Recently, I often hear friends talking about metacognition, but what exactly is metacognition?
The first time I heard this term was brought up by the president of Chaos University, Li Shanyou.
The concept put forward by American psychologist J.H. Flawell is the cognition of cognition. For example, students are performing various cognitive activities (perception, memory, thinking, etc.) during their studies, and on the other hand they have to actively monitor and adjust their various cognitive activities. The re-perception, re-memorization, and re-thinking of cognitive activities such as perception, memory, and thinking are called metacognition.
Next, I will explain from the aspects of cognition, metacognition, how metacognition can help us, and master the strategies and methods of metacognition. I hope to inspire everyone.
1. Cognitive learning:
said in the book "Cognitive Nature": The essence of learning is the knowledge chain and memory knot. People continue to learn and summarize in life, and then form self-reflection. Reflect on the learned knowledge, and gain more knowledge through the process of solving specific things.
Reflection involves a variety of cognitive activities, which can bring better learning effects: retrieve knowledge or early training content from memory, connect these with new experiences, and use observation and thinking , Rehearse the different approaches you might take next time.
The final result is to store the learned knowledge in the body, like a warrior ready to go, always ready, so that when you encounter problems, you have a clear mind and seize the opportunity to solve the problem.
We all know that people are lazy by nature, but there are cognitive laws and mental models bred in it.
Our usual study is to keep rereading, and even recite articles and exercises in order to cope with the exam. This method seems to be efficient (getting high scores in the exam), but in fact it is not very helpful to our personal cognitive learning. It can be said to be the least effective learning method.
Repeated reading and mechanical exercises give us the most intuitive result is that we will, can do the right questions and get high scores, but it will not have a long-term impact on us. Looking at it in a long time span, It's really a waste of time.
We should have such an experience. If we go to review by ourselves before taking the exam, we will always see the phenomenon of seeing everything, but as soon as we go to the exam room, the answer will be on our lips, but we can’t think about it. stand up. Until I got out of the examination room, or heard a sentence from a certain classmate, an instant flashed, and the answer came out like a flood.
Through the understanding of cognition, here are several ways to learn knowledge:
1⃣️ Encoding memory: This kind of memory is short-term memory, just like being on the beach Just like writing, it can be remembered in a short time. This is one of the biggest headaches in our study. Learn to forget. Regarding this, don’t pay too much attention to it. The brain’s memory already has this function. What if it’s very important knowledge and want a long-term memory? This requires the second step.
2⃣️ Consolidation exercise: Through the previous coding and memory learning, more new knowledge can be incorporated. The longer the less important time, the weaker the memory. Those important and frequently used knowledge require us to constantly review and consolidate it. When learning to memorize words, the best way is not to recite them 100 times at a time, but to repeat them ten times today, ten times tomorrow, and ten times every few days. As time goes by, we don't necessarily have to memorize a word 100 times, but through this retrospective study, we will master it more firmly.
3⃣️ Retrieval learning: This should also be a very efficient way of learning, learning through self-reflection or several people asking questions to each other. Each exercise is like an exam, concentrate on, mobilize the brain to work at full speed to find the answer.
2. Metacognition: Metacognition is simply the cognition in cognition
The foundation of metacognition is based on cognition, so its development is compared with Cognitive development is slower. Cognition is relatively intuitive and concrete, while metacognition is internal and abstract, but its function is definitely not worse than cognition.
In essence, metacognition is not equivalent to another phenomenon of cognition. It reflects the cognition of "cognition" on the subject of people. For example, when we go out, we see many people gather together to discuss issues, thinking about why so many people join the discussion? And metacognition tells us why we have "thinking why so many people join the discussion" thinking.
is a bit confusing to read, but we have to keep asking ourselves why we have this kind of thinking, why we think about this kind of thinking, and constantly approach the essence of cognition.
3. How can having metacognition help us
Aristotle once said: The ultimate meaning of life is not only in survival, but also in awakening and contemplation Ability .
Metacognition is our problem-solving method and technology. In one sentence, it can help people to separate from the problem itself.
The biggest difference between people and people is the difference in thinking mode, and metacognition is the most powerful internal means to adjust thinking and improve thinking results.
mentioned in the book "Metacognition": Homeostasis refers to a system trying to maintain a stable and balanced state, not from one extreme to the other. Strain homeostasis is an unstable state, which is necessary to adapt to the ever-changing internal and external environment, and the purpose is to regain self-stability.
Self-steady state and strain-steady state are complementary to each other, just like you are sitting on a comfortable sofa, you will be uncomfortable after a long time, you need to change your posture to achieve the state of self-stability.
About the way metacognition is used to solve specific problems:
1⃣️ Just focus on the problems you can solve, don’t get stuck on the obvious Difficulties that are not within your abilities.
2⃣️ Do only one thing at the same time and devote yourself to it.
3⃣️ Seek inwardly when encountering problems, pay more attention to your own growth, and don't think about changing others.
4⃣️ Remember that you are not what you think.
Zhu Xi said: "Ask the channel where it can be so clear, for the source of living water." It means: as long as you stand at the source of the water, what you get will always be the latest.
Whether it is in the workplace or in life, when encountering problems, we should explore the essence of the problem and think more about the results of the implementation of this matter, and whether this result can lead to other problems or opportunities.
4. Mastering the methods and strategies of metacognition
We understand the concept of metacognition and how the related cognition can solve problems, so how do we master it. First of all, we have to make it clear that metacognition itself is abstract and internal. It belongs to thinking in thinking, thinking in thinking.
If you want to have this ability, deliberate practice is a must. Provide you with a few ways to practice to improve your metacognition:
1⃣️ Meditation, meditation
Practice your concentration ability at a fixed time. At the beginning, you will definitely be distracted. Once you find it Take it back quickly. This kind of operation is relatively simple and very useful. In the book "The Road to Wealth Freedom", Mr. Li Xiaolai also specifically mentioned a similar topic. He also listed a formula: attention> time> money.
The future of business must be a battle for attention, we have experienced the development of the InternetAfter the rise of traces, it has experienced the rise of the mobile Internet, followed by the 5G era, short video, and artificial intelligence era. Business has also begun to transform from the entity to the Internet, and even from the media and social e-commerce. These are undoubtedly a consumption of our attention. People who are motivated will consider how to avoid being distracted by these "tempts", so they choose to block these things.
But when you have deeper thinking, you will change your mind to focus on how to get the attention of others, and develop products to adapt to the development of the times.
Learning meditation and meditation is a kind of release to the soul of oneself, and it is also a kind of deep learning of oneself.
2⃣️ Through a kind of self-study, find one's own interests and hobbies
Our study and education rarely involve personal hobbies, and everything seems to be arranged from elementary school, junior high school, and high school. I finally got admitted to the university, and arrangements were made for the professional parents who study. In the best four years of university, I studied a major that I had no interest in. After I graduated, I worry about choosing a job.
The chosen job is not compatible with the profession. This should be a common phenomenon, and everyone seems to understand it. But those who have graduated for many years, when asked about their interests, are still blank and don't even know what they like.
Under our generally accepted education, interest and work are originally two different things. Work is to support the family, but interest is supposedly used as a way of entertainment. Is it difficult to understand yourself? It's really difficult, if you haven't considered this issue seriously.
Looking for your own interest On the other hand, it is also a search for yourself. The rest of your life is not that long. Please be loyal to yourself and live like yourself.
3⃣️ Self-reflection in the process of self-exploration
"My day and my body are three times", ancient thoughts of sages and sages. Self-reflection is very necessary for the training of metacognition, and it is also a very effective means.
Spend half an hour every day to summarize and reflect on yourself, and you will see the effect of reflection after six months to one year. A lot of truths have actually been mentioned by some sages long ago, but we are always in pursuit of "new knowledge" instead of making reflections and summaries.
For example, the "ten thousand hours rule" we often talk about nowadays, there is a copper kettle hourglass in "Weng You Weng" in ancient times, and Weng said: "There is no other, but hands are familiar.
Another example, the realization of very hot knowledge recently is not a new phenomenon at all. Getting a good university entrance and having a good job is not considered knowledge realization.
Knowledge is difficult to realize when it is placed there, it depends on the form of dissemination. When there was no Internet, the teacher's knowledge could only be taught to the students in his own class. Now it is different. Record a video and sell hundreds of thousands of copies for the same lesson.
The same teachers from Tsinghua and Peking University, non-Tsinghua and Peking University students would spend a lot of money, but now you can listen to the courses of senior teachers for a few hundred dollars, so our knowledge has been moving towards low prices , And even free roads.
But in the face of massive data, how to filter has become a problem. Combining the above example is just to tell you a reflection on the phenomenon, we can also combine our daily work and life to carry out such a reflection and summary. And then to improve one's own metacognitive ability.
5. Write to the end
An idea, if an idea is not put into practice, it will always be just a fantasy. What we lack is not knowledge itself, but new ideas to open up our minds, constantly upgrading our cognition and changing our perspective on things. There is a very good tool in our continuous upgrading process: thinking in action.
The first step is to do it first, and continue to reflect, adjust, optimize and feedback in practice. Use action to stimulate thinking, and use thinking to improve action.
The second step is to treat yourself as a professional, let yourself believe in what you do, and use expert standards to demand yourself, Using this seemingly "pretending" imitation, step by step forced myself to become a professional.
Reference books for this article:
"Metacognition" [America] David DiSalvo (David DiSalvo)
"Leap Transition" Classical
"Cognitive Nature" Peter Brown (Peter C. Brown)
"The Road to Wealth Freedom" Li Xiaolai
