Setting goals can transform your life. Goals can help you get in shape, improve your finances, learn a new language, or finally launch that business. But goal-setting can also leave you miserable. Burnout, stress and disillusionment are high on the list of potential side effects. The crucial difference between success and burnout often comes down […]

Why is learning effortful? Why do we struggle to learn calculus but easily learn our mother tongue? How can we make hard skills easier to learn? Cognitive load theory is a powerful framework from psychology for making sense of these questions. Cognitive load theory, developed in the 1980s by psychologist John Sweller, has become a […]

As the year ends, I thought I’d revisit some of my favorite entries from the past twelve months: The Productivity Frontier: Can You Get More Done Without Making Sacrifices? – How much more productivity can you squeeze out of your day? Is such a squeeze sustainable? Productivity enthusiasts like me often talk about systems to […]

In my quest to understand the nuts-and-bolts process of how we learn complex, valuable skills, I’ve read quite a few books on learning, teaching and skill acquisition. This batch of books challenged my thinking and changed my mind on quite a few things. I read these books to further investigate learning by doing and the […]