Topic map

Level: reference · for finding a page by subject instead of by chapter

One line: The sidebar lists the chapters A to Z; this page sorts every page by subject into branches, then follows the threads that run between chapters.

The chapter numbers are the suggested reading order, and each chapter is one argument, so inside a chapter the lessons are best read in order. This page is the other way in. A page sits once in the tree, where it belongs; a ↪ marks a page from another branch that is worth reading alongside. The build checks that every page appears here.

The tree

• Knowing what you know
  • Checking a feeling against a result · from Knowing What You Know
    • Metacognition: judging what you know — Flavell's four abilities, calibration, overconfidence, Brier score, proper scoring rule, rereading vs self-testing, planning, monitoring, evaluating, the muddiest point
    • Count the vowels — McGuire's exercise, levels of processing, knowing the goal, organising principle, 15!
    • Studying vs learning: Bloom's levels on one theorem — whats vs hows and whys, make-an-A vs teach-the-material, Bloom's taxonomy 1956 and 2001, Euclid's formula
    • ↪ The buffer hour — the same check applied to time estimates
    • ↪ Mindset and motivation — the same check applied to imposter feelings
• Making it stay
  • Memory over time · from Making It Stay
    • Spaced retrieval — forgetting curve, testing effect, spacing effect, SM-2, logarithmic cost, McGuire's study cycle, intense study sessions
    • Interleaving — blocked vs interleaved practice, choosing the method, Rohrer and Taylor, volume formulas
    • ↪ How memory works — the pipeline the two techniques act on, and desirable difficulties
    • ↪ Sleep — consolidation between the reviews
  • Working memory · from Making It Stay
    • Cognitive load — Sweller, intrinsic, extraneous, germane, chunk, working memory span, automaticity, schema, byte-pair encoding
    • ↪ Count the vowels — an organising principle holds fifteen phrases as one idea
  • The hour of work · from Making It Stay
    • Focused and diffuse thinking — Oakley's pinball, Magnus Carlsen, local maximum, hill climbing, Einstellung effect, incubation, Poincaré, Pomodoro, hard start jump to easy, default mode network, how sure each claim is
    • ↪ Spaced retrieval — the break in McGuire's intense study session is the same step away
• Believing you can
  • Beliefs as rules for evidence · from Believing You Can
    • Learned helplessness — Hiroto and Seligman, rule of succession, explore–exploit, start small, vicarious success, personalization, pervasiveness, permanence, ABC technique
    • Day or night: perspective taking and the cutoff under a dichotomy — dichotomous thinking, perspective taking, cutoff, twilight, sorites paradox, fuzzy logic, Zakrajsek
    • ↪ Mindset and motivation — self-efficacy, growth mindset, the two biases, graded
• Planning
  • Time · from Planning the Work
    • The buffer hour — planning fallacy, skewed task times, exact convolution, buffer, actual-to-estimate ratio
    • Goals and schedules — Locke and Latham, SMART, process and end goals, goal creep, stretch goals, to-do rules, the week as a template, talking to faculty
  • Tools · from Planning the Work
    • Learning with AI — rereading made perfect, Bastani, Kestin, hints not answers, quizzes, teach-the-material, Anki
• Body and brain, every claim graded
  • Memory · from Body and Brain
    • How memory works — attention, working memory, consolidation, storage; encoding, consolidation, retrieval; interference; forgetting curve; the big four; desirable difficulties; pretesting; hypercorrection; zone of proximal development
    • Brain chemistry — LTP, acetylcholine, dopamine, norepinephrine, curiosity, arousal, what does not follow
  • Lifestyle · from Body and Brain
    • Sleep — sleep after learning, sleep loss before it, naps, wakeful rest, stages, caffeine's half-life
    • Exercise — long-term brain health, acute attention, memory around a session, BDNF, timing
    • Food and supplements — caffeine, deficiencies, Mediterranean diet, omega-3, L-theanine, Bacopa, Ginkgo, prescription stimulants; no doses
  • The person · from Body and Brain
    • Mindset and motivation — self-regulation, self-efficacy, growth mindset, attribution bias, egocentric bias, imposter syndrome, stress, retrieval under stress, intrinsic motivation

Threads across chapters

Calibration everywhere

One habit, checking a prediction against a result, runs through the whole library.

1. Metacognition — confidence against answers, scored.
2. The buffer hour — estimated time against actual time, as a ratio.
3. Learned helplessness — belief in success against the record, and what happens when the record stops growing.
4. Mindset and motivation — imposter feelings against the evidence.
5. 05_Body_and_Brain — every claim against its evidence, as a grade.

Desirable difficulties

The techniques that feel worse and work better.

1. Spaced retrieval — a review helps most when the fact had nearly slipped.
2. Interleaving — the mixed sheet scores lower in practice and higher on the exam.
3. How memory works — Bjork's name for the pattern, pretesting, and why learners misjudge it.
4. Learning with AI — the tool that removes every difficulty, desirable ones included, unless asked not to.
5. Focused and diffuse thinking — the one difficulty that is not desirable: more focus on a stuck problem, which only climbs the same hill again.

Start small

1. Learned helplessness — four small successes undo ten failures enough to try again.
2. Goals and schedules — Study Tip 2.1, subgoals, and one stretch goal only.
3. Mindset and motivation — "I can't yet", then a small task in the area you "can't do".

The four-chunk budget

1. Cognitive load — the budget, and practice widening it.
2. Count the vowels — an organising principle as one chunk with slots.
3. Goals and schedules — write the task down instead of holding it.
4. How memory works — the bottleneck's place in the pipeline.