Guides and reviewed roundups
Learning guides from the Cadence team
Plain comparisons of learning apps, honest notes on what free actually includes, practical guides to the hard conversations at work, and what the research on learning actually supports. We make Cadence, we say so in every article, and we point at a different app when it is the better answer.
Learn anything, one lesson a day.
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Browse by topic.
Search by name, or narrow to one part of the list. Every roundup names its sources, states what we did not test, and discloses that Cadence is ours.
Showing all 19 articles.
Choosing an app
8 articles
Roundups and reviews for deciding what to actually use.
Reviewed roundup
The best learning apps for adults, sorted by what you want to learn
A plain comparison of the best learning apps for adults, sorted by what you actually want to learn, with what each app is good at and where it falls short.
Reviewed roundup
Free learning apps for adults, and what free actually gets you
The free learning apps for adults that are genuinely free, what each free tier actually includes, and which apps call themselves free but are not.
Reviewed roundup
The best apps for learning skills you actually use at work
The best apps for learning workplace skills, from software and certificates to the harder ones like giving feedback, running meetings, and managing up.
Reviewed roundup
Apps like Duolingo, for everything that is not a language
Apps like Duolingo for other subjects: which ones copy the daily streak and short lesson format well, and which just look similar on the surface.
Reviewed roundup
How much do learning apps actually cost?
What learning apps actually cost: how each one charges, which are free forever, and the billing traps that make subscriptions cost more than expected.
Reviewed roundup
Apps to replace doomscrolling, honestly compared
Apps to stop doomscrolling by replacing the habit rather than blocking it, with an honest note on which ones feel like scrolling and which do not.
Reviewed evaluation
Is Blinkist worth it?
Is Blinkist worth paying for? What the subscription actually includes, who gets value from book summaries, and when a different app is the better buy.
Reviewed evaluation
Is Headway worth it?
Is the Headway app worth paying for? What the subscription includes, who it suits, and where a different app or the book itself is the better choice.
Career skills
7 articles
Practical guides to the conversations and decisions at work.
Practical guide
How to give feedback that actually changes something
A practical method for giving feedback at work: what to say, the sentence patterns that fail, and how to tell whether the message actually landed.
Practical guide
How to have a difficult conversation at work
How to prepare for and hold a hard conversation at work: the opening sentence, what to do when it goes badly, and the mistakes that make things worse.
Practical guide
Your first 90 days as a new manager
What to actually do in your first 90 days managing people: what to change early, what to leave alone, and the mistakes new managers reliably make.
Practical guide
How to manage up without being political
How to manage up at work: getting decisions out of a busy manager, disagreeing safely, and handling the common types of difficult boss.
Practical guide
How to run a meeting that ends in a decision
How to run effective meetings: the agenda that works, how to handle the person who derails it, and which meetings to cancel outright.
Practical guide
How to negotiate a job offer without losing it
How to negotiate a job offer: what to say when asked for a number, how to counter, and what is negotiable besides salary.
Practical guide
How to get promoted from individual contributor to senior
What actually gets you promoted from individual contributor to senior: the scope shift, the evidence to collect, and why doing your job well is not enough.
Learning better
4 articles
How to build the habit, and what the research actually supports.
Practical guide
How to actually learn something new every day
A practical method for learning something new every day: how to size the daily unit, decide the next step in advance, and recover from missed days without quitting.
Practical guide
What to do instead of scrolling
What to do instead of scrolling, matched to the moment you reach for your phone, with an honest note on why the swap feels worse before it feels better.
Sourced research
Microlearning statistics, with the studies behind them
Microlearning statistics with real citations: what studies on spacing, retrieval, and forgetting actually found, and which popular numbers have no source.
Sourced research
How long should a lesson actually be?
How long a learning session should be, according to actual studies: why session length matters less than spacing and recall, and where the 10-minute claim comes from.
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How we write these
Rules we hold ourselves to.
- Every product named links to its own official page, checked on the review date shown in the article.
- We do not quote competitor prices as exact numbers, because they change by region, platform, and offer.
- Research claims name the study, with authors and a year, and link it. Numbers we cannot trace to a real paper are called out rather than repeated.
- Every entry says what the product is bad at, including ours.
- When a different app is the better answer, the article says so plainly.