About

The Infinite Loop is built on a principle supported across decades of research in cognitive science, adult learning, and expertise development: in complex environments, the most durable advantage is the ability to learn, adapt, and synthesize knowledge continuously.

Studies on the half-life of technical skills show that domain-specific knowledge now decays faster than ever — in some sectors within 2–5 years (AJG), with many skills classified as perishable (<2.5 years) or semi-durable (<7.5 years) (IBM). Across industries, researchers consistently find that long-term effectiveness depends less on static expertise and more on meta-skills: adaptability, systems thinking, and learnability (D2L; Spencer & Lucas).

My own life has been an ongoing experiment with these principles.
I grew up without much structure and spent countless afternoons in the library, working through textbooks, programming guides, and puzzle collections. Long before I knew terms like meta-learning or far-transfer, I was practicing the basics of both: learning how to learn, how to extract principles, and how to connect ideas that didn’t obviously belong together.

That early autonomy shaped the way I approach new problems even today.

My career has taken me through many different disciplines — not because I planned it that way, but because opportunities kept pulling me into unfamiliar territory. Over time, I noticed a pattern that mirrors what research calls cognitive flexibility, far-transfer learning, and integrative thinking: the ability to move across domains, identify underlying structures, and apply them in new contexts.

Eventually, I realized something about the way I tend to learn: I don’t specialize in domains as much as I specialize in connecting them.

I approach subjects by stripping them down to governing mechanisms — the constraints, incentives, feedback loops, and structural principles that persist even as tools and terminology shift. Working at that level has helped me navigate new fields more quickly, but it has also humbled me; you can’t rely on surface familiarity when you’re constantly starting from basics.

This approach became a kind of personal operating system — a repeatable way of learning that I now call the integrative learning loop.

Over the years, I found myself returning to the same pattern:

  1. Extract the governing principles from a new domain
  2. Recognize structural analogies across different fields
  3. Test those analogies through small, low-risk experiments
  4. Integrate what holds up into a broader mental model
  5. Reflect and revise those models as new information emerges

It turns out this mirrors research on the master adaptive learner, a model emphasizing iterative cycles of curiosity, exploration, experimentation, and reflection (AMA). It also aligns with the meta-skills progression framework from Skills Development Scotland, which emphasizes principles-first thinking and flexible mental model construction (SDS).

None of this is innate or exclusive.
It’s simply a way of learning that grew out of necessity — and one that anyone can cultivate.

What This Space Is

This is not a repository of polished conclusions.
It is a working space — a laboratory of learning where I examine new ideas, break them apart, connect them, and test the mental models that emerge.

Posts here draw from:

  • engineering and systems architecture
  • financial theory and market structure
  • cognitive science and decision-making
  • organizational behavior and complexity
  • real-world experimentation
  • the discipline of lifelong learning itself

Each piece is an artifact of the integrative learning loop:
a record of tracing a principle, exploring a domain, or finding a connection that only becomes obvious in hindsight.

Why This Matters

In a world where the half-life of skills is shrinking and entire domains evolve faster than organizations can adapt, research shows that sustainable relevance comes from:

  • meta-learning — the ability to acquire and refine knowledge continuously
  • cognitive flexibility — the ability to shift perspectives and strategies
  • cross-domain synthesis — the ability to generate insight by unifying disparate fields
  • adaptive expertise — the ability to apply principles, not just procedures

Tools change. Markets change. Organizations change.
Principles endure — and the ability to connect them endures even longer.

That is the philosophy behind The Infinite Loop:
learning as infrastructure, synthesis as capability, reinvention as ongoing practice.

An Invitation

Whether you’re a technologist, a builder, a leader, or simply someone who enjoys sharpening how you think, my hope is that this space offers something useful:

  • a pattern you can borrow
  • a model you can adapt
  • an idea that sparks a question
  • a question that sparks an experiment

If this project succeeds in anything, let it be this:
helping you strengthen your own loop — your personal system of curiosity, synthesis, and lifelong growth.

Always learning. Always growing.
Progress is an infinite loop.