The capstone
🎓
Build the system, for something real
Twelve lessons of principles are worth nothing until they run against a goal you actually want.
Learning How to Learn · Lesson 7
Capstone: Design Your Learning System
beginner⏱ 25 min · 7 cards
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System Builder
The ten steps of a personal learning system.
Design for the week where everything goes wrong. A system that needs a perfect week is a hope.
Ten steps, checking that retrieval, spacing, and slack are genuinely present.
Worked fragment
Spanish in six months
Sub-skills: work vocabulary, listening speed, past and conditional tenses, recovering mid-sentence. Twenty minutes weekday mornings, one conversation on Saturdays, Friday empty as slack.
Recovery rule decided in advance: a missed day is a missed day. Two missed weeks triggers a schedule review, not a restart.
Key term
What makes it a system
Once designed, are you finished?
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The reflection step
A scheduled fortnightly review of what is working. Without it you have a schedule, not a system — and schedules do not adapt.
Nuance
Design for the bad week
Maester Note
A system that only works when you are rested, motivated, and undisturbed is not a system. It is a hope.
Quick check
What is the test of a mental model?
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