically understand the entire logic of the story but do we actually need to understand getting bitten by a radioactive spiders will give you superpower no we just need to accept it as the promise and everything else makes sense and it's actually a pretty easy story but if you hang up on the fact that oh it doesn't make sense to get superpowers like those are not real how can you get superpowers if you just got bitten by a spider then you may feel like I don't understand the Spider-Man movie so in our learning process I actually fell into this trap that I just cannot understand some Concepts so if you really struggle to learn a specific topic and it seems like you need to learn a lot of out of scope things to help you understand this topic ask yourself does this concept really need to be understood can I still know how to use it even though I don't understand it if we know how to use it to solve the problem or complete our test we actually don't need to understand it just memorize it and move [Music] on now after you learn all the details try to explain every sing thing to yourself from the start to your end goal this is also called definement technique it's a great way to test yourself whether you truly understand some Concepts or not while you're teaching or explaining notice do you have anywhere that you really struggle to explain it what parts are really hard for you to put into simple words what detail did you miss answering this question will show you where you are missing important points then you can go back to your studying material and review those parts to improve your understanding sometimes we're thinking about things in our own head we think we might understand it well but we might actually miss some really important stuff the best way to uncover these missing details is to speak out loud and try explaining it to someone as if they're a child thank you so much for watching this video I really hope you are having a wonderful day so far and I wish you all the best and thank you better help for sponsoring this video consider better help and use the link in my description box to get 10% up

Channel: Han Zhango

Views: 34,369

Keywords: science explanation, self learning, self-taught, study tips, studying, ivy league, power of intuition, how to listen to your intuition

Id: ECsCU3ycWcY

Length: 8min 57sec (537 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2023