These two volumes enumerate 328 lessons extracted from The Learning Project. I added topics of my own—such as the benefits of bad teachers—and others recognized as important, such as the decision biases enumerated by the economists Tversky and Kahneman.

Various authors present guidance for thinking. Most have a prejudice that espouses logic, reason, intuition, emotion, reward, or practicality. My goal is more general. It is to examine the interaction between the environment and our minds that affects how we learn.

By "supergenius" I refer to something quite different from the superior overachiever. Supergeniuses are often unsuccessful, go unrecognized, and are not celebrated. They are connected to something deep within themselves and don't give a shit what other people think. If geniuses blaze the trails we follow, supergeniuses blaze trails that we're not yet ready to.

Supergenius is related to my notion of enlightenment, but the word enlightenment comes with too many presumptions and too much baggage. The notion of enlightenment that I'm referring to is not religious, awe-inspiring, or spectacular, but something that's very private, perhaps hidden and unexpressed. It's a kind of self-recognition that focuses one's spirit and life energy and draws out one's full potential. It does this without regard to the threat of injury or the promise of reward.

We're told the best teaching is done by the best teachers, but it's often offered by the worst. The common decision biases that are derided as foolish—such as following the crowd, and seeing only what you're inclined to believe—also reflect important truths. Following the insight that the opposite of any deep truth is another deep truth, I'm searching for the guidance in both what's fundamentally correct and its opposite. The supergenius is someone who not only sees all sides, but also conceives of there being no side, the reality of the ambiguous, and even in this finds direction.