But, if you have evidence that these are more successful than alternatives, I'm game. Where is the evidence? For that matter, what are the alternatives?
(Currently typing with my 4mo old. So... apologies for any typos.)
The strategies (or archetypes) are just 4 different ways to achieve a focus period for doing some work.
Regardless of which you pick, the core thing you look for in each (and possibly others, but those seem quite an exhaustive list of such strategies, or at least the major ones) is focused work.
I don't think we need any evidence besides the mountains of empirical evidence that focused work is better - not any more than people needed evidence that we should breath before we learned about oxygen and the workings of the lungs...
What intellectuals? These plans can equally apply to a high-school educated person learning to cook or whatever.
>Take the archetypes listed. There are non famous failures in each. Selecting the successes is a bit of a sleight.
What archetypes? The post never mentions any archetypes or lists any chery-picked successes. Perhaps you mean the "strategies" listed? Those are mere ways to approach the issue.
Besides what's important is not whether this practice will have failures -- as it doesn't guarantee a success nowhere in the post. The real question is whether it's more successful than alternative approaches.
>So what is to be learned?
That minimizing distractions, and focusing for some time even if you are if you are confused at first, is better than not doing it.
And that if you want to try the system in practice and see if it works for you, pick a subject, and devote seven 4-hour sessions to it.
Even if you don't learn that much at the end, it would still be better than spending the same time with analysis paralysis about how to study...