In ordinary usage the word “productivity” is virtually synonymous with “working hard.” The person who says, “I was really productive today” means that she worked hard and checked off a lot of tasks. It’s interesting, then, that this is not how economists who study productivity think about the term. In some ways, the economic concept of productivity...

One of my ongoing projects is to learn more about how research in learning is applied within specific fields. You can read my review of books summarizing the literature on language learning here and learning physics here. To that end, I read Motor Learning and Performance, written by the eminent researchers Richard Schmidt and Craig Wrisberg. This...

One of the fun things about writing a book is that you get a chance to talk about it in a lot of different venues. I had a lot of fun chatting with people to promote Ultralearning, and my new book, Get Better at Anything, has been no different. I wanted to share some of those discussions today. (Also check out the guest essay I wrote for Nir Eyal’s...

My new book, Get Better at Anything, came out two weeks ago. Thanks again to everyone who has bought it so far! For those of you who have already dived headfirst into the book, I would greatly appreciate a review on Amazon—reviews make a big difference in helping new people discover the book. The central idea of my new book is that three factors determine...

When I decided to write another book about learning, I knew an obvious question would come up: How is this book different from your last one? The truth is, I could write a dozen books on learning. Even when working on this one, I realized how many areas I couldn’t explore sufficiently: mental models, connectionism, background knowledge, declarative...

My new book, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery, is now available! Buy now: AMAZON APPLE BOOKS BARNES & NOBLE BOOKS-A-MILLION BOOKSHOP GOOGLE PLAY HARPERCOLLINS KOBO INDIGO AUDIBLE Life depends on learning. We spend decades in school, acquiring an education. We want to be good at our jobs, not just for the perks...