Preparing for Optimal Learning

Soft Skills for Optimal Learning

We call skills that are objective and quantifiable (can be measured), often technical or content-specific, “hard skills”. Some examples are things like knowing how to program in Python, being able to write marketing copy, knowing how to do your taxes, or knowing how to change the oil in your car. In contrast, skills that are more difficult to measure, and are sometimes thought of as personal characteristics - competencies and abilities that help you function optimally and relate to others - are called “soft skills”. Some examples are things like empathy, time management, creativity, critical thinking, planning, and organisation.

A lot of the courses you may take online are intended to help you gain hard skills. What many people don’t realise, however, is the vital role soft skills play in enabling us to gain hard skills. If you can’t manage stress, focus well, manage your time, plan ahead, prioritise tasks, set goals, and so on, you will have a great deal of difficulty in managing online, self-directed learning in particular, as you will not have the support of a teacher or facilitator to assist you. For this reason, we’re going to have a look at some soft skills that will enable you to succeed in mastering the relevant hard skills. We’re going to consider the importance of self-care (including sleep, nutrition, and exercise), the set and setting necessary for learning, the value of focus and the power of flow, best practice ergonomics, tricks for time management, prioritisation, goal setting, managing stress, and developing a growth mindset. Let’s get started!

Sleep

As you’re going to be the driving force in your learning journey, it’s important to take good care of yourself. You need to ensure that how you are living, the choices you’re making from day to day, enable you to have the energy and focus to concentrate, engage, and learn.

The first aspect of self-care to consider is whether or not you’re getting enough rest. For many people, one of the attractions of a self-directed online course is the flexibility they have regarding when and where they can study, as this allows them to fit in studying around other responsibilities such as work, or caring for family members. When studying replaces down-time, it becomes particularly important to ensure that you don’t burn the midnight oil until you burn yourself out. The Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School (2007) warns that lack of adequate sleep affects your mood, motivation, judgement, and even your perception of events.

Sleep functions to revitalise us mentally and physically, and give us energy to face the day. Scientifically, we know a lot about why and how this happens. Sleep is when we do a lot of our processing of experiences and emotions. It lowers blood pressure and promotes cardiac health. It even helps our bodies to regulate blood sugar - research indicates that adults who get less than 7 hours of sleep per night are at higher risk of getting type two diabetes as the lack of sleep increases insulin resistance (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021). The body’s production of hormones necessary for tissue repair is highest during sleep (Halson, 2020), as well as that of cytokines, important for fighting infection (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, n.d.)

Most importantly from a learning perspective, sleep helps us to think clearly, process and store new information, and form memories. The Sleep Foundation (2022) explains that “quality sleep leads to improved concentration and better problem-solving and decision-making”. In addition, as we come to understand more and more about the neurobiology of the brain, and neuroplasticity in particular, it becomes increasingly clear that sleep is vital in the growth and adaption of neural networks (Puderbaugh & Emmady, 2022).

Sleep also plays a really important role in memory formation. Learning and memory are often described as composed of three phases, specifically acquisition, consolidation, and recall (Harvard Medical School, 2007). Acquisition is the process by which we are exposed to, and take in, new information. Consolidation is the process in which we form a memory of what we have learned, and recall is the recollection of the memory. While acquisition and recall take place while we’re awake, consolidation is widely believed to occur during sleep, including both REM and slow-wave sleep.

To learn more about memory and sleep from one of the foremost experts on the subject, watch this TED Talk by Dr Robert Stickgold, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of Harvard's Center for Sleep and Cognition.

Nutrition and Exercise

Nutrition is important to enable the brain to function optimally - so important, in fact, that Nutritional Psychiatry is a burgeoning psychiatric specialisation. Certain dietary patterns are proven to impair brain function and worsen mood disorders; for example, diets high in refined sugars have been shown to increase oxidative stress and systemic inflammation, worsening conditions like depression and anxiety (Selhub, 2022). What you eat also affects the kind of bacteria that live in your gut (your intestinal microbiome), which can have wide ranging health implications. Some gut hormones can even enter the brain and directly affect cognitive ability. Diet has been shown to have such a significant long-term effect on our cognitive ability that some researchers believe that improving our diet over a long period of time can actually slow down or prevent the cognitive decline associated with ageing (Gómez-Pinilla, 2008). Certain innovative studies are even beginning to make a case for the effect of diet on cognition and mental health being passed down from one generation to the next, due to the way that diet can impact the expression of certain genes (epigenetics).

Cyclist riding beside a lake against the background of the setting sun

Exercise boosts the brain, increasing blood flow to the region, and the production of an essential neurotrophin shown to improve thinking and learning (Meeusen, 2014). Moreover, exercise improves endorphin levels, which in turn makes you feel happier and reduces stress chemicals. Within the cognitive overhead - the brain strain - that self-directed learning adds to the learning process, managing stress in order to be able to engage, focus, process, and remember becomes increasingly important. There is a great deal more interesting research on this topic that we unfortunately can’t cover here, for brevity’s sake. However, Dr Ratey, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (who has written a book on the benefits of exercise for learning entitled “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain”) summarises the impact of exercise on learning quite succinctly. He explains that exercise helps with learning in three key ways: “First, it optimises your mind-set to improve alertness, attention, and motivation; second, it prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another, which is the cellular basis for logging in new information; and third, it spurs the development of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hippocampus” (Barile, n.d.).

Set and Setting

Set and setting is a neat way to describe the effect on an experience of someone’s mindset (set) and the environment (setting) they are in. This phrase was first popularised by the infamous psychedelic drug advocate Timothy Leary, referring to the extent to which a person’s mindset and environment can impact the experience they have on psychedelic drugs. It has since come to be used in fields such as medicine, psychology, and education, because of the growing recognition of how much mindset and environment can impact our experiences in these fields.

Let’s consider mindset first. The mindset you have when you settle down to learn has an impact on your learning experience. If you're tired, distracted, or disinterested, you won’t have an optimal learning experience. The best learning takes place when you’re rested, actively engaged, and taking an interest in the material. You need to make a conscious decision that you want to learn, even if you feel a bit reluctant. Reminding yourself of your goals, and the reasons you’ve embarked on a bootcamp, can help with establishing a positive and determined attitude.

With respect to setting, for many people, self-directed online learning happens from home, although others may find it more practical to work from places like a library or coffee shop. Wherever you choose to work from, it’s important to create a physical environment that is suitably comfortable and also reasonably quiet (or at least free from distracting noise - some people achieve this with headphones and music, or soundproof ear defenders), where you can sit comfortably and really focus on the task at hand.

Device Usage and Ergonomics

A common threat to focus and flow, when learning, is physical discomfort. It’s no surprise that trying to learn when you’re really hungry, tired, or cold is less successful than when you’re physically comfortable. As part of ensuring optimal physical comfort, and securing your ability to continue working for longer, it’s important to give some thought to ergonomics (which really just means your efficiency in your working environment). If you’re seated poorly (e.g. slumped on a couch or at an awkward angle or height at your desk), for example, you can develop unpleasant physical symptoms such as pain in your back, arms, wrists and hands. The Occupational Safety and Health Division of the US Department of Labour (OSHA) provides valuable guidelines on good working positions for computer usage, as well as workstation environment guidelines covering topics like lighting and ventilation.

Ideally, when you’re sitting down to a session of self-directed online learning, you want to get into a flow state - that ‘in the zone’ state of deep focus in which you are totally absorbed in something (in this case, your learning) to the extent that nothing else seems to matter much in the moment. Achieving a flow state improves comprehension and recollection, but has the additional benefit that you are more likely to enjoy what you’re doing. You can experience a flow state doing almost anything, even such mundane tasks as washing the dishes or taking a walk (Csikszentmihalyi,1990). You may be sceptical as to whether learning is the sort of activity where you are likely to experience flow - surely it’s more likely in less challenging, more fun activities? This, however, is not what research indicates! Consider the following:

Although having the correct set and setting will help you to achieve flow, it also requires a conscious effort to focus intensely and not be distracted. Multi-tasking is the enemy of flow! No matter what you might think, you’re not going to be able to learn as effectively if you’re sitting in front of the TV with a show running in the background, or frequently checking your messaging apps or social media. Csikszentmihalyi directly addresses the topic of flow and studying, acknowledging how easy it is to find yourself studying in a distracted, detached manner, and how to approach studying in order to avoid this. As an example, an approach like reading through lecture slides or notes the night before an exam is unlikely to be conducive to flow. On the other hand, study methods that involve more actively doing something are more likely to be conducive to achieving a flow state. Examples include activities like creating flashcards and practising using these, summarising what you’ve learned and creating practice questions to test yourself on the material, or using what you’ve learned to actively solve problems (such as doing practice exam papers, or applying what you learn on a coding bootcamp to create functioning code or solve problems posed by sites like beecrowd, HackerRank, and many others). Apps like Headspace and Calm can assist you in learning about flow states by teaching about mindfulness, and providing meditation and similar exercises that are proven to help you increase your ability to focus deeply.

The Pomodoro Technique for Focus

Having scheduled some time for learning, the next challenge is to sit yourself down and get on with the business of engaging with your learning material. The Pomodoro technique is a simple hack to get yourself to focus when this is proving difficult. Pomodoro means tomato in Italian, but what does that have to do with productivity? The technique was developed by a student in the 1980s who was struggling to focus. He bargained with himself that he would commit to just a short focus period, and set about timing himself with the intention of determinedly not letting himself be distracted until the time was up. He found a tomato-shaped kitchen timer, and the Pomodoro technique was born!

To use this technique, follow the steps outlined below:

1. Write a list of your tasks and select one.
2. Get a timer - your smartphone will work well, or you can Google for “timer” and get an in-browser timer.
3. Set your timer for 25 minutes, and focus on your chosen task until the timer rings.
4. When the timer goes off, mark off one Pomodoro (i.e. the first timed focus period has been completed) and note what you’ve achieved in the time.
5. Next, take a small (maximum 5 minute) break. Moving your body will help with focus, so you could stand up and stretch a little, fetch a glass of water, or something similar. These small breaks give your brain a rest, lower stress, and improve your ability to assimilate what you’ve learned and to focus again after the break.
6. Then set your timer and do another Pomodoro (your next 25 minute timed focus period)!
7. After you’ve completed four Pomodoros, take a longer break (15-30 mins).

Some people find that as they train themselves to focus better, they can start doing without the assistance provided by the Pomodoro structure and begin to accomplish longer periods of focussed flow. This doesn’t happen for everyone, and that is okay. The important thing is to find a technique, or combination of techniques, that works for your specific life situation and neural wiring. One size never fits all when it comes to learning (one of the reasons so many children find school such a challenge!).

Prioritisation

When you’re faced with a list of tasks, it can be difficult to decide what to do first. You might consider factors like what you need to do versus what you want to do, which tasks are most or least fun, which tasks are most urgent, and which tasks will have major consequences if you don’t do them. A useful tool to help you with prioritising tasks is the Eisenhower matrix, named after the 34th US President Dwight D Eisenhower. Eisenhower is famously quoted as saying, “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” This was the inspiration for the development of the Eisenhower matrix by Stephen Covey, author of the bestselling book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (1989).

The Eisenhower matrix looks like this:

Tasks are assigned to the independent indicators urgency (Urgent or Not Urgent) and importance (Important or Not Important). On this basis they can be mapped onto the four-quadrant matrix. Things in quadrant 1 (Urgent and Important) should be given the highest priority - let’s call this P1 - and done first. Things in quadrant 2 (Not Urgent but Important) - let’s call this P2 - should be scheduled, so that they do ultimately get done and aren’t forgotten about or constantly bumped to the bottom of the list. Things in quadrant 3 (Urgent but Not Important) - let’s call this P3 - can be delegated to someone else. Things in quadrant 4 (Not Urgent and Not Important) can be ignored completely, unless you have additional time, after all your P1 - P3 tasks are done.

Let’s look at a worked example of this. Imagine you have the following to-do list:

Now let’s assign Urgency and Importance to these things.

Finish writing up proposal for work within the next 3 days and send to boss - Not Urgent (because it’s only due in 3 days) but Important, so P2
Put away laundry - Not Urgent but Important because, so schedule it, P2
Prepare dinner - this is a tricky one! Although it is Important to prepare dinner and Urgent that it be done before dinner time, it’s not necessarily something that only you can do - perhaps you have a family member who is equally able to prepare dinner and who has more time than you. It’s worth factoring this in to determine the priority level. In this example we’re going to assume that your significant other gets home from work an hour before you do on this particular day, and you are able to delegate by asking them to prepare dinner, making this a P3 priority.
Check Facebook and WhatsApp messages - Not Urgent and Not Important. This can be delayed until you’ve finished all your more important tasks. If it has to be missed completely for the day, nothing terrible will happen in your life. P4.
Pay electricity bill due by midnight - This is both Urgent and Important as if you don’t do it on time, your electricity could be cut off. You have a tendency to forget about bills and so it makes sense to prioritise this as a P1, and aim to do it as soon as possible.
Send monthly newsy email to Grandma - this is Important - Grandma lives for hearing from her grandkids! - but not Urgent. You could leave it until the weekend and write to her then, but you don’t want to forget entirely, so schedule it - P2.
Start next module of self-directed online learning course - this is both Urgent and Important as if you skip a day of working on your course you start to fall behind. It’ll take one to two hours, so you make it P1, and plan to do it directly after paying your electricity bill online, as that only takes 5 minutes.
Catch up favourite Netflix show - this is arguably neither Urgent nor Important and so can be delayed or ignored - P4. If circumstances were to change, however, the priority might change. Imagine that you’ve been working on your online course for a few hours every night, and were also very busy at your job every day. You start to feel really burned out, which in turn affects your ability to concentrate or remember anything you read. In this situation, some rest and recuperation would be in order, and you might prioritise watching an episode of your show a bit higher, so as to relax and recover before tackling higher priority tasks.

Let’s look at our list again, now prioritised:

As you can see, the list is now much more manageable!

Fitting New Priorities into your Life

You now have the skills to prioritise your tasks, but you still need to fit them into your available time. To help with this, let’s consider a well known story about a professor who is teaching a class about time management.

A jar filled with pebbles, seen from above

Jar of pebbles

In the story, the professor shows his class an empty glass jar, and then proceeds to fill it with large rocks. He asks the class whether the jar is full and they agree that it is. The professor then goes on to pour some small pebbles into the jar, which slip in between the rocks. He asks the class whether the jar is now actually full and they laughingly agree. The professor then pours a cup of sand into the jar, filling in all the tiny spaces between the rocks and the pebbles, showing that even more can be added to the jar! He then proceeds to repeat the experiment, but in reverse, adding first sand, then pebbles, and then rocks. The class is interested to see that he can no longer fit the same quantity of rocks, pebbles, and sand into the jar. The order and size of the items is clearly important!

The professor goes on to explain that the jar represents our lives, and that each type of material he added represents parts of our lives. The rocks represent the “big” things in our lives, the really valuable and meaningful things like your partner, family, health, and so on. These are the things that would sustain us if everything else was taken away. The reverse is also true; without these things, even if we had smaller less valuable things, the quality of our lives would suffer. The pebbles represent smaller things, like our jobs, studies, friends, and hobbies. These definitely add to our quality of life, but they do not form our life’s core. The sand represents smaller and even less important things - for example, material possessions, or the time you spend on social media or playing video games that should be fitted in around the more important things.

If you were learning in a traditional face-to-face instructor-led course, the course would have lesson times and practical afternoons and so on, and you would write those into your schedule and plan things like activities with friends around those. In online, self-directed learning, it’s easy to fall into the trap of using your “free” time outside of the bigger responsibilities (the rocks) for small fun things like games, social media or socialising. The problem with this is it fills your jar with sand, leaving no room for the pebbles, which include studies.

The take-away from this story is that the most significant parts of your life, like your health, or responsibilities like looking after your family, need to come first. Thereafter, make a point of actually scheduling some contiguous blocks of time for self-directed learning, and fit your social media time and other smaller and less important activities around that.

It’s worth noting that online learning changes this metaphor slightly! As most of us have a device like a smartphone with us a lot of the time, it is possible to use small portions of time - for example while waiting for a bus or taxi, or in line at the bank - to access learning materials and complete micro-learning activities like a bit of reading or a short quiz. These micro-learning opportunities definitely contribute to your overall learning, but unless your course is specifically designed for micro-learning (some are), micro-learning is no substitute for blocks of contiguous focus time in which you can strive to achieve flow for maximum cognitive performance.

Eat the Frog

What do you do if you have a number of P1 priority tasks and are trying to decide which to do first? Here, the Eat the Frog method can help. This is a well known productivity approach, commonly expressed as “If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.” The idea is that if there is a particularly unpleasant or intimidating task, it is better not to put it off, as then the task grows increasingly intimidating and you get caught in a pattern of procrastination. It’s also better to prioritise harder or more intimidating tasks such that the most intimidating ones come first.

Todoist, a productivity app, explains why the Eat the Frog technique works:

The suggested approach to “eating your frog” is to follow these steps:
1. Decide on your frog (use prioritisation techniques to help you).
2. Pick something you'll be able to complete in 1-4 hours.
3. Break it down into smaller steps if needed, so that you can complete at least one of the steps in 1-4 hours.
4. Resist the temptation to plan ahead too much.
5. Prepare your frog the night before, if there is anything you can do that will make it possible for you to be more prepared to face it in the morning.
6. Eat your frog first thing!

As a last word on productivity, there are many productivity apps available that can help you, such as Calendly or Google Calendar for scheduling, note-taking apps like OneNote, Joplin, and Obsidian, distraction-blockers like Freedom and Serene, and mind-mapping software like Coggle. More are added to the market all the time, so it’s a good idea to Google for the best-rated ones that most directly address whatever specific problems you’re looking to solve.

SMART Goals

Part of prioritisation and productivity is knowing what you're aiming to achieve. SMART is a technique used to set goals that makes the goals much more achievable. The SMART acronym breaks down as follows:

Let’s do a quick worked example. Let’s say your goal has been to “Finish my self-directed online learning course”, but you’re struggling to make progress and feel dishearteningly like you’re getting nowhere. You can reformat your goal as a SMART goal something like this:

Specific - Complete a section of my online course.
Measurable - Use topics to split my course up into sections and work on a topic at a time.
Achievable - I’ve noticed that it takes me at least 10 hours to complete one topic in the past. The maximum amount of time I have for learning per day is 2 and a half hours, and so I will not aim to complete a topic in any less than a week as there just wouldn’t be time.
Relevant - I enjoy doing the optional extra readings for my course as these add context and depth to what I’m learning. They’re not essential for completing the assignments, however, and so I will focus on the coursework necessary to do the assignments before letting myself get carried away reading a few hundred-page extra resource out of interest.
Time bound - I have 12 weeks to complete my course and it has 10 topics/sections. I will aim to complete at least one section every week, leaving me with 2 weeks that I can use as catch-up time if I fall behind, and to prepare for my final exam.

Your final SMART goal might look something like: “My goal is to complete one section (topic) of my course per week, aiming to study for 2 hours per weekday, focussing on the coursework that is relevant to my assignments, and pacing myself over the 12 weeks of the course to ensure that I finish in time and am adequately prepared for my exam.”

Note that the details of how you set your SMART goal are up to you and don’t have to look like this example, as long as the goal addresses each letter of the acronym. You will need to think about your life as a whole, and your other tasks and priorities, in order to determine what is achievable and realistic.

Managing Stress and Frustration

Stress is a normal part of life. We run into it everywhere, whether we’re pushing to beat a deadline at work, trying to make a relationship work, parenting children, or managing our finances. Research indicates that short-term stress can actually be beneficial, can push you “just to the level of optimal alertness, behavioural and cognitive performance” (Kaufer, 2013), and “typically [does] not impose a health burden” (Schneiderman et al., 2005). Physiologically, short term stress has been shown to make energy stores available for our bodies to use, and to redistribute energy to the skeletal muscles and the brain. From an evolutionary perspective this makes sense: these adaptive responses assist us in fighting off or running away from threats, or outwitting it! What about longer-term stress, though? Well, with longer-term, or chronic, maladaptive stress, the picture changes dramatically: it can cause heart and vascular problems (Schneiderman et al., 2005), slow healing and reduced immune response, and poorer cognition and memory function (Yaribeygi et al., 2017). The ideal stress level for learning is one where we feel challenged enough to have to fully engage our brains and focus in, but not where we feel lost, hopelessly frustrated, or defeated.

Cognitive Framing

Is there anything we can do to try and ensure we experience healthy rather than maladaptive stress when learning? The good news is that there is. Part of the solution relates to changing how we think about things (called “cognitive framing”) so as to prevent the stress, and part of the solution relates to how we manage the stress if and when it does occur.

The 3 Ps

When is stress positive and useful as opposed to negative and a health risk? And what determines the threshold where positive stress changes to negative stress? One thing we do know is that this threshold differs widely between people. Jessop writes, “Perhaps the response depends to what degree the subject associates the stress with apprehension (“get me out of here”) or excitement (“bring it on”). Personal perception of stress as either a negative or a positive influence may be self-fulfilling on health outcomes (Keller et al., 2012) but the crucial link in the stress pathway which flicks the switch towards the “thrive” or “freeze” positions in individuals is totally unknown (2019).

Imagine Bob and Rob both have to give a 15 minute presentation to an audience of 200 people. Bob is scared but excited about the opportunity. He worries about his presentation and so starts working on it straight away, putting in an hour's work every evening for a week. He asks his family to be a practice audience and gives the presentation to them, noting down things he gets wrong, and working on improving those specific aspects of the presentation. Rob is also initially scared but excited. He sits down to start working on his presentation but anxiety overrides excitement and so he stops. He becomes increasingly anxious and finds he cannot bring himself to work on the presentation. He ends up creating the entire thing the morning before he needs to present, and so never gets to trial the presentation or practise it. In this scenario, it’s quite obvious which of these people is likely to have the better experience when they finally give the presentation. But what makes the difference, what makes Rob’s response to the challenge tip over into anxiety whereas Bob’s response remains at a positive-stressor level? Martin Seligman, sometimes known as the father of positive psychology, believes that this has to do with cognitive framing (how we see something in our minds), specifically optimism versus pessimism. He has been working in psychological research since the 1960s, and draws on a huge body of research that has been conducted since then that shows that it is not the case that people who have things go right for them tend to be more positive, but that people who are more positive tend to have more things go right for them! This seems ridiculous - how can our mental attitude to things make a difference to the outcomes we achieve in this way? And yet study after study proves this to be the case, and even proves that it is possible to use speech analysis of various people to work out how positively they frame things mentally, and thereby predict their likely success in their career, in politics, etc.

What we learn from Seligman and other researchers in the field of positive psychology is that how we cognitively frame things has a major effect on things like how hard we try; how easily we are discouraged; how personable we manage to be in interviews, how much we keep trying again when we fail; how pleasant others find us and thus our access via our networks to opportunities; how happy we are; how happy our children are; and how quickly, easily, and successfully, we’re able to learn new things!

This is all wonderful if you’re a generally positive person, but if you’re not, or you consider yourself generally unlucky, you may feel that the lookout for you is bleak. The good news is that, if that is how you’re feeling, you’re wrong. There is a wealth of peer-reviewed studies spanning approximately 60 years that proves this, and shows us how to, in Selgiman’s words, “Change your mind and your life” (1997). Seligman identifies three axes on which everyone’s internal mental explanations of things are placed, specifically Permanence, Pervasiveness, and Personalness. If your mental accounts of bad experiences are particularly Permanent, Pervasive, and Personal, you will score highly on pessimism, and ultimately experience less success, and more trouble learning, than someone who has low scores on these 3 axes.

The Violin Contest and Causal Attribution

Let’s look at an example - we’ll call on our friends Bob and Rob again. Both Bob and Rob play the violin. Both decide to enter a local talent competition and both perform rather badly on the day. Rob goes home and settles down with a nice warm drink and thinks, “Gee, that went badly. I’m really not great at the violin. I’m not sure why I keep on with it. I never achieve much with any of my hobbies really. I mean let’s be honest I suck at everything I try. I’m just not particularly talented”. Bob gets home to his own warm drink and thinks, “Gee that went badly. I really didn’t like the judge, he was totally unfair. He seemed to take a totally random dislike to me. But never mind, I also play the guitar. Maybe I should enter the guitar section next time, the judge for that section seemed really kind and I might have better luck! And actually, I didn’t practise as much for this competition as I could have, if I’m brutally honest with myself. I could try and practise at least half an hour every day rather than only weekends - I bet that would give me a much higher chance of winning a prize next time!”

Let’s break their reasoning for their failure (i.e. causal attribution) down using Seligman’s three axes to determine what is Permanent, Pervasive, and Personal.
Rob:
“I never achieve much” = Permanent - not ever, no chance of change, doesn’t have a hopeful outlook at all
“I’m really not great at the violin” = Personal - the problem is himself, and so even if there was a next time he is the common element and the outlook will remain bleak
“I’m just not particularly talented” = Personal - the problem is his lack of talent, and that is not something he sees as within his control to change (we should teach him about neuroplasticity!)
“I suck at everything I try” = Pervasive, present through all areas of his life

Bob:
“I could try and practise… I bet that would give me a much higher chance of winning a prize” = Not Permanent, he believes that by actions he can choose to take he can have more success next time, so his framing of himself is empowering
“Maybe I should enter the guitar section next time” - Not Pervasive - doesn’t project his lack of success as likely to apply to the other instrument he plays, remains hopeful for that one; Not Personal, sees the instrument as the problem rather than his musical ability, so with a different instrument he might have a better outcome
“I really didn’t like the judge, he was totally unfair. He seemed to take a totally random dislike to me” = Not Personal - blames the judge rather than himself, so with a different judge he might get a better outcome

Rob is thoroughly discouraged, whereas Bob has a plan to improve and although disappointed, is not as discouraged as Rob. Rob becomes quite depressed, feeling like a failure. Bob goes on with life as normal. The next year, another talent competition is held. Rob doesn’t enter, unable to face disappointment and depression again if he doesn’t do well. Bob, who has been practising the guitar (and on a much more regular basis than he ever practised the violin) enters and comes third.

Rob stops playing music entirely over the next few years; he associates it with feeling bad about himself and can’t bring himself to play much, and the rustier he gets, the more he confirms his suspicions that he’s just not very talented and his playing is bad. Bob, on the other hand, ramps up his playing, never achieving a first at the competition, but gaining quite a few offers for gigs at local pubs and weddings which brings in a tidy bit of extra income. At the 5-year mark after the first competition, all else being equal, Bob is the happier and wealthier of the two men, and this can arguably be attributed to his personal explanatory style.

This is just one small, and very simplified example, and if you’re poking it full of holes, you’re probably right that the evidence provided does not necessarily justify the conclusion. A lot of other things could have happened in those five years! However, bear in mind that the story is simply intended to provide an example of how to identify attribution of the causality of events in optimistic or pessimistic ways based on Seligman’s three axes. If you need more convincing as to the merit of the theory supporting the case for the effect of causal attribution on success and happiness, please read more about positive psychology (and in particular the works of Martin Seligman who is a seminal name in the field).

Pause and Reflect

Assuming you’re convinced about the power of causal attribution - what then? The trick is to remember those three axes - Permanent, Pervasive, and Personal. Take a moment now to reflect on a time when something negative happened to you. Reflect on your own thoughts that arose to explain the event at the time. See whether they align with the 3 Ps. If any of those causal attributions are Permanent, Pervasive, or Personal, try reframing them in a way that is none of those things. Write the reframing down and say it to yourself over and over, like an affirmation. How long does it take before you start feeling slightly differently about the event?

Having used the 3Ps once, you need to incorporate the technique into your everyday life. Practise cognitive reframing many times a day each time there is a negative event, and you will gradually learn more optimistic thinking. This will help you to become more determined, more likely to try again when you fail, and more likely to be happy. You should slowly begin to see that the result, not giving up and not being discouraged easily, enables you to begin to achieve more and be more successful!

Growth vs Fixed Mindset

When Ann was a child, if she got a bad mark on a test, her parents would frown at her, tell her that she needed to study harder, and remind her about the importance of doing well at school to achieve future success. When she got a great mark, they would tell her how smart she was and how proud they were of her, and sometimes reward her with something like an ice cream or extra pocket money. They responded to her achievements and emphasised her intellect. This is not an uncommon approach taken by parents in raising children. Notably, research indicates that we should be doing quite the opposite, focussing on effort and process rather than achievement, intellect, or talent.

A small seedling held in the palm of someone's hand. In the background is a rectangular pot containing more seelings.

Praising effort has been shown to be a far more effective motivator than praising achievement. In fact, some studies show that praising achievement can actually reduce enthusiasm and effort over time (Glerum et al., 2020), because people become concerned that they can’t live up to previous performance and develop challenge-avoidance and performance-related anxiety. Even more interesting is the finding that children praised for effort tend to show the opposite behaviour, and seek out harder challenges in which they can exhibit more effort (Galinsky, 2010). Studies also relate intellect- or achievement-related praise with the development of “self-handicapping, a defensive strategy in which people create obstacles for themselves to provide an excuse for [possible] future failure” (LearningLabAdmin, 2022).

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has done a lot of research into how focussing on achievement and performance can backfire in education. Arising from this work is a very important concept, that of fixed versus growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset tend to believe that you have a certain level of talent and ability, and your achievement or performance reflects this. If you do badly on a test, with this mindset, you’re likely to assume it’s because you weren’t smart enough, and won’t be smart enough next time either. If you do well you may assume it’s because you’re smart, but are likely to worry about the next test, because any poor performance directly threatens your self-concept as a smart person. If you have a growth mindset, on the other hand, you’re likely to believe your intelligence is flexible and can increase, as can your talents, with the application of effort. You’d think of your brain like a muscle that can be strengthened with training. People with a growth mindset tend to be more resilient, and aim for (and achieve!) mastery more often. Research in neuroscience supports the biological reality of a growth mindset, i.e. that our brain develops more, and our intellectual capacity increases, when we put in the right kind of effort over a period of time.

How do you achieve a growth mindset? Similar to the advice about causal attribution, this can be achieved by noting what you’re thinking and focussing on, and making a conscious decision to cognitively reframe anything that is not aligned with a growth mindset. For example, when you do well at something and catch yourself thinking “I’m brilliant!”, reframe it to something like “I really worked on that, and it’s paid off!”. If you do poorly in an assignment, don’t think “I’m just not smart enough for this course”, think “If I put in the effort studying over the next few months I know I can get good enough to manage this course”.

Having looked at the value of optimism (and avoiding the 3 Ps, Permanent, Pervasive, and Personal, in negative causal attribution), as well as the power of a growth mindset (rather than a fixed mindset), do you notice some common areas between the two? It all comes down to cognitive framing - how we choose to think about things has a major effect on our experience of life and success in life, and also, specifically, our perseverance and success in learning.

If you’re still a bit confused as to what a growth mindset looks like in practice, take a look at the Effective Effort Rubric. Below is a reproduction of just the first row:

As you can see, the rubric shows the behaviours associated with taking on challenges that are typical of a fixed, mixed, and growth mindset. The full rubric provides this information for seven categories that are components of learning. You’re strongly encouraged to download and read through the full rubric.

We encourage you to approach your learning with us in such a way that you actively work on creating a growth mindset and being optimistic in your causal attribution. Many decades of research in learning and education has proven the difference this makes to students!

Other Approaches for Managing Stress

Stress management is a relatively well-understood area, and you will find innumerable solutions offered via Google. Some of these are snake oil - there is no one pill or supplement you can take that will “fix” your stress, although there is sound peer-reviewed research support for the beneficial effect of certain medications, as well as some herbal substances (Salve et al., 2019). Please note that any sort of drug-based approach to stress management must be discussed with an appropriately qualified healthcare practitioner as even some unregulated herbal remedies easily available from pharmacies and health shops can have side effects or interactions with other medications. In medical matters, always err on the safe side, and get professional advice!

Everything we’ve discussed in the self-care section is also relevant to managing stress, as the role of factors such as sleep, nutrition, and exercise in enabling better learning includes their contribution to stress management. In addition, there is an approach called “grounding” that you can actively apply to lower your stress levels. Grounding techniques work by promoting physiological changes in your body. When you’re stressed, neural signals from your brain alert your body of potential danger. Your body responds by producing adrenaline, increasing your heart rate, heightening your senses, and increasing your oxygen intake. Your body also produces a stress hormone called cortisol. Ground techniques help you to regulate and exert control over your body’s response to stress. Let’s consider a few grounding techniques.

Grounding Techniques

Grounding techniques are methods to increase your feeling of calmness and centredness, as well as gain some perspective on and distance from difficult emotions. These techniques often draw on your senses to get you “out of your head” and “into your body”.

Body parts representing the 5 senses: ear, eye, hand, tongue, nose.

Use your senses

Sensory Techniques

• 5-4-3-2-1: In this technique, you identify five things you see, then four things you hear, three you can smell, two you can touch or feel, then one you can taste. You can change the numbers and the senses around (e.g. five things you can hear, four things you can touch, etc.) - what is important is to focus on the details of the things you can see around you, and focus as much as possible on the experience of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting the things you identify. Some people claim that saying the things you identify out loud is helpful, but this isn’t absolutely necessary. The aim is to intentionally really engage your brain via your senses, thereby removing your focus from whatever has been causing the stress.

• More ways to activate senses: You can also focus on one of your senses at a time. For example, if you choose to focus on touch, you could touch your clothing, chair, and other surrounding objects and focus on the textures. You could splash cold water on your face, or immerse your hands in a bowl of cold or warm water and focus on how this feels. You could also switch from hot to cold and focus on the difference in the sensations. You can also try focusing on different parts of your body, for example by holding an ice block in your mouth, having a warm drink, rubbing your feet on a very soft carpet/blanket, or standing barefoot on the grass.

3 people jumping into the air, silhouetted against a pink and purple sunset.

Get moving!

Movement Techniques

• You’re probably familiar with the benefits of exercise, but even small amounts of movement can assist somewhat with stress. Try getting out of your chair and stretching. If you Google “stretches for stress management” you’ll get a number of hits (e.g. this one) and can try out a few suggestions to find what works best for you.
• You can lie on a floor or a bed and try slowly tensing and releasing all of your muscles, from your feet up to your head.
• You can walk from your desk to fetch a glass of water, or go for a walk around the block.
• If you feel more energetic, you can find an online workout on a platform like YouTube and do it (there are workouts available from as little as 2 minutes up to a few hours, so there’s really something for every energy level!).
• If you have a little more time, you could also try going for a jog, or playing your favourite sport. If the activity is out of doors and involves getting some fresh air, bonus points!

A child is blowing soap bubbles in the air through a bubble wand.

Bubble breathing

Breathing Techniques

• You can try taking really deep breaths and focussing on slowly filling your lungs with air right down to the very bottom, and then slowly releasing the breath.
• Another technique involves timed breathing. This might look something like: breathe in for four seconds, hold for four seconds, out for four seconds, hold for four seconds. The period does not have to remain the same for each, e.g. you could breathe in and out for six-second periods and hold your breath for four-second periods, or any combination that works for you.
• Combining breathing like this with visualisation can be an effective meditative practice; for example if you imagine your gaze moving around four sides of a square while breathing. You can make this more difficult (requiring increased focus) by imaging a cube held in your hands and moving your attention in a square pattern over four of its faces. If you want to really increase the difficulty, imagine yourself hovering over a human-sized cube suspended in space, such that when you reach the boundary of a face of the cube, you move in 3D space to hover over the next face at the same angle, each of the four faces your traverse being associated with a breath either in or out.
• Bubble breathing is another breathing technique for stress management. You can either blow bubbles into the air using bubble liquid and a bubble wand, or take a straw and gently blow bubbles in a glass of water. Bubble breathing works by regulating your breathing in the same way as other breathing techniques: when you blow bubbles, you take a big slow breath in and then slowly and gently exhale in a measured way.

Note your thoughts and feelings as they arise, and then let them float by

Noting

• Noting is a variation of a breathing technique, where you take slow deep breaths in and out. However, with noting there is a cognitive component as well: every time you become aware of a feeling, you mentally note “Feeling”, and then let it go and refocus on breathing. Every time you become aware of a thought you mentally note “Thought”, and then let it go and refocus on breathing. Do this for anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. You may find it helps you to lie down because you can then relax more of your muscles while using the technique. This can be a particularly useful way to get to sleep if you are struggling to shake off stressful thoughts.

A blackboard full of indistinct calculations

Mental maths can help you redirect your focus and thereby decrease anxiety

Mental Techniques

Maths techniques
• Close your eyes and starting at one, double numbers as far as you can in five minutes, e.g. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16…
• Try running through all your times tables as you might have done when you were a child.
• Count backwards from a hundred. If you want to make this harder (and thus require more focus), try counting backwards in twos, threes, fours, sevens, etc.
• Pick a number and think of all the ways that number can be made up, e.g. 24 = 1x24, 2x12, 6x4, 3 x8, 48/2, 96/4, ½ x 48, etc.

Language techniques
• Recite, or learn, a poem.
• Try to remember all the words to a song.
• Sing a song you know all the way through.
• Try to list facts about yourself and your situation. You can choose neutral facts e.g. “I am 6 foot tall; I live at 23 Maple Way; I have 2 siblings; my carpet is green; I like drinking tea”, etc., or specifically look for facts which are reassuring e.g. “I am warm; I am fed; I have a home; I am loved”, etc. – whatever applies to you. The act of thinking and listing forces your focus away from the source of stress.
• Another technique is to create an affirmation, such as “I am powerful and I will overcome this problem”. Recite this to yourself for at least 5 minutes, ideally multiple times a day over a period where you feel stressed. This may seem silly, but research indicates that it is a technique that can be used to essentially "brainwash' yourself into having more confidence and determination! If you can’t think of an affirmation, there are hundreds of suggestions available online.

Soft Skills for Optimal Learning

Self-care

Sleep

Nutrition and Exercise

Your Environment

Set and Setting

Device Usage and Ergonomics

Focus and Flow

The Pomodoro Technique for Focus

To use this technique, follow the steps outlined below:

Pause and Reflect

Prioritisation

Pause and Reflect

Fitting New Priorities into your Life

Eat the Frog

SMART Goals

Pause and Reflect

Managing Stress and Frustration

Cognitive Framing

The 3 Ps

The Violin Contest and Causal Attribution

Pause and Reflect

Growth vs Fixed Mindset

Pause and Reflect

Other Approaches for Managing Stress

Grounding Techniques

Sensory Techniques

Movement Techniques

Breathing Techniques

Noting

Mental Techniques

Pause and Reflect