Category: Learning
Articles in the "Learning" category. Hands-on know-how for studying, plus how to break through plateaus and build habits — articles on growth and the craft of learning.
The Prettier Your Mistake Notebook, the Less It Works — How to Build a Retest Device, Not a Fair Copy
2026-07-24 18:30:00
Question the standard advice to "copy your mistakes neatly into a notebook." Rewriting, transcribing, and rereading feel like studying but have repeatedly been reported among the least efficient methods for retention; what works, the research says, is retrieval practice — recalling without looking — and spaced repetition — retrying just as you start to forget. So design your mistake notebook not as a fair-copy album but as a personal retest device: a three-way diagnosis for selecting which mistakes get in, a format that bans copying model answers, a next-day → 3-day → 1-week re-solving template, a strike-through graduation rule after two spaced consecutive correct answers, and a hard cost cap of 3 minutes per problem, 10 minutes per day — each step with the "why" behind it.
Read moreWhen You're Slumping, Your Self-Assessment Loses Its Ground Twice Over
2026-07-20 18:00:00
When you're in a slump, you can't recall what you actually did — or what you'd meant to do. Both the numerator and the denominator vanish, and all that's left is the feeling that you failed. When I actually counted the records, I'd published nine articles and about 52,000 characters in the month from June 22. And yet the open-source release I'd publicly promised was genuinely undelivered. Here are eight steps for re-running your self-assessment on records instead of memory, plus the things I've forbidden myself.
Read moreAI Writes the Code. So Humans Hold the Meaning Inside — For Now
2026-07-11 17:10:00
Now that AI writes the code, self-study's old walls — setup, errors, no one to ask — have melted. In their place is a new gap: you can have it built, but you don't understand it. AI tends to think 'as long as it runs.' So understanding the meaning inside, and directing AI precisely, becomes the engineering that's left. But the future forks — an honest take.
Read moreHow to Actually Work Through a Problem Set — Go Rough on the First Pass, the Real Work Starts on the Second
2026-07-01 18:00:00
How much a problem set moves your score depends less on how many questions you solved than on how you cycled through them. Solve everything without timing yourself on the first pass, carry only the wrong ones into the second, and repeat the third pass until they're fully solved. A step-by-step guide — with the reasoning behind each step — to combining the grade-level drills, topic-based question sets, the review list, and the Impact department on passed.jp's English problem set.
Read moreWhen Self-Taught Programming Won't Stick: Rebuild With Systems, Not Willpower
2026-06-30 18:00:00
Self-taught programming doesn't stall because of talent or willpower — it stalls because of structure. The people who keep going don't rely on grit; they rely on systems. The three structural reasons you break, six systems for keeping self-study alive, and a field guide to the most common places you get stuck and how to get out.
Read moreWhen Your Studying Stalls: Restart With Systems, Not Willpower
2026-06-11 20:35:00
When your progress flatlines, most people blame themselves for a lack of motivation. But a plateau isn't a matter of talent or grit. Treat motivation as a consumable, and rebuild with systems instead: make one metric visible, raise the load by one notch, and bring the friction of starting to zero. Three concrete moves, grounded in real experience.
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