What we teach, and what we refuse to teach
Six principles that decide the content of every lesson, and an explicit list of what you will never find here.
The mechanism before the technique
A technique learned without its mechanism is a recipe: it works as long as the situation looks like the example, and it collapses the moment it does not. We always explain why a method works, multisensory encoding, the baroreflex, progressive overload, the testing effect. You become able to adapt, and you stop depending on us.
Honesty about what is not known
Self-improvement lives on promises the research does not support. We flag the limits every time: reading beyond 700 words per minute is skimming, mind mapping has a real but moderate benefit, adrenal fatigue does not exist, power poses did not survive replication, the autophagy of fasting is overstated. A course that never says “we do not know” is lying somewhere.
Execute rather than understand
Understanding a technique produces immediate satisfaction and no change. Every lesson ends with a dated exercise and every module with a 21, 30 or 84-day protocol, with its check tests. We take the risk of giving you a precise plan rather than a vague inspiration.
Measure, always
Words per minute, the length of your longest block of focus, time to fall asleep, recall score, waist measurement, how often you speak up. Every module opens with a baseline measurement and closes with the same one. This is not surveillance: it is what stops you believing it is working when it is not, and the reverse.
One brick at a time
The most common failure in learning is not difficulty: it is simultaneity. Our protocols install one habit a week, with a minimal version planned for the bad days. A system applied at 70% for six months beats a perfect system abandoned on day ten.
Skills, not content
You are not buying hours of video. You are buying a 100-image table you will use for thirty years, permanent memory palaces, a conditioned anchor, a system of organisation, a way of reading. These are assets: they do not wear out and they compound with each other.
Our five refusals
A course is defined as much by what it excludes as by what it contains.
Absurd speed promises
We will not teach reading at 10,000 words per minute, because it is physiologically impossible. We teach going from 200 to 600, which is already considerable.
Food supplements
No module will sell you capsules, nor recommend any beyond correcting a deficiency documented by a medical test. The free levers, light, sleep, protein, walking, account for most of the result.
Neuromyths
Right brain against left brain, visual or auditory learning styles, using 10% of the brain, detoxing. These ideas are disproven and we say so in the lessons where you would expect them.
Making you feel guilty
We do not treat discipline as a moral virtue. If a protocol does not hold, it is usually that the system was badly sized, not that you lack willpower.
Replacing medical care
Chronic insomnia, anxiety disorder, disordered eating, persistent pain, suspected ADHD: we point you explicitly towards a health professional. Our protocols sit alongside care, never instead of it.
What we build on
The work cited across the modules. When a claim rests on nothing solid, we write that down in black and white in the lesson.
- Ebbinghaus (1885), Bjork, the forgetting curve, desirable difficulty, spaced repetition
- Maguire et al., brain imaging of memory competitors, use of spatial navigation
- Rayner, eye movements and the physiological limits of reading
- Leroy (2009), attention residue when switching tasks
- Bandura, self-efficacy and the sources of confidence
- Masicampo & Baumeister (2011), planning, not completion, frees working memory
- Leproult & Van Cauter (2011), sleep restriction and testosterone
- Mueller & Oppenheimer (2014), handwritten note-taking and retention
- Brooks (2014), relabelling anxiety as excitement
- Gilovich et al. (2000), the spotlight effect
This list is not exhaustive: each module cites its own references in the body of the lessons. We also say, where it applies, that a result is disputed or comes from animal studies.
Read a complete lesson
The best way to check whether this approach suits you is to read a whole lesson, free.