The Learning Game

Fabrega built the book from newsletter issues readers already wanted more of. Instead of starting from scratch, she reviewed her old newsletters, picked the pieces at the core of her message that resonated most, grouped them by common themes and arranged them into a table of contents with a storyline.

She then wrote the missing chapters and ended every chapter with an illustrated, practical action step. "I totally started from abundance."

How I Write▶ 33:04

Personal classroom stories open the book, not research. Her instinct was to lead with research, facts and figures, but David Perell pushed her to write her classroom stories because readers remember stories. Her first article, about loving teaching and then quitting, became the book's introduction.

Quotes made up 20 to 30% of her early pieces; she treats them as training wheels dropped as confidence grows.

How I Write▶ 20:46

Every idea is paired with a visual that carries the meaning. From her first pieces she added a visual of the idea in her head, and readers engaged more with those pieces. In the book, illustrator Yanis Zolin read the text, chose what to draw and iterated drafts with her, so some pages deliver the point through the image.

The cover shows tic-tac-toe played the wrong way so a stranger can guess it is about doing things differently. She grew up moving between countries without speaking the language, so she learned to lean on visuals, and the illustrated format makes it a book people like to gift.

How I Write▶ 16:02

Give each reader one specific kind of feedback to give. When she opened the draft to six readers, each said something different and she felt she had to rewrite everything. She then assigned roles: her husband Fernando did line edits on words, sentences and grammar, while another reader gave high-level notes on stories and what was interesting.

"You need to give them a specific kind of feedback."

How I Write▶ 34:10

Ask a friend who knows your stance to attack the argument. She asked her friend Sylvia to criticize the book and challenge her biases, which surfaced holes in a one-sided argument. Sylvia later wrote the foreword.

Explicit permission lets a friend be harsh without holding back or damaging the friendship. "I want you to make me hate you."

How I Write▶ 36:22

Cut any paragraph that adds nothing, even ones you love. Wanting no extra words because many books could have been articles and readers abandon them halfway, she had editors including Perell and her husband flag paragraphs that added nothing, and she cut them.

She calls her husband the best editor. "I don't want to have one extra word."

How I Write▶ 32:29

School drills form over ideas, creating adults who hate writing. Fabrega argues school teaches sentences, spelling and five-paragraph essays instead of ideas; two third graders wrote phenomenal stories but froze over spelling, and their parents saw only the misspellings.

She calls such adults "damaged writers". Spelling and grammar can be fixed later, while the idea is what AI won't replace.

How I Write

Her angle comes from linking outside fields back to education. She stopped reading education books, followed her curiosity into poker, finance, sports, gaming and psychology, and connected them to learning, such as using Dr House to ask how kids find their specific knowledge.

Those links made the writing relatable to parents and anyone who went through school. She also teaches curating and remixing others' ideas with credit, rather than only warning about plagiarism.

How I Write