Things work differently for different minds, I find that Courseras model of commitment works better for me. I tried 2 Udacity classes which are self-paced, I actually did quite a lot of the modules but somehow I moved on. On Coursera you have to live with the class and at least try to make all assigments and such on time. I think one thing that works good for me is the feeling of having a special oportuinty and "if i dont do this I will be left behind in the new age". Dont get me wrong I would love to be the kind of person I thought I was; searching the web, finding places and things most people would not assume were there and then putting them together. But I need the feeling of being on a "quest" and building up a illusion of "if I make this, things will change". Latter rambling is maybe more general, my point is some people (me) just cant handle the notion of almost force-feed overflow of accesible information and thinking that everybody doing it, so why bother (if the retention in the article is true that should be instrumentaly good for my crazy notion). Sorry for the crazy rant, if only the mind lacked biases. Maybe I should atleast try those mentioned in the article instead of being overpowered by strange thoughts.