The Learning Engine 28 January 2026 Learn21 — Is This For You? A good day to you! I've been getting questions about Learn21, so I want to answer them directly. "Do I have the time?" Learn21 is about 10-12 hours over 21 days. That's less than an hour a day, with a few days off. Live sessions happen at 11 AM Eastern on Thursdays and Mondays; if you can't make a session, recordings are available immediately. Here's another way to think about the time: Check your screen time right now. How many...
2 days ago • 2 min read
The Learning Engine 24 January 2026 Learn21 — The Full Schedule A good day to you! Here’s a question I’m getting about this course: "What does Learn21 actually look like?" That’s a fair question; we all want to know the commitment when we sign up for an activity. The Structure Learn21 runs for 21 days. Over those three weeks you'll attend six live sessions with me, complete focused asynchronous work between sessions, and apply everything to a real learning project you choose. The three weeks...
6 days ago • 2 min read
The Learning Engine 19 January 2026 Learn21 — A Strange Kind of Success Story A good day to you! I want to tell you about a student who almost didn't make the story. When I taught AP Physics C at a school in Singapore, I designed the course around the principles of learning. Every topic had three assessments spread across the semester, so students had to engage with the material multiple times. The very first video — about 25 minutes — explained my Model for Learning: How memory works, what...
11 days ago • 2 min read
The Learning Engine 16 January 2026 Learn21 — The Missing Class A good day to you! There's a class that does not exist, but should be available for every person. The class would be called "How to Learn," with the curriculum covering the actual mechanics of the learning process: How our experiences create long-term memories. What makes practice stick, generating better performances. Why some approaches lead to frustration while others lead to growth. Instead, we were assigned material and told...
14 days ago • 2 min read
The Learning Engine 13 January 2026 Learn21 — Why I Built the System A good day to you! I want to tell you why I built Learn21. In college, I was doing many different activities: Varsity soccer; leadership in campus ministry; physics research with professors I admired; a full social life; and, studying physics as my major. With every activity, I was intense. But I kept walking out of physics exams wanting to cry. I would sit down at the beginning of the exam and look at the problems, then...
17 days ago • 1 min read
The Learning Engine 9 January 2026 Launching Learn21! A good day to you! I know you're trying hard. Managing up and down, putting out fires in both directions. Drowning in emails during the day, then watching YouTube videos at night hoping something clicks. Waking up the next morning no further along than you were the day before. You're putting in the effort, but there's no system to see what is actually working. I built something for this challenge. Learn21 is a 21-day guided experience to...
21 days ago • 1 min read
The Learning Engine 31 December 2025 Newsletter 039: Thanks for a great 2025 — onto an exciting 2026! Greetings and salutations — and happy New Year! Thanks for coming along on this journey with The Learning Engine throughout 2025! There has been a lot of interesting progress and growth for The Learning Engine, so I'm thankful for the opportunity to share the ideas with you through this newsletter. Here are a few of my best newsletters from 2025: Learning How to Learn — The Ultimate...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
The Learning Engine 2 December 2025 Newsletter 038: What Removing Play-Doh from Clothes Taught Me about Learning Greetings and salutations! A quick note: I was on a podcast recently, having a wide-ranging discussion on learning! The ideas in the podcast flow from my general thinking on learning, connecting the theoretical ideas with practical solutions — I hope you enjoy! A Story Have you ever tried to get Play-Doh out of clothes? With two small children, getting Play-Doh out of clothes has...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
The Learning Engine 21 November 2025 Podcast: "MBV Episode #83: Nathan Belcher, Learning Engine" Greetings! This week I had the pleasure of recording a podcast with Sue Maguire and Sandy Dickson, discussing learning -- both theoretically and practically. We had a wonderful chat, so I know you'll enjoy the podcast! Link to the podcast: MBV Episode #83: Nathan Belcher, Learning Engine All the best! Have comments or questions about any part of this newsletter? Please reply and let me know — I...
2 months ago • 1 min read
