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Normally when I talk about learning quickly, I’m using speed as a synonym for efficiency. Use more effective methods and you’ll learn more in less time. All else being equal, that means you’re learning faster. 通常我在谈到快速学习时，是把“速度”当作“效率”的同义词来用的。使用更高效的方法，就能用更少时间学会更多内容。在其他条件不变的情况下，这就意味着学得更快。 Today, however, I want to consider a different meaning for speed: how quickly should you try to do things in order to improve performance. 但今天我想谈谈速度的另一层意思：为了提高水平，你应该以多快的速度做一件事情？ One way to imagine this is to look at something like chess. Chess can be played at different speed levels: you could play tournament-length games, which take hours. You could play blitz, which has only a few minutes, or bullet chess where moves are counted in seconds. 一种思考的办法是考虑下棋这样的活动。可以以不同的速度下棋：你可以像棋类锦标赛那样下，一局花几个小时；也可以下快棋，一局只要几分钟，或者更快的快棋，每一步只有几秒钟思考。 If your goal were to improve at chess, which kind should you make your core practice? 如果你的目标是提高棋艺，应该着重练习哪种呢？ Speed and Transfer 速度与迁移 The first thing to consider is that often what we think of as a single skill is actually different skills when viewed from different timeframes. 首先需要考虑的是，通常我们认为是同一种技能的东西，从不同时间框架来看，其实是不同的技能。 Consider solving a math problem. You can painstakingly calculate an exact answer. Or you can ballpark it using some guessing. While the two skills are related, they are, strictly speaking, different mental abilities. 比如解决数学问题。你既可以费力地计算一个准确的结果，也可以估计一个大概的范围。这两种技能虽然相关，但严格说起来，它们是不同的智能。 The research on transfer shows that when we train skills, they tend to be learned quite narrowly. So tons of time learning to do back-of-the-envelope calculations may not improve your calculating skills as much as you’d expect. This also works in the opposite direction as you may be able to get the “right” answer, but without a quick guess that’s in the ballpark. 关于能力迁移的研究表明，我们在训练某种能力时，往往只能训练到非常有限的一部分。因此，花大量时间练习粗略地估算，并不会像你希望的那样提高计算能力。反之也一样，你或许能够计算出“正确”的答案，但无法粗略地估计是否在合理的范围。 I experienced this firsthand when working on my portrait drawing project. 我在进行肖像画项目时就亲身体会了这一现象。 My initial thought was that drawing faces well came from “guessing” the relative positions of facial features, lines and shapes. Thus if I simply did more and more quick practice, my guesses would get increasingly accurate and I’d draw realistic pictures. Speed, then, made sense. 我一开始认为，画好人物面部肖像，靠的是“估计”五官、线条和形状的相对位置。因此，只要我练习越来越多的速写，就会估计得越来越准确，从而画出逼真的肖像。速度在这里是说得通的。 This worked, for a while, but eventually I found that my problem wasn’t accuracy but precision. There was too much variability in my guesses even if I wasn’t systematically making a particular kind of mistake. 这起作用了一阵子，但最终我发现自己的问题不是准确度，而是精确性。尽管我没有系统性地犯特定某种错误，但我的估计还是有太多不一致的地方。 The solution ended up being learning a different method for drawing based on triangulation, as taught by Vitruvian Studio. This method, in contrast to my guess-and-sketch approach, was not fast. My first attempts took hours. With practice, I could do it faster, but it was still much slower and more painstaking than sketching. 最终的解决办法，是我学习了Vitruvian Studio教的三角定位画法。与我自己的估计、速写式画法不同，这种方法并不快。我最开始尝试时花了几个小时。经过练习，我可以画得快一些，但仍然比速写慢得多、辛苦得多。 The result was that I got better at drawing portraits, but only weakly better at doing quick sketches. The skills I enhanced mostly worked when I had at least an hour to draw, not sixty seconds. If I wanted to get better at the sixty-second sketches, I’d probably need to master different techniques. 结果是，我的肖像画画得好多了，但是速写只提高了一点。只有当我有至少一小时而不是只有一分钟画画时，通过三角定位画法训练的技能才能发挥作用。如果我想要提高六十秒速写的水平，恐怕需要掌握另外的技巧。 The lesson here is that the timeframe you need to perform a skill within often constrains the methods you can use to master it. The way you solve a problem in ten seconds is often, cognitively speaking, quite different from the way you solve it in an hour. 从这件事中得到的经验是，有多长时间做一件事，通常限制了掌握所需技能应用的方法。花十秒钟解决一个问题的方法，从认知学的角度来说，通常与花一小时解决的方法是大不相同的。 Are You Failing to Reach an Ideal or You Don’t Know What the Ideal Is? 你是否没有达到理想状态，或者不知道理想状态是什么？ A lot of learning involves having a mental representation of what the ideal performance ought to be, a method or approach to achieve said performance, and then working towards implementing that method with your mind. 许多学习都需要先有一个心理表征，知道理想的表现是什么样的，用什么方法或手段来达到那种表现，然后努力在心里运用那种方法。 There are therefore two distinct problems you can encounter when you’re trying to learn something. The first is that you have a clear picture of what you’d like to do, and how you’re going to do it, but you’re simply unable to implement the approach you’ve chosen. In these cases, slowing things down is usually better. By slowing down the speed of the overall process you can devote more attention to each aspect of the problem. Only once you’re able to do it correctly does it make sense to try to do it faster. Rushing this only results in making mistakes. 因此在试着学习某件事时，你可能会遇到两种不同的问题。第一种是你清楚地知道自己要做什么，以及要怎么做，但就是无法运用选定的方法。在这种情况下，放慢速度通常会有好的效果。通过放慢整个过程的速度，你可以给予问题的各个方面更多关注。只有当你能够正确地完成时，提高速度才有意义，匆匆忙忙只会犯错。 Drawing portraits, it was better that I focus on applying the method the best I possibly could, rather than artificially give myself time constraints, which would have caused me to mess up more things and have a harder time mastering the technique. Similarly, when I want to improve my writing, I usually form a clear idea of what kind of essay I want to write and slow down my process until that form is achievable. 以画肖像来说，我最好先专注于尽可能娴熟地运用画画的方法，而不是人为地给自己设定时间限制，那只会让我搞砸更多事情、更难掌握绘画技巧。类似地，当想要提高写作水平时，我通常会先有一个清晰的想法，准备写什么样的文章。这个过程可以慢慢来，直到那个想法可以实现。 The second type of problem, however, is when you’re not even sure what the ideal should be and need more information to figure this out. 但可能遇到的另一种问题是，你根本不知道理想的表现是什么样的，而需要更多信息来弄明白这一点。 A new writer may need to pen a dozen or more essays to get a sense of the kind of writing they’d like to create. You may need to do a few dozen sketches before figuring out where your artistic deficits lie. Faster means more feedback and solving these problems earlier. 写作新手需要写上十几篇甚至更多文章，才能对自己想要的写作类型有点感觉。你可能需要画上几十张速写，才能发现自己的艺术缺陷在哪里。更快就意味着更多反馈，以及更早解决这些问题。 The best example of speed leading to greater quality is often in entrepreneurial domains. The problems being solved here are often related closely to identifying what is the ideal to reach, as opposed to mastering the execution of that ideal. Many businesses fail because the founder picked the wrong problem to solve and wasted too much time trying to solve it. 最能够证明速度越快质量越好的例子，通常在创业领域。这里要解决的问题，通常与找到什么是要达到的理想状态有关，而不是掌握如何做到那个理想状态。许多企业失败，都是因为创始人选择的是一个错误的问题，而浪费了太多时间去解决它。 Ask yourself, “Do I know what I’d like to do, and what approach I should take to do it?” Or, “I’m not sure what’s the right way to approach this?” The former suggests slowing things down, the latter suggests getting faster feedback. These aren’t the only considerations that matter for speed, but it’s a useful heuristic. 问问你自己：“我知道自己想要做什么，以及应该采用什么方法吗？”还是“我不确定什么是实现这个目标的正确方法？”前一个意味着要放慢速度，后一个则意味着要尽快获得反馈。这不是决定速度的唯一考虑，但是一个有用的探索。 A Meta-Heuristic for Handling Trade-Offs 一个权衡利弊的元启发式方法 The balance between going faster and doing it right depends on a trade-off. Faster feedback means you get more information allowing you to explore the problem space to figure out what the key challenges are and possible strategies for overcoming them. Thus faster is better. Slowing things down, on the other hand, helps you home in on a strategy you’ve already chosen, allowing you to execute it correctly. Thus slower is also better. 做得快和做得对之间的平衡，取决于两方面的取舍。尽快获得反馈意味着能够获得更多信息，让你在问题空间中摸索，找到关键的挑战，以及可能的解决策略。因此更快是好的。另一方面，慢下来帮助你集中精力于已经选定的策略，从而能够正确地执行。因此更慢也是好的。 Many (if not most) things you want to learn involve these kinds of trade-offs. You want to space out the things you want to learn to extend your memory, except not so far that you’ll forget. You want to take advantage of direct practice to minimize transfer failures but also do drills to give yourself more space to master components. 你想学的许多（甚至大多数）内容都包含这样的取舍。你希望间隔学习想要学的东西，从而延长记忆时间，但又不间隔太久以致忘记。你想通过直接实践减少能力迁移的失败，但也想通过做练习给自己时间掌握各个方面。 The meta-heuristic I use when dealing with these problems is to do both and feel out which seems to be helping more. So if I were unsure whether my struggles in a new domain were due to inadequate breadth of feedback or inadequate mental bandwidth to do things properly, I might spend ten hours doing both faster and slower practice and see which seems to be bearing more fruit. 我解决这个问题的元启发式方法是两种都做，看哪一种更有帮助。因此如果我不确定在一个新领域遇到困难是因为反馈不够还是脑力不足才导致无法正确完成，可能会花上十小时，同时做快的和慢的练习，看哪种收效更高。 If you can adopt the above approach you rarely get “stuck”, but it also requires more self- awareness to monitor your own progress. 如果你能够采取上面的方法，就几乎不会被“卡住”，不过这也需要更强的自觉来监督自己的进度。 >>> 热门主题 <<< |
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