Learning is a lasting change in what you can do, remember, or understand, or in how you feel about something, caused by experience.

• A golfer’s average score improves from 81 to 75, and they enjoy the game more.
• A driver learns to handle snow, still drives well in it the next winter, and feels calm instead of anxious.
• A welder’s welds get stronger and faster, and they take more pride in the work.
• A babysitter learns to get a toddler to bed without tears, and both enjoy the evening more.

In each example, learning changed a person for the better: their capability grew, and they came to feel better about what they do.

Learning can also change a person for the worse, as with a bad habit or a learned fear. This guidebook focuses on learning that changes you for the better.

1. Explain learning well enough that others can become better at learning things that they want to or need to learn.
2. Reliably get four results when you learn:
   1. Capability: you get as good as you want at whatever you choose to learn, such as golf or statistics, and the skill lasts and holds up in new situations.
   2. Enjoyment: learning is engaging, with little needless stress or frustration.
   3. Efficiency: little wasted time, effort, or money, and no busywork.
   4. Improvement: you keep improving the way you learn.

• Results that matter
  • New abilities let you reach goals, solve problems, and do work that pays off and that people value.
• It feels good
  • Getting better at something you care about is one of life’s real pleasures, and it can become addictive.
• The skill behind every other skill
  • Get good at learning and you can get good at almost anything: a sport, a job, an instrument, a language.
• More time for everything else
  • Without busywork, false starts, and skills that fade, the time and money you save go to the rest of your life.
• Keep up as things change
  • Jobs, tools, and fields keep changing. People who learn well adapt; people who don’t fall behind.
• Help others learn
  • You can guide your children, friends, students, and the people you manage or lead.

• Time and effort
  • Real learning takes practice spread over weeks or months.
• Being bad at first
  • You make mistakes, sometimes in front of others, before you get good.
• Choosing means giving up
  • Time spent learning one thing is time not spent on something else.
• Sometimes not worth it
  • For a one-time task, it can be cheaper to hire someone or look up the answer.
• Learning it
  • The recipe takes an hour or two to learn, and weeks of using it on real projects to make it a habit. Old habits, such as rereading and cramming, are hard to drop.

• When you face something you will do again and again, or where a lot is riding on doing it well.
• When your work, field, or life changes and old skills stop being enough.
• It matters less for one-time tasks someone else can do for you.

• Everyone, since everyone has things they want to get better at.
• Most of all, students, people starting or changing careers, people in fast-changing fields, and parents, teachers, coaches, and managers who help others learn.

A golfer three-putts too often and wants to fix it.

1. Set your goal: Get down in two putts or fewer from 30 feet, eight times out of ten.
2. Get just enough know-how: Watch one short lesson from a respected putting coach on controlling distance, and write down its two main points.
3. Try it for real: Putt twenty balls from 30 feet on the practice green, and count how many take two putts or fewer.
4. Check your attempt: Eleven of twenty. Most of the misses stop well short, so the gap is distance, not aim.
5. Improve and repeat: Lengthen the stroke on long putts and putt twenty more. Over three weeks of short sessions on different greens, the count climbs to seventeen and stays there.
6. Look back: Counting every putt showed the gap right away. The long sessions of the first week were tiring and added little. Next time, keep the sessions short from the start.

A traveler has a trip to Mexico in three months and wants to get by in Spanish.

1. Set your goal: Order a meal, ask for directions, and make small talk for a few minutes, all without switching to English.
2. Get just enough know-how: Ask a friend who learned Spanish as an adult how they did it. Their advice is to learn the hundred or so phrases you’ll use most and to start speaking in the first week.
3. Try it for real: Book half an hour with a tutor online and try to order a meal in Spanish.
4. Check your attempt: The phrases came out fine, but the tutor’s replies were too fast to follow. Listening is the gap that matters most.
5. Improve and repeat: Listen to slow Spanish for ten minutes a day, and meet the tutor twice a week. By the trip, meals and directions go smoothly, and small talk still needs work.
6. Look back: Speaking from the first week worked well. A month on a grammar app before that added little. Next time, find someone to speak with first.

The same recipe gives results like these.

• A statistics student
  • Uses the normal distribution on problems they haven’t seen before, months after the course ends.
• A new manager
  • Runs meetings that end on time with clear decisions and owners.
• A car owner
  • Changes their own brake pads, and can do it again.

• Each starts with something the learner wants to be able to do, not with a subject to study.
• Each says what good enough looks like before the first attempt.
• Each gets to a real attempt quickly.
• Each follows the same six steps.
• Each ends with a capability that lasts and a better way to learn the next thing.

Nobody bakes a great pie the first time, and nobody gets good at learning by reading about it. You get good by running the recipe many times and improving each time.

1. Try: Run the recipe on something real that you want to learn.
2. Look back: Compare how it went with the standard for learning, and find the step that cost you the most.
3. Improve: Fix that one thing, then run the recipe again on the next thing you learn.

Repeat the loop until you reliably meet the standard.

A TwF (task with feedback) is a task you attempt, paired with feedback that compares your attempt with a standard.

• TwFs are how you run the loop: you try something you’re learning, find your gaps, close them, and repeat until you reliably meet the standard.
• They show whether you’ve learned: you meet the standard when you can pass the Mastery TwFs on your own, months after you stop practicing.
• They keep you from fooling yourself. Reading about a skill makes it feel familiar; a TwF shows whether you can do it.
• They save time. You work on your gaps, not on what you already know.

TwFs come in four levels, from a first try to the full standard: Basics, Apply, Range, and Mastery.

The value of learning is the total worth of what you learned.

Some things you learn are worth far more than others, so choosing what to learn can matter more than how much or how fast you learn.

1. Explain the value of learning well enough that others can learn to apply it.
2. Choose between things you could learn next, and judge whether a learning project is worth its time, by estimating how often you’d use each and how much each use would gain you.

In general, capability is the ability to do something.

In learning, capability is what you can do, remember, or understand.

You can:

1. Explain capability, and how it differs from a single good performance (such as an A after cramming), so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply it.
2. Judge how reliable, durable, and robust your capability is in something you’re learning.

• Good learning goals reflect worthwhile results for the learning process.

You can:

1. Explain goals in learning so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply them.
2. Set learning goals that are worth it to you, of the right kind (do, explain, or recall) and the right size for you.

In learning, a standard is a description of what is desirable in the capability you want to gain.

You can:

1. Explain what a standard is, and how it differs from a goal, so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply it.
2. Write a standard for something you’re learning that you can check your attempts against.

A first learning project is one full run of the recipe on a small skill that you can try right away and check yourself.

You can:

1. Run the recipe on a small skill you choose, such as juggling three balls, well enough to meet the standard you set for it.

Choosing goals worth it means picking things to learn whose payoff to you outweighs what they cost in time and effort.

Builds on Goals in Learning (Key Ideas).

You can:

1. Choose learning goals whose payoff to you outweighs their cost in time and effort.

Matching the kind of goal means deciding whether a goal is to do, explain, or recall something, and splitting a mixed goal into parts of one kind.

You can:

1. Name the kind of each goal (do, explain, or recall), and split mixed goals into parts of one kind.

Sizing goals means choosing how much each goal takes on, so it is big enough to be worth it and small enough to reach soon.

You can:

1. Size goals so each is worth reaching and within reach soon.

Writing a checkable standard means describing what good enough looks like for a goal so clearly that you can check each attempt against it.

Builds on Standards and Capability (Key Ideas).

You can:

1. Write a standard for each goal that you can check your attempts against, including for reliability, durability, and robustness.

• Missing information stalls learning.
  • Most information sources (teachers, websites, books) are missing key things.
• Too much information slows learning.
  • Most sources also give you far more than you need, which buries what matters and delays practice.
• Incorrect information builds misconceptions and habits that are hard to unlearn.
  • Outdated sources, popular myths, and confident non-experts are common culprits.
• Knowing what to look for lets you find what’s missing, skip what isn’t needed, and avoid what’s wrong, so you learn faster and better.
• When you’re having trouble learning something, look for an information problem first.
  • Usually you are missing information, have wrong information, or can’t execute. Trouble executing usually means you’re missing information about how to proceed.
  • This gives you a way to diagnose and fix learning problems.

You can:

1. Explain information in learning so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply it.
2. Get information for anything you want to learn that is correct, covers what you need, and leaves out what you don’t.

• Experts’ methods give you two things of value: great results and the easiest ways to get them.
  • If you copy experts, you will eventually get both.
• If you learn by doing what makes sense to you (ignoring expert practice), you will likely develop misconceptions and bad habits.
  • These will likely work to some degree, but not well, and they are hard to unlearn. They block you from great results and ease, which is the goal.

You can:

1. Explain imitation in learning so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply it.
2. Find the people who excel at what you’re learning, work out how they do it, and copy their methods until your methods and results match theirs.

Getting just enough know-how means learning how to do something only until you can make a first real attempt.

Builds on Information in Learning.

You can:

1. Get enough know-how to make a first real attempt, without stalling in reading and watching.

In learning, practice is trying to do what your goal describes in order to get better at it.

You can:

1. Explain what practice is so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply it.
2. Practice in ways that move you toward the standard for what you’re learning.

Trying it for real means attempting what you’re learning in a real situation that matters to you.

Builds on Practice.

You can:

1. Make real attempts at what you’re learning, in situations that matter to you.

In learning, evaluation is comparing the result of an attempt with the standard to find the gaps.

You can:

1. Explain what evaluation is, and how it differs from feedback (evaluation finds the gaps; feedback tells you how to close them), so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply it.
2. Evaluate your attempts against the standard well enough to find the gaps that matter most.

• Feedback tells you what to change to get better results.
  • Without it, repetition makes mistakes stick.
  • Better results feel good and increase motivation.
• Internal feedback is always available, and it grows with your knowledge.
  • Even without a teacher, you can observe your results and yourself. The more you know, the more those observations tell you.
• Skill with feedback lets you help others grow, too.
  • Giving others feedback is also one of the surest paths to your own improvement.

You can:

1. Explain feedback in learning, and how it differs from a rating (which tells you where you stand, not how to improve), so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply it.
2. Get and use feedback after each attempt that tells you how to close your biggest gap.

Improving is changing what you know or do so that your next attempt comes closer to the standard.

You can:

1. Explain what improving is so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply it.
2. Make changes after each attempt that bring your next attempt closer to the standard.

In learning, repetition is making repeated attempts at the same capability, spread over time and across situations.

You can:

1. Explain what repetition is, and how it differs from empty practice (repeating without feedback, which makes mistakes stick), so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply it.
2. Repeat your practice over time and across situations well enough to make what you learn reliable, durable, and robust.

Iterating means repeating try, check, and adjust until you meet the standard consistently, not just once.

Builds on Capability (Key Ideas).

You can:

1. Iterate on something you’re learning until you meet its standard consistently.

Spacing means coming back to what you’ve learned after growing gaps and pulling it from memory each time.

You can:

1. Space your practice so you still meet the standard weeks and months later.

Varying means practicing on different problems and in different conditions.

You can:

1. Vary problems and conditions so you meet the standard in situations you haven’t practiced.

In learning, recursion is breaking something too big to learn at once into smaller parts and learning each part with the same process.

You can:

1. Explain recursion so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply it.
2. Break something too big to learn at once into parts you can learn one at a time, and learn each part with the same process.

Ordering the parts means putting the parts of a big subject in a sequence that gives you real capability early and builds toward the whole.

You can:

1. Order the parts of something big so you can do something real early, stay motivated, and build toward the whole.

The learning process is the set of steps a person uses to learn.

You can:

1. Explain what a learning process is, and how it differs from learning itself (the process is what you do; learning is the change it causes), so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply it.
2. Judge a learning process by how well it works, how enjoyable it is, and how efficient it is.

Improving the learning process is changing how you learn so that your next learning project works better, is more enjoyable, or is more efficient.

You can:

1. Explain what improving the learning process is so that people with the necessary prerequisites can use your explanation, along with appropriate practice and feedback, to apply it.
2. Improve how you learn from one learning project to the next.

Looking back on a learning project means rating a finished project on how well it worked, how enjoyable it was, and how efficient it was, and choosing what to change next time.

Builds on The Learning Process.

You can:

1. Rate each learning project on how well it worked, how enjoyable it was, and how efficient it was, and pick the change that will help most next time.