You’re Probably Taking Too Many Notes
2026 Sep, ~200 words
Teasers
Short distillations of longer writing. Each teaser links to the full blog posts (and books) it came from.
2026
You Need to Measure Learning
2026 Sep, ~100 words
Why You Need to Interleave Practice
2026 Sep, ~150 words
Why Understanding Multiplication Isn’t Enough
2026 Sep, ~250 words
Why College Proofs Seem Impossible
2026 Sep, ~100 words
What Makes an Expert
2026 Sep, ~100 words
What Happens When Students Don’t Know Their Math Facts
2026 Sep, ~150 words
The Secret to Building Confidence
2026 Sep, ~50 words
The Rot Starts With Multiplication Tables
2026 Sep, ~150 words
The Math Habit That Actually Works
2026 Sep, ~100 words
The Case for Mastery Learning
2026 Sep, ~200 words
The Best Way to Take Notes
2026 Sep, ~100 words
Stop Holding Back Kids Who Are Ready
2026 Sep, ~100 words
Spaced Repetition = Wait-lifting
2026 Sep, ~150 words
Silly Mistakes Mean You Need More Practice
2026 Sep, ~150 words
Remedial Math at Harvard
2026 Sep, ~50 words
Radical Math Acceleration Isn’t the Problem
2026 Sep, ~200 words
Practice More Often, Not Longer
2026 Sep, ~200 words
Middle School Math is the Biggest Waste
2026 Sep, ~100 words
Mental Traffic Lights
2026 Sep, ~150 words
Learning is Bridge Building
2026 Sep, ~100 words
How to Build Problem-Solving Skills
2026 Sep, ~150 words
How Concrete Math Becomes Abstract
2026 Sep, ~100 words
Differential Equations is One of the Worst Taught Math Courses
2026 Sep, ~100 words
Concrete Skills Build Abstract Understanding
2026 Sep, ~200 words
College Math Classes Are Often a Waste of Time
2026 Sep, ~150 words
Calculus is Not the Finish Line
2026 Sep, ~100 words
Calculator Addiction
2026 Sep, ~100 words
A Math Concept Doesn’t Need Different Explanations
2026 Sep, ~150 words
A Good Grade is Not Equal to Mastery
2026 Sep, ~100 words
Unconscious Skills
2026 Aug, ~100 words
Training Wheels Syndrome
2026 Aug, ~100 words
The Drag of Weak Foundations
2026 Aug, ~100 words
The Comfort Ceiling
2026 Aug, ~50 words
The Classroom Conveyor Belt
2026 Aug, ~100 words
Take the Hints Away
2026 Aug, ~100 words
Skill Inflation
2026 Aug, ~100 words
Phantom Mastery
2026 Aug, ~150 words
Mental Tollbooths
2026 Aug, ~150 words
Mental Outsourcing
2026 Aug, ~100 words
Learning Debt
2026 Aug, ~150 words
Foundation Termites
2026 Aug, ~150 words
Fake Practice Hours
2026 Aug, ~100 words
Competence Mirage
2026 Aug, ~50 words
Cognitive Crutches
2026 Aug, ~50 words
Civilization Mode
2026 Aug, ~100 words
Bubble Wrapped Students
2026 Aug, ~100 words
Brain Calluses
2026 Aug, ~100 words
Borrowed Time
2026 Aug, ~100 words
Borrowed Brains
2026 Aug, ~100 words
Academic Life Raft
2026 Aug, ~100 words
The goal isn’t to think faster. It’s to need less thinking.
2026 Jul, ~100 words
Spaced repetition is progressive overload for your brain.
2026 Jul, ~50 words
GPS Brain
2026 Jul, ~50 words
Global identity labels are often where improvement goes to die.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Your attention is severely limited and highly leveraged. Be careful how you spend it.
2026 Jun, ~50 words
If your practice does not expose weaknesses specific enough to correct, you are just practicing staying the same.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Working to realize your potential is hard, but not as hard as coping with the fact that you had potential and did not capitalize on it.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Win the first hour of the day, and it becomes easier to win the rest.
2026 Jun, ~150 words
So much of your future is shaped by what you do when nobody is making you do anything.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Use tools to extend your competence, not replace it – otherwise it becomes your ceiling instead of your floor.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
The easiest way to stay mediocre is to keep your goals abstract and your days unexamined.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Spaced repetition is like weight training for memory. You might even call it wait training.
2026 Jun, ~150 words
Smart people often fail by trying to generalize before they have earned the examples.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Most students who think they’re “bad at math” are just carrying invisible gaps.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Mediocrity does not need a villain. It only needs sustained inattention.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Many people do not fail from lack of potential, but from lack of runway.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
How you compress learning time without fake shortcuts:
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Go deep on one thing long enough, and it becomes a doorway to everything else.
2026 Jun, ~50 words
Do not ask whether it felt like learning. Ask whether it changed what your brain can do.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
You do not always need today to be a breakthrough. More often, you just need it to be another rep in the same boring loop that eventually bends reality.
2026 Jun, ~50 words
You cannot cram mastery any more than you can cram a physique.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
You cannot be creative at a high level unless you are robotic at a low level.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Writing is leverage for everything you know.
2026 Jun, ~150 words
What looks like instinct is usually accumulated reps.
2026 Jun, ~150 words
The fastest learner is the person with the shortest cycle time between attempt, feedback, and correction.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Structure isn’t a cage. It’s a cache for your best decisions, so you can spend your energy living freely instead of renegotiating your life from zero every morning.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
We have thousands of years of accumulated genius; trying to “re-discover” it is like trying to reinvent the microchip with a rock.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Potential is not a trophy; it is a countdown timer. Use it before it expires.
2026 Jun, ~50 words
Poorly designed group work becomes a grade subsidy: stronger students prop up weaker students’ grades while weaker students miss the learning that would make them stronger.
2026 Jun, ~150 words
Passion usually follows action, not the other way around.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Most people don’t hate hard subjects. They hate when the basics they skipped come back to embarrass them.
2026 Jun, ~50 words
Most people don’t fail from doing too little at once, but from doing nothing too often.
2026 Jun, ~150 words
Math becomes overpowered when you stop treating it as a standalone trophy and start attaching it to real domains.
2026 Jun, ~150 words
Learning is not “I recognize this when I see it.” Learning is “I can reproduce this when I need it.”
2026 Jun, ~150 words
Learning doesn’t happen when information goes into your brain; it happens when you force it back out.
2026 Jun, ~100 words
Learning advanced math and coding is a time machine: every year you learn ahead lets you start compounding opportunities before most people can even see them.
2026 Jun, ~50 words
Hardcore skill development is the most reliable path to opportunity.
2026 Jun, ~150 words
Growth begins where comfort ends.
2026 Jun, ~150 words
You have to understand the difference between doing the work and circling the work without landing on it.
2026 Jun, ~50 words