My key Takeaways : 1. Map between Problem Components and solution ideas(Mental Mapping Strategy) 2. Believe in what you are doing (Never compare yourself with others=> Everyone is Unique and have their own learning abilities and capabilities). 3. Practice Practice Practice and add mental mapping while you practice 4. Everything looks impossible until you try it
I always called that instinct, that feeling that clicks when I get to face a problem, it tells me that everything is kind of connected and that there are patterns everywhere. I really love that feeling of smoothness and fluidity that you get when you see a problem and already know how to solve it.
For me instinct is more primal and usually comes from another category. Like my brain gets intuition into things it’s done before but instinct is much more nebulous, (where the F did the brain came up with the instant thought even though I’ve never done or experienced this thing).
Personal summary: 1. Use intuition as an additional resource - don't fully rely on it 2. Be more mindful - meditation can also help with bettering your intuition 3. Be passionate - a motivated brain is a much more effective one
@@thegodofthenewworld4142 In the video, when speaking about passion, Colin meant that you should be passionate in whatever you want to better your intuition. He was giving an example of him using intuition in his personal vocation - competitive programming. So it's better for you to have a genuine desire to do that in which you want to excel intuitively.
@@AHeroWith1000Names but what if i don't have a passion for anything at all? i'm just existing as some vegetable and don't understand what is wrong with me my whole life, i don't even have a motivation to go eat something and always forgetting about it or just doesn't do anything
I’m an attorney and basically used your system of training my intuition to prepare for two bar exams. I only studied for ten days (for each exam) and passed both tests easily. Thank you for the great video.
@@chaudiep8274 Absolutely. The multistate bar exam is a multiple choice exam. There were several companies that offered large books of sample questions with an answer key that explained why each choice was either correct or incorrect. I just woke up each morning and did sample questions for 15 to 18 hours a days. By day four or five, patterns started to emerge and by day ten, I was performing significantly better compared to when I started.
I feel like extra-curriculars while growing up is so important. Because at my age (26 or so), I was able to transfer the intuition I learned from sports and music into my now, programming career. I am grateful for the introspection and patience pursuing sports and arts gave me. Because it gives nont-academic people like me a roadmap and still viable approach to technical problems like in software.
@@TheBruceKeller i've heard the term neuroplasticity before, but I never learned what it meant. can you explain it to me or direct me to a video that has valid information about it
My suggested heuristic: Play ‘20 questions’ or ‘Guess Who’, but with your problem I.e., Ask a question; then answer that question. Not even technical questions - start simple and work up in granularity/complexity (where complexity means how many different ideas are compounded/nested/taken as givens) Think about the objects, their properties, the relationships. Does the structure that arises resemble anything? In what ways could you argue that it differs? What would your argument be that it is similar enough that you can reuse what you know works with the analogous structure? I think this kind of incremental, paced, and discursive approach is very revealing. Having a gentle argument to-and-fro about each observation.
This video has made me realise that I do this exact process all the time without consciously thinking about it. It has also made me realise that I am really lazy with it and haven't achieved much. I have always been frustrated by the way teachers teach. They almost always use the slow method, it's never fast mapping. I have always found it more natural to start with a high-level concept that I do not understand as an entryway into the basic details, rather than to start with the details not knowing what they're all going to be used for. I believe the mind makes better use of information that it can assign an intended purpose to. I have always complained to my parents and told my mentors that they could just describe the whole thing to start and I would learn the details later, but they consistently told me that I was putting the cart before the horse. I heard many times that you must start with the foundation to build a house and that trying to skip important lessons could only be a detriment. Except I knew I wasn't trying to skip them, only perhaps have them presented to me rearranged. They wanted to teach their syllabus bottom-up, but I saw it upside-down.
Same here mate,same here.. Watched the video until 01:50,but yours is the same scenario as mine,except i don't got much people to hear me out & I gotta search things on my own.. Its hard cause it hasn't yield/paved a way yet -Disciple & regular habitual training/practice- is a must to learn & grow every particular skills (with enough sleep & nourishment) See ya there 😃🌟✨🙌 23.11.2022 04:00 pm ist
Your conception about intelligence is absolutely correct. Geniuses are people who started super young to practice. They didnt know everything, but started the search young and made this problem-solution association early.
This video sums up much of what I learnt from programming since I was 13, german university math and professional chess. At first you kind of feel stupid because you lack any kind of intuition, and you won’t develop it properly if you don’t constantly do problems at the edge of solvability and sometimes just check if your intuition was right for maximum efficiency.
I think I got good at programming when i would write stuff on my TI-84 calculator. I tried so many things on the edge of solvability like you say, driven by pure middle school desire to make my own games. I looked back at some of the TI-BASIC code now and have no idea what any of it is doing. I even learned ASM back then using a chart with all of the different operations and their hex codes.
You literally speak from my soul. I think intuition plays a central role in studying math and programming (that's what I do), if you train your intuition you will be very surprised what it is able to do. Solutions just flow as you see the problem. I would love to see studies on what the nature/nurture ratio is, I am sure it is not just nature as I for example did a lot of math in my early days. It might be just interest in problem solving which would again be a bit of nurture since you just reflect what your parents do. But yeah anyway great video, you got +1 sub
This is why I hate it when school always forces us to grind through boring masses of complicated problems we have only the faintest inkling of how to solve. I'd much rather just see a bunch of answers first, that way I can intuitively grasp what is needed to reason with the real problems.
When learning a programming language, I like to solve them first using an external resource. Then I read the code and why it makes sense, and then I do a similar problem. It helps so much, and saves a bunch of data into memory.
@@yadullahkurt2189 you train your intuition through gathering of knowledge. more specifically, understanding. shallow knowledge where you know the equation but not how it works does not help your intuition.
this video made me realize how underrated just reading the editorial is, i used to see it as a "i give up" button, but seeing as a way to improve the intuition faster is WAY more helpful.
The analogy that comes to my mind is connecting the dots. Not only are you recognizing patterns from past experiences, but instinctively knowing that the quickest route from one point to another is a straight line, the mind already suggests the quickest route to solving problems. Kind of like if you're running late to work and you had to figure out the fastest way there.. The trick is being mindful of patterns in every area of life, or in other words, being in listening mode instead of talking mode, or auto pilot...
I call this top-down learning, opposite of bottom-up learning (which is what's usually done in school etc. Top-down learning is good once basic concepts have been understood. For example a great way of learning how to build and app is to start with a simple app that someone else has made, then start poking around and explore how it works. Doing it this way i learn a lot faster than if i were to go with the bottom-up approach.
So true. A lot of people I know thinks I am crazy for writing code my self instead of copy and paste or using library's. When I don't understand how someones code works I will create my own version then compare it to there code. This method works great because it either helps me understand there code or I will find a better method.
12:38 Genetics matter more for peoples speed and confidence when learning something new. I would highly recommend "A Mind For Numbers" It's written by an engineering professor named Barbara Oakley and it goes into a lot of detail on the science around getting good at math/science. The intuition parts of this video sound very similar to the science the author presents on mathematical intuition. As far as the book says IQ is concerned, IQ lets you progress faster in STEM thanks to an improved ability to pick up and understand new information. People who aren't as gifted in their IQ can still get to be extremely good at STEM subjects, they just have to be prepared to spend more time and effort getting good in the first place, and it's going to be more difficult to keep up with the bleeding edge of their subjects in the long run. It's also important for slower learners to not compare themselves to really quick learners, a lot of people get discouraged and quit when they can't keep up with their peers as effortlessly as the smartest person in the room, but it's not really that big of a deal that it takes some extra effort to keep up at the end of the day.
agree with the genetics on speed and confidence part (though it can be independent on genetics aswell) highly doubt the IQ bit though... you can never measure general intelligence.
@@MrRand0mGamer you've no idea what you're talking about... reaction time and iq are nowhere correlated... spatial verbal and non verbal can be learnt..it all has a lot more to do with childhood upbringing rather than genetics..
@@aakarshan4644 You have no idea what you are talking about. I am not just making things up like you are. Reaction times have been studied along with IQ since Francis Galton in 1899 and many researchers since. Look at the work of Arthur Jensen who has done extensive research on it or look at the early work of Galton and G.M Whipple or most recently Ian Deary. You can't recruit people in the US military with an IQ of 83 and below for good reason. They tried that in the unpopular Vietnam War. Look up MacNamara's morons. These soldiers no matter how many tries lacked the reaction time to hit the targets in the time required in training. Many could not even understand the concept of throwing a grenade at an arc so as to hit a target on the ground. No matter how many times they tried to explain the trajectory of an arc with trying to get them to think of birds flying over head or whatever, could not prevent them from just throwing like a pitcher every time and missing the target. Actually bother to look into it before just saying I am wrong. Stop pretending to be an expert about something you never read any books on.
This is one of the best videos I have seen in a long time. No over the top intro. Straight to the point. Video is as long as it NEEDS to be. Covered all your points wonderfully AND you actually gave reasoning behind your points. So much more but god damn! For a while now I have been thinking about similar things discussed in the video. Related to talent and skill. People can have a natural level of talent. But practice (nurture) can bring someone else to the same level or even higher. You want to put all the good habits/fundamental principles into your subconscious (intuition) so that you can focus more of your attention to higher level things.
Did I point out that intuition is a third processor resident in your spirit - outside of the physical- and accessing knowledge from the spheres outside the physical alongside data in your unconscious and Left brain. Triple processing. Intuition creates instant knowledge in , for me, an almost nonverbal state. One ‘feels it’ and then, if confident enough, can express it.
That's a very cool technique, you inspired me a lot. Reasoning is like creating a new novel from 0 to 1000000000000 words, tedious but original. Intuition is like borrowing 10 novels you have read, taking relevant plots out from these 10 novels, then re-mixing them into your own novel.
This is the first video (and definitely not the last) that I've seen from you and I cannot agree with you more about being passionate about learning. This is something many people lack and it truly is so powerful. An inspired and passionate brain can truly achieve wonders.
This is why people benefit from re learning basics, you learn different ways of thinking about or applying things u 'know'. Especially useful in maths, learning Chinese, British, American and Indian approaches to teaching the same thing can be very useful
I 100% agree! Intuition, obviously, results from past experience, proved by many great psychologists, and philosophers. One tip here: always take truth inside otherwise intuition system will not be rigid which, eventually, will clatter your mind.
8:40 is how I revised for a lot of my exams through school without having to put in much effort so I could focus on stuff I was interested in lol, thanks for making it sound like a legit way of problem solving and not just laziness 😅
I did a little bit of this doing help desk work. At first you have no clue as to why something breaks but with enough exposure not only do you a) become familiar with the systems/context surrounding a problem and b) you create your own rules / patterns to look out for. Novel problems will require you to break new ground, but solving that old problem becomes an asset that you rely on for diagnosing future problems and creating solutions. As a plus, even if your intuition / hunch is wrong, you've become so efficient and prepared at analyzing it that it becomes trivial to keep going. In other words, you learn to "fail fast" versus going down a rabbit hole and getting stuck.
This was actually great advice. Most of mental training YT is something along the lines of "wanna read faster? just read faster". This had actual proof and practical advice, thanks!
The Discord pings were such a great example. I literally paused the video to check Discord instantly. This video is great, I really appreciate it!! I'm in my first year of Computer Science and I'm gonna do my best to put all of what I learned here into practice!
ive had issues with solving problems and arguing with myself. then you come onto my screen and explain the entire problem to me and how to fix it. you're one smart dude, dude
12:30 Yes, mindfulness practices can improve your ability to think as you are training your mind to be less distracted and more focused. Personally, not having my thoughts wonder as much as they used to really helps me during study and note taking. Nice video💯
Agreed. As someone with ADHD, breathing exercises or just being more in the present helps me to atleast be able to read a full paragraph without zoning out. Isn't as helpful in hour-long study sessions tho Only medications like Adderall help, but they have their own side effects :(
I’ve been making my own theories recently on how problem solving can be naturally improved through studying multiple subjects and applying it to other subjects so I’m glad this video showed up at this coincidental time
thank you for making this video man. for years, in my academic career i noticed that even though i practice A LOT before any crucial exams (i'm a slow learner lol), i usually didn't get my desired results. i didn't know where i was missing and questioned a lot about my studying technique, however i think i might've found the missing piece to the puzzle: developing "intuition". it all makes sense now.
Favorite video I've watched in a while. Ended so strong, you're so right about passion and feeling like you're in control, that's where the real fuel is.
Like literally the first thing he described about practicing it is NOT solving the problem but skipping ahead to the solution and thinking backwards in components. You're an edgey dunce
I don't comment very often, but i feel like i had to on this one. I just wanted to say that your video has given me a lot of new perspective and i really enjoyed every second of it. You my dear fellow have earned a new subscriber :D
i remember a time when i was practicing dp and gave a leetcode contest that week, scrolled through the questions and saw question 3 and it instantly clicked. Wrote its solution and submitted it in one go. That was the peak of me
Interestingly you put a lot into perspective for me. At school I wouldn't study a whole lot, but I'd cover the content within a few days before the tests / exams and look at the answers to questions rather than actually do the question. Might be why I still got very good grades with little effort
I paused right after 11:58 to mention this; It's like you've spoken to my soul and explained so much to me, things I already knew deep inside but couldn't explain, and connections I haven't seen. Thank you sir. In the spirit of the words of Richard Hamming, you have proven and shown me how to be great. Now I have no excuse in not doing so. Edit: I should have finished first because it got even better.
Thank you for this! I just started a new role that requires me to think more and solve problems on a daily basis. I was struggling at first since I didn’t really have that at my previous jobs, but I’m motivated to make those mental connections. Thanks again 🙏
This pretty much sums up what I was missing in my education and why I flunked high school. Despite that, if I wasn't talking with friends, my head would be in the clouds trying to imagine what 3-D cross sections of 4-D shapes would look like, or taking an imaginary trip around the solar system at relativistic speeds to understand speed and and it's relationship with time. I've always preferred training my intuition over memorizing names, dates, and formulas because it actually feels like I learned something.
As a kid I would play around with a game I started on my own out of intense boredom. Years later I would realise that this weird game somehow drastically improved my memory capacity. I'd read a page of a book and then try to rewrite it by memory alone the next day. I would spend hours forcing my memory. It was so difficult to try and convince myself to not just cheat and read the page again. This silly game somehow developed a slight degree of photographic memory. That to this day helps me to clearly recall memories, old textbooks, recent and decades old dreams, or whatever really, I just have to force the muscle memory until the information finally appears. I would often encourage others to not lazily search in google what's that song they have at the tip of their tongue. Instead focus your memory and try your best to remember. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, try harder. We have the technology, but we still need to train our brains properly in a regular basis.
When I was in 10th grade, I literally used my intuition in answering all my exams. Of course, I did study, but the thing that did the work was mostly my intuition because my brain is just feeding me all the equations to use although I haven't read them on my notes the night before examination.
Well put, most have acquired their intuition by practice. They are at a point where things come naturally, you throw a random problem and they almost instantly can sense the steps to take to slove it. People outside of this looked puzzled like "I can never be able to do that!". But the thing is, the whole motivation/passion is interesting to me, I don't know how it can be instilled in others that lack of it. It's good so far, yet people will be asking "Yeah, but how can I motivate myself?". Answer: by start practicing. "Yeah, but how can I motivate myself to start?", etc.. Maybe one answer is what you say, if passion/motivation is not there for a subject, maybe you need to look at another subject that attracts you more. Else, the "fake it till you make it" approach. But I am thinking, most of us got their initial start up from their childhood. I can't explain to someone who dreams of learning programming how I did it. If I also was to start into a new skill that is out of my league right now, it's hard to find the motivation at a later age. I might be thinking a bit in contrary to your nature-nurture model. I am glad to have certain skills but I know I haven't evolved others at a young age. But I never have chosen what to develop. It wasn't even family/education, because you might have cases of several brothers/sisters, some of them develop certain skills and others not. But they were in a similar environment. I mean,. I am not sure how much free will or lack of it plays a role at the younger age where you develop the inclinations for certain skills while being delayed/avoid others. I have some times people who ask me "Please teach me how to program, I would love to do what you can do. How is it even possible?" and I've tried but the majority if not developed at early age fail. They try to grasp some things sometimes but they don't focus their time enough to break the ice (as it's dedicated to other things in their life, possibly other skills they developed, even social activities). It's fascinating to thing about motivation/passion to get started, but it's a chicken/egg problem.
@@yadullahkurt2189 Also, besides my previous answer being ironically "practice" (the chicken and egg dilemma), one thing on the video that sounded interesting is sometimes you have to read the solution if you can't put yourself into finding the solution yourself. By reading several solutions you might get more ideas on how things work, so some intuition training might come from there, although it's good to train it by solving problems yourself too. But if you are not motivated with the later, maybe the first one of reading other people's work might help a bit.
> I don't know how it can be instilled in others that lack of it. It's good so far, yet people will be asking "Yeah, but how can I motivate myself?". Answer: by start practicing. "Yeah, but how can I motivate myself to start?", etc.. Here's what people don't realize. Motivation is not an absolute requirement to get things started. Its great to have but even those that have passion for things don't always have it. Once you get started & start to see some results, the motivation comes naturally. There is a lot of truth to 'the first step is always the hardest'.
@@per_scep_tivegamer879 I agree that the expectation of motivation is a trap. Sometimes, if you don't feel like it, you end up never starting. I know it myself, so I'll try to convince myself to start something even for 5 minutes. Then I see it flowing while it was hard to bootstart in the beginning. I know it and then the next days I don't apply it, it feels heavy before you start, then if you disregard the heaviness and start for few minutes anyway it goes away. Also, a common mistake is, to start with looking at social media/other pleasing stuff, like "I'll check something pleasing or eat something nice to get me in mood and then start". It takes you away, makes you avoid the unpleasant things. But if you keep on the unpleasant for few minutes, you end up getting used to it. For the day. And then I forget this the next day, I can't even make it into a habit.
This is true. What i learnt with programming is once i saw the solution for a problem, i never forgot it. Not forget it but basically i remembered it like an additional method or a way to solve a particular problem. When i saw a question which used this, i can use it intuitively without too much thinking. I think practice is the key here
I use this method every week for tests. It works wonders. Last year there was a really hard question in my math test and I couldnt solve it. I said to my subconcious "AYY bro solve this one for me, Imma solve the other ones." Then I came back to it. I was the only one who solved it.
I used a good practice method to get good at maths which was basically taking the topic we were learning, spending about an hour learning the topics we actually needed to know, doing some revision for the basics, and then I immediately moved on to much much harder questions. By making the stuff you want to memorise really well only a smaller part of the big picture, your brain remembers it much easier because it recognises it not as a challenge but a step to completing the challenge. I can usually spend about half the time doing this than I would doing studying with the regular revision and learn it to an equal or even better extent. Eg I'm doing trig in school at the moment and the vast majority of questions I'm asked are 2d, but I have been creating complex 3d diagrams and have been using intuition to try to solve a lot of it, I once even drew a 3d diagram in 2d and still solved the problem correctly even if it took way more steps. It's like weights, you could easily do a ton of reps of a low weight but if you're not pushing yourself you don't really get stronger, and your limits extend further if you do heavier weights, and you can now do that old weight way way easier and faster.
Thank you, this is what an improvement mindset looks like. I had a feeling about this as well and it applies to Information Technology as well in terms of problem solving. There is an IT intuition that I use for sure
big proponent of meditation here, helped me build a successful trading AI, something for which there is almost no useful information on the internet. So had to build and learn everything from scratch, intuition played the biggest role on my journey
Thank you for spreading good information with both clear articulation, and explanation. I paused the video several times to introspect, and build connection with everything you were saying. As I was absorbing your anecdotes and theories, I kept reflecting, along with reading the comment section. There's a lot I can comment about, (whether it's humour, motivation, editing, insight, & etc.), but once again, thank you sir. I look forward to making great use of what I learned today for the benefits of the future. I'll definitely save this video, and send it to some friends as well.
This is the part of "grinding leetcode" prospective engineers don't talk about. Some people who reached their goals would claim, "I just memorized the most recent problems". But there has to be some element of pattern matching taking place after the problem-solution mapping you're bringing up. Reading or hearing words, "find the shortest path" or "find the overlapping" immediately trigger a narrowed space of potential patterns to try out. Then when it comes to the nuance of a generally similar problem, the problem-solving part comes from trying out customizations to the model you "intuited" generally so they fit and prove your intuition. I think that's why general rules like, "start with an extremely large or extremely tiny example" are a go to technique, because they're quick to prove or disprove the first model you came up with. Glad to hear chunking and recall described, too. It's exactly how some musicians can replay an entire song by hearing it just a few times and taking a few notes. Or how quarterbacks memorize hundreds of plays. Thanks for articulating your thought process, definitely inspiring.
Well this just helped me understand my problem solving skills. In college, there was always that pressure of passing my class for my parents and scholarship reasons. Through that stress, I ultimately created a bad habit of only mapping. Sometimes I'd reason through a couple problem, but not nearly enough. Now having passed these high level math courses. I find myself wanting to go back and relearn and try to really understand these problems. This explains why I wasn't feeling smart for these classes even though I really enjoy learning math/coding. Removing myself from the school setting was all I needed. Just wish I could have known that before each class. Great video :)
I've been doing this for so long but didn't even realize until now! I am a non-native trying to learn English and Intuition helped me a lot in being advanced and speaking flawlessly with no grammatical mistakes For example, while using articles like “a” and “an” there's a rule that says you use “an” when the word begins with any of the sounds produced by “A, E, I, O, U” or vowels. It would be a pain in the ass if I was required to go through all of them and check if the word fits any of these and then come up with the answer to finally say it while speaking to someone. I would be taking a lot of pauses and conversations would be no less than a chore for me. This is what I used to do before in the beginning. Now I subconsciously use my intuition. I credit the number of books I've read, movies I've watched and UA-cam videos with English speaking creators like you etc and can just figure out the correct pronunciation in a fraction of a second. As mentioned in the video it's a “gut feeling”. I can just feel when a word doesn't feel right. “A apple” sounds a bit odd and weird. The words don't roll well together on my tongue. But when I say “an apple” everything makes sense. This also gives you an edge in the real world compared to those folks who do not reflect on their thoughts and just focus on the academic elements. Example, although “University” starts with a vowel you still say “a” University instead of “an” University. Because the U makes a Y sound. One pronounces it as “Yoo-niversity”. While you use “an” while saying “Umbrella” because it makes the regular “uh” sound. Like when you say “ultimate”. You don't say “Yooltimate” even tho it's not theoretically wrong. Any person who lacks intuition will fail this test as they have gone with whatever was taught in class and just crammed it. While someone with intuition will sense that “an” fits and sounds better here. Did I just simplify the sixth sense in words that even a child can understand it?! I indirectly just used the Feynman Technique 😆
It's like the system 1 and system 2 thing that Core-A-Gaming discusses in his videos about fighting games. You can apply this to a lot of skills that need to be learned. Plus learning to manage your mental stack, having the fundamentals you learn run intuitively under the hood so that you can focus on the more mentally demanding game of reading your opponents move. It's all about practice and recognizing situations and how to deal with them.
Life changing video for me because before this when I faced any problems of mathematics or general reasoning I go into the contemplation and my mind do shallow thinking and as consequences my ability to solve problems is Subpar.but this rational thinking give me idea of right way of fixing problem. My lessons - Reasoning < intuition And intuition come after practice so many times a certain number of problems and for this you have to a reasonable and logical mind so it's very parallel to each other. First you have to learn the fixing the pattern of problems and after that intuition come gradually
This explains why I am the way I am - I'm heavy insight and light on intuition naturally. Hence why I sucked at timed tests as a kid and this lead everybody to think I was stupid, but then conversely during this same time people were impressed with how deep and thorough my thinking went. I sit, contemplate, mull, chew on things for a long time before accepting conclusions, and it takes a long time for something to settle into my intuition.
This video is AMAZING. Best explanation I've ever gotten on practical intuition (i.e. pattern recognition). Never thought about there being a difference between Insight (slow brain reflection) and Intuiting (fast brain brain recognition).
Thank you, Colin, for making this video. For two years, I've been a psychology major in college and am working on a paper about problem-solving. This video helped me a lot to understand how we apply our problem-solving skills in a new situation.
Sometimes I find better success with some task (say, gaming) when distracted by some other task (a video, music), and I attribute it to isolating these fast and slow processes by putting them on separate tasks, and then there being contexts where my slow or fast process is just sooooo well attuned that it's better than using both. You mentioned IQ, and also kind of lightly touched on focus/clarity/flow without those words, but also something you can chew on is the connection between intuition training and language learning. Certainly also at minimum it is also a subconscious pattern detection instinct.
This might be reason why old people find it difficult to use smartphones as efficiently as younger generation. There is a conflict between the fast and slow processes making it difficult for one process to function optimally
I am a software developer. Falling asleep, I think about what I am working on. Sometimes I recall my dreams, often, not. But code falls off my fingertips when I get to work and I can't explain it, but it just works.
15:27 I think your wrong about this. Trying to motivate yourself by thinking of the end goal is only a very short term "solution". What you should do is convince yourself that you like the process itself. This can be done by thinking of the enjoyable parts of the thing and even by turning negatives into positives by switching how you think about the thing.
Intuition is simply behavior shaped by unanalyzed contingencies-or, put differently, some behavior has worked in the past in some situation but you haven’t thought about _why_ or _how_ it works, you can’t put into words that it _does_ work, or you might not even be aware that it _does_ work. (In that sense, all intuition is non-verbal in basis-you can’t express it in words.) I’m saying that to demystify intuition. This video contains excellent advice because, by exposing yourself to problems and the solutions, you’re exposing yourself to the situation (i.e., the problem) _and_ the behavior (i.e., the method involved in the solution) that might solve it.
I found that a good way to "unlock" intuition is to solve geometry problems, specifically euclidean geometry. Not only do they help you with visualization, but those problems require a good deal of intuition to solve efficiently so you are left with no other option but to develop your intuition
Okay so now I realise that intuition is what got me through my math exams in school! I was a super lazy kid, I almost never did homework but I always got good grades. I would study a bunch of math problems the day prior to the exam, all with their solutions (I never solved any myself) and then went to the exam and I INTUITIVELY knew how to solve it. It worked wonders for me at that time. But I never considered myself good at math and I never put the work to understand the reasoning behind all those problems and solutions. I just skimmed through these exams with my intuition
@@ABC-jq7ve I'm not an undergrad in math, I study law. But I don't follow this technique anymore in any area. I try to understand fully what I'm studying.
My notes: - Use intuition as a tool - Get yourself familiar with the questions as much as possible (deliberate practice) - Engage yourself with finding the answers (creating mental maps for problems and solutions) - Your memory will become better - If you find the solutions yourself - You spent enough time with the problem - You understand how the association and correlation works - Understand and create a mental map for how you solve a problem - Be mindful - See your life from a nurture perspective rather than nature (you control your future by controlling your present) - Workout/ exercise (personal addition) - Be motivated, the mental interest enhances the brain operations - Intelligence is like a muscle you have to build it (just like your body) - Good practice improves
the strat you use is exactly why i usually never do a math problem on paper twice instead just read the solution multiple times, only try the ones that are pretty much completely new and difficult . most people around me are like why do you read math, solve it.
Hey I do the same! It is so damn amazing and fascinating to hear someone use the same 'technique' as you. Honestly, you put it very eloquently and now I will send this video to anyone who asks me "How did you do it so fast" the next time haha. Great job. Also it makes me relieved that if I practice enough I can actually use it for my career like you and it is not some delusion I was having. 😂 Really, thank you! Intuition is such a beautiful gift of evolution and building it is like putting pieces in a puzzle (that one can call their 'mind map') after careful examination of those precious pieces. My favourite part is linking pieces from different subjects and disciplines. Like building bridges over rivers that seem uncrossable!
I agree about improving your intuition by reading lots of problems and solutions. That helped me gain a general solution overview so much quicker. It is easy to get stuck deep diving on one topic and that learning strategy helps you avoid that pitfall. Thanks for the great video.
I felt a bit confused and struggled to understand this video(bsc of My english comprehension) but my intuition tells me it has a lot to learn and apply for my situation. Your comment helps me a lot to get an idea about this video. I'm learning how to analyse data to generate insights for storytelling reports. I read and researched on other's projects and analysis and just knew how to create mine. I guess it's called intuition too, like figure out patterns from examples
I find that when I disassociate from myself and attach my ego to the larger identity of the world, my intuition throws at me solutions to the world's problems.
I can speak both with Programming and Chess: 1. In programming, you want to start with patterns that are easy, let's say Leetcode, you first try to understand the easy ones, if you already faced this in the past your intuition will click. Quicksort, Binary Search, Heap Sort, anything that it's a problem, if you dont know the pattern I would say spend as much as possible trying to understand the solution. 2. In Chess, you can do puzzles that would be the equivalent of problems in programming, you start with the easy ones and go through each of them multiple times, there is actually a book called the Woodpecker Method which start with Easy, Medium then hard puzzles, and you go through them each day, and repeat, the book force you to practice intuition since it pushes to do it in a faster time, also playing long time control Chess helps you because it engrained you Chess patterns and understand positions. Same can be said anything that requires critical thinking, practice makes perfect.
While I was learning to program, I started a job fixing electronics. The intuition I learned from solving problems really helped me learn programming. Now I’m university (in biology, totally unrelated) I find studying so much easier than when I was younger. I think doing those two things taught me discipline and intuition and that has been great for me!
I think the most important thing about problem solving is to not get trapped in your way of thinking. Most solutions can be found by just taking one or two mental steps. Going in a random direction at first (like the one your intuition is telling you) is totally fine even though it might be the wrong direction. But most people trust their intuition too much and try to go forward looking for the solution in that direction instead of going back to the start and take a completely different approach. I can't say if this also applies for programming but for real life problems, this is one of the most important things I've learned. If the solution doesn't come to you after going two steps in one mental direction, then it's most likely the wrong direction no matter what your intuition is telling you. That's also how you come up with ideas people call "creative". Because creative ideas are usually the ones that are far away from the direction your intuition wants you to go. Afterall they wouldn't be creative if every person thinks of them immediately, would they?
Such a fresh young face with such fresh young insights into intuition. What you're describing is closer to raw IQ than intuition. Those answers you believe have been intuited have actually been calculated by the infinite instantaneous "yous" but at such a fast rate your 8 bit reality buss has to append useless information like the memory of having thought the think.
I don't know if any other person commented the same. But, at least, the beggining has resulted me super familiar to the book "Fast & slow thinking" from Daniel Kahneman. I am reading it with a slow peace and is super in my opinion is super fun to read!! I recommend it to anyone, rigth now I just have 29 pages which is not a lot, is not nearly the beggining, but I mean, is already causing effect in the way I think. Wish anyone read this comment and yeah... I think that is everything I wanted to say! PD: nice video!!
I appreciate you making these videos.The concepts are familiar to me from before. But they way you put it together makes it easy for a lot of people to take it in.
The problem and solution section reminds me of a style of speed reading. Focusing on the beginning and ending of a sentence and letting the glance of your eyes “fill in” the rest.
Competitive coding feels more like pattern recognition and repetition than intuition and problem solving. Like being able to recognize patterns, and identifying which flavor of problem hints at the uses of which data structures etc. I mean Feynman even said this in his book for puzzles in general. The hardest part is figuring out a puzzle for the first time, the rest seems like just recognizing combinations and variations of the same puzzles youve already solved/now memorized
Your way of approaching passion, or general emotions related to the logic process, corelates so much with the Viktor Frankl theory. That theory, written on man search's of meaning, consist basically on finding a meaning in life in general, but mainly in many different tiny (or seemingly not relevant) situations. Like you said, passion is a huge factor tp activate your mind. That sense of accessible challenge is possible both through passion and/or belief, which in this case can be brought by meaning. So yes, you also got it right, logically, about the Viktor Frankl's theory. Prompts for the way you approach things!
Really felt it when you said that some ideas just come to you out of nowhere. I love math and I take a lot of extra classes at school and we solve significantly harder problems than the average difficulty level. So when I'm staring at the problem for a bit it has been too often that I feel like I got an idea, start trying to write it down and then I'm like "Wait no, huh? What the heck??" lol
@@Kumalala2007 Unfortunately you are older than me so I don't think I'd be of much use to you, but you can tell me what you're struggling with and I'll look into it and try to help you! I can also give you some very basic, but effective tips that have helped me get better at math. Firstly I always make sure that I make use of everything that I can. For example if I don't understand a something from the teacher, nor from my workbook. Then I'd try UA-cam or other sites(I use Khan Academy a lot, but idk if it's for all languages). When you think you kinda understand a concept it's time for you to practise, practise and practise. I do all practise problems from my school books and online sources + practise/revision tests if we're approaching a test. While I do these problems, when I get something wrong I always mark it. Then I try to explain to myself why it's wrong and if I succeed I move on. I still leave the mark, so before a test I can go through the ones I have initially gotten wrong to see if I'll get them wrong again. However, if I can't explain a problem to myself, I start searching through all my resorses available. If I still can't figure it out, I ask a teacher or a classmate for help. Keep in mind that I also go to a private tutor for math and I ask her for help with such problems. Math is something you have to very consistent in. It's a constant build up, so if you didn't understand something in the past, it most likely will come and bite you in the future. If there's anything else I can help you with, please don't be afraid to ask. I'll try to help as best as I can
i think this video just changed my life. this is exactly how my brain used to just naturally function with math, but after dropping out my senior year from a bad depressive episode in the middle of covid and taking a gap year, im now in my second semester of college and ive been feeling so stupid since my natural learning ability in my youth was the center of my confidence in my intelligence(grades were awful because of undiagnosed adhd combined with dysfunctional home life, test scores great since i learned fast). as ive been watching this it resonated so deeply and it immediately clicked that all i have to do is re-train my brain how to do this as i fill in the gaps i forgot in math. thank you so much for this.
lol ironically or maybe not so ironically I was looking was for someone to describe the way my intuition feels so I could see a pattern and validate that I’m not crazy. This is an unlock for me!
The subconscious is the ultimate computer. Cognition is the keyboard. Every point this man made is perfect.
the subconscious is the creator of your own reality👍
Meat riding here is crazy
Cognition would better be CPU, and sight and movement can be keyboard haha
What does that even mean?
@@greatcesari It's just wordvomit as usual.
My key Takeaways :
1. Map between Problem Components and solution ideas(Mental Mapping Strategy)
2. Believe in what you are doing (Never compare yourself with others=> Everyone is Unique and have their own learning abilities and capabilities).
3. Practice Practice Practice and add mental mapping while you practice
4. Everything looks impossible until you try it
I always called that instinct, that feeling that clicks when I get to face a problem, it tells me that everything is kind of connected and that there are patterns everywhere. I really love that feeling of smoothness and fluidity that you get when you see a problem and already know how to solve it.
You described exactly what I feel when I'm programming some backend services
@@electricimpulsetoprogramming YES
For me instinct is more primal and usually comes from another category. Like my brain gets intuition into things it’s done before but instinct is much more nebulous, (where the F did the brain came up with the instant thought even though I’ve never done or experienced this thing).
Jesus loves you guys! He died on the cross for our sins! Repent and live for God before it's too late 🙏
@@electricimpulsetoprogramming Do you enjoy backend? Thinking about learning programming for a new career.
“change your future’s past” is a cool phrase i haven’t heard before. gonna start using that
In what situation are you gonna use it?
@@MiyamotoMusakaki been a year and still haven’t used it lol. but i do like it tho
@@MiyamotoMusakakito write a song maybe
Personal summary:
1. Use intuition as an additional resource - don't fully rely on it
2. Be more mindful - meditation can also help with bettering your intuition
3. Be passionate - a motivated brain is a much more effective one
thx
How do I be passionate??
@@thegodofthenewworld4142 In the video, when speaking about passion, Colin meant that you should be passionate in whatever you want to better your intuition. He was giving an example of him using intuition in his personal vocation - competitive programming. So it's better for you to have a genuine desire to do that in which you want to excel intuitively.
I think you forgot the big one: memory.
He basically did so many problems that they are now ingravated in his memory.
@@AHeroWith1000Names but what if i don't have a passion for anything at all? i'm just existing as some vegetable and don't understand what is wrong with me my whole life, i don't even have a motivation to go eat something and always forgetting about it or just doesn't do anything
I’m an attorney and basically used your system of training my intuition to prepare for two bar exams. I only studied for ten days (for each exam) and passed both tests easily. Thank you for the great video.
proud of you!!
Well done, Turd.
@@golfinonotturno9697😮
Can you share how you train your intuition to pass both tests with just 10 days preparation??
@@chaudiep8274 Absolutely. The multistate bar exam is a multiple choice exam. There were several companies that offered large books of sample questions with an answer key that explained why each choice was either correct or incorrect. I just woke up each morning and did sample questions for 15 to 18 hours a days. By day four or five, patterns started to emerge and by day ten, I was performing significantly better compared to when I started.
I feel like extra-curriculars while growing up is so important.
Because at my age (26 or so), I was able to transfer the intuition I learned from sports and music into my now, programming career.
I am grateful for the introspection and patience pursuing sports and arts gave me.
Because it gives nont-academic people like me a roadmap and still viable approach to technical problems like in software.
Also, just the more well rounded your experience is while you are near maximum neuroplasticity, the better apparently.
@@TheBruceKeller awesome point 😃
@@TheBruceKeller i've heard the term neuroplasticity before, but I never learned what it meant. can you explain it to me or direct me to a video that has valid information about it
@@mistadude It's your brain's ability to change, neuro = brain, plasticity = easily shaped. Huberman's Lab talks about it pretty much every podcast.
I agree a lot with you
My suggested heuristic:
Play ‘20 questions’ or ‘Guess Who’, but with your problem
I.e., Ask a question; then answer that question. Not even technical questions - start simple and work up in granularity/complexity (where complexity means how many different ideas are compounded/nested/taken as givens)
Think about the objects, their properties, the relationships. Does the structure that arises resemble anything? In what ways could you argue that it differs? What would your argument be that it is similar enough that you can reuse what you know works with the analogous structure?
I think this kind of incremental, paced, and discursive approach is very revealing. Having a gentle argument to-and-fro about each observation.
This video has made me realise that I do this exact process all the time without consciously thinking about it. It has also made me realise that I am really lazy with it and haven't achieved much. I have always been frustrated by the way teachers teach. They almost always use the slow method, it's never fast mapping. I have always found it more natural to start with a high-level concept that I do not understand as an entryway into the basic details, rather than to start with the details not knowing what they're all going to be used for. I believe the mind makes better use of information that it can assign an intended purpose to. I have always complained to my parents and told my mentors that they could just describe the whole thing to start and I would learn the details later, but they consistently told me that I was putting the cart before the horse. I heard many times that you must start with the foundation to build a house and that trying to skip important lessons could only be a detriment. Except I knew I wasn't trying to skip them, only perhaps have them presented to me rearranged. They wanted to teach their syllabus bottom-up, but I saw it upside-down.
that last line is hard asl
Same here mate,same here..
Watched the video until 01:50,but yours is the same scenario as mine,except i don't got much people to hear me out &
I gotta search things on my own..
Its hard cause it hasn't yield/paved a way yet -Disciple & regular habitual training/practice- is a must to learn & grow every particular skills (with enough sleep & nourishment)
See ya there 😃🌟✨🙌
23.11.2022 04:00 pm ist
so bso what you meant is to see the bigger picture of what you want to learn?
@@salmantorik6091 Yeah.
how do you see the general overview and then you fill with the details?
Your conception about intelligence is absolutely correct. Geniuses are people who started super young to practice. They didnt know everything, but started the search young and made this problem-solution association early.
This video sums up much of what I learnt from programming since I was 13, german university math and professional chess. At first you kind of feel stupid because you lack any kind of intuition, and you won’t develop it properly if you don’t constantly do problems at the edge of solvability and sometimes just check if your intuition was right for maximum efficiency.
There is a reason Kramnik always recommended slow chess because it helps your understanding.
I think I got good at programming when i would write stuff on my TI-84 calculator. I tried so many things on the edge of solvability like you say, driven by pure middle school desire to make my own games. I looked back at some of the TI-BASIC code now and have no idea what any of it is doing. I even learned ASM back then using a chart with all of the different operations and their hex codes.
Ive been called dumb my whole life and im trying to prove them wrong. Thank you colin.
"been trapped in this basement for five years" killed me lmfao
ikr
you're overreacting
You just missed the "Help I've ..."
saw it too xD
lol I saw it too!
I love how much you're pointing out that passion is needed in order to succeed and get better at something
I don’t have passion but bills to pay😂
@@LiberatedNotes then ur the guy who will work for me
@@drownedwhale i dont mind until i get paid and get to spend it doing things i love
@@LiberatedNotes I mean yea maybe ur perspective is diffrent its all good
You literally speak from my soul. I think intuition plays a central role in studying math and programming (that's what I do), if you train your intuition you will be very surprised what it is able to do. Solutions just flow as you see the problem. I would love to see studies on what the nature/nurture ratio is, I am sure it is not just nature as I for example did a lot of math in my early days. It might be just interest in problem solving which would again be a bit of nurture since you just reflect what your parents do. But yeah anyway great video, you got +1 sub
This is why I hate it when school always forces us to grind through boring masses of complicated problems we have only the faintest inkling of how to solve. I'd much rather just see a bunch of answers first, that way I can intuitively grasp what is needed to reason with the real problems.
When learning a programming language, I like to solve them first using an external resource. Then I read the code and why it makes sense, and then I do a similar problem. It helps so much, and saves a bunch of data into memory.
still i don't get it. how we train our intuition? it's like touching the clouds? metaphysics?
@@yadullahkurt2189 you train your intuition through gathering of knowledge. more specifically, understanding. shallow knowledge where you know the equation but not how it works does not help your intuition.
@@descai10 thanks for reply. Then please tell me what is the difference between the two terms "intuition" and "experience"
this video made me realize how underrated just reading the editorial is, i used to see it as a "i give up" button, but seeing as a way to improve the intuition faster is WAY more helpful.
The analogy that comes to my mind is connecting the dots. Not only are you recognizing patterns from past experiences, but instinctively knowing that the quickest route from one point to another is a straight line, the mind already suggests the quickest route to solving problems. Kind of like if you're running late to work and you had to figure out the fastest way there.. The trick is being mindful of patterns in every area of life, or in other words, being in listening mode instead of talking mode, or auto pilot...
I call this top-down learning, opposite of bottom-up learning (which is what's usually done in school etc. Top-down learning is good once basic concepts have been understood. For example a great way of learning how to build and app is to start with a simple app that someone else has made, then start poking around and explore how it works.
Doing it this way i learn a lot faster than if i were to go with the bottom-up approach.
So true. A lot of people I know thinks I am crazy for writing code my self instead of copy and paste or using library's. When I don't understand how someones code works I will create my own version then compare it to there code. This method works great because it either helps me understand there code or I will find a better method.
Kinda true, it doesn't matter what the topic is, jumping into the deep water will pretty much always be the better option
@@spbspb2413damn right!
Not very easy to find pep talk backed up with CONVINCING reasoning, this actually has the potential to drastically truly change mindsets
12:38 Genetics matter more for peoples speed and confidence when learning something new. I would highly recommend "A Mind For Numbers" It's written by an engineering professor named Barbara Oakley and it goes into a lot of detail on the science around getting good at math/science. The intuition parts of this video sound very similar to the science the author presents on mathematical intuition.
As far as the book says IQ is concerned, IQ lets you progress faster in STEM thanks to an improved ability to pick up and understand new information. People who aren't as gifted in their IQ can still get to be extremely good at STEM subjects, they just have to be prepared to spend more time and effort getting good in the first place, and it's going to be more difficult to keep up with the bleeding edge of their subjects in the long run. It's also important for slower learners to not compare themselves to really quick learners, a lot of people get discouraged and quit when they can't keep up with their peers as effortlessly as the smartest person in the room, but it's not really that big of a deal that it takes some extra effort to keep up at the end of the day.
😮👌
agree with the genetics on speed and confidence part (though it can be independent on genetics aswell) highly doubt the IQ bit though... you can never measure general intelligence.
@@aakarshan4644 you can measure IQ with reaction times alone
@@MrRand0mGamer you've no idea what you're talking about... reaction time and iq are nowhere correlated... spatial verbal and non verbal can be learnt..it all has a lot more to do with childhood upbringing rather than genetics..
@@aakarshan4644 You have no idea what you are talking about. I am not just making things up like you are. Reaction times have been studied along with IQ since Francis Galton in 1899 and many researchers since. Look at the work of Arthur Jensen who has done extensive research on it or look at the early work of Galton and G.M Whipple or most recently Ian Deary. You can't recruit people in the US military with an IQ of 83 and below for good reason. They tried that in the unpopular Vietnam War. Look up MacNamara's morons. These soldiers no matter how many tries lacked the reaction time to hit the targets in the time required in training. Many could not even understand the concept of throwing a grenade at an arc so as to hit a target on the ground. No matter how many times they tried to explain the trajectory of an arc with trying to get them to think of birds flying over head or whatever, could not prevent them from just throwing like a pitcher every time and missing the target. Actually bother to look into it before just saying I am wrong. Stop pretending to be an expert about something you never read any books on.
This is one of the best videos I have seen in a long time. No over the top intro. Straight to the point. Video is as long as it NEEDS to be. Covered all your points wonderfully AND you actually gave reasoning behind your points. So much more but god damn!
For a while now I have been thinking about similar things discussed in the video. Related to talent and skill. People can have a natural level of talent. But practice (nurture) can bring someone else to the same level or even higher. You want to put all the good habits/fundamental principles into your subconscious (intuition) so that you can focus more of your attention to higher level things.
Thats so true
Did I point out that intuition is a third processor resident in your spirit - outside of the physical- and accessing knowledge from the spheres outside the physical alongside data in your unconscious and Left brain. Triple processing. Intuition creates instant knowledge in , for me, an almost nonverbal state. One ‘feels it’ and then, if confident enough, can express it.
It helps if your practice is primarily nonverbal so cognition does not block intuition.
That's a very cool technique, you inspired me a lot.
Reasoning is like creating a new novel from 0 to 1000000000000 words, tedious but original.
Intuition is like borrowing 10 novels you have read, taking relevant plots out from these 10 novels, then re-mixing them into your own novel.
This is the first video (and definitely not the last) that I've seen from you and I cannot agree with you more about being passionate about learning. This is something many people lack and it truly is so powerful. An inspired and passionate brain can truly achieve wonders.
You’re generally one of the few people whom I feel comfortable, listening to actually talk from a deep intellectual well, and I appreciate it
This is why people benefit from re learning basics, you learn different ways of thinking about or applying things u 'know'. Especially useful in maths, learning Chinese, British, American and Indian approaches to teaching the same thing can be very useful
I have been recommended this video 12 times.... god wants me to unlock this ability
I 100% agree! Intuition, obviously, results from past experience, proved by many great psychologists, and philosophers. One tip here: always take truth inside otherwise intuition system will not be rigid which, eventually, will clatter your mind.
8:40 is how I revised for a lot of my exams through school without having to put in much effort so I could focus on stuff I was interested in lol, thanks for making it sound like a legit way of problem solving and not just laziness 😅
4:40 7th line (6th by 0-indexing) "I have been trapped in this basement for five years". Somebody save him!
GO save Colin !!!!
Haha
“You’re in control of your life. Even if it’s not true, it’s helpful” I love that
I did a little bit of this doing help desk work. At first you have no clue as to why something breaks but with enough exposure not only do you a) become familiar with the systems/context surrounding a problem and b) you create your own rules / patterns to look out for.
Novel problems will require you to break new ground, but solving that old problem becomes an asset that you rely on for diagnosing future problems and creating solutions.
As a plus, even if your intuition / hunch is wrong, you've become so efficient and prepared at analyzing it that it becomes trivial to keep going. In other words, you learn to "fail fast" versus going down a rabbit hole and getting stuck.
This was actually great advice. Most of mental training YT is something along the lines of "wanna read faster? just read faster". This had actual proof and practical advice, thanks!
The Discord pings were such a great example. I literally paused the video to check Discord instantly.
This video is great, I really appreciate it!! I'm in my first year of Computer Science and I'm gonna do my best to put all of what I learned here into practice!
ive had issues with solving problems and arguing with myself. then you come onto my screen and explain the entire problem to me and how to fix it. you're one smart dude, dude
12:30 Yes, mindfulness practices can improve your ability to think as you are training your mind to be less distracted and more focused. Personally, not having my thoughts wonder as much as they used to really helps me during study and note taking. Nice video💯
Agreed. As someone with ADHD, breathing exercises or just being more in the present helps me to atleast be able to read a full paragraph without zoning out. Isn't as helpful in hour-long study sessions tho
Only medications like Adderall help, but they have their own side effects :(
I’ve been making my own theories recently on how problem solving can be naturally improved through studying multiple subjects and applying it to other subjects so I’m glad this video showed up at this coincidental time
IQ PREDICTS success at the school system. Not reasoning. That capacity to learn will increase with application.
thank you for making this video man. for years, in my academic career i noticed that even though i practice A LOT before any crucial exams (i'm a slow learner lol), i usually didn't get my desired results. i didn't know where i was missing and questioned a lot about my studying technique, however i think i might've found the missing piece to the puzzle: developing "intuition". it all makes sense now.
Favorite video I've watched in a while. Ended so strong, you're so right about passion and feeling like you're in control, that's where the real fuel is.
so you get better at problem-solving by solving problems! wow, didn't see that coming
Like literally the first thing he described about practicing it is NOT solving the problem but skipping ahead to the solution and thinking backwards in components. You're an edgey dunce
I don't comment very often, but i feel like i had to on this one. I just wanted to say that your video has given me a lot of new perspective and i really enjoyed every second of it. You my dear fellow have earned a new subscriber :D
i remember a time when i was practicing dp and gave a leetcode contest that week, scrolled through the questions and saw question 3 and it instantly clicked. Wrote its solution and submitted it in one go. That was the peak of me
Interestingly you put a lot into perspective for me. At school I wouldn't study a whole lot, but I'd cover the content within a few days before the tests / exams and look at the answers to questions rather than actually do the question. Might be why I still got very good grades with little effort
Thank you so much asian jesus 🙏
He isn’t Jesus only Jesus is Jesus
I paused right after 11:58 to mention this; It's like you've spoken to my soul and explained so much to me, things I already knew deep inside but couldn't explain, and connections I haven't seen. Thank you sir. In the spirit of the words of Richard Hamming, you have proven and shown me how to be great. Now I have no excuse in not doing so.
Edit: I should have finished first because it got even better.
Thank you for this! I just started a new role that requires me to think more and solve problems on a daily basis. I was struggling at first since I didn’t really have that at my previous jobs, but I’m motivated to make those mental connections. Thanks again 🙏
This pretty much sums up what I was missing in my education and why I flunked high school. Despite that, if I wasn't talking with friends, my head would be in the clouds trying to imagine what 3-D cross sections of 4-D shapes would look like, or taking an imaginary trip around the solar system at relativistic speeds to understand speed and and it's relationship with time. I've always preferred training my intuition over memorizing names, dates, and formulas because it actually feels like I learned something.
The concepts in high school are very basic.
As a kid I would play around with a game I started on my own out of intense boredom. Years later I would realise that this weird game somehow drastically improved my memory capacity.
I'd read a page of a book and then try to rewrite it by memory alone the next day.
I would spend hours forcing my memory. It was so difficult to try and convince myself to not just cheat and read the page again.
This silly game somehow developed a slight degree of photographic memory. That to this day helps me to clearly recall memories, old textbooks, recent and decades old dreams, or whatever really, I just have to force the muscle memory until the information finally appears.
I would often encourage others to not lazily search in google what's that song they have at the tip of their tongue. Instead focus your memory and try your best to remember.
Where was I going with this?
Oh yeah, try harder. We have the technology, but we still need to train our brains properly in a regular basis.
Loved the last part 😂
This is such an empathetic video.
Loved it and going to be playing it on repeat for the next couple of hours.
Keep at this please, more insights!
When I was in 10th grade, I literally used my intuition in answering all my exams. Of course, I did study, but the thing that did the work was mostly my intuition because my brain is just feeding me all the equations to use although I haven't read them on my notes the night before examination.
Well put, most have acquired their intuition by practice. They are at a point where things come naturally, you throw a random problem and they almost instantly can sense the steps to take to slove it. People outside of this looked puzzled like "I can never be able to do that!". But the thing is, the whole motivation/passion is interesting to me, I don't know how it can be instilled in others that lack of it. It's good so far, yet people will be asking "Yeah, but how can I motivate myself?". Answer: by start practicing. "Yeah, but how can I motivate myself to start?", etc..
Maybe one answer is what you say, if passion/motivation is not there for a subject, maybe you need to look at another subject that attracts you more. Else, the "fake it till you make it" approach. But I am thinking, most of us got their initial start up from their childhood. I can't explain to someone who dreams of learning programming how I did it. If I also was to start into a new skill that is out of my league right now, it's hard to find the motivation at a later age. I might be thinking a bit in contrary to your nature-nurture model. I am glad to have certain skills but I know I haven't evolved others at a young age. But I never have chosen what to develop. It wasn't even family/education, because you might have cases of several brothers/sisters, some of them develop certain skills and others not. But they were in a similar environment. I mean,. I am not sure how much free will or lack of it plays a role at the younger age where you develop the inclinations for certain skills while being delayed/avoid others.
I have some times people who ask me "Please teach me how to program, I would love to do what you can do. How is it even possible?" and I've tried but the majority if not developed at early age fail. They try to grasp some things sometimes but they don't focus their time enough to break the ice (as it's dedicated to other things in their life, possibly other skills they developed, even social activities). It's fascinating to thing about motivation/passion to get started, but it's a chicken/egg problem.
hi, how we practice our intuition? can you give me summary?
@@yadullahkurt2189 practice
@@yadullahkurt2189 Also, besides my previous answer being ironically "practice" (the chicken and egg dilemma), one thing on the video that sounded interesting is sometimes you have to read the solution if you can't put yourself into finding the solution yourself. By reading several solutions you might get more ideas on how things work, so some intuition training might come from there, although it's good to train it by solving problems yourself too. But if you are not motivated with the later, maybe the first one of reading other people's work might help a bit.
> I don't know how it can be instilled in others that lack of it. It's good so far, yet people will be asking "Yeah, but how can I motivate myself?". Answer: by start practicing. "Yeah, but how can I motivate myself to start?", etc..
Here's what people don't realize. Motivation is not an absolute requirement to get things started. Its great to have but even those that have passion for things don't always have it.
Once you get started & start to see some results, the motivation comes naturally. There is a lot of truth to 'the first step is always the hardest'.
@@per_scep_tivegamer879 I agree that the expectation of motivation is a trap. Sometimes, if you don't feel like it, you end up never starting. I know it myself, so I'll try to convince myself to start something even for 5 minutes. Then I see it flowing while it was hard to bootstart in the beginning. I know it and then the next days I don't apply it, it feels heavy before you start, then if you disregard the heaviness and start for few minutes anyway it goes away. Also, a common mistake is, to start with looking at social media/other pleasing stuff, like "I'll check something pleasing or eat something nice to get me in mood and then start". It takes you away, makes you avoid the unpleasant things. But if you keep on the unpleasant for few minutes, you end up getting used to it. For the day. And then I forget this the next day, I can't even make it into a habit.
This is true. What i learnt with programming is once i saw the solution for a problem, i never forgot it. Not forget it but basically i remembered it like an additional method or a way to solve a particular problem. When i saw a question which used this, i can use it intuitively without too much thinking. I think practice is the key here
I use this method every week for tests. It works wonders. Last year there was a really hard question in my math test and I couldnt solve it. I said to my subconcious "AYY bro solve this one for me, Imma solve the other ones." Then I came back to it. I was the only one who solved it.
I used a good practice method to get good at maths which was basically taking the topic we were learning, spending about an hour learning the topics we actually needed to know, doing some revision for the basics, and then I immediately moved on to much much harder questions. By making the stuff you want to memorise really well only a smaller part of the big picture, your brain remembers it much easier because it recognises it not as a challenge but a step to completing the challenge. I can usually spend about half the time doing this than I would doing studying with the regular revision and learn it to an equal or even better extent.
Eg I'm doing trig in school at the moment and the vast majority of questions I'm asked are 2d, but I have been creating complex 3d diagrams and have been using intuition to try to solve a lot of it, I once even drew a 3d diagram in 2d and still solved the problem correctly even if it took way more steps. It's like weights, you could easily do a ton of reps of a low weight but if you're not pushing yourself you don't really get stronger, and your limits extend further if you do heavier weights, and you can now do that old weight way way easier and faster.
Thank you, this is what an improvement mindset looks like. I had a feeling about this as well and it applies to Information Technology as well in terms of problem solving. There is an IT intuition that I use for sure
big proponent of meditation here, helped me build a successful trading AI, something for which there is almost no useful information on the internet. So had to build and learn everything from scratch, intuition played the biggest role on my journey
Thank you for spreading good information with both clear articulation, and explanation. I paused the video several times to introspect, and build connection with everything you were saying. As I was absorbing your anecdotes and theories, I kept reflecting, along with reading the comment section. There's a lot I can comment about, (whether it's humour, motivation, editing, insight, & etc.), but once again, thank you sir. I look forward to making great use of what I learned today for the benefits of the future. I'll definitely save this video, and send it to some friends as well.
This is the part of "grinding leetcode" prospective engineers don't talk about. Some people who reached their goals would claim, "I just memorized the most recent problems". But there has to be some element of pattern matching taking place after the problem-solution mapping you're bringing up. Reading or hearing words, "find the shortest path" or "find the overlapping" immediately trigger a narrowed space of potential patterns to try out. Then when it comes to the nuance of a generally similar problem, the problem-solving part comes from trying out customizations to the model you "intuited" generally so they fit and prove your intuition. I think that's why general rules like, "start with an extremely large or extremely tiny example" are a go to technique, because they're quick to prove or disprove the first model you came up with. Glad to hear chunking and recall described, too. It's exactly how some musicians can replay an entire song by hearing it just a few times and taking a few notes. Or how quarterbacks memorize hundreds of plays. Thanks for articulating your thought process, definitely inspiring.
Well this just helped me understand my problem solving skills. In college, there was always that pressure of passing my class for my parents and scholarship reasons. Through that stress, I ultimately created a bad habit of only mapping. Sometimes I'd reason through a couple problem, but not nearly enough. Now having passed these high level math courses. I find myself wanting to go back and relearn and try to really understand these problems. This explains why I wasn't feeling smart for these classes even though I really enjoy learning math/coding. Removing myself from the school setting was all I needed. Just wish I could have known that before each class. Great video :)
I've been doing this for so long but didn't even realize until now! I am a non-native trying to learn English and Intuition helped me a lot in being advanced and speaking flawlessly with no grammatical mistakes
For example, while using articles like “a” and “an” there's a rule that says you use “an” when the word begins with any of the sounds produced by “A, E, I, O, U” or vowels. It would be a pain in the ass if I was required to go through all of them and check if the word fits any of these and then come up with the answer to finally say it while speaking to someone. I would be taking a lot of pauses and conversations would be no less than a chore for me. This is what I used to do before in the beginning. Now I subconsciously use my intuition. I credit the number of books I've read, movies I've watched and UA-cam videos with English speaking creators like you etc and can just figure out the correct pronunciation in a fraction of a second. As mentioned in the video it's a “gut feeling”. I can just feel when a word doesn't feel right.
“A apple” sounds a bit odd and weird. The words don't roll well together on my tongue. But when I say “an apple” everything makes sense.
This also gives you an edge in the real world compared to those folks who do not reflect on their thoughts and just focus on the academic elements.
Example, although “University” starts with a vowel you still say “a” University instead of “an” University. Because the U makes a Y sound. One pronounces it as “Yoo-niversity”. While you use “an” while saying “Umbrella” because it makes the regular “uh” sound. Like when you say “ultimate”. You don't say “Yooltimate” even tho it's not theoretically wrong. Any person who lacks intuition will fail this test as they have gone with whatever was taught in class and just crammed it. While someone with intuition will sense that “an” fits and sounds better here.
Did I just simplify the sixth sense in words that even a child can understand it?! I indirectly just used the Feynman Technique 😆
yes that's why english is bullshit.
It's like the system 1 and system 2 thing that Core-A-Gaming discusses in his videos about fighting games. You can apply this to a lot of skills that need to be learned. Plus learning to manage your mental stack, having the fundamentals you learn run intuitively under the hood so that you can focus on the more mentally demanding game of reading your opponents move. It's all about practice and recognizing situations and how to deal with them.
Life changing video for me because before this when I faced any problems of mathematics or general reasoning I go into the contemplation and my mind do shallow thinking and as consequences my ability to solve problems is Subpar.but this rational thinking give me idea of right way of fixing problem.
My lessons -
Reasoning < intuition
And intuition come after practice so many times a certain number of problems and for this you have to a reasonable and logical mind so it's very parallel to each other.
First you have to learn the fixing the pattern of problems and after that intuition come gradually
This explains why I am the way I am - I'm heavy insight and light on intuition naturally. Hence why I sucked at timed tests as a kid and this lead everybody to think I was stupid, but then conversely during this same time people were impressed with how deep and thorough my thinking went. I sit, contemplate, mull, chew on things for a long time before accepting conclusions, and it takes a long time for something to settle into my intuition.
This video is AMAZING. Best explanation I've ever gotten on practical intuition (i.e. pattern recognition). Never thought about there being a difference between Insight (slow brain reflection) and Intuiting (fast brain brain recognition).
Yes! Thank you for this insightful video. I found it very useful and informative! :D
Thank you, Colin, for making this video. For two years, I've been a psychology major in college and am working on a paper about problem-solving. This video helped me a lot to understand how we apply our problem-solving skills in a new situation.
Sometimes I find better success with some task (say, gaming) when distracted by some other task (a video, music), and I attribute it to isolating these fast and slow processes by putting them on separate tasks, and then there being contexts where my slow or fast process is just sooooo well attuned that it's better than using both.
You mentioned IQ, and also kind of lightly touched on focus/clarity/flow without those words, but also something you can chew on is the connection between intuition training and language learning. Certainly also at minimum it is also a subconscious pattern detection instinct.
This might be reason why old people find it difficult to use smartphones as efficiently as younger generation. There is a conflict between the fast and slow processes making it difficult for one process to function optimally
I am a software developer. Falling asleep, I think about what I am working on. Sometimes I recall my dreams, often, not. But code falls off my fingertips when I get to work and I can't explain it, but it just works.
15:27 I think your wrong about this. Trying to motivate yourself by thinking of the end goal is only a very short term "solution". What you should do is convince yourself that you like the process itself. This can be done by thinking of the enjoyable parts of the thing and even by turning negatives into positives by switching how you think about the thing.
Intuition is simply behavior shaped by unanalyzed contingencies-or, put differently, some behavior has worked in the past in some situation but you haven’t thought about _why_ or _how_ it works, you can’t put into words that it _does_ work, or you might not even be aware that it _does_ work. (In that sense, all intuition is non-verbal in basis-you can’t express it in words.) I’m saying that to demystify intuition.
This video contains excellent advice because, by exposing yourself to problems and the solutions, you’re exposing yourself to the situation (i.e., the problem) _and_ the behavior (i.e., the method involved in the solution) that might solve it.
I found that a good way to "unlock" intuition is to solve geometry problems, specifically euclidean geometry. Not only do they help you with visualization, but those problems require a good deal of intuition to solve efficiently so you are left with no other option but to develop your intuition
I agree, this or calculus integration problems. The latter takes a ton of intuition at least at the start.
Okay so now I realise that intuition is what got me through my math exams in school! I was a super lazy kid, I almost never did homework but I always got good grades. I would study a bunch of math problems the day prior to the exam, all with their solutions (I never solved any myself) and then went to the exam and I INTUITIVELY knew how to solve it. It worked wonders for me at that time. But I never considered myself good at math and I never put the work to understand the reasoning behind all those problems and solutions. I just skimmed through these exams with my intuition
May I ask what you do now? I know someone who did that in undergrad math but had to drop out of their masters because it stopped working.
@@ABC-jq7ve I'm not an undergrad in math, I study law. But I don't follow this technique anymore in any area. I try to understand fully what I'm studying.
This is the most motivational video I ever seen to fight hard problems. I repeat it everyday. Thank you
My notes:
- Use intuition as a tool
- Get yourself familiar with the questions as much as possible (deliberate practice)
- Engage yourself with finding the answers (creating mental maps for problems and solutions)
- Your memory will become better
- If you find the solutions yourself
- You spent enough time with the problem
- You understand how the association and correlation works
- Understand and create a mental map for how you solve a problem
- Be mindful
- See your life from a nurture perspective rather than nature (you control your future by controlling your present)
- Workout/ exercise (personal addition)
- Be motivated, the mental interest enhances the brain operations
- Intelligence is like a muscle you have to build it (just like your body)
- Good practice improves
-Help iv been trapped in this basement for five years (the most important note
the strat you use is exactly why i usually never do a math problem on paper twice instead just read the solution multiple times, only try the ones that are pretty much completely new and difficult . most people around me are like why do you read math, solve it.
Hey I do the same! It is so damn amazing and fascinating to hear someone use the same 'technique' as you. Honestly, you put it very eloquently and now I will send this video to anyone who asks me "How did you do it so fast" the next time haha. Great job. Also it makes me relieved that if I practice enough I can actually use it for my career like you and it is not some delusion I was having. 😂 Really, thank you!
Intuition is such a beautiful gift of evolution and building it is like putting pieces in a puzzle (that one can call their 'mind map') after careful examination of those precious pieces. My favourite part is linking pieces from different subjects and disciplines. Like building bridges over rivers that seem uncrossable!
Can you explain it with an example, i didn't get it
Very good analogy, the bridge one! I will be thinking about that in the future 🎉
finally someone who can admit he is smart without fussing too much over it. great video
I agree about improving your intuition by reading lots of problems and solutions. That helped me gain a general solution overview so much quicker. It is easy to get stuck deep diving on one topic and that learning strategy helps you avoid that pitfall. Thanks for the great video.
I felt a bit confused and struggled to understand this video(bsc of My english comprehension) but my intuition tells me it has a lot to learn and apply for my situation. Your comment helps me a lot to get an idea about this video. I'm learning how to analyse data to generate insights for storytelling reports. I read and researched on other's projects and analysis and just knew how to create mine. I guess it's called intuition too, like figure out patterns from examples
I find that when I disassociate from myself and attach my ego to the larger identity of the world, my intuition throws at me solutions to the world's problems.
Can you please walk us through an example? That was so interesting I want to practice
Nah, apply it, make mistakes
@@martinwilches6583 make mistakes to train intuition?
I can speak both with Programming and Chess:
1. In programming, you want to start with patterns that are easy, let's say Leetcode, you first try to understand the easy ones, if you already faced this in the past your intuition will click. Quicksort, Binary Search, Heap Sort, anything that it's a problem, if you dont know the pattern I would say spend as much as possible trying to understand the solution.
2. In Chess, you can do puzzles that would be the equivalent of problems in programming, you start with the easy ones and go through each of them multiple times, there is actually a book called the Woodpecker Method which start with Easy, Medium then hard puzzles, and you go through them each day, and repeat, the book force you to practice intuition since it pushes to do it in a faster time, also playing long time control Chess helps you because it engrained you Chess patterns and understand positions.
Same can be said anything that requires critical thinking, practice makes perfect.
I am the one who blame about my intelligent. You made the video to open my mind. Thank you so so much
While I was learning to program, I started a job fixing electronics. The intuition I learned from solving problems really helped me learn programming. Now I’m university (in biology, totally unrelated) I find studying so much easier than when I was younger. I think doing those two things taught me discipline and intuition and that has been great for me!
i think in systems, you have changed EVERYTHING
thank you internet wizard stranger
I think the most important thing about problem solving is to not get trapped in your way of thinking. Most solutions can be found by just taking one or two mental steps. Going in a random direction at first (like the one your intuition is telling you) is totally fine even though it might be the wrong direction. But most people trust their intuition too much and try to go forward looking for the solution in that direction instead of going back to the start and take a completely different approach.
I can't say if this also applies for programming but for real life problems, this is one of the most important things I've learned. If the solution doesn't come to you after going two steps in one mental direction, then it's most likely the wrong direction no matter what your intuition is telling you.
That's also how you come up with ideas people call "creative". Because creative ideas are usually the ones that are far away from the direction your intuition wants you to go. Afterall they wouldn't be creative if every person thinks of them immediately, would they?
Incredible content, very well structured, fun to understand and concise
Such a fresh young face with such fresh young insights into intuition. What you're describing is closer to raw IQ than intuition. Those answers you believe have been intuited have actually been calculated by the infinite instantaneous "yous" but at such a fast rate your 8 bit reality buss has to append useless information like the memory of having thought the think.
Thanks man! Keep up the good work!
I don't know if any other person commented the same. But, at least, the beggining has resulted me super familiar to the book "Fast & slow thinking" from Daniel Kahneman. I am reading it with a slow peace and is super in my opinion is super fun to read!!
I recommend it to anyone, rigth now I just have 29 pages which is not a lot, is not nearly the beggining, but I mean, is already causing effect in the way I think.
Wish anyone read this comment and yeah... I think that is everything I wanted to say!
PD: nice video!!
In awe at the number of people writing comments like they just unlocked their third eye by watching this video
Currently grinding leetcode 😭 will definitely keep this in mind 😤
I appreciate you making these videos.The concepts are familiar to me from before. But they way you put it together makes it easy for a lot of people to take it in.
Thinking, Fast and Slow?
Yeah, one of my description's links is derived from that book, it's incredibly interesting
@@ColinGalen Ah, yes, I’ve been reading it. Fascinating stuff
Where were u all these days? 😭 One of the best video so farrrrr....
please do more informative videos like this that can be applied to more fields other than specific programming🙏
The problem and solution section reminds me of a style of speed reading. Focusing on the beginning and ending of a sentence and letting the glance of your eyes “fill in” the rest.
Competitive coding feels more like pattern recognition and repetition than intuition and problem solving. Like being able to recognize patterns, and identifying which flavor of problem hints at the uses of which data structures etc.
I mean Feynman even said this in his book for puzzles in general. The hardest part is figuring out a puzzle for the first time, the rest seems like just recognizing combinations and variations of the same puzzles youve already solved/now memorized
Your way of approaching passion, or general emotions related to the logic process, corelates so much with the Viktor Frankl theory. That theory, written on man search's of meaning, consist basically on finding a meaning in life in general, but mainly in many different tiny (or seemingly not relevant) situations. Like you said, passion is a huge factor tp activate your mind. That sense of accessible challenge is possible both through passion and/or belief, which in this case can be brought by meaning.
So yes, you also got it right, logically, about the Viktor Frankl's theory. Prompts for the way you approach things!
It's sad that Colin has been trapped in his basement for 5 years. I hope he can get out.
Really felt it when you said that some ideas just come to you out of nowhere. I love math and I take a lot of extra classes at school and we solve significantly harder problems than the average difficulty level. So when I'm staring at the problem for a bit it has been too often that I feel like I got an idea, start trying to write it down and then I'm like "Wait no, huh? What the heck??" lol
Can you help me with math please, I'm at a senior high school level.
@@Kumalala2007 Unfortunately you are older than me so I don't think I'd be of much use to you, but you can tell me what you're struggling with and I'll look into it and try to help you! I can also give you some very basic, but effective tips that have helped me get better at math. Firstly I always make sure that I make use of everything that I can. For example if I don't understand a something from the teacher, nor from my workbook. Then I'd try UA-cam or other sites(I use Khan Academy a lot, but idk if it's for all languages). When you think you kinda understand a concept it's time for you to practise, practise and practise. I do all practise problems from my school books and online sources + practise/revision tests if we're approaching a test. While I do these problems, when I get something wrong I always mark it. Then I try to explain to myself why it's wrong and if I succeed I move on. I still leave the mark, so before a test I can go through the ones I have initially gotten wrong to see if I'll get them wrong again. However, if I can't explain a problem to myself, I start searching through all my resorses available. If I still can't figure it out, I ask a teacher or a classmate for help. Keep in mind that I also go to a private tutor for math and I ask her for help with such problems. Math is something you have to very consistent in. It's a constant build up, so if you didn't understand something in the past, it most likely will come and bite you in the future. If there's anything else I can help you with, please don't be afraid to ask. I'll try to help as best as I can
i think this video just changed my life. this is exactly how my brain used to just naturally function with math, but after dropping out my senior year from a bad depressive episode in the middle of covid and taking a gap year, im now in my second semester of college and ive been feeling so stupid since my natural learning ability in my youth was the center of my confidence in my intelligence(grades were awful because of undiagnosed adhd combined with dysfunctional home life, test scores great since i learned fast). as ive been watching this it resonated so deeply and it immediately clicked that all i have to do is re-train my brain how to do this as i fill in the gaps i forgot in math. thank you so much for this.
good luckl
lol ironically or maybe not so ironically I was looking was for someone to describe the way my intuition feels so I could see a pattern and validate that I’m not crazy. This is an unlock for me!