Thinking & Learning
10 pieces · 47 min of reading
How to Learn Anything Faster
Most of us were never taught how to learn — so we default to the least effective methods and wonder why it doesn't stick. The science of learning is clear, a little counterintuitive, and genuinely fast once you use it.
Quick read3 min02The Biases That Fool Everyone
Your brain runs on mental shortcuts — fast, efficient, and usually good enough. But those same shortcuts misfire in predictable ways, and the misfires are invisible from the inside. Here are the big ones, so you can catch yourself.
Read5 min03How to Spot Bullshit
We're swimming in claims — headlines, ads, viral posts, confident strangers, statistics that "prove" whatever the poster wants. You don't need a PhD to defend yourself. You need a handful of fast questions that make bad information reveal itself. Here's the field guide.
Quick read4 min04Memory: How to Make Things Stick
Memory feels like a recording device — press play and the past comes back. It's nothing of the sort. It's more like a story your brain reconstructs each time, from fragments, and it can be trained, tricked, and strengthened once you know how it actually works.
Quick read4 min05How to Make a Hard Decision
Big decisions feel paralyzing because we treat them as one giant knot. Break the knot into steps, apply a few sharp tools, and even life's hardest calls become navigable — not painless, but clear.
Quick read4 min06Thinking in Systems
Some problems don't have a villain. They have a structure: things that pile up, loops that feed back, and delays that make sensible people overreact. Once you can see the structure, a lot of baffling behaviour stops being baffling.
ReadInteractive6 min07Bayesian Thinking for Everyday Life
You take a medical screening test. It catches 90% of people who have the condition, and it's wrong for only 9% of people who don't. Your result is positive. How worried should you be?
Read6 min08Creativity Is a Process, Not a Gift
In 1960 the publisher Bennett Cerf bet Dr. Seuss $50 that he couldn't write an engaging children's book using only 50 different words. Seuss won the bet with Green Eggs and Ham, one of the best-selling children's books ever written.
Read5 min09Taking Notes That Actually Help You Think
Open any notebook from a lecture or a meeting you sat through a year ago. You'll probably find pages of careful writing that you never looked at again, and that make little sense to you now. That's the usual fate of notes. They feel productive while you write them, and then they mostly sit there.
Read5 min10Why You Understand Less Than You Think
Do you know how a bicycle works? Most people would say yes without hesitating. You've ridden one, seen hundreds, maybe fixed a chain.
Read5 min