How to Gain Intuition and Learn Fast
By: Olav Schewe
Tags: Brain, Study, Learning, Problem Solving, Book Excerpts

Book Excerpt

How to Gain Intuition and Learn Fast

Tapping into your brain’s powerful “procedural learning system” can help you develop intuitive problem solving and learn more quickly Olav Schewe Jun 2·13 min read

Image credit: Christian Horz.

Can anything good come out of playing video games all day long? For Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, the answer is yes. Blevins is one of the world’s most famous gamers. For him, gaming is a full-time job that reportedly earns him around $20 million a year from sponsors and followers. Blevins typically spends ten to twelve hours per day playing games, which he streams to his more than 20 million followers. Much of our discourse is on how to learn information from books, videos, and lectures. But what about when you want to become an awesome gamer like Blevins? Or become an outstanding race car driver, translator, mathematician, writer, or musician? Although conscious understanding built on strong sets of neural links can help, it’s still not enough to bring you to top levels of expertise.

You can enhance and broaden your learning by tapping into your brain’s powerful, mysterious (you’re mostly not even conscious of it!) procedural learning system.

Declarative Versus Procedural Learning

Here’s a little surprise. When you learn something, you’re depositing sets of neural links in long-term memory. But there are two completely different ways you can deposit those sets of links. One way uses the relatively quick-to-learn declarative learning system. This system is closely integrated with working memory, so you’re mostly conscious of what you’re learning (in other words, you can “declare” it).

But there is a second, equally important learning system: the procedural system. When you deposit sets of links through the procedural system, those links go into a different place in long-term memory than where you deposit links declaratively. It’s like having two legs to stand on instead of just one. If you learn something using your declarative system, and then build on it by also using your procedural system (or vice versa), you have a much richer and deeper set of links for whatever you’ve learned.

Let’s say you’re learning how to serve a ball in tennis. In the beginning, you proceed consciously and declaratively by keeping your eye on the ball. When you first hit the ball, using your working memory to retrieve from declarative links the simple steps for hitting the ball, your serves are pretty bad.

But after lots of practice, serving the ball becomes an automatic procedure. This is because practice allowed you to place and strengthen “how to serve a tennis ball” links in the procedural areas of your long-term memory. When you draw on strong procedural links, your serve becomes smooth and natural.

For any given serve, once you decide consciously and declaratively (with the starting nudge of working memory), to serve a tennis ball, you begin to move your arm. The procedural system kicks in, and off the ball goes. Together, the declarative and procedural systems work hand in hand to give you a great serve.

For many decades, researchers thought that procedural learning only involved motor skills — like serving that tennis ball, kicking a football, playing the piano, or learning to type. Then researchers realized that the procedural system was also involved in habits, like putting your pants on before you put on your shirt in the morning, or nodding hello as you greet someone.

But now, researchers are discovering that the procedural and declarative systems work together in most kinds of learning, including writing, language, math, music, and, of course, video games. Unlike declarative learning, you’re largely not aware of when you are learning through or using your procedural system. (This is why, once you’ve driven to your house many times, you can become lost in thought and drive home on automatic pilot, without even being aware of how you got home. You first learned how to get home declaratively, but once you practiced enough, your procedural system can take over and you drive home unaware of your actions.)

In essence, the procedural system is a black box — you can’t see what’s going on inside. The procedural system can receive input from your working memory (such as when you decide to try to serve a tennis ball), or input from what you sense (such as seeing a pothole ahead when riding a bicycle). But you are unaware of how the black box of the procedural system does its learning. All you know is whether you hit the baseball and it went to where you wanted it to go, or whether your bicycle glided smoothly around the pothole — or it crashed.

Despite its “black box” behavior, the procedural system can be extremely sophisticated — it can help you learn both simple and complex patterns without consciously thinking about them. Toddlers and children, with their exceptionally powerful procedural systems (their declarative systems don’t come online until they grow older), pick up virtually their entire native language using their procedural system. Do you know how to solve a Rubik’s Cube quickly? You’re using your procedural system. Do you like to watch real-life surgeons in action on television? Their procedural systems play an important role in their expertise.

Well-developed links in your procedural system allow you to be lightning-quick, even in stressful situations. These links involve not only actions such as serving a tennis ball, but also the ability to quickly see relationships such as 7 and 5 sum to 12 without having to think about them, or that a certain type of calculus problem requires taking a derivative. When you face a native speaker of the language you’re studying, procedural links are also what enable you to speak comfortably and fluently, instead of finding yourself searching for words. Together, the speed and smooth confidence of the procedural system, coupled with the flexibility of the declarative system, can make you a learning force to be reckoned with.

Learn Using Both Systems

The declarative system is kind of humdrum. It learns best through step-by-step explanations. But the procedural system is unusual. It learns by intuitively feeling out patterns. In fact, you often cannot explain what you’ve learned procedurally, or at least not very easily: try explaining how to tie shoelaces without resorting to “watch me.”

Let’s cut to a key point. It’s not possible to flip a switch and consciously move back and forth between declarative and procedural learning. As we mentioned, the procedural system learns by developing a feel for patterns. That happens through practice — and lots of it, in a variety of situations. So let’s look at several different subject areas to get a feel for how to best use practice to improve both your procedural and your declarative learning.

Use Your Procedural System to Improve Your Problem-Solving Intuition, Speed, and Confidence in Math and Science

It’s relatively straightforward to learn math declaratively. Just follow the step-by-step procedure you’ve been taught to solve the problem, and you’re done. But this straightforward approach does little to help build links in long-term memory through your procedural system. A much better approach is to internalize key, exemplar problems. This helps develop your intuitive, fast procedural system.

To internalize a problem, you should pick a problem where the complete worked solution (not just the numerical answer) is available — but don’t look at the solution or procedure explanations. Listen to your internal voice instead — can you feel or intuit a whisper of your first step? (Remember, your procedural system often can’t put what you’re doing into words, as the declarative system can. But it can hint!)

If you do get an intuition about what that first step is, great! Do it. If you don’t get word from your intuition after trying hard, take a peek, and then do the first step. Then try to do the next step on your own. And the next — all the way to the end of the problem. Only peek if you need to — and, of course, after you’re done, to check that you’ve done the problem correctly.

If the material is difficult, you may find yourself taking a peek at virtually every step the first time you try to solve a problem — that’s okay. Be sure to work the entire problem by writing it down — don’t skip steps. Then try to work the problem again — hopefully without peeking until you are finished.

Here’s an example, just to give you a sense of what we mean.

Key Point

The way to develop your problem-solving intuition is to try to draw the solution from inside yourself when working on problems. Only peek at the next step of the solution if you absolutely have to, and then make sure you practice the problem again, later on, to make sure you can do it all without peeking.

Here’s an example of what you might be thinking as you look at each step of an algebra problem. (As you advance further in math, you may not be able to verbalize the steps.)

3(3 + x) = 21 + x

How can I simplify this? Oh yes — multiply the 3.

How can I simplify this? Oh yes — multiply the 3. (3 × 3) + (3 × x) = 21 + x

Okay, just need to multiply the items inside the parentheses now.

Okay, just need to multiply the items inside the parentheses now. 9 + 3x = 21 + x

Hmm — how do I get the x’s by themselves more? If I move the 9 right and single x left, that’ll do the trick.

Hmm — how do I get the x’s by themselves more? If I move the 9 right and single x left, that’ll do the trick. 3x–x = 21−9

At this point, I just need to do simple subtraction.

At this point, I just need to do simple subtraction. 2x = 12

To get x entirely by itself, all I need to do is divide both sides by 2.

To get x entirely by itself, all I need to do is divide both sides by 2. x = 12 / 2

This is simple math.

This is simple math. x = 6

I’m done!

Most students do not do this extra internalization practice, and it’s a big mistake that differentiates pro learners from ordinary learners. Once you’ve internalized the problem you’ve selected, and several other problems that share resemblances — and differences — with the first, your brain begins to develop an intuition for how to solve these kinds of problems. That’s your procedural system in action!

In other words, as your brain internalizes seemingly simple but important procedures like “get rid of the parentheses” and “group the x variables on one side and numbers on the other,” you begin to develop a deeper sense of the patterns involved in this and related types of problem-solving. This deeper, broader pattern sense can allow you to tackle problems even if the problems might seem superficially quite different from anything you’ve solved before.

This means, to develop your problem-solving intuition, you should internalize different types of problems, each over several days, until the solutions flow out easily with no peeking. (You don’t need to wait to internalize one problem completely before you begin internalizing others.) Eventually, you should be able to just look at a given problem and step quickly through the various parts of the solution procedure in your mind, almost as if it were a song.

Don’t be surprised if, the first day you try to internalize a problem, you feel it’s just too hard. When you try again the next day, you’ll be surprised at how much easier it is. And by the third day, it will start feeling natural — even, yes, intuitive!

You can quickly check your answers in math using a website like WolframAlpha or Mathway. Just enter what you want to calculate or know about, and AI technology will get you to the solution.

Remember, though, that you can’t always look it up — you need a solid internal structure so you have an intuitive understanding of what’s behind the computations.

Start Interleaving

The next strategy to use with your internalization technique is interleaving — that approach where you alternate different types of problems — for example, alternating module 3 problems with module 7 problems. If you build interleaving practice into your internalization studies, you’re laying a solid neural foundation. This will help you create sets of links about how to use specific techniques. It will also show you how those links relate to other sets of links involved in other techniques. You’re allowing your procedural system to do one of the things it does best — detect different patterns. Later, on tests, you will find you have a natural, faster intuition about which technique or concept to bring into play.

What Should You Internalize?

How do you know what material is best to internalize? A great place to start is with the example problems that are worked out step by step in a textbook. They may seem easy, but they are often trickier than they first appear, and they usually demonstrate important concepts. Problems your instructor has worked out, as well as practice questions from old tests, are also great to internalize — that is, if you know that the solutions are correct. (As we mentioned earlier, taking practice tests is a great way to prepare for tests.) The broader your pool of internalized problems, the easier you will find it to see analogies and transfer your skills to other, more distantly related areas.

Use Your Procedural System to Improve Your Foreign-Language Studies

As a child, you naturally used your procedural system to learn to speak your native language. But as you grew older, you began to rely more on your flexible, fast-learning declarative learning system.

When it comes to learning a second language, however, that reliance on declarative learning is both good and bad.

The declarative system can allow you to easily learn new vocabulary words and to quickly learn the patterns for verb conjugations or noun declensions. The problem is, when you find yourself in front of a native speaker, you often struggle. This can happen because you have put the links of learning in your slower-to-retrieve-from declarative memory. You haven’t yet deposited sets of links in your procedural system. And it’s the procedural links that give you easy, natural fluency in a language. The more you’re able to develop your procedural links when learning a specific language, the more fluent your language skills become.

The Value of Retrieval Practice, Spaced Repetition, and Interleaving

No surprise, language learning needs a lot of retrieval practice — additional repetitions of retrieval practice almost always improve your ability to learn and retain the material. But realistically, there are only so many hours in a day and you’re probably facing a deluge of new vocabulary words. So what’s the optimal time for you to space out your repetitions? Minutes, days, weeks, or months?

Probably the most important question to ask yourself is how long you want to remember the material. If you have a test in a week, repeat the material each day for a week. If you want to remember it for a year, review it once every three weeks. Once you’re comfortable that you’ve got a word or phrase down, put the next repetition further out — expand the spacing gap. And remember that sleep and brief periods of mental relaxation help.

Of course, interleaving and spaced repetition are also important — they improve not only declarative but also procedural learning. When it comes to language learning, interleaving means mix it up! Don’t just study static lists of vocabulary words written on a page. Instead, create either electronic or handwritten flashcards and shuffle them, so they’re always in a different order. If you’re studying three verb tenses over three weeks, don’t just study one verb tense, and then the next and the next (textbooks and teachers love to do it this way). Instead, give yourself a chance to roughly grasp each tense as it is presented. Then, as soon as possible, start mixing up the tenses. This approach is harder and more confusing at first, but you’ll learn better.

The best form of interleaving is to speak with a native speaker. You never know what words and sentences are going to be lobbed at you, or in what order. Start practicing with a native speaker as early and as much as possible in your studies, mistakes be damned. Get onto a website like italki and exchange conversations for free or hire a tutor. Remember that classroom instruction tends to emphasize declarative learning, whereas immersion (or as near as you can get to immersion) will help build your procedural system.

Sometimes people feel that they simply aren’t capable of learning a new language. Often, they really could learn the language — it’s just that the declarative approaches used in classrooms don’t necessarily work well for those who tend to lean on their procedural learning system. For these more procedural types, diving into the deep end of the pool and speaking with native speakers from the very beginning, going back to look things up in books when necessary, can be a good approach.

Good Language-learning Sources

Duolingo (an app that teaches you vocabulary, phrases, and sentences)

Busuu (another language learning app)

italki (a video chat platform that connects you to native speakers)

Preply (a video chat platform similar to italki)

Yabla (a platform with captioned videos that allows you to slow the speaking speed and break the video into small, easily repeated sections)

FluentU (a platform much like Yabla, with a somewhat different selection of languages)

Use Gestures To Help You Remember Words

Intriguing research has shown that making a meaningful gesture while learning a new word in a foreign language can help you remember and understand that word better. For example, if you’re learning the word for “write” in another language, you might say “write” in the new language as your hands make a writing motion. If you’re learning the word for “high,” you might move your right hand up above your head. As you “drink,” you would move your hand as if drinking from a cup. These gestures seem to help bind the sound of the word to its actual meaning.

Improving Your Writing and Artistic Skills

Famous statesman Benjamin Franklin used a special technique to improve his writing. Is it a declarative or procedural technique? We think it’s a bit of both. In any case, it works.

To use the “Franklin approach,” find writing you admire. Take a paragraph and jot a word or two down to remind yourself of the key ideas of each sentence. Then use those keywords as hints to see if you can recreate the sentence. Check your sentence against the original and see which one is better. Does the original have a better vocabulary? Better prose? If it does, you’ve just learned how you can improve your writing. Notice — you’re not just memorizing other people’s writing. You’re actively beginning to build your own sets of links about how to write well. Eventually, using this technique, you will discover ways you can write better than the originals you’re learning from.

Of course, this technique can work not only for writing, but also for art, language study, and other creative endeavors.