Tag: #learning

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• Experts Do Not Know More, They See Differently

  The 1973 chessboard experiment is the starting point of expertise research. Masters remember real game positions far better, but on randomly scattered arrangements most of that advantage disappears. That means pattern pe

  2026-08-16 · 13 min read #mindset#learning#expertise#chunking#perception

• The Road to Becoming an Expert: Feedback First, Volume Second

  This post moves the evidence set out in the previous four posts into an executable form. Narrow the domain to where feedback arrives, build the feedback loop before you build the volume, practise under the conditions you

  2026-08-16 · 14 min read #mindset#learning#expertise#deliberate-practice#career

• The Structure of Practice: Why Practice That Goes Well and Practice That Lasts Are Different

  Spacing, retrieval practice, mixing things up. Three things with relatively solid evidence in learning research, set out together with their effect sizes. And then the central paradox of the field: the conditions that ma

  2026-08-16 · 14 min read #mindset#learning#practice#retrieval#spacing

• Metacognition — The Gap Between Feeling You Know and Knowing

  Metacognition lost its definition as it became a buzzword. This post returns to the original definition of monitoring and control, and sets out the way the feeling of knowing is manufactured from fluency as a proxy signa

  2026-08-16 · 12 min read #mindset#metacognition#learning#psychology#2026-08

• How to Improve Your English Without the Situation: Manufacturing Real Conditions Through Simulation

  If your English improved while playing a VR game, VR is not the reason. Three conditions happened to line up at once: repetition of the same situations, real-time pressure, and a low social cost for getting it wrong. Thi

  2026-08-16 · 10 min read #english#learning#practice#conversation#2026-08

• What Studying Well and Playing Sport Well Share Is Narrower Than It Looks

  Is there really an ability that carries over between studying and sport, between coding and playing an instrument? The conclusion of the cognitive-training transfer literature runs against popular expectation. Near trans

  2026-08-16 · 13 min read #mindset#learning#expertise#transfer#evidence

• Why Juniors Are Especially Anxious — The Entry Ladder Has Changed

  A junior engineer's anxiety comes from position, not personality. It is the layer most often named as replaceable, the layer with the least evidence behind it, and the layer with the most people to compare against. This

  2026-08-15 · 6 min read #career#junior-developer#ai#learning#entry-level

• Learning How to Learn — Telling Fundamentals From Fashion, and Choosing One Thing to Go Deep On

  A learning strategy usually arrives as a list of things to learn, when what is actually needed is a criterion for what not to learn. This piece covers the single question that separates fundamentals from fashion, the rul

  2026-08-15 · 7 min read #career#skills#learning#fundamentals#deliberate-practice

• How to Read a Difficult Book — Five Judgment Calls That Matter More Than Finishing

  Most of the time, what makes a difficult book difficult isn't unfamiliar words — it's the shape of the argument. Grounded in Adler's method for reading and in what reading research actually supports, this piece lays out

  2026-08-02 · 14 min read #storytelling#reading#books#learning#culture

• Why 10,000 Hours Alone Will Not Make You Better — The 4 Real Conditions of Deliberate Practice

  Why do some people have ten years of experience but the skills of a third-year? The 10,000-hour rule is a popular distortion that Anders Ericsson, the original researcher, himself called a misreading. This post restores,

  2026-07-20 · 7 min read #mindset#self-improvement#deliberate-practice#learning#growth

• Do Not Reread — Close the Book and Recall: The Original Testing-Effect Paper and the Spaced-Repetition Algorithm

  Rereading your notes feels like knowing, but the exam exposes the gap. Roediger and Karpicke's 2006 experiment shows exactly why: rereading wins a test five minutes later, then loses badly to repeated retrieval (testing

  2026-07-20 · 7 min read #psychology#paper-review#mindset#learning#memory

• What to Learn Deeply, What to Skim — A Learning Strategy for the AI Era

  When an AI answers almost anything in three seconds, what is still worth learning deeply? Cognitive psychology has an uncomfortable answer: memory is built by pulling information out of your own head, not by having it ha

  2026-07-12 · 12 min read #career#learning#ai#software-engineering

• How to Study with AI — 8 Techniques That Turn an LLM into Your Best Tutor

  If you just read the answers AI gives you, you get the feeling of studying without the skill. This piece shows how to recreate the power of 1:1 tutoring that Bloom's 2 sigma problem revealed — a Socratic tutor, Feynman r

  2026-07-06 · 8 min read #ai#learning#study#productivity

• A Knowledge Map for the Rising Tech Roles of 2026 — What to Actually Study

  AI/LLM engineer, platform/DevOps/SRE, security engineer, data engineer, frontend — a checklist-style map of what the five most in-demand roles actually require. Includes the cross-cutting skills every role shares, plus t

  2026-07-06 · 7 min read #career#roadmap#skills#learning

• The Law of Compounding — The Strongest Force in Learning and Life

  Compounding is what happens when returns start earning returns of their own. The principle does not stay confined to money. It works the same way in learning, skill, reputation, and relationships. This essay looks calmly

  2026-07-05 · 13 min read #learning#compounding#habits#self-improvement

• Learning from Mistakes — Resilience and Antifragility

  Mistakes feel like verdicts, but they are closer to data. This essay looks at the difference between fragile, resilient, and antifragile responses to disorder, at the blameless post-mortem that engineering culture invent

  2026-07-05 · 16 min read #learning#resilience#antifragility#failure

• Good Questions Make Good Answers — The Art of Asking

  In an age when answers are everywhere, the truly scarce skill is asking a good question. This essay walks calmly through the Socratic method, first-principles thinking, Toyota's Five Whys, a taxonomy of questions, the co

  2026-07-05 · 15 min read #learning#curiosity#critical-thinking#questions

• Lifelong Learners — The Attitudes of Great Students

  A balanced look at the attitudes and habits shared by people who never stop learning — deep curiosity, the willingness to be a beginner, teaching as a way to learn, intellectual honesty, and patient humility. It opens wi

  2026-07-05 · 14 min read #learning#curiosity#self-improvement#lifelong-learning

• Are Geniuses Born? — The Myth of Talent and Effort

  We call remarkable people geniuses, and in that moment we stop asking how they got there. This essay looks calmly at the Mozart myth, Anders Ericsson's research on expert performance, the popular ten-thousand-hour rule,

  2026-07-05 · 16 min read #learning#talent#expertise#excellence

• Learning How to Learn — The Science of Study

  The skill of learning something can itself be learned. This essay walks through active recall, spaced repetition, interleaving, the fluency illusion, elaboration, metacognition, and the role of sleep in memory consolidat

  2026-07-05 · 15 min read #learning#metacognition#study-skills#education