Challenges

In 2012, I decided to try to learn MIT’s 4-year undergraduate computer science curriculum in 12 months, without taking any classes. I was successful in passing the final exams for 33 classes and completing the required programming projects. You can view my TEDx Talk regarding the challenge, see links to all the free material I used, and see all the exams and projects I posted.

In 2014, I went with Vat Jaiswal on a trip to learn languages around the world. We traveled for just under one year, learning Spanish in Spain, Portuguese in Brazil, Mandarin Chinese in China and Taiwan and Korean in South Korea. For each language we had minimal preparation and aimed to learn with one rule: don’t speak in English! See the progress we made for each language in just three months each, as well as Vat’s stunning videography from each country.

In July of 2016, I did a 30-day challenge to see how much improvement I could make in drawing faces. I’ve done a rather extensive write-up which explains why I undertook the project, what techniques I used and implications for learning other subjects. Here is a comparison of three self-portraits I undertook. The first was […]

In April 2019, I decided to tackle a short, but challenging, project to learn the basics of quantum mechanics. I had always had a fascination for physics. I devoured copies of books like Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe or Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. They described the rules of the world as being […]

In April 2020, my wife and I decided to embark on a project to speak only her native language, Macedonian, at home. Following the No English Rule that was successful in my previous project, I want to see how well one can learn a language without needing to leave the house!