The Accelerated Learner: Master Any Skill Twice as Fast with Science-Backed Techniques

Kenneth Shipley is a cognitive science researcher and learning design consultant who has spent the past fifteen years translating academic research on memory, skill acquisition, and expertise development into practical learning systems.

His work began during his graduate studies in cognitive psychology at the University of California, San Diego, where he investigated the neural mechanisms of memory consolidation. Dissatisfied with how slowly research findings moved from academic journals into real-world practice, he left academia to found Accelerated, a consulting firm that designs learning programs for organizations including technology companies, medical schools, and professional sports teams.

Shipley's approach bridges the gap between rigorous cognitive science and everyday practice. He has developed training curricula for Fortune 500 companies, designed onboarding systems that reduce skill acquisition time by an average of 40 percent, and consulted with Olympic training programs on optimizing practice schedules for peak performance.

His writing has appeared in *Psychology Today*, *Harvard Business Review*, and *Wired*. He is a frequent speaker at education technology conferences, where he advocates for evidence-based learning design over intuition-based approaches. His first book, *The Accelerated Learner*, grew out of a popular blog series that reached over two million readers and was translated into twelve languages.

Shipley lives in Seattle, Washington, where he spends his non-research time practicing classical guitar (badly but deliberately), trail running, and attempting to learn Japanese through the very techniques described in this book. He remains convinced that his Japanese will be conversationally fluent before his guitar playing is passable.