I’ve received a few requests for this post, so here it is: my approach to focus. It is not an end-all be-all solution for everybody, but rather a look at the key underlying ways you can keep yourself moving towards a task. The tricks here should work well for anybody,...

I enjoy explaining to others just what it is that makes me enjoy learning and speaking Mandarin Chinese so much, as it is a language which is poorly understood. Shrouded in mystery in the west, we’re likely to see it employed as a “mystical” tattoo instead of as a communicative...

Why does it matter why we have brains? It seems like such a self-evident question that we don’t bother asking it… but once we do, it proves much more complex than anticipated.   It is a question which should be asked as we delve into philosophy, psychology or any other...

Blackouts.   Anybody who has ever drank a lot (or been around people who do) knows about this phenomenon. Entire sections of the night can disappear from a person’s memory without a trace. A recent Lifehacker article about drinking and decision-making caught my eye, and one comment in particular claimed...

Nobody wants digital learning techniques (software, games etc.) to succeed more than me. I was formally trained in computer science and video game design, and readers of the blog know that neuroscience, human learning and foreign languages are all amongst my primary interests. I’ve even created a few iPhone apps...

After I learned Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and a little Arabic I did not think that switching between foreign languages was very hard. The three (plus English) were all from distinctly different language families, which made the task relatively painless. Not only did they sound different but the very grammar and...

  I have tried reading books in foreign languages before, such as when I was learning Spanish. Like most, I found it challenging. The number of unknown words and the sheer amount of confusion made it easy to give up, even with simple books. It seemed more like a chore...

In this first podcast (an experiment, of a sorts) I take a look at the research into the psychology of doing things better, and how we can use it to improve our productivity and motivation.     Scroll down to play today’s podcast, or subscribe in iTunes.  If you find...

I love seeing science become mainstream and cool, but sometimes “pop-sci”  borders on pseudoscience and becomes an entirely different beast.  There are certain myths and themes that crop up across the internet as well as in movies and conversations that just plain bother me because they are so completely unfounded...

Sometimes experiments do not work out quite the way we expect.  The study drugs experiment is one of those cases.  It was fraught with problems, from shipping errors to technical problems to all-out hardware failures.   I do not consider the experiment to be a failure by any means.  I...