Distractions

'I wish I could somehow
Go back in time, and maybe listen to my own advice'

Little Mix

If you had the choice of half a box of chocolate right now, or a full chocolate box in 2 weeks, which would you choose?

How about if you had a choice of half a box of chocolate in one year, and a full box in a year and two weeks?

Which then?

For the former, most people admit they would give in to temptation now, instead of waiting 2 weeks.  Especially if it was in front of them all of the time.  Imagine the aroma, the thought of the taste.  

For the latter, most people would say ‘I could wait that extra 2 weeks!’.  Why?  

“Because in the future, we are wonderful people!”  Dan Ariely

My latest blog is about how we live in the present.  Something we are very much encouraged to do - carpe diem and all that.  The past is gone, all you have is now.  This is great.  

 However it doesn’t help us with our goals.

We all have goals.  We set them to achieve them.  But... we don't have the tools to succeed for difficult goals, because your main decision-maker, you, lives in the present.  This leads to abject failure and self-loathing, in extreme cases.

Think about what you would say to your old self.  Say from ten years ago.  If you could give that person advice, what would you say?  That makes your current self, your ‘future-self’ in their eyes.  This future-self has all the answers and knows exactly what to do to succeed.  Do we listen to this person?  Of course not!

Enjoying your present leads to a great past.  Working hard in the present leads to an enjoyable future.

We have to look back from our future self.  Learn to listen to future self and not present self.  Present self lives on impulse.  Future self condones self-discipline.

The secret of success - achievement of goals -  is to listen to your future self only.

In the present we say

• I don't want to go to the gym
• I'll eat that doughnut
• I enjoy smoking, why quit?

Too often we wait until our present is miserable by something out of our control like illness. THEN we do something about it.

God and the doctor we like adore,
When in danger, but not before

Whereas if your future self was around, in charge, you'd have a tough regime to follow of daily gym sessions, fantastic diet, daily study of your most self-improving subject area, mastery and practice of that musical instrument you've always wanted to play, and that bucket list will have some ticks on it, instead of blanks.

Would that give you a happy present?  No, you'd be permanently exhausted!  So a balance must be struck.  At the moment, present-self is in total charge and the balance is all in his favour.  

Make him relinquish some of that power.  Listen to your future-self at least half the time.  Now you're aware - have a listen.

What would your future self say?  That's easy. What would you say to yourself of ten years ago?

Like in the song, what would you say if you could go back in time and listen to your own advice?

Whatever that is will be what your future self in 10 years would say to you right now!  

Whatever it may be, you have to listen to your own advice and follow it.

Is it do that course you always wanted?

Is it get to the gym and get into real shape?  Run a marathon?  Ten?  

Whatever it may be, and it will be personal to you, your future self is telling you to do it, just like you would tell your old self from 2, 5 or 10 years ago.

What's your greatest achievement?

Your future self would probably beg you to improve yourself, to do your best at everything, because he knows something you don’t.  You can be sure of that, because you would have acted differently in the past if you knew then what you know now, right?

To quote that song again

“Wish that I knew back then, what I know now.”

Once we’ve decided we must listen to our language very carefully.  I’ve calculated the percentage probability of a completion of a task from our statements about it.  Here are some below.

‘I hope I can do it’ - Percentage Probability of Completion = 0.1%

‘I’ll try to do it’ - Percentage Probability of Completion = 0.5%

‘I’m thinking of doing it’ - Percentage Probability of Completion = 0.9%

‘I’m going to do it’ - Percentage Probability of Completion = 1.4%

‘I’ll do it tomorrow/later/in the future’ - Percentage Probability of Completion = 2%

‘I want to do it’ - Percentage Probability of Completion = 4%

‘I’m doing it’ - Percentage Probability of Completion = 97%

‘I did it’ - Percentage Probability of Completion = 100%

Make sure you only use those last two in your language.  A friend of mine said to me ‘I’m thinking of going for a run later...’ The next day, I knew the answer, but I asked anyway.  Of course he didn’t go.

To do lists are useless as they are just a version of these statements.  You need to write a 

‘I AM DOING’ list and then just follow it.

For me, I'm writing my maths e-books I have promised myself for over 2 years.  At last!  I believe it's a great method for understanding maths easily.  But locked in my mind it's not so great.

Colonel Chris Hadfield, Commander of the ISS and all-around awesome dude has this advice:

Don’t look back, that’s not where you’re going.  True, but have a look to see what you would have told yourself.

The power of negative thinking, where you think about all the possible bad things that can happen, act to do something about them, and remove your worries.

Sweat the small stuff (take care!)


Maintain attitude - keep going towards your goal, no matter what the distractions.

Space Oddity (Part I)

“And all the science, I don’t understand,

It’s just my job 5 days a week.”                                         

Elton John, Rocket Man

While I’m tutoring my students, I tend to unnerve them by suddenly asking:

• Is there gravity in space?

Going up?

 And

• When the space shuttle takes off, what path does it take?* 

Invariably, I get the wrong answers to these questions.  Especially if the student has a GCSE in physics.  Then it’s almost certain they’ll get it wrong.

So why is this?

How do I know they’re going to get these wrong?

Because they are questions that they are never asked.

Students are asked questions where they already have been given the answer in some previous lesson.  Then it’s just a question of whether they remember the answer.  Questions that are different from this in any way completely throw them.

This is because children are not educated, but fed information.  This is taken to be the same thing. 

Another example I saw in a school science textbook was, “Insulin converts glucose into glycogen.”  Test question – “What does insulin convert glucose into?”.  This doesn’t teach what glucose or glycogen are or why this is important, what they do or anything!  It just appears from outside that something is happening, something is being taught, when in fact absolutely nothing is going on. 

Richard Feynman, one of the most highly regarded theoretical physicists of the 20^th century and a Nobel prize winner, used to loathe this kind of education and first became aware of it in Brazil while on a visit there.  He noticed the students all passed the exams, but when they were asked a question that wasn’t the same as the exam, they had no idea of the answer or worse, how to figure it out.  He stated that ‘No physics is being taught in Brazil!’ even though there were many schools and universities churning out ‘physicists’ and almost caused a diplomatic incident.

Thinking differently

It was a theme he found himself returning to in America where he was asked to evaluate high school textbooks.  He found the same thing.  Even the vetting process for the choice of textbooks followed this ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ phenomenon as committee members voted on a book without reading it – which drove him mad. 

However, he was right.  This is what is happening in schools and textbooks in the UK.  Maths and science are taught in this way.  That is why children aren’t able to do these subjects, achieve nationally low pass rates and worse, lose interest in them.  They are not taught why things are, but how to pass an exam on it.

There can be nothing more dull then learning to pass an exam, the details of which mean nothing to you.  And when you ask why things are and show some curiosity, you are shouted down and told the immortal words, ‘It Just Is’.  I once discussed with a maths teacher why a minus times a minus is a plus – because she was complaining that her students were asking her why it was! – and I eventually got her to admit that she didn’t know why.  Of course, IT JUST IS.

So what’s the solution? 

My idea is to use what the students already know.  Use their intuition to teach them concepts.  Then when it has been confirmed they actually do understand the three rules of maths, use inductive learning to figure out all the techniques required to be able to manipulate numbers, algebra, trigonometry and calculus.  Because when you take this approach, it can be seen to be all the same.

Tutoring, this only takes a few days of one-to-one tuition.  I bet it would be more efficient to tutor each child individually for 3 days then to teach them nothing for 10 years.

I’ve had students in year 10 who when they first come to me, can’t multiply two numbers like 23 x 41.  If that’s the result of 10 years of class education, something isn’t working.  Even if they can multiply numbers together, they do it in a horrendously complicated way, either by the misnamed ‘Grid Method’ or by ‘Long’ Multiplication which is almost as bad.  But worse than that, try asking what multiplication is for.  What do we use it for?  They have no idea.  They’ve not been asked that one.  They can just do it.  Maybe.

They’re also not shown how to know if their answer is correct.  They have to ask the teacher ‘Is this right?’.  Instead, they should be able to check easily and quickly whether it is correct.  Why?  So they become independent learners, who use logical thinking skills to solve problems.  That is one of the main reasons to learn maths and science – apart from its applications. 

We could have a world where these subjects are exciting, interesting and spark creativity and new thinking.  Where a child asks…”Well, if that’s true, what about this situation?” and they come up with something new!  It’s time we think different.

I hope this is going to change in schools.

I would hope the students become inspired and energised.

But I think it’s gonna be a long, long time…

*these questions to be answered in Part II...see you then.