Accuracy develops from meticulousness in all of your tasks. As Thorndike concludes, “The mind does not give something for nothing, but it never cheats.”

Another common mathematical heuristic is to look for an invariant. If you can find something that doesn’t change in a problem, no matter how you modify it,

Unlearning isn’t easy. It requires not only the investment to practice new strategies until they can compete with old habits, but also the emotional punch of accepting a decline in your temporary performance.

The three explanations of creativity—expertise, environment, and randomness—are not mutually exclusive.

Unfortunately, direct feedback about mistakes with a familiar strategy may not be enough to fix it. One reason for this is that unless the replacement strategy is sufficiently practiced, it may still be too effortful to compete with the old pattern.

The ability to automate component skills is a key factor in the performance of many complex tasks, and is one of the reasons why we can’t simply perform at an expert level merely from watching someone else do it.

Repeated practice isn’t enough. Without feedback, improvement is often impossible.

most problems are not solvable.

Success Is the Best Teacher.