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I Analyzed 13 TED Talks on Improving Your Memory— Here’s the Quintessence

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How you can make the most out of your brain.

Created by the author on Canva.

Meta-learning is one of the most powerful tools you can acquire.

No life skill can earn you greater dividends than learning effectively — you’ll need less time and energy to master any topic you want.

I spent the last years exploring the intersections between neuroscience, brain research, and cognitive psychology. I’ve shared my book recommendations on learning how to learn and how-to guides for applying the strategies to writing, reading, online courses, EdTech software and knowledge management.

In the last week, I watched and summarized 13 TED talks on memory, brain enhancement, and learning how to learn. The most insightful made it into this article.

By reading, you will learn how to best use your brain to get the result you want. You can read the article in one go or jump to the sections that are most interesting for you.

Here are the best ones I watched and the key messages so you can apply them to your life.

You’ll understand how neuroplasticity works (1), how you can actually change your brain (2), and acquire skills rapidly (3). You will then learn how specific strategies can improve (4) and increase (5) your memory function (4) and techniques to triple your memory (6) so you can remember everything you want with ease (7).

Table of Contents
1) After Reading This Your Brain Will Not Be the Same
2) Learn How to Learn From Somebody Who Has Transformed Her Brain
3) How to Learn Anything Fast in 20 Hours (Rapid Skill Akquisition)
4) Techniques to Improve Your Memory Function
5) The Most Transformative Thing to Improve Brain Function
6) Here’s How You Can Triple Your Memory
7) Supercharge Your Learning Practice With This Technique

1) After Reading This Your Brain Will Not Be the Same

How does your brain change throughout life based on what you think, do, and experience?

In her talk, brain researcher and professor Lara Boyds explains what science currently knows about neuroplasticity. In essence, your brain can change in three ways.

Change 1 — Increase chemical signalling

Your brain works by sending chemicals signals from cell to cell, so-called neurons. This transfer triggers actions and reactions. To support learning your brain can increase the concentration of these signals between your neurons. Chemical signalling is related to your short-term memory.

Change 2 — Alter the physical structure

During learning, the connections between neurons change. In the first change, your brain’s structure stays the same. Here, your brain’s physical structure changes — which takes more time. That’s why altering the physical structure influences your long-term memory.

For example, research shows that London taxi cab drivers who actually have to memorize a map of London to get their taxicab license have larger brain regions devoted to spatial or mapping memories.

Change 3 — Alter brain function

This one is crucial (and will also be mentioned in the following talks). When you use a brain region, it becomes more and more accessible. Whenever you access a specific memory, it becomes easier and easier to use again.

But Boyd’s talk doesn’t stop here. She further explores what limits or facilitates neuroplasticity. She researches how people can recover from brain damages such as a stroke and developed therapies that prime or prepare the brain to learn — including simulation, exercise and robotics.

Her research is also helpful for healthy brains — here are the two most important lessons:

The primary driver of change in your brain is your behaviour.

Repeated practice is the most effective way to reprogram your mind.

In line with other research on a concept called the desired difficulty, her research has shown that increased struggle during practice leads to both more learning and greater structural change in the brain.

This is counterintuitive yet super powerful, so let me rephrase it: Learning works best when it feels hard. You want to struggle while learning.

The opposite the “fluency illusion” while, e.g. rereading material, can give you a false illusion of competence. A helpful antidote is self-testing.

There is no one size fits all approach to learning.

The 10,000-hour rule is overly simplified. No single intervention is going to work for all of us in the same way. Lara Boyd makes a call for personalized learning.

She then continues with something I don’t agree with: “The uniqueness of your brain will affect you both as a learner and also as a teacher. And now this idea helps us to understand why some children can thrive in traditional education settings and others don’t.”

It’s not your brain’s uniqueness that determines whether you thrive or barely survive in traditional education settings.

She neglects socio-economical factors such as emotional support or a family’s income level. Moreover, there are actually evidence-based techniques that seem to work for almost all of our brains, see (2), (5), and (7).

The most powerful lesson to remember from her talk is the following: You’re never too old to stop learning. Because of neuroplasticity, you can build the brain you want.

2) Learn How to Learn From Somebody Who Has Transformed Her Brain

It hadn’t always been clear that Barbara Oakley would become a professor of engineering. She fell off the “math bandwagon” early on and flunked her way through elementary, middle, and high school math and science.

At age 26, during her military job, calculus and physics looked like hieroglyphics to her. But she didn’t settle with the status quo. She asked herself:

“What if I could get those ideas? What if I could learn that weird math language?”

So she set on a journey to change her brain — a journey that would ultimately influence many other learners as well.

Dr Oakley reached out to top neuroscience and cognitive psychology professors around the world. She asked them:

“How did you learn? And how do you teach, so others could learn?”

One of the key answers she got was the distinction between two brain modes: the focused and the diffused mode.

For optimal learning, you need the focused and the diffused mode.

In focused mode, you think based on prior knowledge and rely on often used neural connections associated with problem-solving on familiar tasks.

The diffused mode, on the other hand, feels like daydreaming and enables unpredictable, new neural connections.

When you let your mind wander without actively thinking about the problem, you likely come up with a solution you hadn’t thought about. It’s the state where creativity flows freely.

To learn, you need both.

Many people optimize their days for focused mode thinking — through deep work, flow states, and other work sessions. Learning can happen during focused attention.

But the diffused mode is equally important. Diffused thinking only occurs when our minds can wander, for example, during a shower or while going for a walk. While this feels like taking a brain break, our mind continues to work for us.

A famous example for this is Dali’s and Edison’s napping time, as Dr Oakley shares in her TED talk. To access their diffused thinking mode, they looked at a problem and took a nap to come up with a solution.

To integrate the two thinking modes into your daily schedule (and to beat procrastination), you can use the Pomodoro technique — focusing for 25 minutes and giving yourself a pleasurable 5-minute brain break afterwards.

How to learn most effectively

Lastly, she gives a couple of applicable knowledge nuggets on how to learn most effectively.

  1. Exercise can increase your ability to both learn and to remember (also see 5).
  2. Testing yourself, e.g. through flashcards, until the solution flows like a song from your mind.
  3. Instead of rereading and highlighting, recall something from your memory. Look at a page, look away, and see what you can remember from the top of your mind.
  4. Understanding is not enough to build mastery of new material. Instead, you want to combine it with practice and repetition in different circumstances.

Now let’s look at a concrete example of how you can acquire new skills rapidly.

3) How to Learn Anything Fast in 20 Hours

What if you’d only need 45 minutes a day for a month to get decently good at skills such as language learning, coding, or arts?

Out of necessity (his newborn child minimized his free time), Josh Kaufman explored how to learn new things really fast. As a result, he developed the most efficient practice method.

The 4-step process to learn any skill fast

The 10,000-hour rule is a myth — instead, there are four steps neccessary for rapid skill acquisition:

  1. Deconstruct a skill by breaking it down into smaller pieces. The more you can break it apart, the better you can learn. For example, learning to write online becomes idea-collection, headline practice, introduction writing, editing, and distribution.
  2. Learn just enough to self-correct. Books, courses, etc. are often a way to procrastinate on the practice itself. Use resources to learn enough to know when you make a mistake. Then practice.
  3. Remove any distractions that keep you from practising. This aligns with what many smart people such as Clear or Thaler preach. Self-control and self-discipline depend much more on your environment than on your willpower. Ban your phone and TV from your practice.
  4. Really practice for the full 20 hours. You have to do the work and overcome initial frustration barriers. The greatest barrier to learning something is emotional, not intellectual. So, push through the initial “feeling stupid” phase and learn for 20 hours before your stop.

4) Techniques to Improve Your Memory Function

Memory works in three stages: encoding, consolidation, and retrieval.

Nancy Chiaravalotti’s research focuses on the first part — remembering new information such as names of people you meet or items from your to-do list.

To enhance how you encode two very effective techniques:

Use imagery

Attach an image or picture to visualize the information. For example, if you want to remember the word ‘house’, picture your house. Thereby, you encode new information in two ways (verbal and visual), which increases brain activity.

A very effective way to remember things better is to combine unrelated ideas into a single image. The best image for any given word, is the one you associate with the strongest memory.

For example, “mum at the beach” for you would look completely different from me (because your picture would be your mum and a beach would be the most vivid beach you can bring to your mind).

Make it even more robust through context

What comes before or after a word by providing more semantic meaning. For example, instead of just a house, you can say the old house on the hill. Invent a mini-story around new information.

The best way is to combine both techniques. Chiaravalloti tested this with people who have memory injuries and found significant improvements after ten sessions.

Increased brain function through imagery and context practice. Source: Nancy Chiaravalotti.

You are able to change your brain. Start to visualize things and add a story to better remember what you want to learn.

5) The Most Transformative Thing to Improve Brain Function

Neuroscientist Dr Wendy Suzuki used to sit, read, and study for hours. She published well-respected articles and was on her way to becoming a renowned memory researcher.

Still, she felt something was off. It wasn’t until she started regular exercise that she felt better.

“After every sweat-inducing workout that I tried, I had this great mood boost and this great energy boost. And that’s what kept me going back to the gym,” she says in her TED talk. “I was able to focus and maintain my attention for longer than I had before. “

Because of the benefits she felt, Dr Suzuki did something unusual for researchers. She changed her research field — from memory pioneer to exercise explorer.

Exercise changes your brain in three main ways

And that’s how she came to the hypothesis that exercise is the most transformative thing that you can do to your brain: “Moving your body has immediate, long-lasting and protective benefits for your brain. And that can last for the rest of your life.”

Immediate attention increase. A single workout will immediately increase your levels of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin and noradrenaline. This, in turn, improves your ability to shift and focus attention for at least two hours following your workout.

Memory enhancement. Long-term exercise changes the hippocampus (critical for your capability to form and absorb new long-term memories). You produce new brain cells that improve your long-term memory.

Protective brain effects. Your brain is like a muscle. The more you’re exercising, the bigger and stronger your hippocampus and prefrontal cortex (critical for attention, decision-making, and focus) gets. The two areas will grow and slow down the effects of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer and dementia.

A single researcher’s team discoveries aren’t enough to confirm her hypothesis. But there’s a canon of research that attests to the brain-altering effects of exercise.

Researchers from Harvard have shown that exercise boosts verbal memory, thinking and learning. Plus, moving your body supports your ability to learn a new language by enhancing your ability to remember, recall and understand new vocabulary.​

You don’t need to become a marathon runner to unlock the benefits of exercise. As a rule of thumb, you want to exercise three to four times a week for at least 30 minutes.

6) Here’s How You Can Triple Your Memory

What’s the best way to memorize things?

Ricardo Lieuw On, the founder of remind learning, walks the audience through a memory palace to make them remember the first ten presidents of the United States.

He makes the case why creating bizarre images in a place you know helps you memorize things in order.

Yet, he doesn’t mention how to build a memory palace. Here’s my brief explanation if you want to learn the so-called “method of loci”:

How to develop your personal memory palace

There are five steps you can use to create your personal memory place.

  1. Pick a place. Choose a space you remember vividly, e.g., your childhood home or your workplace. Close your eyes and picture the floor plan. Now take a mental walk inside the location.​
  2. Identify specific features. Remember distinctive features about your space. If you use your childhood bedroom, for example, you can include your bed, shelf, closet, lamp, window, door, and carpet. These features will serve as memory slots.​
  3. Repeat the walk. ​Once you’ve identified a couple of objects, repeat the mental walk three times. Always use the same direction. Visualization can feel tough first, but it’ll become easier with practice. ​​
  4. Fill the spots with things you want to remember. ​Once you’ve established your memory palace, you can imprint it. Say you’re trying to memorize the planets in their distance to earth. All you need to do is take the known object (e.g. your bed), and visually place Mercury on it. You continue with the other planets on your other memory slots.​
  5. Revisit your memory palace from time to time. Repetition strengthens your neural representations. That’s why you want to visit your memory places once in a while. You can build as many places as you like because your brain capacity is unlimited.
How to build a memory palace (Source: WikiHow licensed under CC 2.0).

7) Supercharge Your Learning Practice With This Technique

Brain athletes can memorize a card deck within 12 seconds — TEDx speaker Boris Nikolai Konrad can do it in 30.

Boris also completed two master studies (physics and computer science) in the time of one and holds a PhD in psychology. He is fluent in English and Dutch and speaks decent Mandarin and Spanish.

Yet, he wasn’t born with a better brain than yours.

Building better memory is a skill you can learn.

These people (including Boris’s) don’t have a better memory than you do. Brains of memory athletes do not look different from yours.

In his talk, he shares a manual on how to develop a superbrain.

Just as Lieuw On (6) made his audience memorize 10 presidents, Konrad made his audience remember physics through a visual story.

And on top of these two memory experts, Jonathan Levi explores the same accelerated learning technique in his talk.

A picture is worth more than a thousand words.

In quintessence, all three share the idea that a picture is worth more than a thousand words. Instead of remembering verbal facts, your brain is more likely to remember the information if you picture it (this is also in line with (4)).

Let’s say you want to remember China’s 14 neighbouring countries: Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Myanmar, Mongolia, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Vietnam.

Instead of rereading the list, again and again, a much more effective technique is to visualize an image for each of the countries. Here’s his example — but remember that yours can look completely different (as its dependent on your strongest association with a word).

Source: Jonathan Lewi’s TED TALK

In Conclusion

Some themes reoccur in all talks, such as your innate ability to change your brain whenever you want, the power of visualization, and adding context and stories to remember new information better.

Once you get better at the process of learning, you can apply it anywhere to your life — hobbies, jobs, or relationships. In Dr Oakley words:

“Learning how to learn is the most powerful tool you can ever grasp. Don’t follow your passions, but broaden your passions and your life will be enriched beyond measure.”

May you enjoy your learning journey.

My free weekly Learn Letter will give you tools and resources to accelerate your learning. If you’d like to accelerate your online writing, register here.

A Podcast Listening Strategy for Learning

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Three steps to make the most of your podcast time

Source: Canva

Podcasts are an excellent way to acquire new knowledge. Hosts boil hours of research down to digestible content.

Yet, while podcasts are growing into one of the largest knowledge libraries on our planet, many people are not as strategic about their listening practice.

Listening to podcasts doesn’t make you smarter per se — it’s what you pick and do with it that will make all the difference.

The following lines will give you three quick ways to make the most of any value-packed podcast you listen to.

1) Find high quality podcasts

The friction to publishing podcasts is lower than it is for publishing books. You don’t need a publisher. Anyone with a phone and internet connection can become a podcast host.

Hence the quality of podcasts varies, and most podcasts are not worth your time. But some are. Instead of choosing a podcast based on the thumbnail and title, make a short effort to find the best one for you.

You can check out charts in the category “education,” search by keyword and podcast (e.g., best podcasts for language learning), or look at a podcast curation site.

Here are three of my favorite value-packed podcasts for learning:

Huberman Lab
Dr. Andrew Huberman, a tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, discusses science and science-based tools for everyday life.

Philosophize This!
Stephen West shares ideas that shaped our world. It’s for anyone interested in an educational podcast about philosophy where you don’t need to be a graduate-level philosopher to understand it.

NPR: It’s an independent, nonprofit media organization founded on a mission to create a more informed public. NPR has many great podcasts, but my favorites are Radio Ambulante (in Spanish) and TED Radio Hour.

2) Use apps that help you remember more

You won’t remember much from a podcast if you only listen to it. Your brain needs repetition and elaboration to make new knowledge stick.

Unlike books, you can’t highlight audio — or can you?

I listen to my podcasts while biking or walking. Hence, an extremely uncomfortable situation to open a notepad or Roam Research whenever I hear an interesting idea.

But two applications have transformed how I listen to podcasts: Snipd and Airr. Both are audio highlighting tools.

When you hear something you want to remember, you tap a button. In Snipd, this creates a snippet that includes a descriptive title with optimized start- and end-points to capture the context, a summary of your snip, and the full transcript.

Source: Snipd

Airr is very similar to Snipd. The app allows me to tap on my AirPod and pin a conversation so that I can reread it whenever I need it. I no longer need to scan back through an entire episode to find a snippet or thought I can’t quite remember.

I sync Airr with a service called Readwise, which extracts all my audio snippets to Roam and Obsidian.

Source: Airr on the App Store

I haven’t fully tried Snipd yet, but I like Airr (mainly because of the AirPod feature). However, an advantage of Snipd is that it works for Android as well as iOS. Snipd also offers you a direct integration to Obsidian, which makes the monthly Readwise subscription obsolete. You should be able to export markdown with Airr as well, but I haven’t managed to do this.

3) Become a teacher by learning in public

Have you ever read a book only to forget the quintessence three weeks later?

You don’t have a bad memory. Forgetting is natural and actually even essential for learning.

But to make information stick, you’ll want to interrupt this forgetting, ideally, through a meaningful learning practice.

All great books on learning that I have read agree on the effectiveness of teaching newly learned things to others.

In ‘How We Learn’, Benedict Carey writes,

“Many teachers have said that you don’t really know a topic until you have to teach it, until you have to make it clear to someone else.”

The attempt to communicate what you’ve learned to your family, friends or any online audience is a very effective learning technique. Carey again:

“These apparently simple attempts to communicate what you’ve learned, to yourself or others, are not merely a form of self-testing, in the conventional sense, but studying — the high-octane kind, 20 to 30 per cent more powerful than if you continue sitting on your butt, staring at that outline. Better yet, those exercises will dispel the fluency illusion. They’ll expose what you don’t know, where you’re confused, and what you’ve forgotten — and fast.”

Carey is not the only one who recommends teaching what you’ve learned to other people. In ‘A Mind for Numbers’, Dr. Barbara Oakley provides another powerful example:

“The legendary Charles Darwin would do much the same thing. When trying to explain a concept, he imagined someone had just walked into his study. He would put his pen down and try to explain the idea in the simplest terms. That helped him figure out how he would describe the concept in print. Along those lines, the website Reddit.com has a section called ‘Explain Like I’m 5’ where anyone can make a post asking for a simple explanation of a complex topic.”

You don’t have to be an expert on the topic you just listened to on the podcast. Having some knowledge gaps can even benefit your learning practice.

Oakley again:

“You may think you really have to understand something in order to explain it. But observe what happens when you are talking to other people about what you are studying. You’ll be surprised to see how often understanding arises as a consequence of attempts to explain to others and yourself, rather than the explanation arising out of your previous understanding. This is why teachers often say that the first time they ever really understood the material was when they had to teach it.”

So the next time you listen to an episode you want to remember, explain it to your flatmate in a blog post or a short video clip. You will be surprised by how much this practice improves your learning.

My free weekly Learn Letter will give you tools and resources to accelerate your learning. If you’d like to accelerate your online writing, register here.

You Want to Write Online in 2022? Publish Your Articles Here

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Where you start makes all the difference.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

Where will you publish your writing?

You face ever-growing options —Medium, Substack, your own website, and LinkedIn, and other publications.

This guide will help you make the right choice on where to start publishing your writing. The choice depends on your context. Some platforms might be more suitable for you than the other ones.

After reading this article, you’ll know the key factors for decision-making, and you’ll feel confident about your choice.

The key question to ask yourself

The most important thing you should look out for is to get sufficient data on your writing because this is what will help you improve.

You want to know which of your posts perform best and how much time people spend on your articles. Comments underneath your posts to learn about your readers’ needs and interests.

Through data, you can analyze your writing and create more from what works well. You can push the topics your readers are genuinely interested in and steadily attract more people.

But to get this kind of data, you need an initial audience of people reading your posts. That’s why the core question you should be asking yourself is: Do I have an existing +10K follower base on any social media platform or +2K newsletter subscribers?

In essence, you can break down all the existing options into this formula: They either distribute your content to their existing audience, or you have to bring in your own people.

You can write the best content in the world, but if nobody discovers your work, it will be worthless. So unless you have an existing audience, the key metric for your decision-making should be whether the platform you choose can help you grow your audience.

Writing on your personal blog

James Clear, Farnam Street, and many other successful writers post their writing on their blogs.

The key advantage of your own blog is that you own your audience. You can do with your blog traffic whatever you like: share affiliate links, advertise brands or sell your own products.

Another argument for blogs is your independence from algorithms. You’re not dependent on platforms to show your work to the readers. And you can design the website in your personal style.

You don’t need to be a programmer to publish your articles online. Content management systems like WordPress, Ghost, or Wix make website building easy.

Yet, unless you have an existing follower base, you’ll need to have a plan to drive people towards your blog. Are you good at SEO or plan to learn it? Can you spare +$2000 dollars and hire freelancers for sustainable traffic strategies? And is your writing good enough so that people will actually read your post once they find them?

When you’re starting out, you don’t know which articles people want to read from you. You might begin with a food blog and realize only later on that you’re not really into the topic. If you write on a blog and change your mind regarding your niche, you might have to start everything again from scratch.

That’s why — unless you have solid data on your niche and some 100 articles in your backlog — I advise against starting on a blog/website.

Writing on Substack

Newsletters are tempting. Platforms such as Substack, a platform for newsletters where subscribers have to pay for the creator if they wish to receive the recurring content, are on the rise.

Substack has grown from 0 to 1,000,000 paying subscribers within its first 4 years on the market. According to Hamish McKenzie, the co-founder of Substack, the top 10 publications of the platform together bring in more than $20 million per year.

“When you look at the economics of newsletters
 If you can find 10,000 people to pay you $100 a year, you’re making $1 million a year. No one in media is going to pay you that.”

— Casey Newton, Platformer

Other success stories include Scott Hines, who grew his email list to 1,000 in less than a year. He writes personal essays about life, parenting, sports, and architecture. Scott says he started from scratch.

Yet, substack doesn’t help you gain an audience. You’ll have to bring in people on your own.

One of the most common Substack advice is to reach out to your family members, friends, colleagues and ask them to subscribe (out of solidarity).

Many of the people who experienced rapid growth on Substack, had an existing audience when they started their newsletter. So unless you can bring an audience from another platform, I’d advise against starting on Substack.

Writing on Linkedin

LinkedIn has 774,61 million active users and the platform is expected to reach 1,034.56 million by 2025. LinkedIn is the go-to platform for networking in the business world, and it can offer a large audience.

There’re two ways to write on LinkedIn in 2021. You can either publish articles or posts. Articles are in-depth pieces, while posts are quick ideas.

LinkedIn articles can be an option for you if you have an existing audience within your niche and you know which content works well for them. With that, you can get initial traction of people commenting and being interested in your content.

Yet, long-form articles mostly don’t perform well on LinkedIn even for people with a large follower base. You also won’t get paid anything on LinkedIn for writing, regardless of how many people have read your work.

Short-form posts can help you gain followers if you go viral or semi-viral. Yet, short writing mostly lacks in-depth information and expertise. To build authentic relationships and a loyal follower base, you’ll have to provide more valuable content to your audience than ‘few hundred words long’ social media posts. As on most social media platforms, creators fight for the attention of the users on LinkedIn as well.

Source: Wes Kao

If you want to build a loyal audience that values depth and clarity, I don’t recommend starting writing on LinkedIn. While the platform can be a growth tool to drive traffic towards your content, it’s not the best place to practice your craft.

Writing on Medium

Founded in 2012 by Ev Williams, the co-founder of Twitter, Medium users have grown steadily. The platform has gone through several changes through the years, including the introduction of the Partner Program, which allows writers to earn money based on members’ reading time.

In 2021, Medium proportionally reduced its paid journalists and started to support independent writers.

On Medium, publishing is frictionless. You tap into an existing audience of people interested in long-form content— unlike LinkedIn, where people mainly go to network and scroll. Through publications, comments, and curation, you receive feedback on your writing. Data on reading time, views, and the reading ratio will help you improve.

Plus, you don’t have to spend time building your website, doing SEO, and finding sponsorships or affiliates for your website. You get paid based on the user’s reading time on your articles.

Many creators complain their earnings aren’t in alignment with their time and energy investment. Indeed, only the top 10% of the writers regularly earn more than $100.

My income on Medium varies from $1,500 to $5,000 — but even if Medium wouldn’t pay me a single cent, I’d write on the platform. I get thoughtful comments and 10 to 25 e-mail subscribers a day.

I see the platform as a tool for testing and improving my writing and building an audience. The income is a nice side effect. If you’re starting out, the platform can offer you many growth and learning opportunities.

Conclusion

To make the best decision on where to publish online, you’ll have to consider the size of your audience.

While it makes sense to redistribute your 10k+ social media following to a paid newsletter subscription or to a blog filled with ads and affiliates, if you’re starting from scratch, it’s easier to tap into the audience of already flourishing platforms.

Do you want to build a consistent writing habit?

Pre-register for the next cohort of my writing online accelerator. You will transform into a consistent writer to attract an audience, create career opportunities, and become a better person. Find more details about the next launch date here.

This Trap Prevents Most People From Clear Thinking

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How to stop clouding your judgment.

Photo by Niloofar Kanani on Unsplash

In his book ‘Stillness is Key,’ Ryan Holiday wrote:

“Wisdom is [
] the ability to rise above the biases, the traps that catch lazier thinkers.”

I disagree.

Mental traps not only catch the lazy thinkers — they snag all of us. Because cognitive laziness is how our brains save energy.

Among the most common pitfalls is our tendency to stick to what we believe. Warren Buffett said:

“What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”

Cognitive psychologists call this confirmation bias. It means we select and favor information aligned with our beliefs and values.

We can’t eradicate this thinking trap. But this article will equip you with tools that help you think better.

The Bias That Clouds Your Thinking

“Many startups fail because founders disagree,” my professor said. It was June 2017, and I listened to one of my last business lectures.

He continued explaining the specifics, but I had already stopped listening.

I just founded my first company and thought, “This doesn’t apply to us. We chose the right people.” I continued daydreaming.

Little did I know that wishful thinking would cost me loads of money and energy. Yet, I’m not alone in this. Many others tend to ignore disconfirming evidence.

In 1979, three researchers at Standford divided study participants based on their opinion on death penalties. One group included all believers, the other all skeptics.

Both groups read articles with evidence on death penalties. Half of the people in both groups read studies that disproved the death penalty efficiency. The other half read conforming studies.

Did the evidence influence the participants thinking?

It did. But not in the way you might imagine.

Evidence reinforced preexisting beliefs. No matter which of the two studies they read — both groups were more convinced of their initial opinion.

We do not change our opinion based on research. Instead, we interpret the facts in a way to supports our values and beliefs.

“ In an attempt to simplify the world and make it conform to our expectations, we have been blessed with the gift of cognitive biases.” — Sia Mohajer

How to Rise Above the Confirmation Bias

“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government,” Thomas Jefferson stated in 1789. But he was wrong.

Facts don’t make humans better thinkers or citizens. Often, they make us more ignorant.

“What we believe depends on what we want to believe,” Adam Grant said. “We favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt.”

Here are four strategies that help you see what you don’t want to see so you can think clearer.

1) Seek Contradicting Evidence

Test your hypothesis. If you read a book, use red post-its to highlight contradictions to your worldview.

Juvoni Beckford says: “If you read a book and there are very few red flags, then there’s no real reason to keep on reading the book. If you understand everything, why are you reading the book?”

2) Dare to be wrong

The enemy of learning is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge — the things you think you know.

When you’re convinced to know something, learning something new means you have to change your mind. Overcoming your ego is one of the big challenges for better thinking.

The further you’re in your career, the stronger you’re desire to be right. But this desire prevents you from seeing the truth. Embrace intellectual humility. Dare to be wrong.

3) Ask open-ended questions

If you google “Is Green tea better for my body than coffee?” you will see results that highlight the advantages of yoga. If you phrase the question in the other way, “Is coffee better for my body than green tea?” you will see the opposite tendency.

The search engine will show you what you asked for. By using open-ended questions (“Which beverage is best for my body?”), you’ll get closer to an objective answer.

4) Become a critical thinker

At age 21, Franklin gathered smart people in his city to form a mutual improvement club. Each Friday evening, the club’s members brought an interesting conversation topic. Once every three months, the members wrote essays on the topics they discussed.

Learning researcher Anders Ericsson writes about it: “By creating the club Franklin not only ensured himself regular access to some of the most interesting people in the city, but he was giving himself extra motivation (as if he needed any) to delve into these topics himself.”

As research shows, accountability increases your motivation to think critically. If people around you ask you to justify your thinking, you’re likelier to overcome confirmation bias.

Evaluating your worldview is exhausting. It requires mental energy. Even if you’re not lazy, your brain likes to take shortcuts.

Yet, confirmation biases can harm us in the form of misjudgments and bad decision-making.

The best recipe against unconscious biases is self-awareness. Now that you’re aware of our collective mental laziness, you’ll have an easier time overcoming the mental trap. Step by step, you’ll be able to think better.

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

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Understand This Rarely Mentioned Concept and You Will Never Stop Learning

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Everything you know has an expiration date.

An old advertisement showing a doctor recommending cigarettes.
Country Gentleman, 1946 (Source)

From the 1930s to the 1950s, doctors recommended smoking.

People who believed cigarettes were good for you weren’t stupid. They followed the tenor of their times.

Much of what we believe today will be wrong 50 years from now. Here’s the reason why and what you can do about it. Knowing the following concept will help you keep an open mind so you can become a lifelong learner.

The Half-Life of Knowledge

Half-life is the time it takes for a certain quantity to halve in value. Nobel Prize winner Ernest Rutherford discovered the concept in his work on radioactivity, but it also applies to everyday life.

The biological half-life of caffeine is around 6 hours. So when you drink a cup of coffee with 200 mg caffeine at 6 AM, you’ll still have 100 mg in your system around lunchtime. Another six hours later, and you’ll have 50 mg in your blood (which is why sleep scientists recommend not drinking coffee after lunch).

The half-life of knowledge works similarly: it measures the amount of time before half of the knowledge in one area is outdated or proven untrue.

As a med student, my fiancé takes hour-long multiple-choice exams every year. Yet, the box marked correct in the last year might not be correct in the next.

The half-life of medical knowledge is 18–24 months. Half of what doctors believe to be true today will be outdated in less than two years from now.

This iteration is not only true in medicine but in other academic disciplines.

Scientist Rong Tang explored 750 scholarly monographs to determine the half-life of knowledge. Here’s what he found:

Adapted by Eva Keiffenheim based on Rong Tang (2008).

Can we derive history has a knowledge half-life of 7 years? No. Tang’s research hasn’t been replicated, and he solely focused on books.

But there’s one thing to learn here: knowledge isn’t permanent. Most of what we consider truth today decays within a decade from now.

“We laugh at people who still use Windows 95, yet we still cling to opinions that we formed in 1995.”

— Adam Grant

What Most People Ignore For Too Long

Philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote almost a century ago, “the fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

Changing your opinion when presented with conflicting evidence is one of the most valuable skills of the 21st century.

Psychologist and researcher Adam Grant dedicated an entire book to rethinking. One line stayed with me long after reading: “The purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs.”

If Pulitzer Prize winner Kathryn Schulz read this statement, she would agree.

In ‘Being Wrong,’ she writes: “This is the pivotal insight of the Scientific Revolution: that the advancement of knowledge depends on current theories collapsing in the face of new insights and discoveries. In this model of progress, errors do not lead us away from the truth. Instead, they edge us incrementally toward it.”

Everything you know has an expiration date. But this change is nothing to be afraid of — it’s how you learn and progress.

Smoke a fresh cigarette. R.J. Reynolds, 1931, SRITA. (Source)

“Facts change in regular and mathematically understandable ways.”

― Samuel Arbesman

How You Can Benefit from This Concept

In 470 B.C. Philosopher Anaxagoras said, “Thunder was produced by the collision of the clouds, and lightning by the rubbing together of the clouds.”

We might laugh about ancient philosophers’ theories as they attempted to make sense of their world — but what are some of our current beliefs that will seem crazy in 50 years’ time?

Understanding that facts have a half-life helps you on many levels:

  • You don’t cling to outdated beliefs. You keep an open mind and can make better sense of the world.
  • You understand truth as an asymptote. We can never reach the absolute truth. But constant questioning and a curious mind lead to better approximations.
  • You ask yourself: What do I believe that might be proven wrong soon? Looking for evidence that contradicts your worldview is how you become a lifelong learner.

In Summary

Just because you read something in a study doesn’t mean it remains true. Many scientific studies are cited long after they’ve been proven wrong.

Consider Howard Gardner’s ‘Theory of Multiple Intelligences.’ According to it, all students have learning styles: linguistic, musical, kinaesthetic, and spatial. The theory was published in the 80s, proven wrong in the 90s, and, as Alex Beard writes, “enshrined in teacher-training syllabuses in the 2010s.”

Question what you read. Change is the only constant in knowledge.

It’s impossible to know everything. Even if you do nothing but reading tons of papers on your subject, you can barely keep up with new knowledge.

Here’s what to keep in mind:

  • update your beliefs when presented with evidence and new arguments
  • remain aware of what you don’t know
  • never stop learning

Because learning is the most valuable skill of our time.

“If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.”

— Adam Grant

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

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3 Specific Ways to Benefit from the Zeigarnik Effect

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How interrupting your tasks can boost your creativity.

Photo by Robert Katzki on Unsplash

Have you ever felt guilty about not finishing a task?

My parents used to tell me “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” (German: Was du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen.)

I grew up in the mindset believing anything that can be done today should be done today. Whenever I procrastinated on a thing, I felt bad.

But not finishing can be a good thing. Here’s a brief explanation of the Zeigarnik effect and four ways to reap the benefits in everyday life.

A brief explanation of the Zeigarnik effect

In the 1920s, soviet researcher Bluma Zeigarnik discovered people remember interrupted or uncompleted activities better than completed ones.

She observed the effect in waiters. They remembered orders only so long as the order was open and forgot it as soon as it was served.

As a scientist, Zeigarnik started experiments to test her observation. She asked probands to complete 15 to 22 tasks such as solving a puzzle, stringing beads, folding paper, or counting backward.

She let half of the participants complete all of their tasks while she interrupted the other half before they finished.

Zeigarnik then tested how many unfinished tasks the participants would remember. The experiment’s results were significant. Participants were twice as likely to remember incomplete tasks than complete ones.

You likely know this effect from earworms. When you stop listening to a song halfway through, your brain will start the song repeatedly to complete it. The music will be stuck in your head.

The Zeigarnik effect has also been explored more recently by two researchers from Florida State University. Baumeister and Masicampo discovered people did worse on a task when they were interrupted finishing a warm-up activity — because it is still stuck in their working memory.

created by Eva Keiffenheim vie Canva

How to use the Zeigarnik effect for you

Luckily, the Zeigarnik effect also comes with upsides. You can use it to improve your creativity, memory, and much more.

1) Better recall through interleaving

Learning scientists agree unfinished things stay longer in your memory. If you interrupt a learning session and resume later, you’ll likely remember more of the content.

Researchers call this learning strategy interleaving: “In interleaving, you don’t move from a complete practice set of one topic to go to another. You switch before each practice is complete. If learners spread out their study of a topic, returning to it periodically over time, they remember it better.”

So the next time you’re trying to remember information, schedule strategic breaks in the middle of your learning session.

2) Boost your creativity with this trick

Creativity doesn’t work with willpower. You can’t sit down and force your best ideas to come to your consciousness. Creativity works better in your brain’s diffused mode.

This mode feels like daydreaming and enables new neural connections. When you let your mind wander without actively thinking about the problem, you likely come up with a solution you hadn’t thought about.

Adam Grant writes in his book Originals: “When you’re generating new ideas, deliberately stop when your progress is incomplete. By taking a break in the middle of the process, you’re more likely to engage in divergent thinking and give ideas time to incubate.”

The Zeigarnik effect can help unlock your best ideas. Start thinking about a topic or an unsolved problem. Write the question down and bring it to your mind. But then, do something unrelated where you can let your mind wander, e.g., washing the dishes, cleaning the apartment, going for a phone-free walk.

“These were all situations which occurred to me-while showering, while driving, while taking my daily walk and which I eventually turned into books.”

— Steven King

3) Get people’s attention with cliffhangers

Ever binge-watched a series? Likely, every episode finished unfinished with a story thread that hadn’t been resolved.

But even if you don’t write a playscript, you can increase people’s interest with informational teasers.

When you give presentations, for example, the Zeigarnik effect can help you retain your audience’s attention. Tease a piece of important information early on, but don’t reveal it until the end.

The next time you feel guilty about not finishing a task, remember the Zeigarnik effect — a strategic break can actually help you be more creative, improve your recall, or get people’s attention.

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Top 3 Ways to Discover Inspiring Content as a Creator

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All of them are free.

Source: Created by the author via Canva

With fluff-flooded feeds, finding unique content can be tricky. As a creator, you probably know how difficult that can be.

When I started writing, I wasted much research time on social platforms. In the end, I was rarely satisfied with the results.

But discovering inspiring resources doesn’t need to be complicated. There are reliable, free platforms designed for online creators.

Here are my top three sources for content inspiration. Every single one can improve your creative process.

1) Refind — the 5 most relevant links.

The site helps you find the best from all around the web, tailored to your interests, curated by experts and algorithms.

You follow your favorite topics, sites, thought leaders, and friends, and Refind puts together the most relevant new links and key takeaways for you. Every day you see 5–10 new content pieces. I use Refind as a key inspiration for my weekly newsletter.

In addition, you can also subscribe to Deep Dives. Dozens of experts introduce you to the best articles and videos from their field of expertise.

For example, I created a deep dive on ‘How to build a writing habit’ with ten time-tested articles and videos from around the web. Any creator can curate a deep dive and get boosted to an audience who would otherwise not have found them.

How you can use it:

Sign up for free here and select your favorite creators and industries. Once the platform knows your preferences, you’ll receive 5–10 relevant links each day.

Whenever you find something valuable, you can organize your links within your collections— for yourself or the web.

Screenshot of Refind.

2) Bookshlf —curation by humans.

Bookshlf is a place designed for curious learners who share their knowledge in public.

So-called shelves are curated link collections. A single Shelf can be organized by topic, mood, category, or media type, or in any other way that makes sense to you. As a result, the platform is filled with diverse content across industries.

Most curators post 20% self-created content, like their podcasts, videos, articles, and 80% resources. You can find things that alter your mindset, your understanding or get you to look at the world from a new angle.

I’ve used the platform since January 2020 to discover and organize content. I created shelves around my writing topics. On my profile, you’ll find shelves for education & learning, entrepreneurship, and creativity.

How you can use it:

You can sign up free here. Browse the Shelves and communities that trigger your interest. Subscribe to Shelves and follow your favorite curators to access exciting and relevant content easily.

You can also create your Shelves and get tipped by other users.

Screenshot of Bookshlf.

3) Feedly — smarter news reader.

Feedly is an online service that uses artificial intelligence to cut through the noise and flag specific topics and trends you care about from all the sources you trust. In essence, it’s an RSS feed aggregator.

While Refind and Bookshlf started recently, Feedly has been around since 2006. The platform is used by +15 million curious minds.

I started with Feedly in 2014 and upgraded to the premium version four months ago. For $99/year, I have all newsletters, favorite Twitter feeds, and blogs in one place.

How you can use it:

You can sign up free here. Just like Refind and Bookshlf, Feedly is free — and if you’re happy with limited functionality, it can stay free forever.

Feedly is less intuitive than Refind or Bookshlf. First, you want to find and organize the right sources. Second, train the AI assistant Leo to filter out the noise (which I haven’t managed to do yet). Then, you can read through your curated feed.

Screenshot of Feedly.

In Conclusion

Managing and discovering content doesn’t need to feel difficult. These three tools help you organize, curate, and find the content you love:

  • Refind — the 5–10 most relevant links tailored to your interest.
  • Bookshlf — a digital library from curators for curators.
  • Feedly — an RSS feed aggregator to have everything in a single place.

I rely on all three content discovery tools, but right now, Refind is my favorite (it’s free, but I like it even better than my paid Feedly).

Instead of feeling discouraged by all these ways to find new content, experiment at your own pace. Try the platforms that resonate with you, and screw the rest.

Choose one or two new content resources until you find a pattern that helps you to become a better content creator.

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

3 Promising Opportunities to Teach Your Kids From Home

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These organizations innovate homeschooling.

Photo by Marga Santoso on Unsplash

“What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children’s growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools,” educational theorist John Holt said, “but that it isn’t a school at all.”

Holt argued schools work as oppressive environments and turned kids into compliant employees. And that’s how in the 1970s, the modern homeschooling movement began.

The debate is still ongoing, and many people argue schools enforce and prioritize compliance and consumption over critical thinking and creativity.

Learning in home education is often less formal and more personalized than school education — ranging from traditional school lessons to free forms such as unschooling.

Reasons for homeschooling vary from better educational opportunities, a healthier learning environment, special needs, or being the only option in remote areas.

Homeschooling is legal in many countries (e.g., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States) but outlawed by others (e.g., Germany, Japan, Brazil).

Homeschooling legality Source: Fobos92 and Svenskbygderna

What follows are three organizations that rethink the way children learn from home.

1) Primer — A home for ambitious kids.

Primer is the world’s first community built for curious and ambitious kids to find and explore their interests together. Their goal is to “free the next generation of kids to be more ambitious, more creative, and to think for themselves.”

Unlike connected learning networks that replace core curricula, Primer is supplemental. To foster kid’s curiosity, the team offers various learning formats:

  • Clubs. Students collaborate on projects such as writing, storytelling, coding, inventing machines, music, or nature.
  • Rooms. Live audio chat spaces allow students to experiment with new ideas, solve problems, and tap into their interests (e.g., debating, writing, puzzling, coding, starting a business).
  • Journals. In journals, kids can document their projects by creating and organizing blocks of text, images, videos, and links.

There is no set schedule for a day with Primer, as all their activities happen in addition to set curricula.

After a free trial month, Primer is $49 a month for the first child and $19 a month for each additional child.

Primer was founded by Ryan Delk and Maksim Stepanenko, who both have been homeschooled. Previously, they helped build companies like SpaceX, Square, Gumroad, Lyft, and Coinbase.

“We studied the American Revolution by driving to historic locations in the original 13 colonies and crawled through cardboard tubes to learn how the digestive system works.”

— Ryan Delk, Co-Founder of Primer

Screenshot of Primer Landing Page

2) Outschool — Where kids love learning.

Outschool online marketplace of virtual classes for children aged 3–18. Outschool’s goal is to engage and inspire learning through various classes and subjects.

The platform offers kids the opportunity to explore their interests in-depth with interactive classes taught via live video by experienced, independent teachers.

Like Primer, Outschool doesn’t suggest a fully-fledged curriculum. Instead, the platform offers more than 100,000 live lessons to more than 900,000 learners in 174 countries.

Pricing starts with $10 a course, and the most expensive multi-week course I found on the platform costs about $75.

The platform was founded by Amir Nathoo, who is a former investor and holds various patents.

“If we just stick to the core curriculum, then it is very difficult for kids to develop differentiated skills. More of the school day needs to be spent on kids pursuing their interests with the benefit of increased autonomy and self-direction — with this, kids’ motivation to learn can increase. There’s going to be so much change in technology and society in the next 10 years, I think we will head in a direction of hybrid core + self-directed.”

— Amir Nathoo, Founder of Outschool

Screenshot of Outschool Landing Page

3) Synthesis — Where kids become
problem-solvers.

Synthesis started as a school spin-off from Elon Musk’s AdAstra school. As of now, it’s a weekly, 1-hour enrichment program for students who want to learn how to build the future.

They offer a simulation-based learning experience built around complex team games. Students work through case studies, simulations, and game-based challenges.

Synthesis doesn’t design simulations for content but the experience. Simulations are complex and have no right answers. For example, 18–20 kids work in groups with one facilitator. But facilitators don’t lecture. Instead, the student groups explore and learn game rules on their own.

The idea of the simulations is to change the way kids approach real-life problems and prepare them to navigate the complexity and chaos that comes with life.

While playing, kids teach themselves how to win. In the process, they learn new problem-solving skills. Here are two game examples:

  • Art for All. Students compete in an auction game for the best art exhibits. The simulation covers negotiation and covers mental models such as auction theory and the winner’s curse.
  • Fire! In this collaborative game, students fight forest fires with varying conditions. It covers mental models such as positive-sum vs. zero-sum games.

Pricing is $180 per month, and a sibling discount is available.

Synthesis is led by Chrisman Frank. On a visit to Elon Musk’s AdAstra school, he fell in love with Synthesis.

In 2020, Frank convinced the AdAstra principal and his former colleague Josh Dahn to spin-off Synthesis as a for-profit company. Frank’s vision was to scale the learning software and develop a generation of super thinkers.

“When mistakes are not penalized, people are more likely to just keep trying. And if you keep trying, then naturally, you have more chances of eventually succeeding.”

— Ana Fabrega, Chief Evangelist at Synthesis

Screenshot of Synthesis Landing Page

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

5 Quick Fixes for a Calmer, More Focused Life

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How to *not* be distracted all the time.

Image created by the author via Canva.

Do you ever feel time runs like sand through your fingers?

If you’re struggling to live a more present life, you likely focus on the wrong things. Improving your inner peace is about what you do less of, not more of.

Taking a moment to integrate these quick fixes can help you find an inner state of calm while staying on top of things.

None of these suggestions should take you more than three minutes to set up, but every single one will help you reach more focus and presence.

1) Change Your Social Media Passwords

Without your active consent, social media’s persuasive design tricks you into screen time with severe consequences.

Different research attests to a relation between social media usage and mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and even suicide-related thoughts.

Not knowing your password is one of the most effective ways to spend less time on social media. I follow this technique since 2017, and it has given me weeks of time. I created a threshold that prevents me from impulsive social media checks.

How to do it:

Go to all social media you use regularly and change your password to a random combination you can’t remember.

Don’t save the new password in your browser. Instead, write it on a piece of paper. Then log off your social media platforms and place the paper in some drawer.

2) Don’t Consolidate Messaging Apps

Self-labeled productivity apps like Shift or Franz sound tempting. It seems convenient to aggregate all communication channels in one place.

Yet, these apps lead to context switching and thereby destroy your focus.

Cal Newport says: “Switching your attention — even if only for a minute or two — can significantly impede your cognitive function for a long time to follow.”

Once I deleted Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, and Franz from my desktop, I focused better on one project at a time.

How to do it:

Delete all messaging aggregators from your computer. Anytime you need a specific communication channel, open it in your browser.

Instead of being surprised by new messages, you actively decide when to open and read the messages.

3) Delete Mail from Your Phone

I used to check my email when walking up the stairs and while waiting in a line. My mind revolved around work even while I wasn’t at my desk.

But our brains need off-time. To get maximum focus during working hours, we need enough time away from work. Plus, boredom brings benefits.

How to do it:

Pick your phone and delete your Mail app. Nothing is so urgent it can’t wait until you’re back at your desk.

“Are you distracted by breaking news? Then take some leisure time to learn something good, and stop bouncing around.”

— Marcus Aurelius

4) Use Site-Blockers

Compulsive social media checks will make your thoughts bounce around like a ping-pong ball. A study from Irvine University found it takes 20 minutes to refocus after distractions.

Chamath Palihapitiya, former Facebook executive, says: “We were not evolved to get social approval being dosed upon us every 5 minutes.”

For better productivity, fix your environment. If you don’t want to get distractions, use a site-blocker.

How to do it:

I use this free chrome extension to block LinkedIn, Facebook, and Mail from 9 PM to noon.

Block all sites that dilute your focus. You’ll be surprised how much more you can achieve in less time.

5) Charge Your Phone Outside Your Bedroom

If you charge your phone in your bedroom, you’re likely poisoning your mind with trash at the most important times of your day — before you sleep and after you wake up.

Here are the three of the most damaging effects of using your smartphone in your bedroom:

  • You lose time
  • You lose focus
  • Your sleep quantity and quality drops

By abandoning your phone from your bedroom, you can implement new bedtime and morning rituals such as reading, meditating, journaling, or letting your mind wander.

Keeping my phone out of my bedroom was the single most effective habit to read more books. Since I managed my phone habits, I have read one book a week for almost three years.

How to do it:

Get an alarm clock and stop waking up to your smartphone’s alarm. When you sleep with your phone in another room, you don’t need to exert your willpower first thing in the morning. Instead, you’ll start your days with a clear mind and ease into a distraction-free morning.

Often, anxiety and hurry are caused by distraction. These quick fixes help me live a calmer life that’s full of focus. I hope they do the same for you.

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

9 Influencers Worth Following That Tweet About the Future of Learning

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A curated list of inspiring edupreneurs.

Created by the author via Canva.

Anything you read, watch or listen to shapes your thoughts. Hence, it’s worth paying attention to what you consume online.

I left teaching in Summer 2020 to make education fairer and better for as many learners as possible. Parts of what I do now includes connecting and reporting about education transformation.

Here’s a selection of thinkers who inspire me through their thoughts and projects on the future of learning.

1) Salman Khan

Salman Khan is the American educator who founded Khan Academy. His online education videos have been viewed more than 1.8 billion times. On Twitter, he shares ideas about bridging the digital divide and education transformation.

“Shying away from something where you are well suited to make a positive impact — especially because it is risky or can draw criticism or unwanted attention — is just as damaging as not realizing areas where your actions are counterproductive.”

— Salman Khan

2) Alain Chuard

Alain is the Founder & CEO of Prisma, a connected learning network that fully replaces regular school. Prisma didn’t transfer the core curriculum to the online world but created its own learning framework. On Twitter, Alain shares ideas on how to create learner-centric online schools./media/4dc1ab9cd7b5e747464e2f6d1a17abea

3) Richard Culatta

Richard is the CEO of ISTE — a community of global educators who believe in the power of technology to transform teaching & learning. He recently published the book ‘Digital for Good: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World’ and is a popular speaker on EdTech and innovation. On Twitter, he shares opinions on the digital divine and responsible device usage.

4) Ana Lorena Fabrega

Ana Lorena left teaching in 2019 to explore alternatives to traditional education. She’s now the Chief Evangelist at Synthesis, an online program partly initiated by Elon Musk. I love her Fab Friday newsletter, where she explores the future of education./media/57742cf1e5f6d6fdf684a7ed93cf0da0

5) Jelmer Evers

Jelmer is a history teacher, author and was nominated twice for the Global Teacher Prize. He is currently building an international teacher leadership network. If you understand Dutch, you can follow him on Twitter. Alternatively, watch his TEDx talk on flipping the education system.

6) Vlad Stan

Vlad is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Galileo — a global learning community for 8 to 18-year-olds. At its core, Galileo strives for self-directed (the freedom to choose what you want to learn) and self-organized (the freedom to design your daily schedule) education. Vlad tweets about homeschooling and EdTech./media/90cc016a4213594bfd498a8af5345e52

7) Saku Tuominen

Saku is the founder of HundrED — a not-for-profit organization that seeks and shares innovations in K12 education. I love to be inspired through their yearly global collection. Saku isn’t very active on Twitter, so instead, you might want to explore innovations curated by his company.

8) Wes Kao

Wes co-founded Maven, a platform for cohort-based courses. While MOOCs completion rate is just 3 to 6 percent, CBCs aim to improve completion rates through active, synchronous, hands-on learning. Wes published an excellent article on a16z and tweets about learning and thinking./media/98a3c16f3957046274b53bcbe649d16d

9) Jo Boaler

Jo is a professor of Mathematics education at the Standford Graduate School of Education and co-founder of youcubed. During my two years as a full-time Math teacher, her books drastically improved my teaching. On Twitter Jo shares insights on the growth mindset and mathematics.

“A lot of scientific evidence suggests that the difference between those who succeed and those who don’t is not the brains they were born with, but their approach to life, the messages they receive about their potential, and the opportunities they have to learn.”

— Jo Boaler

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

How Connected Learning Networks Shape the Future of Education

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Learning innovation with Sora, Galileo, and Prisma.

Image created by Eva Keiffenheim via Canva.

Education visionary Sir Ken Robinson once said:

“Our task is to educate their (our students) whole being so they can face the future. We may not see the future, but they will and our job is to help them make something of it.”

Yet, many kids grow up in an education system that stems from the industrialized age. Most schools batch children by age and expect them to learn at the same speed with the same means.

Connected Learning Networks follow a new paradigm. The approach to learning is defined as “learning that is socially connected, interest-driven, and oriented towards educational, economic, or political opportunity.”

Here are three schools that build on Connected Learning Networks and how they might shape the future of education:

1) Sora — High school built for you

Sora is a virtual high school that aims to accelerate students toward their wildest dreams.

Teachers are no longer teachers who deliver lectures but so-called guides who challenge students, structure individual curricula, and facilitate learning.

Sora offers various learning formats:

  • Independent projects. Students follow their learning interests (e.g., computer science or 18th-century Victorian fashion) and work towards their project goal.
  • Learning expeditions. Live learning sessions (e.g., saving the coral reef and shellfish industry) happen three days a week. These expeditions have deliverables, and students are assessed based on a mastery scale.
  • Career tracks. Learning advisors help students design their school experience around their desired career track, e.g., engineering, design, or health sciences.

Here’s what a typical schedule at Sora looks like:

A Day at Sora
9:30am daily standup on discord
10:00am project work (e.g. programming a game or writing a book) 
11:00am first learning expedition (e.g. history of buddhism)
12:00pm lunch break
12:45pm second learning expedition (e.g. saving the coral reef)
3:00pm afternoon checkpoint
4:30pm 1-on-1 check-in with experts to work through questions
5:00pm virtual club (e.g. movie club, school feedback sessions)

Tuition is $3,600 to $9,600 per year with flexible tuition options for families with a non-working parent or any extenuating circumstances.

The school was founded by Wesley Samples, Indra Sofian, and Garrett Smiley. They have work experience in venture capital, content marketing, as well as financial and entrepreneurship education.

Screenshot of Sora’s landing page.

I rate this approach 2/5 — Here’s why:

I love how Sora rethought curricula and moved away from a factory schedule. Their learning design can indeed foster self-directed learning enthusiasts.

What’s also great is the mastery-based curriculum where skill levels go along with learning science (e.g., 0 for exposure, 1 for recognition and recall, 2 for elaboration, 3 for application, and 4 for transfer).

Moreover, I like is their student focus. They state: “Schools suck because they are so far removed from the students that they serve. Our students know that we hear them, and though we make mistakes, they know that we all can learn from them.”

Yet, there are a few aspects that make me question Sora schools. First, their curriculum isn’t holistic. I can’t see subjects that focus on relationships, physical education, or arts.

Their site says, “relationships are one of the most important aspects of an education.” But a virtual book club isn’t enough to reinforce social skills.

Sora also lacks a clear roadmap to physical education. There’s the subject on an exemplary grade certificate. Yet, there’s neither a sports teacher on the team list nor a subject in their curriculum.

The online school doesn’t seem to offer art classes. It’d be great to take a more open approach to career tracks. Next generations need more than engineers, designers, and health scientists.

Sora seems like is the perfect school for parents who can’t wait for their students to join the high-achieving workforce.

2) Galileo — Online self-directed global school

Galileo is a global learning community for 8 to 18-year-olds. They offer live learning experiences and online courses.

At its core, Galileo strives for self-directed (the freedom to choose what you want to learn) and self-organized (the freedom to design your daily schedule) education.

Their mission is to improve the way we learn. Here’s how they do it:

  • Clubs such as Minecraft education, history clubs, coding, or theater clubs. These are ongoing teacher-led experiences where students connect and collaborate on topics of their interest. Students may join clubs on a week-to-week basis.
  • Nanocourses such as Logo design, artificial intelligence, space exploration, food innovation, or photography. They are 1-month project-based courses where the students learn a new skill. Students present their products during the final week of the course.
  • Bootcamps on game development, anthropology, or documentary making. There are two or three-month-long project-based learning experiences to inspire and give students a jump start on topics they want to learn about.

The school states the schedule looks different for every student, but here’s an example of how it might look like:

A Day at Galileo
9:00am daily check-in
9:30am 3D modeling club
11:00am Spanish club
1:00pm psychology crash course YT
3:00pm Math Khan - decimals
5:00pm Dance ballet

Their curriculum builds on existing solutions like Khan Academy, BrainPop, CodeCombat, Coursera, CrashCourse, or Duolingo. In addition, they invite mentors for inspirational speeches.

Tuition is $300 per student per month or $2000 per student a year (with a 20% siblings discount).

Kelly Davis and Vlad Stan founded Galileo. Kelly has taught in various countries throughout Asia, and Vlad is a serial entrepreneur.

Screenshot of Galileo’s landing page.

I rate this approach 3/5 — Here’s why:

The school’s founders share a noble motivation: “ We want you to be obsessed — or at least passionate — about the topic you are teaching, no matter if your passion is related to the core curricula or it’s just something completely different you pursued on your own.”

Galileo offers a holistic curriculum that includes dancing, singing, writing, languages, coding, maths, books, science. In addition, they provide more than 70 live learning experiences that go beyond economics and business skills.

Unlike Sora, they add a personal layer to online learning. They have student-led check-ins and local dojos — small, local, in-person learning experiences. So far, these local communities exist in Romania, Japan, the USA, Kenya, and Portugal.

They give people the opportunity to individualize their kids’ curriculum, and their team shares a passion for lifelong learning.

Yet, I’m not sure whether un- and deschooling with local dojos encompass the future of education is. So, while Galileo is an interesting niche product, I can’t see how this solution would work at scale.

Galileo seems like is the perfect school for world travelers and digital nomads who want to offer their kids connected, self-directed, world-class education.

“We have to personalize education, not standardize it.”

— Sir Ken Robinson

3) Prisma — The world’s first connected learning network

Prisma is a personalized, full-time online school for 9–14-year-olds. They reinvent learning.

Their vision is to create the world’s most effective and inclusive Connected Learning Network dedicated to preparing millions of kids for life and work in the 21st century.

Prisma offers various formats to their students:

  • Peer cohorts. A group that meets daily to collaborate, socialize, and learn with.
  • Coaching. Learning coaches meet and assist with learning on a daily basis.
  • Live workshops. A selection of virtual workshops that focus on communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. According to their website, these workshops are optimized for engagement.

For students, a typical schedule looks like this:

A Day at Prisma
10:00am standup
10:30am independent learning routines (e.g. math, English, arts)
12:00pm lunch
1:00pm live workshops (e.g. debates, strategy simulation, writing)
3:00pm projects
3:30pm coach-learner 1-on-1 (once a week)

Prisma didn’t copy and paste a bricks & mortar curriculum to online videos. Instead, they’ve custom-designed their learning content.

Unlike other programs, this school places a focus on inclusion: “Each learner, regardless of disability status, develops an individualized learning plan along with their Learning Coach and family.”

They do so by adjusting individual learning plans, for example, through more structure or learning accessibility.

The school enrollment works in 6 x 5-week learning cycles per year and costs $7415 a year. In addition, Prisma offers financial support options to support 40% of learners in each cohort.

Prisma was founded by serial entrepreneurs and parents Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard. They built Prisma as a quest to reimagine school and for their children.

Screenshot of Prisma’s landing page.

I rate this approach 4/5 — Here’s why:

Prisma mastered many aspects I missed at Sora and Galileo.

Most importantly, their curriculum is holistic. They didn’t transfer the core curriculum to the online world but created their own learning framework consisting of:

  • Foundational knowledge (language literacy, numeracy, history, technology literacy, and science principles)
  • Powers (creativity, critical thinking, communication)
  • Perspectives (global perspective, empathy & compassion, mindfulness)
  • Practices (collaboration, design thinking, reflection, discussions, self-care)
  • Mindset (self-efficacy, emotional awareness, purpose, growth mindset, ownership & self-direction, love of learning).

Prisma also mastered to include physical education in a virtual learning environment. They acknowledge the difficulty of physical online education but have found three solutions that seem to work for their students:

  1. Live dance, yoga, and fitness instructors
  2. Fitness and other off-screen breaks that encourage movement
  3. Fitness badges by joining athletic endeavors in their local community

Moreover, they relied on learning evidence and eliminated grading: “There has been considerable research showing that grades reduce kids’ intrinsic motivation and encourage them to do ‘just enough’ rather than their best.”

I’d be curious what students say about the rather big group size with 50–70 learners per cohort and 12–18 learners per coach. In an online setting, this appears to make personalization difficult.

While their site states they’re a global online school, admission is only open to anyone who can operate in US time zones. So unless parents want to mess up with their child’s sleep cycle, Prisma is instead a US online school.

Prisma is the ideal online school for US homeschoolers and kids who don’t like traditional schooling.

In Conclusion

The application of Connected Learning Networks is still very young. Sora and Galileo started in 2018, Prisma in 2020.

These three online schools point us towards the future of education — personalized, global, and student-centered.

Yet, we mustn’t forget the entry barriers. To provide fair innovative learning experiences, all students need equitable access to devices, reliable wifi, and a safe place to learn.

Unless we focus on providing these resources to all students, Connected Learning Networks will further increase the digital gap among income levels.

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Antilibraries Are the Better Libraries

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Here’s how they can accelerate your learning.

Photo by Pickawood on Unsplash

Do you ever feel guilty about the book staple you haven’t read? Polymath Nassim Nicholas Taleb says you shouldn’t:

“Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.”

Yes, you read it right. The pages you haven’t studied indeed add value to your life. Here’s why.

Antilibraries protect you from ignorance

When you just read a few books in your life, you’re likely aware of what you don’t know. But once you’ve read through some hundred books, you tend to become ignorant.

You might be too confident, too sure, and less aware of the things you don’t know. That’s where antilibraries come into play.

The books you haven’t read (and will never read) assemble your antilibrary.

They represent unknowledge and are the best cure for overconfidence. Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes:

“A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool.”

Antilibraries help you overcome the biggest enemy

The illusion of knowledge — the things you think you know — is learning’s biggest enemy. The authors of the learning bible ‘Make it Stick’ write:

“The illusion of mastery is an example of poor metacognition: what we know about what we know. Being accurate in your judgment of what you know and don’t know is critical for decision making.”

Stuart Firestein, professor of Biology at Columbia University, adds an important point:

“We know a lot of stuff but of course there is more stuff that we don’t know. And not only is there more stuff that we don’t know — but the more we know, the more we increase the amount of stuff we don’t know, because there was all that stuff that we didn’t know that we didn’t know before. [
]

An image I always like is of a circle of knowledge — but as the circle grows, as the diameter increases, so does the circumference that’s in contact with all that darkness outside the circle of light — that ignorance.”

When you’re convinced, you know something, learning something new means you have to change your mind.

People who don’t want to change their minds keep stuck in the same place. So overcoming our egos is one of the big learning challenges.

Antilibraries accelerate your learning

“You will never read all those books,” friends say when they look at my want-to-read list. The list grows by 2–3 books every day.

My friends are right. Even though I read 1–2 books a week, I will only get through some of them.

But that’s the point: My antilibrary is a constant reminder of what I don’t know. It helps me stay curious and humble. Psychologist Adam Grant writes:

“No matter how much brainpower you have, if you lack the motivation to change your mind, you’ll miss many occasions to think again.”

How to move forward

Don’t ever feel discouraged by the books you haven’t read. Instead, see them as a reminder to be humble and curious. Combined, they’re the essential ingredients for life-long learning.

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Elon Musk Disliked His Kids’ Schools — So He Started His Own

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Is he quietly revolutionizing education?

Image edited by the author (Source: Duncan.Hull — CC BY-SA 4.0)

“So you want to keep your kids away from regular schools?” a reporter asked Elon Musk in an interview.

You know Musk’s mindset: If he doesn’t like something, he builds his own versions — cars, rockets, highways, energy companies.

Musk replied: “I just didn’t see the regular schools weren’t doing the things I thought should be done. I thought, let’s see what we can do. Maybe creating a school would be better.”

In 2014, Elon Musk asked Josh Dahn, a former Teach for All Fellow and his kid’s teacher at the time, if he’d start a better school with him at SpaceX. Dahn agreed. The school Ad Astra, Latin for ‘to the stars,’ was born.

Ad Astra School’s Two Core Principles

Musk reimagined education on First Principles thinking: boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there instead of reasoning by analogy.

Instead of accepting the prices of rockets, Musk asked himself, “What’s a rocket made of?” He listed the components and calculated the costs. He found that raw materials were nearly 100 times cheaper. He decided to build his own rockets instead of buying some.

For education, Musk came up with these two principles.

1) Batch children by ability instead of age.

Regular schools batch children by age, assuming it’s is the most important denominator. Traditional school systems expect students of the same age to learn at the same speed. Musk disagrees with age segregation:

“Kids have different abilities at different times. It makes more sense to cater the education to match their aptitudes and abilities.”

2) Don’t teach to the tool. Teach to the problem.

Ever asked a teacher why you learn something? Most answers don’t go beyond you’ll need this..someday. If the relevance isn’t clear, learning feels irrelevant.

Learning to use tools is pointless and boring unless those tools help you solve a real problem. Listing the tools you need to take an engine apart isn’t the same as trying to disassemble the engine yourself. By doing the work, you see the tool’s relevance as you go.

This EdTech Startup Scales Musk’s Ad Astra School

A few years later, Chrisman Frank, Dahn’s former colleague at ClassDojo, visited Ad Astra. He fell in love with one part of the school — Synthesis.

In 2020, Frank convinced Dahn to spin off Synthesis as a for-profit company. Frank’s vision was to scale the learning software and develop a generation of super thinkers. Here’s how it works.

Synthesis is a simulation-based learning experience built around complex team games. Students work through case studies, simulations, and game-based challenges.

While playing, kids teach themselves how to win. In the process, they learn new problem-solving skills. Two game examples:

  • Art for All. Students compete in an auction game for the best art exhibits. The simulation covers negotiation and covers mental models such as auction theory and the winner’s curse.
  • Fire! In this collaborative game, students fight forest fires with varying conditions. It covers mental models such as positive-sum vs. zero-sum games.

In a recent podcast episode Chrisman Frank, Synthesis CEO, and Ana Fabrega, Chief Evangelist, shared details about ‘the most innovative learning experience.’

Replacing Lectures and Books with Software and Games

Lectures remain the dominant teaching method in most schools. But they don’t allow for dialogue, discussions, and disagreement. Instead of training students to become active thinkers, schools train them to become passive listeners.

Books don’t train for problem-solving. From my time as a Maths teacher, I remember ‘real-world’ textbook examples. But students knew I had the right solution in my teacher’s book. Reality is more complex than right or wrong. Most schools teach students to follow the rules as opposed to thinking for themselves.

Synthesis doesn’t design simulations for content but for the experience. Simulations are complex and have no right answers. 18–20 kids work in groups with one facilitator. But facilitators don’t lecture. The student groups explore and learn game rules on their own.

The idea of the simulations is to change the way kids approach real-life problems and prepare them to navigate the complexity and chaos that comes with life.

Students make decisions that have consequences and meaning. They have to understand trade-offs and analyze their choices where there is no binary answer — and the teacher doesn’t have it either.

Expectations Outside Students’ Comfort Zones

Fleas can jump 8 inches high, but when put in a closed jar for three days, they will never again jump higher than the lid’s height. Their offspring mimics their parents and settles on the same height.

A school system’s low expectations are like flea training. Low expectations are a glass ceiling for children and one of the fastest ways to fail them.

Synthesis claims to have in-built high expectations that make kids step outside of their comfort zone.

At Synthesis, there is no teacher to ask for the correct answer when things don’t work. The students know the teaching team trusts to solve these challenges.

Fabrega says children crave complexity. She describes after a while; kids feel comfortable with all the uncertainty. Synthesis teaches kids to feel comfortable being uncomfortable.

Using the Super Mario Effect for Faster Learning

As a teacher, I fostered my student’s growth mindset. I planned entire lessons around it and focused on praising efforts instead of outcomes. I showed my students mistakes help us learn.

Yet, the system beat me. When a kid received a bad grade, they felt demotivated. When mistakes mean you get a worse grade I can’t blame children for trying to avoid them.

The question is: How can you frame a learning process so you’re not obsessed with failure?

Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer turned Youtube star, explored this question and says games are the answer: “The focus and obsession are about beating the game, not about how dumb you might look. And as a direct result of that attitude — of learning from but not being focused on the failures — we got really good, and we learned a ton in a really short amount of time.”

Rober continues: “It feels natural to ignore the failures and try again in the same way a toddler will want to get up and try to walk again or in the same way you want to keep playing Super Mario Brothers.”

Other research attests to the power of game-based learning. Synthesis applied this insight. They reframed the learning process and created game-based learning experiences.

The result: fear of failure isn’t a problem anymore.

Fabrega says: “When mistakes are not penalized, people are more likely to just keep trying. And if you keep trying, then naturally, you have more chances of eventually succeeding.”

“The more we can gamify the process of learning, the better.” — Elon Musk

Did Elon Musk Quietly Revolutionize Education?

Elon Musk did his thing again. He saw something that didn’t work well and changed it. From being unhappy with his kid’s obsolete education, he planted a seed to innovate the education sector.

The idea that our school system was built for the industrial age and the need for a paradigm shift isn’t new. Schools teach to follow instructions when reality has changed. Yet, systemic change is slow.

Musk’s assets and influence enabled people to rethink and rebuild learning environments. Their aspiration to put students’ learning experience front and center is great. If only half of what the kids say is true, Musk’s initiative is doing a great job on this.

Ad Astra recently changed into Astra Nova. Their philosophy is honorable: student centricity, a value for individual abilities, praising curiosity, and encouraging problem-solving and critical thinking:

“What if students were taken seriously and their time well spent? Astra Nova believes in meaningful student experiences across age levels and domains.”

I couldn’t agree more — there’s no reason any child should not enjoy learning.

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Mastering the Diderot Effect Can Help You Stop Wanting More

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How to get off the consumer escalator

Photo by Victoria Borodinova from Pexels

Have you ever wondered how your life would change if you received $50,000?

Denis Diderot, a French philosopher, had lived his previous 52 years in poverty. But in 1765, when an Empress of Russia wanted to buy Diderot’s books, everything changed.

From one day to another, Diderot got $53,000 plus a monthly income to spare. And so he did what any good philosopher would do — buying a new scarlet robe. And that’s when things started going wrong.

How the Diderot Effect Makes You Buy Things, You Don’t Need

Diderot’s new clothing was beautiful. In fact, it was so beautiful; everything else he owned looked misplaced. In his words: “All is now discordant. No more coordination, no more unity, no more beauty.”

So he bought things that matched his new robe’s beauty: a stunning rug from Syria, unique sculptures, a shiny kitchen table, and a magnificent mirror.

When you have money to spend, you see what Diderot calls “a void disagreeable to the eye. There was a vacant corner next to my window. This corner asked for a writing desk, which it obtained.”

Diderot’s behavior coined what we now know as The Diderot Effect. Buying new things can lead to a spiraling consumption of complementary goods. As a result, you crave for more and more things to feel happy and content.

Photo by Jeff Sheldon on Unsplash

Unlike Diderot, I never lived in poverty, but everything changed when my income quadrupled in 2020.

From one day to another, I had money to spare. While I followed my mentor’s recommendations and invested most of it, I also bought a lot of stuff. I upgraded my desk with a new monitor and noise-canceling headphones.

For the monitor, I also needed a better webcam. And for the webcam, additional cable clips, and sockets, so everything looked clean. I was trapped in a vicious consumer circle.

But even if you don’t get an unexpected sum of money, you likely feel other possessions should match your new possessions:

  • You buy a new suit and have to get a belt to match.
  • You buy a new phone and suddenly need insurance, a protective case, new headphones, or a second charger.
  • You upgrade a part of your home and suddenly need the new decor to match it.

Juliet Schor, a professor for sociology, compares the effect to an escalator:

“When the acquisition of each item on a wish list adds another item, and more, to our “must-have” list, the pressure to upgrade our stock of stuff is relentlessly unidirectional, always ascending.”

How to Get Off the Consumer Escalator

There are a few things you can do to break free from The Diderot Effect.

Awareness. If you realize you’re in the consuming spiral, you reclaim your decision power. Once you understand marketing mechanisms, you’ll likely stop buying luxury brands. Not because you’re wasting your money but because you’ll feel foolish doing so.

Self-imposed restraints. Voluntarily change your environment. Stay away from malls, catalogs, online shops, or shopaholic friends.

Durability. Buy things not because of novelty but in terms of how long they can help you. Once you are emotionally attached, it’s harder to replace them with new stuff.

Additional costs and tradeoffs. Before you buy something new, think about the implications and consequences. Does your current software run on a new computer? What else do you need if you acquire that thing you want?

Downgrading exclusivity. New things don’t reflect prestige but ignorance. As Juliet Schor says: “What if, when we looked at a pair of Air Jordans, we thought, not of a magnificent basketball player, but of the company’s deliberate strategy to hook poor inner-city kids into an expensive fashion cycle?”

Final Thoughts

Buying new things can make you dissatisfied with what you have. You’ll end up in a spiraling consumption pattern that has severe psychological and environmental impacts.

As Denis Diderot once said:

“My friends, keep your old friends. My friends, fear the touch of wealth. Let my example teach you a lesson. Poverty has its freedoms; opulence has its obstacles.”

If you’re serious about breaking the consumer spiral, start with the suggested steps and free yourself from the shackles of ever wanting more stuff you don’t need.

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The Butterfly Effect: How Tiny Changes Massively Impact Outcomes

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Embrace the chaotic nature of life.

Image by Pixabay on Pexels

Have you ever wondered how things would have gone differently if you tweaked your starting condition just a tiny bit?

Tiny changes can lead to entirely different results.

In 2013 I failed my undergrad studies’ most important exams by 0.25 points. I had to wait for six months before I was allowed to retake it. I was furious and disappointed. I doubted my aptitude and looked for things to do instead of studying.

I paused my studies for a year and worked for a startup in India, a German bank in Shanghai, and an education project in Argentina. These experiences shaped my drive for education and entrepreneurship — the things I work for now.

But what if I hadn’t failed the exam? I would have followed the beaten track, doing an internship at KPMG or PWC and pursue a corporate career. A minimal change in the starting conditions (such as 0.25 points in an exam) can have a tremendous effect on the outcome.

Understanding the butterfly effect can alter your perspective on decision-making and predictability.

The Butterfly Effect — And Why Nobody Can Accurately Predict the Weather

“You could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby â€Š changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole.”

— Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Many people have heard of the butterfly effect because of the American science fiction film from 2004. Ashton Kutcher travels back in time to change his troubled childhood.

But only a few know that the movie misinterprets the effect. The storyline suggests you can calculate the effect with certainty, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The butterfly effect is about the unpredictability of specific systems.

The concept is called the butterfly effect because a small act like a butterfly flapping its wings and cause a typhoon. And while the metaphor is exaggerated, small events can be a catalyst depending on starting conditions, as Lorenz’s discovery shows.

Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist, mathematician, and professor at MIT, discovered the Butterfly Effect while observing his weather prediction model in the 1960s.

He entered initial conditions slightly different from each other into his computer program (0.506 instead of 0.506127). As a surprising result, these tiny differences led to completely different predictions. A tiny change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome.

“I found that the new values at first repeated the old ones, but soon afterward differed by one and then several units in the last decimal place, and then began to differ in the next to the last place and then in the place before that. [
] The initial round-off errors were the culprits; they were steadily amplifying until they dominated the solution.”

— Edward Lorenz in The Essence of Chaos.

A small error at the start can magnify over time (Source: Created by Author).

“It’s impossible for humans to measure everything infinitely accurately,” says Robert Devaney, a mathematics professor at Boston University, in an interview with the Boston Globe. “And if you’re off at all, the behavior of the solution could be completely off.”

So what Lorenz showed is that even if we think we have precise initial conditions, certain systems aren’t predictable. That’s why meteorologists can’t predict the weather beyond a few weeks.

Lorenz concluded that most weather predictions are inaccurate because we never know the exact starting conditions. In essence, the butterfly’s wing is a symbol of an unknown change.

Examples of the Butterfly Effect that Changed the World Forever

But there’s more to this effect than my statistics exam and inaccurate weather predictions. The butterfly effect can change history, and knowing these examples helps will help you be more realistic about forecasts and decision-making.

Franz Ferdinand

In 1914 a gunshot reshaped the world. It was June 28, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand had just escaped a bomb attack aimed at his car. To save Ferdinand from further attacks, the driver was supposed to change the route — yet he didn’t get the message and took a wrong turn. Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed, which set off a chain of events that led to World War I.

What if the driver would have gotten the message?

Covid-19

The World Health Organization supports the hypothesis that the Covid-19 outbreak started through a transmission from a living animal to a human host.

What if there were no living animals in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market?

Adolf Hitler

In 1907 and 1908, he applied for art school but was rejected twice. Historians and scholars argue that these rejections formed him from an aspiring bohemian artist to the human manifestation of evil. We don’t know how things would have gone, but for sure, humanity would have been better of if Hitler spent his lifetime drawing watercolors.

What if the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna accepted young Adolf Hitler as a student?

Final Thoughts

Even though we love to think we can predict outcomes by our actions, the butterfly effect shows we can’t. Seemingly insignificant moments can shape entire destinies.

We want our world to be comprehensible, but nature proofs us wrong. Our world is chaotic and can change from moment to moment. We’d love to use science to make precise predictions and get clear answers about the world we live in — yet science suggests we can’t.

Science can help us understand the universe, but as the butterfly effect shows, it does so by unraveling the limits of our understanding.

Yes, we can aim to create excellent starting conditions, but we don’t have the power to predict the outcome.

Small imprecisions have a significant impact — our world is unpredictable. If there’s one thing to be learned here, it’s that we can stop obsessing over outcomes.

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The More You Learn the Richer Your Life

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Three ways to make learning a daily habit

Photo by Meryl Katys from Pexels

Naval Ravikant once said:

“The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner.”

And while life-long learning pays great dividends, many people struggle to make it a habit for life. They never learned how to learn or don’t know where to start.

Continuous learning is one of the most powerful habits you can build. The following three ideas will spark your desire to learn and help you make learning a habit you’ll stick with.

1) Create your want-to-learn list.

The best motivator to continue learning is a long list of things you want to learn in life. Similar to a want-to-read shelf, your want-to-learn list creates urgency. If you don’t realize the first two items on it, you’ll never get to all the other things you dream about.

Ask yourself, ‘What do you want to learn before you die?’ and note your answers in your journal or note-taking app. I use a simple table in Notion to collect my want-to-learns. Here’s a sneak-peak of how it looks like:

Notion Want to Learn List (Source: Eva Keiffenheim)

Don’t worry if you don’t have many learning desires in mind. The ideas will flow once you start looking for answers, and your list will grow organically.

When you write down what you want to learn, think beyond online skills. While it’s nice to know how to start and grow your newsletter, the world will become richer when diversifying your skillset.

2) Follow your curiosity.

When was the last time you did something out of pure curiosity? With full calendars, there’s not much time for undirected exploration.

Many people optimize their days for focused mode thinking — through deep work, flow states, and other work sessions. Learning can happen during focused attention. But the diffused mode is equally important.

Diffused thinking only occurs when our minds can wander, for example, during a shower or while going for a walk. While this feels like taking a brain break, our mind continues to work for us.

While you gaze through the window, your subconsciousness consolidates knowledge. It connects the dots. Stephen King writes his best novel ideas came to him while driving, showering, or walking:

“Pow! Two unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty, and telekinesis came together, and I had an idea.”

Give your mind regular breaks and make space for exploration. Follow your curiosity — it will drive discovery. It’s the ultimate fuel for your desire to learn.

An excellent way to follow your curiosity is by asking yourself every evening, ‘Did your day help you cultivate curiosity?’

3) Ban your cell phone from the bedroom.

What if developing learning habits is about what you should do less of rather than more of? The smartest way to start learning every day is by identifying the patterns that hold you back. All you have to do is eliminate them.

If you charge your phone in your bedroom, you’re missing one of the most significant learning opportunities — reading before sleeping.

Once you ban your phone from your bedroom, you’ll realize learning is way easier than you thought.

“What I know for sure is that reading opens you up. It exposes you and gives you access to anything your mind can hold,” Oprah Winfrey once said.

And it’s true. Reading gives you access to the brightest brains on earth. Learning from the most remarkable people is the fastest way to become not only wealthy but also wise.

If I had to name a single learning habit that improved my life, it’d be reading. Books made me wealthy, transformed my sex life, expanded my worldview, and improved the way I work.

Follow your curiosity and order a few books that resonate with you. Replace your pre-sleep phone scrolling with reading, and witness how the pages will get through to you.

In Conclusion

Following these steps isn’t complex or exhausting. On the contrary: These ideas make learning fun and worthwhile.

  • Start and grow your want-to-learn list.
  • Use your curiosity as a guiding principle.
  • Replace your phone with a book.

Instead of feeling discouraged by all the ideas about what you could do to turn learning into an ongoing habit, enjoy experimenting in your rhythm. Think for yourself and keep the things that work for you.

Choose one or two new learning habits until you find a pattern that helps you on your journey to health, wealth, and wisdom.

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Albert Einstein Was a Genius, but a Terrible Husband

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How his life can change the way you look at productivity.

Photo by Taton MoĂŻse on Unsplash

Albert Einstein is one of the most genius contributors to science. At age 26, he discovered light exists as photons and laid the basis of nuclear energy. At 34, he published the general theory of relativity.

He was considered so brilliant that the pathologist who inspected Einstein’s dead body even stole his brain. Nowadays, when you google genius definition, you find Einstein’s name in the explanation.

But what made him a genius in the first place? When asked, Einstein replied,

“Genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work.”

And while that’s the story we continue to preach, it’s only one part of the equation. Einstein’s insane productivity came at high emotional costs for the people close to him.

Einstein treated his wife as an employee he can’t fire

When studying in Switzerland, Einstein fell in love with another student named Mileva Marić, the only woman in his physics classes at ETH Zurich.

And while their first years of marriage are told to be romantic, things changed soon. According to biographer Isaacson Einstein said, “I treat my wife as an employee whom I cannot fire.”

Specifically, Einstein handed her a list of martial demands and only remained together if she agreed to the following conditions.

A) You will make sure:

— that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;

— that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;

— that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

B) You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:

— my sitting at home with you;

— my going out or travelling with you.

C) You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

— you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;

— you will stop talking to me if I request it;

— you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

D) You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.

The irony of Einstein’s popular life lessons

For preparing this article, I read through primary sources, like his letters and more recent articles on his life. And while his work is undoubtedly a great scientific contribution, we should be wary when it comes to his life lessons.

“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.” — Albert Einstein

Really, brother? Do you say your marriage contract is based on understanding and has not much to do with emotional force? Dude, it’s 1913. For the sake of your two young children and her own social standing, your wife can’t just leave you.

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.” — Albert Einstein

Bro, I absolutely agree with your powerful quote. But here’s the catch: Are you aware that because of your marriage demands, your wife couldn’t take her exams and finish her physics studies? You treated her like a personal servant. You limited her intellectual growth.

Now what?

Historians argue Einstein also erased Mileva Marić’s contributions to the Theory of Relativity. Plus, Einstein cheated on Marić with his cousin Elsa Löwenthal whom he would eventually marry (and also cheat on).

When you remember the third point from the martial demands, you can put this into perspective: Einstein would sleep with whomever he wanted, and Marić shouldn’t expect any intimacy from him.

If there’s one life lesson he preached and practiced, it’s the following:

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” — Albert Einstein

Isaacson wrote about Einstein that “he worked as long as he could, and when the pain got too great, he went to sleep.” He even died while working.

In his biography, it says, “One of his strengths as a thinker, if not as a parent, was that he had the ability, and the inclination, to tune out all distractions, a category that to him sometimes included his children and family.”

Einstein was able to become an insanely productive monomaniac because he sacrificed his relationships.

The point is: For every successful genius, there are broken relationships we rarely hear about. So before reading the next article on Einstein’s, Musk’s, or Darwin’s productivity routines, ask yourself:

Do I see the full picture or only the productivity’s shiny side?

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How to Learn Like Someone Who Aced the MIT Challenge

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The four principles of ultralearning.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

In 2014, Scott H. Young embarked on a controversial project.

He completed the MIT undergraduate computer science curriculum at 4x speed. Instead of the typical four years, he passed all final exams in less than 12 months.

Some people praise his results as the ultralearning experience.

Others are more skeptical as Scott transformed his MIT challenge into lucrative blogs and books. Here’s a question some people ask:

Is Scott a sneaky marketer or one of the most efficient life-long learners?

And while I’ll share my opinion at the end of this article, the answer doesn’t really matter. What matters is what we can learn from his learning journey.

These are Scott’s tips on how to become an ultralearner and quadruple your learning efficiency.

Use directness to improve learning effectiveness

Learning in formal settings is often ineffective because it’s distant from the actual application. Let’s take an example.

Imagine you’re a frequent flier. Before every start, you watch the video of a flight attendant putting on the life vest. You watch the video again and again.

But as this study shows, actually putting on the inflatable life vest a single time would be more valuable than repeatedly watching another person doing it. You acquire true mastery by performing the procedure yourself.

Social climber Dale Carnegie used to say knowledge isn’t power until it’s applied. And it’s true.

Don’t spend your time on tasks far away from your end goal. If you want to write online articles, don’t spend time watching a masterclass on how to write a book. Foster a bias towards direct action.

The directness principle is a powerful way to make learning more efficient.

How to do it:

What’s your end goal behind learning?

Let’s say you want to learn writing. What do you want to use it for? Is it for writing a novel? Then start learning to write by writing a novel. Is it for earning an extra income? Then start studying submission guidelines for paid online platforms and pitch your articles there.

Whatever you learn, focus on your true end-goal and pick a practice that’s as close to it as possible.

Feynman’s technique helps you remember anything

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918–1988) was an expert for remembering what he learned — by teaching.

Teaching is the most effective way to embed information in your mind. Plus, it’s an easy way to check whether you’ve remembered what you learned.

Because before you teach, you have to take several steps: filter relevant information, organize this information, and use your own vocabulary to paraphrase the concepts.

Feynman mastered this process like no other. The people of his time knew him for explaining the most complex processes in the simplest language. They nicknamed Feynman “The Great Explainer.”

Bill Gates was so inspired by his pedagogy that he even named Feynman “the greatest teacher I never had.”

How to do it:

The Feynman Technique consists of three simple steps:

  1. Summarize whatever you want to learn on a blank page.
  2. Explain what you learned in plain, simple language as if you were talking to a child.
  3. Identify your knowledge gaps and revisit the concepts whenever you’re stuck circle back to your knowledge source.
  4. Reread what you forgot to mention and add it to your explanation.

By following this technique, your learning by ‘first principles’ instead of superficial memorization.

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

Create a meta-learning map

No life skill can earn you greater dividends than learning how to learn. Yet, most people don’t know how to master meta-learning.

Meanwhile, taking responsibility for your learning is one of the most important undertakings you can manage.

Your meta-learning map serves as a knowledge tree for your practice and will help you learn better. Scott Young, the author of ultralearning, says a meta-learning map should contain three key items:

  • Concepts: Anything that needs to be understood.
  • Facts: Anything that needs to be memorized.
  • Procedures: Anything that needs to be practiced.

How to do it:

Make a learning map before you dive into any specific skill.

If you want to write paid articles, don’t start by practicing headlines. Instead, list all the things you need to acquire, like style, editing, storytelling, research, headlines, and a solid idea-to-paper process.

Unsure how to start the map? Find people who mastered the skill you want to learn and ask them about their learning paths.

Do you want to publish a bestselling non-fiction novel? Craft personal, short e-mails and send them to Malcolm Gladwell, Brené Brown, Nicolas Cole, James Clear, and all the other successful authors. Ask them about the core skills they needed to master. Then, start drafting your own map.

Unlock the power of self-testing

Many people feel traumatized when they think of formal test settings. But testing can be a powerful tool to improve the way we learn.

Because self-testing helps us overcome the illusion of knowledge and shows us whether we truly mastered the subject at hand. Plus, self-testing helps to identify knowledge gaps and brings weak areas to the light.

Even if you don’t get the right answer, the process facilitates remembering the correct answer. In almost all cases, it’s better to solve a problem than memorizing a solution.

Use the testing process to learn more as you go along. Always test yourself before you feel confident and push yourself to recall information, not just review it.

How to do it:

My favorite testing techniques include flashcards with a built-in spaced repetition feature (like Anki for anything, readwise for books, podcasts, highlights, or lingvist for languages).

Apart from flashcards, you can also use free recall. After reading something, try to write down everything you can remember, then use the source material to fill the gaps you missed. After your session, sit down with a piece of blank paper. Challenge yourself to list everything you can remember from what you’ve learned in as much detail as possible.

A third alternative includes the question-book method. Here you write down questions that test the content and answer these questions whenever you revisit the source. Ali Abdaal explains the active recall method in one of his learning videos.

Did Scott Young really finish the MIT curriculum?

Yes and no.

Yes, because he achieved his goal of ‘just wanting to learn more about Computer Science.’

No, because he self-graded his exams, skipped advanced course modules, and replaced peer-projects with less intense modules.

There are plenty of discussions that shed more light on Young’s underlying assumptions. And meanwhile, he also shared a critical reflection on his learning path.

But there’s a more important lesson here: With the right tools, learning any new skill is possible.

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