The article rings very true. Both the on-topic stuff about avoiding writing when we don't feel you'll produce something of quality and the whole off-topic thing about top-of-the-class students not failing enough as kids to form a strong personality.

Let's face it, we all want the glory and "critical acclaim" of writing something good, so when you feel like you will produce only something mediocre or actually bad, you don't feel like writing at all. It's like having a brilliant startup idea and not executing on it because you don't want to dirty up you beautiful imaginary world of success with the harshness of reality and people not caring about your idea.

But in French they say "l'appetit vient en mangeant" (the desire to eat comes while eating) so procrastinating is not the answer. Write one true sentence. Here I am writing this comment instead of going back to my book and writing the intro paragraph to Chapter 6.... Okay, that's it I'm going.

One last thing: if you're ever stuck with writer's block, try recording yourself speak and then transcribing what you wrote. It works great for me when I'm tired. I could me mentally too tired to type, but I can speak a coherent sentence that flows nicely.

The only real way to learn is by doing, and I think that's essentially independent of formatting

That is very true. I've been surprised time and time again at how much progress students make by solving exercises. Right now, this is the main thing missing in the book, and I'm going to be working in the coming months to create a nice set of exercises, possibly using the khan-exercises framework which you can use through the web. The main purpose of the book is to give students the initial tools they will need to then dig into the exercises.

What is it in other texts that you find to be "bullshit"?

I guess the main thing I'm calling bullshit on is the "page inflation" phenomenon. Old calc. textbooks were 100-200 pages long and did a really good job at introducing the three-four new ideas (limits, derivatives, integrals, series). How come new textbooks are 1000+ pages long? The longer the textbook, the smaller the probability that students will actually read it.... so more is actually less.

"Who gives a shit?" ... question is framed in a vacuum.

The relation to the real world is another big motivating factor for learning. This is why I begin each section with a "what is this used for" paragraph and an example. It makes sense to explain the applications before going into the formulas and the theory, otherwise why should-I listen to you?

... "how to ace calculus" ..

Wow cool. That book's tone and content seems very similar to my calculus chapter. Your experience with this short book confirms the fact that you don't need to read thousands of pages to learn how to take limits, find derivatives, and optimize functions.