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 realize I didn't actually understand what I thought I understood. With 100 points available I had the sinking feeling that I'd be lucky to scrape 40 points. This left me shell-shocked, every single time.

The strangest part? I thrived in the lab, working with lasers and other fun physics ideas. This was the same subject, using my same brain — but I had completely different results. The difference between my successes and failures came from how I was trying to learn.

I performed well enough to graduate as a physics major, then became a physics teacher. I kept my intensity, pouring myself into the classroom for years. But through my doctoral work — six years into teaching — I finally saw what I'd been missing in college and with my own classroom.

Not everything I was doing aligned with how humans actually learn.

I had been working hard; my students had been working hard. However, effort without the right structure only brings exhaustion. Once I understood the principles of learning — how memory works, what makes practice stick, and why some approaches lead to mastery — everything changed for the better.

I rebuilt my courses around those principles. Students started saying things like: "I finally understand how to study." And one student, who barely scraped a C in my AP Physics class, told me a year later he was tutoring his college friends in their introductory physics class. My learning system had taken root even when he wasn't fully paying attention.

That's when I knew this was bigger than physics.

Learn21 is the system I needed. In 21 days, you'll install a learning system you can use for everything else — not because I'll give you one fixed answer, but because you'll finally understand how learning actually works.

The first cohort begins Monday, February 2nd.

​Learn more and reserve your spot here!​

If you have questions, simply reply to this email — I read and respond to every one!

If you want to see some of the foundational ideas in Learn21, check out this essay: That’s How Learning Works?!?! A Comprehensive Model for Understanding the Learning Process.