As you try to learn something, you shouldn’t lose sight of all the interesting little detours along the way.

Babies are constantly facing a new normal. Hard-and-fast rules about what works and what doesn’t will be of little use.

Being a good parent, like any learning process, requires thoughtful practice.

The more we want to learn, the more we prime the brain. The more curious you are to know the answer to a question, the better chance you’ll remember it.

We “overvalue performance,” as one psychologist put it, “and undervalue the self.” We’re afraid of being just okay at things. This is a trap. “For to permit yourself to do only that which you are good at,” writes the legal scholar Tim Wu, “is to be trapped in a cage whose bars are not steel but self-judgment.”

Our brain has a host of regions, termed the “action-observation network,” that’s sparked when we watch others do something in our “motor repertoire”

This speaks to a classic problem faced by beginners: setting unrealistic expectations. It makes little sense to lay down strict goals ahead of time for advancing in some discipline when the novice barely understands what the discipline is, what will be required, or how they’ll actually progress. Unmet goals can destroy motivation as much as they dr

5. Your progress may not be linear. Learning happens in fits and starts. Stages are only rough benchmarks. Development does not always march uniformly in one direction.

This co-learning can help turn potential sources of friction—like allocating leisure time—into win-wins.