Internet: From Collecting To Metacognition

A push for life-long learning is the product of generations on the web. The first generation built a door for cagey institutions to publish free information to the masses. The second generation created communities for experts from the institutions, well-knowledged peers and life-learners to join and collaborate. The third generation is expanding learning beyond a pool of information - they are not only congregating it, but creating systems to manage it, tools to retain it, and affordable platforms to share it. In short, learning as an adult is more accessible than ever in history. How do we take advantage of it?

The second generation built a backdoor for consumers to erect information structures alongside institutions - the consumer became the producer with entities like Wikipedia. Blogs and search engine optimization opened a side door to even more accessibility. With this consumer/producer model, the world-wide-web has congregated an infinite information ecosystem. Now the internet is a colossal file cabinet too vast to use effectively. And so, the individual must create their own system to retain data.

The third generation is building a place that can cater to those who want to learn outside of the institution for the same outcome, personal enrichment, and career advancement. How do life-learners create a personal institution? Let's talk about archiving metacognition.

Metacognitive learning, or the ability to simultaneously track, manipulate and archive experience, thought and sensory input is the next frontier for life-learning on the web. Programs like Notion, Roam Research, and others are paving the way in this regard.

Metacognitive Learning: System

Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, is an inception of thought to aid learning. The learner is its own teacher and the inner teacher is also learning about its own system in constant flux. The learner is tracking every step inside its cognitive function. A bit confusing, I know. Let me break it down.

Step 1 → Activate

• Opposed to linear or "passive" learning, active learning should activate a web of ideas that can be manipulated through the sensory input process.

• Ask yourself why you are reading, viewing or listening to new material. Lead the learning with a set of objectives. Add to that list of questions periodically.

  • Find these questions from skimming or light research about the subject from an external source.

What is the source of learning? This is important to determine before learning new material. Is it a youtube series on Roman history, a podcast about startup culture, a digital textbook about computer science, or a classic novel? Learn more about how to write notes on reading material here: Active Reading And How To Write Inside A Book.

Going back to the two positions of life learning, are you learning for an exam, career advancement, personal interest or some kind of hybrid? Answering this question will help mold pre-learning questions.

*Note: Steps are labeled as 1, 1A, 1AA, 1AAA, 1AAAA, etc because every step is working in tandem.

Step 1A → Annotate

• Identify key concepts from sensory input constantly. Break down learning into your own bold headlines. Imagine your thinking as a series of building blocks that will eventually develop a personal wiki or textbook.

  • Layer 1 → archive major ideas

  • Layer 2 → archive key concepts within major ideas

How I Analyze And Annotate With Notion

Upon first glance, Notion is an app with very little going on. For instance, there are no extraneous toolbars or pop-up tutorials. However, there is a lot hidden under the hood. There is a ton of ordinary features you'd find in any standard word processing application alongside unique features only found in Notion. Those unique features are really useful for retaining information. I'm a huge advocate for life learning both in school and out, so I want to show how Notion can be useful for everyone's learning journey. Here is my Notion-based learning process in a nutshell:

1. Wiki entry of particular subject matter

The properties are as follows:

• Date of subject matter (In this case, 1493)

• File (Documents associated with entry)

• Events (I have another database that organizes a timeline of events I want to learn. Great for history buffs. I relate it into my documents database which is where this page lies.)

• Encyclopedia (Another database I relate to my documents. This is essentially every term, person or word I would like to be more familiar with.)

Briefly about the encyclopedia

A quick way to add to a relational property without moving around pages is to highlight everything you want to move into the encyclopedia (control-shift-H), then upon the second inspection of the document, copy and paste the terms into the encyclopedia property like this: (use: @ to call inline link to new encyclopedia entry)

2. I then insert my header points

• Pin Emoji → General summary of the page

• Magnify Glass Emoji → Extra tidbits

• Yield Emoji → Complications associated

The table of contents (trigger: /TOC) is placed next to header points and a toggle (trigger: /TOG) hides the subject in my own words (a paragraph or two).

3. The body of my notes are written

In this case, I am analyzing a document. All highlights pique my interest. All linked terms are from the encyclopedia. All headers give a brief explanation of what a passage is communicating.

4. Footnotes are placed at the bottom

This is simply a link to my encyclopedia (trigger: /linktodata) with a filter that shows all entries associated with this particular page in alphabetical order.

Step 1AAA → Asess

• Assess productivity. Is one hour of sensory input equating to one hour of learning? Are there roadblocks interrupting comprehension? Is there prerequisite material you may need to learn or brush up on before diving into this new material?

  • assess energy level. What is draining energy in your cognitive process? Is it the television being on, working in a messy environment, annotation inconsistency, lack of direction?

Step 1AAAA → Articulate

• After learning each segment of information, build answers to aid pre-learning questions.

• Communicate the information to someone who knows nothing about it.

  • Develop custom "quiz" questions to revisit

  • Write a blog post about the new learning

  • Find a subreddit or forum community and help others who haven't yet fully understood what you just learned.

Periodically → Repeat

• Self assess prior knowledge in order to start a deep learning prospect. Use the annotation framework to access old material. Once you have knowledge of one concept and build more knowledge upon prior learnings, all past concepts become foggier and foggier. This is where something called spaced repetition comes in.

  • I use my pre-learning questions and encyclopedia from the example above to help build a list of questions that I hide inside toggles (trigger: /toggle). It looks something like this

Learn more about spaced repetition to create a repetition table. I suggest keeping track of progress with colorful trackers (ie. red for difficulty understanding to green for full understanding). Get creative with it.

Step 1AAAAA → Review

• Similarly to spaced repetition, reviewing will allow the learner to engage with notes continually through the learning process. For example, I may create a link in Notion for "Christopher Columbus." In my personal learning system, this annotation will be linked every time Christopher Columbus appears in my notes. This process forces me to quickly click on the "Christopher Columbus" page and briefly review every headline that associates with it. I do not test myself in this stage. I simply review, familiarize and refresh my memory.