High Performance & Learning

Choosing Important Problems

Richard Hamming

The most important decision in any career or research agenda is which problems to work on. Working hard on the wrong problem is worse than working moderately on the right one.

Deep Work

Cal Newport

Sustained concentration on demanding tasks produces disproportionate value.

Deliberate Practice

K. Anders Ericsson

Structured practice targeting specific weaknesses drives elite performance.

Flow State

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Optimal consciousness where challenge and skill match produces peak performance.

Spaced Repetition

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Review at expanding intervals to beat the forgetting curve.

10,000 Hour Rule

Malcolm Gladwell / Anders Ericsson

Expertise takes time. Malcolm Gladwell popularised the idea in Outliers: roughly 10,000 hours of practice separate the exceptional from the merely good. The number came from...

80/20 Rule (Pareto)

Vilfredo Pareto

A small share of causes drives a large share of results. The Pareto principle — the 80/20 rule — states that roughly 80% of outcomes often come from 20% of inputs: 80% of revenue...

Active Recall

Retrieving information from memory strengthens learning more than re-exposing yourself to it. Active recall is the practice of testing yourself — trying to produce the answer, the...

Attention Management

Attention is the bottleneck. You can manage time and still lose the day to fragmentation — meetings, notifications, and context switches that leave little continuous attention for...

Cognitive Load Theory

John Sweller

Working memory is limited. Cognitive load theory (CLT), developed by John Sweller and others, says that learning and performance suffer when the total load on working memory...

Compounding Knowledge

Knowledge can compound. What you learn today makes the next learning easier: new concepts attach to existing ones, patterns repeat across domains, and understanding in one area...

Desirable Difficulty

Robert Bjork

Learning that feels easy often leaves little trace. When retrieval is effortless and conditions match the study environment, the brain encodes superficially. Desirable difficulty...

Feedback Loops (Learning)

Learning requires a loop: act, observe the result, compare to intent, adjust. Without feedback — accurate, timely, and actionable — practice is just repetition. You reinforce...

Feynman Technique

Richard Feynman

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. The Feynman Technique turns that maxim into a method: choose a concept, explain it in plain language as if to...

Grit

Angela Duckworth

Grit is persistence toward long-term goals despite setbacks, boredom, and the temptation to quit. Angela Duckworth defined it in research at the University of Pennsylvania: grit...

Growth Mindset

Carol Dweck

Growth mindset is the belief that ability and intelligence can be developed through effort, strategy, and feedback. Its opposite — fixed mindset — is the belief that ability is...

Habits

Charles Duhigg

A habit is a behaviour that has become automatic — triggered by context or cue with minimal conscious decision. Habits form when a loop is repeated until the brain encodes it: cue...

Interleaving

Interleaving is mixing different types of practice or topics within a session instead of blocking — doing one skill or subject until done, then the next. Blocked practice feels...

Mental Representations

Mental representations are the internal structures you use to perceive, understand, and act on the world. They are not the world itself; they are your compressed, structured model...

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the practice of attending to present-moment experience with openness and without automatic judgment — noticing what is happening in mind, body, and environment...

Power of Routine

The power of routine is the leverage you get from making repeated behaviours automatic, predictable, and aligned with your goals. Routine reduces decision cost — you don't...

Sleep & Recovery

Sleep and recovery are the processes that restore cognitive, emotional, and physical capacity after load. They are not optional extras; they are the period when the body and brain...

Accountability Partner

An accountability partner is someone who commits to monitoring and reinforcing your follow-through on stated goals. The mechanism is social: declaring a commitment to another...

Batching

Batching groups similar tasks into a single, uninterrupted block rather than scattering them across the day. The cognitive rationale is attention residue: every time you switch...

Breathwork

Breathwork uses deliberate breathing patterns to regulate the autonomic nervous system, shifting the body between sympathetic (alert) and parasympathetic (calm) states on demand....

Chunking

George Miller

Chunking compresses multiple pieces of information into a single cognitive unit, expanding the effective capacity of working memory. George Miller's research showed working memory...

Cold Exposure

Cold exposure — cold showers, ice baths, cold plunges — triggers a acute stress response that produces lasting physiological benefits. The mechanism: cold activates the...

Commitment Devices

A commitment device is a choice you make today that restricts your future options in order to enforce follow-through. The mechanism exploits loss aversion: by making failure...

Digital Minimalism

Cal Newport

Digital minimalism is a philosophy of technology use where you deliberately reduce digital tools to only those that strongly support your core values and priorities — and...

Dual N-Back

Jaeggi / Buschkuehl / Jonides / Perrig

Dual N-Back is a cognitive training task that exercises working memory by requiring you to track two independent streams of information simultaneously — typically a sequence of...

Elaborative Rehearsal

Elaborative rehearsal is the process of encoding new information by connecting it to existing knowledge rather than simply repeating it. Maintenance rehearsal (rote repetition)...

Energy Management

Energy management treats physical and mental energy — not time — as the fundamental resource to optimise. Time management assumes all hours are equal; energy management recognises...

Environment Design

Environment design is the practice of structuring your physical and digital surroundings to make desired behaviours effortless and undesired behaviours difficult. The insight is...

Implementation Intentions

Peter Gollwitzer

Implementation intentions are pre-decided if-then plans that specify when, where, and how you will perform a behaviour: "If situation X occurs, then I will do Y." The mechanism,...

Journaling

Journaling is the practice of writing regularly to clarify thinking, process emotions, track decisions, and build self-awareness over time. The mechanism is dual: writing forces...

Keystone Habits

Charles Duhigg

A keystone habit is a single behaviour that triggers a cascade of other positive behaviours without requiring separate willpower for each. Exercise is the canonical example:...

Memory Palace

A memory palace is a mnemonic technique where you mentally place items you want to remember at specific locations along a familiar route — your house, your commute, your office....

Method of Loci

The method of loci is a spatial mnemonic strategy — dating to ancient Greece — where information is encoded by associating each item with a specific physical location along a...

Note-Taking Systems

A note-taking system is a structured method for capturing, organizing, and retrieving information so that learning compounds over time. The value isn't in the act of writing —...

Pomodoro Technique

Francesco Cirillo

The Pomodoro Technique structures work into 25-minute focused intervals separated by 5-minute breaks, with a longer break after four cycles. The mechanism exploits two...

Single-Tasking

Single-tasking means doing one thing at a time with full attention. The case for it is neurological: the brain doesn't truly multitask on cognitive work — it switches between...

Speed Reading

Speed reading encompasses techniques designed to increase reading velocity while maintaining comprehension: skimming, chunking, reducing subvocalization, and strategic previewing....

Temptation Bundling

Katy Milkman

Temptation bundling pairs a behaviour you should do with a behaviour you want to do: only allow yourself the enjoyable activity while performing the important one. The term comes...

Time Boxing

Time boxing allocates a fixed, non-negotiable period to a task and stops when time expires — regardless of whether the task is finished. The mechanism exploits Parkinson's Law:...

Ultradian Rhythms

Ultradian rhythms are biological cycles of roughly 90–120 minutes that govern periods of high and low cognitive alertness throughout the day. Unlike circadian rhythms, which...

Visualization (HP)

Visualization — mental rehearsal of a desired outcome or process — engages many of the same neural pathways as physical performance. Neuroimaging studies show that vividly...