Recently, I introduced the concept of ultralearning—deep, intense self-education. This kind of learning is characterized by grappling with deep concepts and hard practice. My bigger learning projects have used this approach out of necessity. If you’re trying to learn something like differential equations or Chinese characters in a short period of time, those constraints make […]

Last week I introduced the concept of ultralearning: deep, aggressive self-education. This is the strategy that I used to learn hard subjects like differential equations or Mandarin Chinese in a short amount of time. This kind of self-education—epitomized by doing intense practice to learn hard subjects—isn’t a normal practice for most people. I believe that […]

My last post sparked some debate when I suggested that trying to think through a rational answer for every practical problem is likely unwise. Duncan Smith comments: This may be good advice for people with the discipline to distinguish between problems that can be solved with a completely rational approach and those that are complex […]