HI, I’M NICK.
I WRITE ABOUT STARTUPS, LEARNING, HACKING, AND PARENTING.

I created CodeCombat and Skritter, and wrote The Motivation Hacker.
Want to say hi? Contact me.
Ruby's Vocabulary Acquisition

I tracked every word that Ruby learned to say in the first 2.5 years of life, analyzing vocab compared to her brothers.

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Tenth Year Book Sales

In which I ignore how many copies of The Motivation Hacker I sold for six years, then "just" ask the AI.

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Christmas Gift Ideas – ChatGPT vs. Google

In which I have a magical Christmas shopping experience with the AI

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Meet Ruby

Photos from the first few weeks of baby Ruby's life

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Clark's Vocabulary Acquisition

I tracked every word that Clark learned to say in the first 2.5 years of life, graphing it and comparing it to Max's.

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Willpower and Success Spirals

I was talking to a friend who seemed to be independently rediscovering what he called self-referential motivation: m...

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Active vs. Passive Learning, or Production vs. Recognition

Here's another concept from language learning pedagogy (see also Extensive vs. Intensive Learning): the difference b...

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Extensive vs. Intensive Learning

In language learning, there's a slightly obscure but useful concept of "extensive reading" vs. "intensive reading". ...

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Getting better at making accurate predictions with PredictionBook

I use a site called PredictionBook to make predictions, say how likely I think they are to occur, and then later jud...

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Murphyjitsu

Humans are naturally bad at predictions. Being bad at predictions, and figuring out how to make better ones, sounds ...

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Meet Clark

Now I have two kids. So far, it's pretty similar to just having one kid. The time and energy needed to sustain doubl...

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Fourth Year Book Sales

I always love it when people share revenue data for their apps / games / books / works, and it's been four years sin...

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Max's Vocabulary Acquisition

Max's vocabulary started exploding around 15-17 months old. I started writing down everything he could say (with und...

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