The text you are reading right now is being processed by the most powerful biological weapon that has ever been created. This weapon that you posses has been the cause of the greatest inventions, wars, technologies and laughs. This "weapon" is your brain, weighing about 1,4 kg. The brain processes everything we see, hear, smell and touch simultaneously. With it we can learn a language and use that language to express ourselves with our fellow human beings. With it we can feel emotions and deeply love someone as well as hate them. We can understand the world around us by learning. The brain is an amazing tool but there is just one problem with it. What is that problem? Is it slow? Does it store too little? We all have bought a new tech device, maybe a tv set or even a microwave but there is always one thing that we expect to be in the box besides it.

THE MANUAL. We need a manual to understand how the device works, things like how to switch it on, switch it off, how to trouble shoot problems and maintain the device. Something our brains didn't come with. How can that be if half of your genes describe the complex design of your brain, with the other half describing the organization of the other 98% of your body? Meaning the designer and creator of the brain knew about the importance of the brain when he created the genome, he went to great lengths to make sure it would work perfectly. I wanted to understand my brain better so that I can learn more efficiently and faster. As a co-founder of a startup @beezond and a software developer i had to constantly keep pushing myself to learn more, and there was no way I could brute force my brain to understand difficult to grasp concepts and still manage to follow the fast paced tech industry.

Focused versus Diffuse mode

Since the very beginning of the twenty-first century, neuroscientists have been making profound advances in understanding the two different types of networks that the brain switches between—highly attentive states and more relaxed resting state networks. We’ll call the thinking processes related to these two different types of networks the focused mode and diffuse mode, respectively—these modes are highly important for learning. It seems you frequently switch back and forth between these two modes in your day-to-day activities. You’re in either one mode or the other—not consciously in both at the same time. The diffuse mode does seem to be able to work quietly in the background on something you are not actively focusing on. Sometimes you may also flicker for a rapid moment to diffuse-mode thinking. Focused-mode thinking is essential for studying math and science and for me, computer programming. It involves a direct approach to solving problems using rational, sequential, analytical approaches. The focused mode is associated with the concentrating abilities of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, located right behind your forehead. Turn your attention to something and bam—the focused mode is on, like the tight, penetrating beam of a flashlight. The focused mode is what you use to solve problems, logically and rationally using information that is somehat limited to the context of the problem you are trying to solve whereas the diffuse mode is the mode you use when learning new concepts and see the bigger picture and it usually fetches information that rarely has context to help you make up new ideas.

To learn a new concept you have to switch off your focused mode and allow your diffuse mode to kick in, but it's not that simple. Remember we don't have a manual to show us how to switch it on and off, so how do we do it? I love music and learned to play the piano in third grade and the guitar later on in my life thanks to my rock loving friends Michael and Kyle. I remember when learning the guitar I tried to to play it using logic, the way we do when solving problems, it didn't work. I went online and watched other people play, did some research on scales and the basic chords learned them and started practicing. I was so addicted to playing that I would practice playing the guitar just before I slept, I would then fall asleep and something amazing would happen! I would dream about myself playing the guitar. In my dream I would play the chords I had learned over and over again. In the morning, I would feel like I played the guitar all night long even though it was just in my dream. When I picked up the guitar to play, everything seemed so much easier and natural. What happened? That was my brain in diffuse mode! Since it was the last thing I was thinking before I slept my brain thought it must be important and started working on a solution!

To solve difficult problems and learn new difficult to grasp concepts you have to use the diffuse mode. Doing the following will help you to achieve that state: Listening to music, exercising, meditation, being around nature especially the beach, praying, walking, jogging or swimming, playing games, listening to binaural beats and the most powerful taking a short 20 to 30 minute nap after an intense focused mode activity to help consolidate the new information to long term memory or to allow your brain to work on a solution while you sleep.

Using this technique to learn and solve problems will yield amazing benefits for you just as it has for me, in the next article I will discuss other awesome tips to help you learn more efficiently. Let me know what you think about this method in the comments below.