#trainability

#trainability

Many situations contain irreducible uncertainty. No matter how many variables we try to control, we can't reduce uncertainty to zero. It's inherent in the messiness of life.

Dog ownership has increased dramatically in many western countries. For example, in the UK there has been an increase from around 8.3 million in 2011 to 13.5 million in 2025. That means that approximately 29% of UK adults own a dog! At least partially this increasing trend of owning a dog is linked to millennials being more likely to have children later in life.

Recently, two unexpected examples by a wild wolf and a domesticated cow named Veronika attracted global attention and once again opened the door for experts and others to weigh in on the question, "Are these really examples of tooling?" Many people are eager to know more about the nitty-gritty details of tooling, so I am thrilled that Dr. Benjamin Beck, an expert in this area, could answer a few questions about this fascinating behavior.

The real transformation happens when you open a fresh page, choose a handful of habits that matter to you, and commit to noticing them day after day. I recently did this with two friends over coffee, and what unfolded felt less like a productivity exercise and more like a gentle act of intention-setting. If you'd like to build your own version of that ritual, here's where to start.

At its core, the curve of learning represents how quickly proficiency increases through experience. The learning curve theory shows that improvement is not linear. At first, people might feel confused and make mistakes, which can slow progress. After some time, though, they start to improve faster. Eventually, as they approach mastery, progress may slow again.

We sit down for dinner. Declan (5) whines, 'You didn't get me my milk!' Not, 'Thank you so much for this delicious meal you have made after a long workday, Mommy. Can I please have some milk?' We get to the playground, and he complains, 'You didn't bring the right pail!' We read three books at bedtime, he accuses, 'We didn't get to read my favorite book about the pandas (because he hadn't chosen it!) The whining is out of control and driving us mad.

Most dog owners are aware that their pooch is smart enough to know a few choice phraseswalkies, for instance, or, perhaps more likely, time for dinner. Some particularly intelligent canines can even identify more than 100 words. And incredibly, a few genius doggies may be able to learn words not by being taught but purely by eavesdropping on human conversations.

This study found that the size of the dog was one of the strongest predictors of a dog's behavior. More specifically: Undesirable behaviors become more common or pronounced as the size of the dog decreases. As height increases, so does the dog's trainability. Long-skulled dogs (think Dachshunds or Italian Greyhounds) have higher rates of stranger-directed fear, barking persistently, and stealing food behaviors as the height and weight decrease.

When you fix the "problem," it teaches kids that you don't think they can handle it. Helping a child be flexible-to adapt when things don't happen as they expect or want-builds resilience. Resilience and flexibility are attributes that ultimately make kids happy. I call this the "taping the pretzel" trap: Your child flips out when something unexpected happens and demands you undo it,

When we look more closely at how and why organizations actually invest in these systems, we can see that the popularity of adaptive learning has far less to do with pedagogical ambition and far more to do with operational pressure. Understanding this gap between how adaptive learning is marketed and how it is used in practice is critical for organizations trying to decide whether it is the right approach for their learning needs.

Praise. Universally good, right? Those of you who are fans of Alfie Kohn's (2018) work know it isn't. Praise comes with baggage. I (EB) was reminded of another downside by a young adult patient who sees praise as invalidating or dismissive of a person's experience. What about this exchange? Person: "I can't do it." Response: "Yes, you can. You are so amazing and strong."

Here's what I discovered: Genuine intelligence has almost nothing to do with your GPA or standardized test scores. Research from the American Psychological Association shows that traditional measures of intelligence often miss crucial cognitive abilities that matter in real life. So what does authentic intelligence actually look like? After diving deep into the research, I've found seven signs that genuinely intelligent people share, and none of them involve memorizing formulas or acing the SATs.