Too busy to watch the whole thing? Read the transcript here (PDF). Above is an interview I recorded with Jonathan Haber. Jonathan independently came up with his own goal to learn a degree in one year (he only found out about the MIT Challenge after he started blogging about his quest). The two main differences […]
Should You Learn Physics Like Newton? Contrasting Expert and Beginner Learning Strategies
After completing the MIT Challenge I got an unusual critique. The complaint was that I shouldn’t have looked at solutions after working through problems. Great thinkers like Newton or Euler, this critic’s reasoning goes, didn’t have access to solutions and they understood the ideas better than anyone. The best process to learn something, he argued, […]
How to Use Feedback
If you want to improve your skills, products or performance, you need feedback. Without feedback, you’re limited to only your perspective, and that’s rarely the one that counts. The tricky part is that feedback can be misleading. Henry Ford famously remarked that if he had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster […]
How Much Specialization?
You’re reading this article because of the power of specialization. I certainly wouldn’t be spending today writing an article if I had to grow all my own food, build my own house and sew my own clothing. Without specialization, the internet wouldn’t exist either. Ditto for computers, cars, antibiotics and probably everything more sophisticated than […]
I'm a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, podcast host, computer programmer and an avid reader. Since 2006, I've published weekly essays on this website to help people like you learn and think better. My work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, TEDx, Pocket, Business Insider and more. I don't promise I have all the answers, just a place to start.