Coaching practices for How to Cut Curriculum
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Cut Curriculum, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I try to teach someone the whole rich subject the way I hold it in my head, and I bury what they actually need to do under a mountain of background and context I find fascinating
- This thing I’m building keeps swelling
- I want to learn this thing but I’ve just grabbed the first course I found and I’m already lost
- I need to trim my spending, but every budget I’ve tried makes me give up a little of everything including the stuff I love
- I try to trim a little off everything and end up miserable about all of it while barely saving a dime
Practices that may help
- Work backwards from what the learner needs to do
Start with the decision or action the learner must take, then trace back only to the knowledge that serves it.
The Curse of Knowledge: Why Experts Struggle to Teach - Ruthlessly edit projects in progress
Cut content, scope, or steps from anything in progress that doesn’t serve the core goal.
Essentialism: The Art of Eliminating the Non-Essential - Metalearning: map the skill before you start
Research how the skill is structured and learned before diving in.
Ultralearning: Aggressive, Self-Directed Learning - Cut ruthlessly in categories that serve no value
Spending that serves no stated value is the right place to be ruthless — not the spending that matters.
Values-Based Spending, Made Practical - Cut costs mercilessly on things you don’t value
Spend extravagantly on your priorities and ruthlessly eliminate the rest.
Conscious Spending Plan, Made Practical - Ultralearning: Aggressive, Self-Directed Learning
Ultralearning, a term popularized by Scott Young, is a strategy for intense, self-directed learning projects built on a handful of principles — metalearning, focus, directness, drill, retrieval, and feedback. The framework itself is a practitioner system, but most of its principles rest on well-studied cognitive mechanisms like retrieval practice and transfer. - Edit out the nonessential
Routinely cut commitments, possessions, and tasks that no longer serve the essential.
Essentialism, Made Practical - Run a plan-monitor-evaluate loop
Before, during, and after a task, ask what you will do, how it is going, and what to change.
Metacognition: Knowing What You Actually Know - Plan in seasons, not permanent allocations
Think of burner settings as seasonal, not fixed — recalibrate at defined intervals.
Four Burners Theory: Making Peace With Trade-Offs - Set up the Cornell three-section page
Divide your page into three sections: a wide main column, a narrow cue column, and a summary section at the bottom.
Cornell Note-Taking: A System for Learning, Not Just Recording
Related concerns
- Ruthless Editing
Cut content, scope, or steps from anything in progress that doesn’t serve the core goal.
Ruthlessly edit projects in progress
- When Four Burners Theory Season Based Planning
Think of burner settings as seasonal, not fixed — recalibrate at defined intervals.
Plan in seasons, not permanent allocations
- Cut Unnecessary Expenses
Spend extravagantly on your priorities and ruthlessly eliminate the rest.
Cut costs mercilessly on things you don’t value
- Do More With Less
Channel your effort into a few vital things done excellently rather than many done adequately.
Less but better
- How To Cut Irrelevant Points
Each supporting point should directly and uniquely answer the question above it in the pyramid.
Apply the "so what?" test to every supporting point
- Learn How To Learn
Research how the skill is structured and learned before diving in.
Metalearning: map the skill before you start
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