The Best of Scott Young
20+ most popular Scott Young articles, as voted by our community.
Scott Young on Better Living
You’re Never Too Good for the Basics
Everyone wants advanced techniques. But it's really the basics that count.
«All skills break down into elemental components–coding has commands, painting has brushstrokes, comedy has jokes. Mastery of the performance results from mastery of the parts.»
The Science of Mental Models
Diving deep into Johnson-Laird’s theory of mental models. It is one of the leading psychological theories of reasoning, even though it doesn’t have the status of being a consensus theory (few theories…
Scott Young on Habits
What are the Limits of Building Better Habits?
Can you achieve anything just by building better habits? After decades of experiments, I share what can and can't be done.
«Routines are behaviors we do repeatedly, but involve many deliberate actions that can’t be done without some effort and thinking.»
Which Works Better: Habits or Projects?
Daily habits or intense, one-off projects? In this article I explain why both are necessary to do great things.
«Often, the habit works against improvement, rather than for it, as I have such ingrained writing behaviors that they are difficult to dislodge.»
Scott Young on Hobbies
Who Has Time for Hobbies?
Should you schedule time for your hobbies? How to prevent digital distractions from eating up your time and what to do instead.
Scott Young on Learning
The 85% Rule for Learning
How often should you succeed at a task, to maximize learning? I review research suggesting the answer is close to 85%.
«we find that the optimal error rate for training is around 15.87% or, conversely, that the optimal training accuracy is about 85%.»
Maximize Your Learning Time with These Seven Habits
How do you learn more in a busy life? Follow these seven habits to increase the amount of learning, without overwhelming your schedule.
«Crash courses, for instance, are faster and more visually dense than many recorded classroom lectures and thus hold your attention more easily.»
Scott Young on Memory
Practice Made Perfect: The 10 Keys to Optimize Improvement
Getting good at anything requires a lot of practice. But not all practice is equal. Here are ten steps to faster improvement.
«Getting good at anything requires a lot of practice–but not all practice is equal.»
Scott Young on Mental Models
Ten Mental Models for Learning
Ten central ideas to keep in mind whenever you need to learn anything new.
«How much you’re able to learn depends on what you already know. Research finds that the amount of knowledge retained from a text depends on prior knowledge of the topic»
Scott Young on Productivity
Self-Efficacy: The Key to Understanding What Motivates You
What is self-efficacy and the three most important takeaways to succeed with challenging goals
«Self-efficacy is your belief that you can succeed in taking a particular course of action.»
My Simple Habit for Smarter Book Reading
The best habit to improve your reading is to ask after every impassioned argument, “What’s the rebuttal?”
«ChatGPT and LLMs can be useful here. Asking an LLM, “What are the most frequently cited objections to opinion X?” doesn’t guarantee an accurate summary of the literature. But it can give you a starting point by introducing you to some jargon you can search for later.»
Scott Young on Psychology
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: How to Change Your Mind
Given the cost and difficulty of obtaining mental health support and the fact that many people’s difficulties do not rise to the level of a clinical disorder, I think understanding the framework CBT…
«Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) often outperforms pharmaceutical drugs alone, and it has become the gold standard for psychotherapy.»
5 Keys to Get the Most out of the Feynman Technique
The idea of self-explanations took off and became a studying meme that has since gone far beyond my own audience. Here are 5 ideas you must keep in mind to get the most out of it.
«Knowing where exactly the gaps are in your understanding makes it easy to seek new explanations. Some good strategies include:»
Scott Young on Speed Reading
I Was Wrong About Speed Reading: Here are the Facts
Seven years ago, I read some books and articles on speed reading and started practicing some of the methods. I found I was able to increase my reading speed from 450 word per minute to 900 in the…
The Real Way to Improve Your Reading Speed
Most speed-reading techniques don't increase your speed without big costs to comprehension. But there is a way to read faster, and it's very simple.
Scott Young on Success
The Simple Rule for Achieving Ambitious Goals
The trick for most ambitious pursuits, I’m afraid, is simply doing the obvious thing much, much more than most other people are willing to do—and accepting that it may hurt at times.
«The trick for most ambitious pursuits, I’m afraid, is simply doing the obvious thing much, much more than most other people are willing to do—and not minding that it’s hard at times.»
Popular
These are some all-time favorites with Refind users.
The Nine Habits to Increase Your Energy
Your energy levels are the basis of your success and happiness. Here are nine habits you can start today to feel more energetic in work and at home.
«Make the first four hours of your morning a quiet, deep work zone.»
The Key to Career Progress
Think career capital, not passion, if you're trying to find work you love.
How to Learn Anything Easily
Why do we convince ourselves that we cannot learn certain skills or subjects? A dive into what makes learning hard and how we can make it easier.
«This means that, in subjects where you have sufficient experience and training, you’re effectively much smarter.»
Brain Training Doesn't Work
Debunking an alluring (but ultimately harmful) myth about how to get smarter.
«we must let go of the false promise that broad-ranging skills can come from practice on narrow tasks. Brain training is a dead-end, but learning is timeless.»
Seven Easy Habits to Read More Books Next Year
Reading books is one of the best habits you can create for yourself. Here are seven easy habits you can implement to finish more books next year.
«Reading is a habit of compounding growth. Learn more and you’ll generate ideas and enthusiasm for making other changes.»
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks the most relevant links from around the web for you. is one of more than 10k sources we monitor.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
- Our community of active users gets the most relevant links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, mark as read, read later, «More/less like this», etc.
- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
How can I report a problem?
When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to hello@refind.com
Who uses Refind?
450k+ smart people start their day with Refind. To learn something new. To get inspired. To move forward. Our apps have a 4.9/5 rating.
Is Refind free?
Yes, it’s free!
How can I sign up?
Head over to our homepage and sign up by email or with your Twitter or Google account.