One of the aspects I’m preparing for the interview is some basic understanding of the technology that the interviewing company works with.
The best approach to the new-to-me subject was chunking. Again, I was surprised with the new awareness and one instant realisations about my learning style. In the past, I used to learn bottom-up, without having clear idea where some things fit in the big picture. It seemed like a better idea to just start and see how far I could get.
Things are different now. I actually need to spend some time initially just getting as much information about the bigger picture before I can successfully start building chunks from the bottom up. Seemingly obvious, now that I feel elated by the progress due to a small tweak in my approach. In the long run, this gives my confidence for whatever I’ll need to learn at my next job.
How does it work? Once I’m ready, I set the timer to 25 minutes. By focusing my attention, I am trying to gain better understanding of the material, followed by repetition to start creating chunks - compact collections of information bound through meaning or use; "knowledge units”, that are easy to access or use.
I am also using this opportunity to practice the following methods:
- Recall - recall involves reading the text once followed by the attempt to repeat as much key information as possible. Only then can the text be read again, followed by the new attempt to recall more information than before. Unlike repeated reading of the new material, this approach helps to retain information much better.
- Deliberate practice - once I understand something new, I try to select a difficult topic as the next one to work on.
- Interleaving - instead of sequential learning of the subject, it is a good idea to skip back and forth between topics or problems. This somewhat chaotic approach builds creativity. The brain can use the new knowledge in a more flexible way.
- Practice and repetition, especially spaced repetition, ensure the new material is firmly ingrained in our brains.
Given the tight timeline of the events, I cannot spread out what I am learning over many days and although my learnings will not still find their permanent place in my long term memory, at least they will be in the working memory and easily accessible.
In the case of preparing for the upcoming job interview, my new chunks are formed on the basis of meaning as I still haven’t used the technology in question, but if I get this job I look forward to expanding my library of chunks in a new and creative ways and pave the way to becoming an expert.
Chunking is a powerful technique and helps us learn not only one subject, but concepts that are related to completely different subjects - this is called transferring.
Let me answer through real-life analogy I came up with while watching him playing with his favourite toys - Lego.
If each Lego brick represents the fact about certain subject, than a collection of those bricks used for building some useful part of a bigger model (e.g. car door, airplane wing) represents a chunk. Once he starts changing or disassembling the original model to create something completely different is like reaching for the existing chunks from the vast library in his brain. The models he builds those chunks into are very creative, which makes him a true Lego Expert.
I look forward to explaining to him the idea behind chunking through Lego.
