I just finished one of the best books I’ve read on the science of learning. Daniel Willingham is a Harvard educated cognitive scientist who writes books and articles about how to learn and teach better. The title of his book, Why Don’t Students Like School?, is a tad unfortunate, I think, because the book isn’t […]
I Was Wrong About China: A First Two Weeks in China (and Chinese)
A little less than two weeks ago, Vat and I arrived in Kunming, China with the goal of not speaking any English. Now that we’re in I wanted to write about life in China and first impressions on learning Chinese. I wanted to be as thorough as possible documenting the progress in learning Chinese, so […]
Don’t Think For Yourself
If you care about being correct more often, here’s a handy rule of thumb: Figure out which groups of people have spent their lives studying the issue you want an answer to. If there is a significant majority who believe conclusion X, then make conclusion X your default answer unless you have very strong evidence […]
Learning Spanish in 11 Weeks | 10-Min Documentary
After hundreds of hours of work filming, editing, translating and transcribing (mostly by Vat), the video documenting learning Spanish in 11-weeks is finally ready. We wanted to try to capture both the progress of learning a language, as well as the experience of living in Spain.
I'm a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, podcast host, computer programmer and an avid reader. Since 2006, I've published weekly essays on this website to help people like you learn and think better. My work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, TEDx, Pocket, Business Insider and more. I don't promise I have all the answers, just a place to start.