Small concepts that rewire how your brain works. Each one short enough to read in minutes, powerful enough to change everything.
Forcing Functions
Designing irreversible commitments that make failure impossible.
Burn the ships. Make public declarations. Put money on the line.
When Cortés arrived in Mexico in 1519, he burned his ships. His soldiers couldn’t retreat. They had to win or die.
Modern versions:
- Tweet your goal publicly
- Bet money you’ll finish
- Sign a contract with financial penalties
- Delete the escape route
The fancy term: Ulysses contracts - named after Odysseus who tied himself to the mast to resist the Sirens’ song.
Why it works: Humans are loss-averse. We’ll work harder to avoid losing than to gain something equivalent.
You’re not disciplined. You’re just better at designing constraints.
Negative Visualization (Premeditatio Malorum)
Ancient Stoic practice: Imagine losing everything you have.
Your job. Your health. The people you love.
Sounds depressing. Paradoxically increases happiness.
The practice:
- Spend 5 minutes daily imagining loss
- Your partner leaving
- Getting fired
- Losing your home
- Death of loved ones
What happens:
- Trivial annoyances disappear
- Gratitude increases automatically
- Anxiety about loss decreases
- You appreciate what you have now
The Stoics weren’t pessimists. They were realists who refused to be blindsided by inevitable loss.
Modern psychology calls this “defensive pessimism” and has proven it reduces anxiety and increases performance.
The Feynman Technique
Named after physicist Richard Feynman, who could explain quantum mechanics to children.
The method:
- Pick a concept
- Teach it to a 12-year-old (or write it for one)
- Identify gaps in your explanation
- Go back and learn those parts
- Simplify and use analogies
Why it works: Most people think they understand things they can’t actually explain.
The test: Can you teach it?
If not, you don’t understand it. You’ve just memorized it.
The gap between:
- Recognizing something (feels like understanding)
- Explaining it from scratch (actual understanding)
That gap is where fake knowledge lives.
Rubber Duck Debugging for Life
Programmers solve code problems by explaining them to a rubber duck.
Seriously. You sit a rubber duck on your desk and talk to it.
What happens: Speaking the problem aloud reveals the solution.
Applied to life:
- Stuck on a decision? Explain it to the duck.
- Relationship issue? Tell the duck both perspectives.
- Career confusion? Walk the duck through your options.
Why it works: Your brain processes information differently when verbalizing vs. thinking.
Internal monologue is messy, circular, emotional.
External speech is linear, logical, structured.
Flawed thinking collapses when exposed to air.
You don’t need a therapist. You need a duck.
Cognitive Load Theory
Your brain has limited RAM.
Working memory capacity: 4-7 items simultaneously.
Why learning feels hard: You’re exceeding your mental bandwidth.
The fix:
- Break complex topics into smaller chunks
- Master one piece before adding the next
- Reduce distractions (each one consumes RAM)
- Use external memory (write things down)
Why experts make it look easy: They’ve compressed complex processes into single chunks.
Beginner driving:
- Check mirror
- Signal
- Check blind spot
- Turn wheel
- Accelerate
- Monitor traffic
- Stay in lane
Expert driving:
- “Change lanes” (one mental chunk)
Learning isn’t about being smarter. It’s about building chunks so complex tasks fit in your limited working memory.
Spaced Repetition Systems
Memory champions don’t have better brains. They use better timing.
The forgetting curve: You forget 70% of new information within 24 hours.
The solution: Review at scientifically optimal intervals.
The pattern:
- Day 1: Learn it
- Day 2: Review
- Day 4: Review
- Day 8: Review
- Day 16: Review
- Day 32: Review
Each review strengthens the memory and extends how long you retain it.
Most people study wrong their entire lives:
- Cramming the night before
- Re-reading notes multiple times in one session
- “Studying” by highlighting
All inefficient.
Spaced repetition: Exploit the forgetting curve instead of fighting it.
Tools: Anki, RemNote, Supermemo
Learn once. Remember forever.
The Einstellung Effect
When expertise blinds you to better solutions.
The classic example: Chess masters shown a problem with an obvious but suboptimal solution.
They find it faster than the better, simpler solution sitting right there.
Why? Their pattern recognition sees the familiar move and stops looking.
In real life:
- Experienced developer uses complex solution because “that’s how we’ve always done it”
- Beginner suggests simpler approach
- It works better
The curse:
- Your knowledge creates mental ruts
- You automatically use familiar patterns
- You stop seeing alternatives
- Expertise becomes blindness
The fix:
- Deliberately ignore your first solution
- Force yourself to find 3 alternatives
- Ask beginners for their perspective
- Periodically question “best practices”
Sometimes the best solution requires unlearning what you know.
Key Patterns
These concepts share a theme: Your brain lies to you about understanding, memory, and capability.
- You think you’re disciplined → You just need better forcing functions
- You think you understand → Try teaching it
- You think you’re thinking clearly → Talk to a duck
- You think learning is hard → Your working memory is full
- You think you remember → Check back in 24 hours
- You think expertise helps → It can blind you
The meta-lesson: Trust systems, not feelings.
Your intuition about your own cognition is remarkably unreliable.
Build external scaffolding:
- Commitments you can’t escape
- Spaced repetition schedules
- Forcing yourself to teach
- Speaking problems aloud
- Chunking complex skills
- Deliberately seeking beginner perspectives
Your brain hasn’t evolved for the modern world.
But you can engineer around its limitations.
That’s what these techniques do.
They’re not life hacks. They’re cognitive prosthetics.
And they work whether you believe in them or not.