Recently, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from students asking the right way to take notes. As I’ve been answering them, I realized that the question of note-taking neatly encapsulates a lot of deeper thinking about the right way to learn things. Instead of explaining how to take notes, then, I’d like to explain how […]

A reader emailed me about a difficult exam he was facing. The test was for a prestigious civil service job in his country. Get one of those jobs, and you’re set for life. Unfortunately, competition was also steep. About four hundred people compete, and only the best scorer on the test gets the spot. Applicants […]

It’s been quite a year. In January, I became a father. In March, the entire world went into lockdown. I also wrote some essays. Here’s some of the best writing I did in the last twelve months: Do the Real Thing. Success largely boils down to a simple distinction. It’s glaringly obvious once you see […]

In my book, Ultralearning, I argued in favor of directness in learning. Given a concrete objective (speaking a language, passing an exam, becoming proficient at a particular skill), the way you practice ought to match the intended use. Transfer is hard. The more we can avoid depending on far-transfer to make our learning successful, the […]