As we did with Spain and Brazil, we filmed a short documentary chronicling our experiences learning Chinese over a little more than three months. Vat also spent hundreds of hours doing timelapses, hyperlapses and videos to try to capture a different perspective on what life is like in China. We both felt that the China […]
How I Plan to Learn Korean Differently than Chinese
Sometimes I question my sanity. After all, what kind of person agrees to learn four languages in a year, including two linguistically unrelated Asian languages back-to-back in six months? Learning Chinese was a blast, but it was also an incredible amount of work. My stated goal from the beginning was to learn as much Chinese […]
The Danger of Easy Skepticism
I remember taking a class in business school, where we had to evaluate the financial prospects of startups. The startups were real, but the names were changed and in industries obscure enough that we rarely could guess the true identity without cheating. Given limited information and numbers, we were each given one company and asked […]
How Well Did the No-English Rule Work for Learning Chinese?
Readers familiar with Vat and my current project of attempting to learn four languages in one year, will note that the big focus has been on one method: not speaking English. Today I want to talk about the failures and successes in applying that philosophy to learning Chinese. My Chinese After Three Months (+100 Hours […]
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.