Talk about strategies...

There's this book I've been reading........well, eating, sleeping, dreaming about these days. And though the book is desparately trying to teach me something wierd...er....tea? coffee...? beans?......ah, EJBs. Phew. But interestingly, what hangs on to my poor brain is a unique strategy the book claims to employ to make my brain hang on to what it's trying to say..........


We know what you're thinking
"How can this be a serious programming book?"
"What's with all the graphics?"
"Can I actually learn this way?"
"Do I smell pizza?"

And we know what your brain is thinking
Your brain craves novelty. It's always searching, scanning, waiting for something unusual. It was built this way. And it helps you stay alive.
Today, you're less likely to be a tiger snack. But you brain's still looking out. You just never know.
So what does your brain do with all the routine, ordinary things you encounter? Everything it can to stop them from interfering with the brain's real job-recording things that matter. It does'nt bother saving the boring things; they never make it past the "this is obviously not important" filter.
Now how does your brain know what's important? Suppose you're out for a day hike and a tiger jumps in front of you, what happens inside your head?
Nerons fire. Emotions crack up. Chemicals surge.
And that's how your brain knows...

This must be important! Don't forget it!
But imagine you're at home, or in a library. It's a safe, warm, relatively tiger-free zone. You're studying. Trying to learn some tough technical topics your boss thinks will take a week, ten days at the most.
Just one problem. Your brain's trying to do you a big favour. It's trying to make sure that this obviously non-important content does'nt clutter up scarce resources. Resources that are better spent storing the really big things. Like tigers. Like the danger of fire. Like how you would never again snowboard in shorts.
And there's no simple way to tell your brain, "Hey brain, thank you very much, but no matter how dull this book is, and how little I'm registering on the emotional richter scale right now, I really want you to keep this stuff around...


Well, then the preface goes on to explaining something boring called metacognition (read- the crux of the strategy), and how DO I get my brain to treat an EJB like a hungry tiger. This of course I'm unable to recollect.

An interesting strategy, but as you can see, a total failure in my case!