Learn what you want.
Make consistent progress learning with short, effective, and relevant daily activities grounded in how we learn.
Free, open source, and private by default.
How it works
From one sentence to something to do today.
01
Add an interest, or more.
One sentence about something you have been meaning to learn, and a few short questions about why now and how much time you have. No account, no sign-up.
What have you been wanting to learn?
Learning to draw02
We sketch out an initial direction, but we evolve it from here.
An ordered set of goals you can reorder, rewrite, or simply say what you want done differently — in words, at any point. It is a starting direction, not a syllabus you are stuck inside.
Anything you’d change? — “less theory, more drawing from life”See what is actually in front of you
Shape, proportion and negative space, before any technique.
Light, and the shadows it makes
One light source at a time, on objects you already own.
Draw from life, badly and often
Short sittings, kept, so the change is visible.
03
Short, interactive activities to make progress every day.
A handful of minutes, written for your plan rather than pulled from a catalogue. Five kinds of activity — learn, review, use, resource, reflect — and what you meet comes back on a schedule that assumes you will forget it.
Today17 minWhere the light lands
Three short things: what a shadow is made of, Tuesday’s terms brought back, and ten minutes with a real mug.
learnreviewuse04
Grow your learning skills as you go.
Every activity is built on a strategy from the science of learning, and the app tells you which one and why it works. Learning how you learn is the part that outlasts any one interest.
Bring it back
reviewPull it back from memory before you look.
Retrieval practice — Roediger & Karpicke, 2006
Have a go first
learnTrying before you're told is what makes the telling land.
Productive failure — Kapur, 2008
Same move, new setting
useVarying the context is what makes it portable.
Variability of practice — Kerr & Booth, 1978
More of the library arrives as it fits what you’re learning, and each one says what it is for.
Why it works
Built on what research already knows about learning.
Learning happens when it’s active.
It’s easy to feel like we’re learning when we consume content, but interacting with it, and making use of it in different ways, really reinforces and extends it.
Motivation can come from more than gamification.
Connections to our lives. Continued relevance. Reflection. Social connection. None of those need a streak counter.
Learning is not linear.
You shouldn’t be stuck in a path that isn’t working for you, or doesn’t match what you need right now.
The science of learning has discovered a lot about how people learn in different domains. thinkering helps us make it useful for our personal learning.
Principles
What we hold to while building it.
User control and choice.
Learning is very personal. Suggestions for ease-of-use, customisation and control for everything else.
Build the science of learning into content and interactions.
Education research has found a lot about how people learn. Much of it isn’t accessible for our everyday learning.
Privacy-centered.
Your data is local to your device by default. An account, and analytics, are both opt-in.
Be intentional and transparent about generative AI use.
Where it is used, why, and what it costs — written down and kept up to date.
The beta is small, and open.
thinkering is early and still being built, so what you make of it is genuinely useful to us. Join the beta, or get in touch.
Join the beta