あなたを97%の人より賢くし、効果的な生涯学習を身につけさせる5冊の本

Mediumの哲学博士アクセル・カサス(Axel Casas, PhD Candidate)が2025年01月12日に「Cogni.tiva」で全文公開した「5 Books That Will Make You Smarter Than 97% Of People And embrace effective lifelong learning」で、
本はスーパーパワーです。
何十年もの知識をまとめたり、物語でインスピレーションを与えてくれるので、私は本が大好きです。お勧めの本はたくさんあります。でも、このトップは違ったものにしたかったのです。
効果的な学習に焦点を当てたかったのです。
物事を早く効果的に学ぶ方法について、実際に知識を飛躍的に高めてくれる本です。後ほどの記事でいくつか取り上げましたが、ここでもう一度皆さんに紹介したいと思います。
これらの本は皆さんを賢くしてくれると確信しています :)

そういえば、友人で東大の卒業生を右代表で卒業した友人が、「良い成績を取るための方法はある。」と言っていました。

それでは、どうぞ！

1. Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn by Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowsky, and Terrence Sejnowski
   You should start with this one.
   Oakley and colleagues are experts in the science of learning. They spent decades researching effective study and teaching methods. In this book, they condense all that information into around 300 pages.
   What I love about this is that it is impossible not to engage with it.
   It is so well written! Here, you will learn:
   The best science-based study strategies.
   How students often get fooled by the illusion of learning.
   The different types of learners.
   The neuroscience of learning.
   Table of Contents:
   Building Memory: How Students Fool Themselves into Thinking They’re Learning.
   Teaching Inclusively: The Importance of Working Memory Capacity.
   Active Learning: The Declarative Pathway.
   Remedies for Procrastination.
   How Human Brains Evolved — and Why This Matters for Your Teaching.
   Active Learning: The Procedural Pathway.
   Building Community Through Habits.
   Linking Learners: The Power of Collaborative Learning.
   Online Teaching with Personality and Flair.
   Charting Your Course to the Finish Line: The Power of Lesson Plans.

2. Ultra-Learning: Accelerate Your Career, Master Hard Skills, And Outsmart The Competition by Scott Young
   Once you have the basics, you can aspire to more.
   Ultra-learning changed my life forever. It made me think about learning differently. It made me realize it is a superpower that can help me in my personal development, getting jobs, scholarships, and more.
   Scott starts this book by sharing his experience studying Computer Science at MIT.
   From home and for free.
   You read that right. He used the free resources available on MIT’s OpenCourseWare and crafted a plan to master it. By doing so, he finished this 4-year degree in only one.
   Truly inspiring.
   Table of contents
   Can You Get an MIT Education Without Going to MIT?
   Why Ultralearning Matters
   How to Become an Ultralearner
   Principle 1-Metalearning: First Draw a Map
   Principle 2-Focus: Sharpen Your Knife
   Principle 3-Directness: Go Straight Ahead
   Principle 4-Drill: Attack Your Weakest Point
   Principle 5-Retrieval: Test to Learn
   Principle 6-Feedback: Don’t Dodge the Punches
   Principle 7-Retention: Don’t Fill a Leaky Bucket
   Principle 8-Intuition: Dig Deep Before Building Up
   Principle 9-Experimentation: Explore Outside Your Comfort Zone
   Your First Ultralearning Project
   An Unconventional Education

3. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, Mark McDaniel
   This book is pure science!
   As a PhD student, I love that. Although this book is from 2013, I think it is still one of the best about effective learning. The only reason it’s not above the others is that it can be more challenging to read for beginners.
   Here, you will learn about:
   Pure science of the best study strategies and why they work.
   How to practice retrieval.
   How to avoid illusions of learning and improve metacognition.
   How to actually make information stick to your memory.
   Table of contents
   Learning Is Misunderstood.
   To Learn, Retrieve.
   Mix Up Your Practice.
   Embrace Difficulties.
   Avoid Illusions of Knowing.
   Get Beyond Learning Styles.
   Increase Your Abilities.
   Make It Stick.

4. Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte
   Information nowadays is overwhelming.
   There’s too much for our brains to digest. For these reasons, Tiago argues, a personal knowledge management (PKM) is more important than ever. He proposes to build a “second brain.”
   This can help you:
   Making our ideas concrete.
   Revealing new associations between ideas.
   Incubating our ideas over time.
   Sharpening unique perspectives.
   Ultimately, a second brain will help you retrieve information.
   And that will make you smarter by enhancing creativity and cognitive flexibility.
   Table Of Contents
   Part One: The Foundation: Understanding What’s Possible
   Chapter 1: Where It All Started
   Chapter 2: What Is a Second Brain?
   Chapter 3: How a Second Brain Works
   Part Two: The Method: The Four Steps of CODE
   Capture 4: Capture — Keep What Resonates
   Chapter 5: Organize — Save for Accountability
   Chapter 6: Distill — Find the Essence
   Chapter 7: Express — Show Your Work
   Part Three: The Shift: Making Things Happen
   Chapter 8: The Art of Creative Execution
   Chapter 9: The Essential Habits of Digital Organizers
   Chapter 10: The Path to Self-Expression

5. Procrastination: What It Is, Why It’s a Problem, and What You Can Do About It by Fuschia M. Sirois PhD
   Finally, a book about learner’s biggest enemy.
   You may have read that procrastination is about being lazy or lacking effective time management skills. Well, this book says that it is way more complex than that.
   This book completely changed my view on procrastination.
   To defeat it, Sirois argues, we need to understand why it happens.
   Fuschia Sirois is a psychologist who has done 20 years of research on how and why humans procrastinate. The strongest argument in her book is that we do it to avoid the negative feelings related to a task.
   For example, I voluntarily delayed studying some topics during my degree because I hated them.
   Interesting reading that includes many exercises and guides to apply in your daily life.
   Table of Contents
   Part I How Procrastination Affects Your Life
   Chapter 1 Procrastination: An All-Too-Common Problem
   Chapter 2 That Mystical Land of Tomorrow: Lost Productivity and Abandoned Dreams
   Chapter 3 Can Procrastination Be Bad for Your Health?
   Chapter 4 Procrastination Through a Social Lens
   Part II When and Why Do People Procrastinate?
   Chapter 5 Procrastination Decoded: Why Mood Matters
   Chapter 6 Seek the Source
   Part III Evidence-Based Strategies to Help You Stop Procrastinating
   Chapter 7 Why Mindset Matters
   Chapter 8 Perspective Matters: The Power of Reframing
   Chapter 9 Embrace Your Future Self to Bridge the Temporal Gap
   Chapter 10 Ready, Set, Go!

Summary
After years of learning new skills, I found these books ideal for beginners.
To recap:
Learn the basics of effective learning by reading “Uncommon Sense Teaching”* by Oakley and colleagues and/or “Make it Stick”* by Brown and colleagues.
Rocket your learning by reading “Ultra-learning”* by Scott Young.
Learn how to manage information and facilitate retrieval by reading “Building a Second Brain”* by Tiago Forte.
Finally, learn how to avoid procrastination by reading “Procrastination”* by Fuschia Sirois.
I hope these books help you in your learning revolution.
*Affiliate links
Ways I can help you:
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The Super Learning Lab. Image created by the author with Canva.
Thanks for reading!
See you,
Axel
Note: this article contains affiliate links, so, if you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost for you!

https://medium.com/@axel.em.casas/5-books-that-will-make-you-smarter-eb510a623098