In today’s issue:

• “The education of fast learners:” Why schools and companies should not neglect their highest performers.
• All my books look more modern now! Professional typesetting and other improvements.

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The education of fast learners

“If a school does not provide challenging, meaningful material to [the faster-learning kids], it is failing in exactly the same sense as when it does not provide appropriate, meaningful material for the students in the other groups. As of right now, those kids are all too often being under-stimulated, under-challenged, and ignored […] and, as a result, building habits of procrastination, sloppy work, and disenchantment with the system they are expected to excel within. It's a serious problem, and one schools need to solve.”

The above comes from a post by a Twitter user named TracingWoodGrains (the same author as this fantastic series of posts about Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore).

I wholeheartedly agree with him. That’s a big problem. Imagine if gyms only introduced 15kg weights once everyone can lift 10kg. Not only would it severely limit the potential of the strongest athletes but also their health – someone who can lift 15kg needs to lift 15kg to stay healthy.

I further add that this problem is also present in many companies, where managers spend a lot of time managing low performers and not enough managing high performers – even though the Return On Investment is much higher in the latter case. Moreover, not giving ambitious objectives to high performers not only robs the company of what they could achieve but also robs them of it – and they will react by either losing motivation or resenting the organization and quitting.

A common reply is, “But teachers don’t have the time to focus on the best – they are fully observed in getting the worst up to speed.” Yes, time is a problem, but the thing about fast learners is that they don’t require much extra time. Just give them the advanced book, tell them they’re ready, and let them read it.

The same applies to high performers. Yes, ideally, you would spend a lot of time coaching them. But if you lack the time, at least point them to good resources, give them ambitious objectives, and give them permission and encouragement to go after them.

Of course, that won’t work all the time, but it definitely does work some of the time, and whenever it’s not done, we let low-hanging fruits rot.

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All my books are more modern now

I’m glad to announce that all my books* have a more modern look (both eBook and physical versions).

I’ve upgraded to professional typesetting. Moreover, while updating them, I took the opportunity to eliminate some typos and some weird phrasings, so they also read better.

Below are some examples of how they look. You can purchase them on my website, Amazon, or most international bookstores.

In case you have already purchased some of my books from my website's store (Gumroad), you will find the upgraded versions in your account's library.

Enjoy them!

(*: The only book I haven’t updated yet is the Pandemic Guidebook.)

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