A common critique of school is that it leads to shallow memorization of facts. Deep understanding and practical skills are often pushed aside in favor of trivia, quickly forgotten after the final exam. The most typical reaction, at least from those endorsing the value of education, is to deny the charge. Yes, we all remember […]

Last week, I discussed John Anderson’s ACT-R theory of cognitive skill acquisition. ACT-R is an ambitious theory tackling a big question: how do we learn things? Anderson’s theory makes compelling predictions and has quite a bit of evidence to back it up. Yet understanding the mind is like the story of the blind men and […]

How do we learn to perform complex skills like programming, physics, or piloting a plane? What changes in our brain allow us to perform these skills? How much does learning one thing help us learn something else? These are hard questions. Most experiments only attempt to address narrow slices of the problem. How does the […]

This is a guest lesson from my Life of Focus co-instructor, Cal Newport. In anticipation of a new session of our popular course, he decided to share some of his experiences building a deep life. Enjoy! Early in the pandemic, driven by the dislocation that characterized the moment, I began writing about a topic I quickly came […]