Our culture celebrates originality and creativity. We want our students to think for themselves, not blindly follow tradition, authority and received opinion. After all, doesn’t science, art and politics depend on us all coming to our own answers? I definitely support the idea of coming to your own beliefs about things. But the way we […]

How do you build general skills? Abilities that not only help you with a narrow problem, but ones that you can apply repeatedly to problems in your life? Many of our goals, whether its becoming a better programmer, a savvier business leader or more original artist are of this type. The bad news is that […]

Learning can be tough, but it doesn’t have to be mysterious. Ample research shows that there are better ways of studying, not just for passing the test, but for creating deep understanding. Below are ten essential strategies you should keep mind any time you need to learn something important. These lessons are drawn from my […]

Why is it harder to watch a physics lecture than Netflix? Why does a cognitively demanding activity, like playing a video game, create a pleasurable state of flow, while math problems rarely feel that way? What makes something effortful? At first glance, these questions seem too obvious to ask. Of course video games are less […]