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 […]

Recently, I published my Complete Guide to Motivation. The guide covers the research landscape on motivation from psychological, neuroscientific and economic perspectives. One of the key researchers I highlighted was Piers Steel, a leading expert on procrastination. Since I found his research findings so helpful in my own understanding of procrastination, I invited him to […]

Sometimes the boring skills in life turn out to be the most important. Case in point: the market for being really good at Excel is much larger than you think. I have a friend who does lucrative consulting work mostly on his ability to be better than you at Excel. Machine learning is trendy, but […]