I agree with the claim that “compressing skill acquisition into extremely intense, short-duration periods (‘explosive skill acquisition’) can be much more effective than extending small chunks of skill acquisition over long-duration periods (‘incremental skill acquisition’).”
I also disagree with the claim that “explosive skill acquisition {Pareto dominates, is generally more effective than} incremental skill acquisition.” I think that — if you do incremental skill acquisition right[1] — it can be pretty effective, sometimes (?often?) more effective than explosive skill acquisition.
So with that in mind, some healthy pushback to each of your points:
Overlapping forgetting curves — the answer to “shoot I might forget stuff” isn’t “bunch reminders as close as possible together.” This is super inefficient, so will requires significantly more total time than optimally spacing your reminders.
Richness of context — memory systems let you ‘remember your rabbit holes’. If I spend a couple hours improving on some skill while encoding it in a web of flashcards, I can pick it up a few months later just where I left off.
Discontinuous practice opportunities — yeah, I think generally explosive skill acquisition is better here.
Self-signaling/top idea — I do think that being the top idea in your mind is a real thing and can be shockingly powerful; same re: self-signalling. However, incremental skill acquisition can have sort-of analogue for each:
Re: top idea, spaced repetition systems can be used to program attention. When you review units of a memory system (be they flashcards, extracts, blips, etc), you bring them back into salience, where they collide with whatever else is on your mind.
Re: self-signalling, spaced repetition memory systems make memory a choice. Too often, people treat their memory systems like an inbox and subscribe to any email list they think they ought to like — then get overwhelmed with bullshit in the ensuing weeks. If it is instead treated like a mental home, then one feels more inclined to decorate it with only the most sacred, beautiful, valuable pieces. After all, the wall-space is limited.
Quantity — IDK man, ceteris paribus (including holding skill-level constant), I’d really rather do fewer reps. For some skills (e.g. writing) ceteris doesn’t end up being paribus, but for others (e.g. remembering a vocab word in another language) it totally is.
Some more reasons against explosive skill acquisition:
It’s both costly in terms of opportunity cost (I missed out on family vacations), but also in terms of direct costs (those were in ~5th percentile most stressful weeks of my life).
It’s (often) not durable. I think this is more the case for some skills and less for others, but my impression is that people underestimate how quickly the skill they just learned will be forgotten. I think that incremental skill acquisition (done well[1]) solves this.
You don’t get enough contact with reality to know what parts are important. When you spread skill acquisition over time, it’s easier to notice “hey wait I’m learning this sub-skill, which seemed important at first, but it sure looks like nobody in practice ever actually needs it? maybe I can just skip it?” or “hmm interesting this other sub-skill which wasn’t in the textbook seems pretty clearly foundational to all of the actual stuff, maybe I should focus a bit more on that.”
But I think most of the above is basically moot relative to the fact that most people do skill acquisition way way way way way less effectively than they could (cf “The MathAcademy Way” & more of Justin Skycak’s stuff; “How Learning Happens”).
Thank you for the comment Saul—I agree with a lot of your points, in particular that “explosive” periods are costly and inefficient (relative perhaps to some ideal), and that they are not in and of themselves a solution for long-term retention.
I expect if we have a crux it’s whether someone who intends to follow an incremental path vs someone who does an intense acquisition period is more likely to, ~ a year later, actually have the skill. And my guess is, for a number of reasons, it’s the later; I’d expect a lot of incrementalists to ‘just not actually do the thing’.
* My ideal strategy would be “explore lightly a number of things, to determine what you want → explode towards that for an intense period of time → establish incremental practices to maintain and improve”
* Your comment also highlighted for me, something that I had cut from the initial draft, my belief that explosive periods help overcome emotional blockers, which I think might be a big part of why people shy away from skills they say they want.
I agree with the claim that “compressing skill acquisition into extremely intense, short-duration periods (‘explosive skill acquisition’) can be much more effective than extending small chunks of skill acquisition over long-duration periods (‘incremental skill acquisition’).”
I also disagree with the claim that “explosive skill acquisition {Pareto dominates, is generally more effective than} incremental skill acquisition.” I think that — if you do incremental skill acquisition right[1] — it can be pretty effective, sometimes (?often?) more effective than explosive skill acquisition.
So with that in mind, some healthy pushback to each of your points:
Overlapping forgetting curves — the answer to “shoot I might forget stuff” isn’t “bunch reminders as close as possible together.” This is super inefficient, so will requires significantly more total time than optimally spacing your reminders.
Richness of context — memory systems let you ‘remember your rabbit holes’. If I spend a couple hours improving on some skill while encoding it in a web of flashcards, I can pick it up a few months later just where I left off.
Discontinuous practice opportunities — yeah, I think generally explosive skill acquisition is better here.
Self-signaling/top idea — I do think that being the top idea in your mind is a real thing and can be shockingly powerful; same re: self-signalling. However, incremental skill acquisition can have sort-of analogue for each:
Re: top idea, spaced repetition systems can be used to program attention. When you review units of a memory system (be they flashcards, extracts, blips, etc), you bring them back into salience, where they collide with whatever else is on your mind.
Re: self-signalling, spaced repetition memory systems make memory a choice. Too often, people treat their memory systems like an inbox and subscribe to any email list they think they ought to like — then get overwhelmed with bullshit in the ensuing weeks. If it is instead treated like a mental home, then one feels more inclined to decorate it with only the most sacred, beautiful, valuable pieces. After all, the wall-space is limited.
Quantity — IDK man, ceteris paribus (including holding skill-level constant), I’d really rather do fewer reps. For some skills (e.g. writing) ceteris doesn’t end up being paribus, but for others (e.g. remembering a vocab word in another language) it totally is.
Some more reasons against explosive skill acquisition:
It’s costly. In high school, I had my summer breaks cut in ~half so that I could spend eight-twelve hours a day bouncing between lectures and drills and practice debates and research on policy and philosophy and critical theory. I became a vastly
more competentless incompetent debater; I missed out on a few family vacations. Totally worth it, but still quite costly.It’s both costly in terms of opportunity cost (I missed out on family vacations), but also in terms of direct costs (those were in ~5th percentile most stressful weeks of my life).
It’s (often) not durable. I think this is more the case for some skills and less for others, but my impression is that people underestimate how quickly the skill they just learned will be forgotten. I think that incremental skill acquisition (done well[1]) solves this.
You don’t get enough contact with reality to know what parts are important. When you spread skill acquisition over time, it’s easier to notice “hey wait I’m learning this sub-skill, which seemed important at first, but it sure looks like nobody in practice ever actually needs it? maybe I can just skip it?” or “hmm interesting this other sub-skill which wasn’t in the textbook seems pretty clearly foundational to all of the actual stuff, maybe I should focus a bit more on that.”
But I think most of the above is basically moot relative to the fact that most people do skill acquisition way way way way way less effectively than they could (cf “The MathAcademy Way” & more of Justin Skycak’s stuff; “How Learning Happens”).
Thanks for writing this, Ben!
Which itself can require quite a bit of skill/effort!
Thank you for the comment Saul—I agree with a lot of your points, in particular that “explosive” periods are costly and inefficient (relative perhaps to some ideal), and that they are not in and of themselves a solution for long-term retention.
I expect if we have a crux it’s whether someone who intends to follow an incremental path vs someone who does an intense acquisition period is more likely to, ~ a year later, actually have the skill. And my guess is, for a number of reasons, it’s the later; I’d expect a lot of incrementalists to ‘just not actually do the thing’.
* My ideal strategy would be “explore lightly a number of things, to determine what you want → explode towards that for an intense period of time → establish incremental practices to maintain and improve”
* Your comment also highlighted for me, something that I had cut from the initial draft, my belief that explosive periods help overcome emotional blockers, which I think might be a big part of why people shy away from skills they say they want.