Explanation Effect

Your capacity to learn, unlearn, and relearn faster than the environment changes.

Malcolm Knowles's principles of adult learning: self-direction, experience as resource, readiness, problem-centered orientation, intrinsic motivation.

Amishi Jha's research: attention is a finite, depletable, but trainable cognitive resource — short daily mindfulness measurably improves it.

Approach a situation as if you knew nothing.

Unusual or bizarre material is more memorable than common material.

Hierarchy of cognitive learning: Remember → Understand → Apply → Analyze → Evaluate → Create. Benjamin Bloom, 1956 (revised 2001).

Decisions hinge on the next unit, not on the average.

The range of policies or ideas that are politically acceptable at a given time.

When someone does us a favor, we feel pressure to return it.

A small step inevitably leads to extreme consequences.

Daily one-line capture of the single most important thing you learned that day.

Someone who incites others to take illegal or rash action, often to expose or discredit them.

We accept vague, general statements as personally meaningful.

Know the perimeter of what you actually know.

The gap between early adopters and the early majority kills most products.

When the limbic system overrides higher cognition and behavior follows ancient circuits, not chosen values.

Cut-rate state reinsurance lets insurers expand coverage in storm-prone zones, socializing the risk.

We overvalue things we built ourselves.