[[Scott Young]] [[lit/kindle/Ultralearning|Highlights]] Scott H. Young completed the entire MIT computer science bachelors using their open courseware in one year. He then traveled to four countries for three months each, speaking only the local language. These experiences led him to collect the stories of other ultralearners and extract the principles that support ultralearning in his book Ultralearning. These principles are (quoted from the book): 1. **Metalearning**: First Draw a Map. Start by learning how to learn the subject or skill you want to tackle. Discover how to do good research and how to draw on your past competencies to learn new skills more easily. Tactic: ask an expert. 2. **Focus**: Sharpen Your Knife. Cultivate the ability to concentrate. Carve out chunks of time when you can focus on learning, and make it easy to just do it. 3. **Directness**: Go Straight Ahead. Learn by doing the thing you want to become good at. Don’t trade it off for other tasks, just because those are more convenient or comfortable. 4. **Drill**: Attack Your Weakest Point. Be ruthless in improving your weakest points. Break down complex skills into small parts; then master those parts and build them back together again. 5. **Retrieval**: Test to Learn. Testing isn’t simply a way of assessing knowledge but a way of creating it. Test yourself before you feel confident, and push yourself to actively recall information rather than passively review it. Tactic: take the exam first, then learn. 6. **Feedback**: Don’t Dodge the Punches. Feedback is harsh and uncomfortable. Know how to use it without letting your ego get in the way. Extract the signal from the noise, so you know what to pay attention to and what to ignore. 7. **Retention**: Don’t Fill a Leaky Bucket. Understand what you forget and why. Learn to remember things not just for now but forever. 8. **Intuition**: Dig Deep Before Building Up. Develop your intuition through play and exploration of concepts and skills. Understand how understanding works, and don’t recourse to cheap tricks of memorization to avoid deeply knowing things. 9. **Experimentation**: Explore Outside Your Comfort Zone. ## Problems There are obvious problems with ultralearning. For one, not everything can be learned through ultralearning. If what you learn doesn't transfer to the real world applications you need it in, the effort is wasted. This applies to other forms of education as well. Young highlights the work of the psychologist Robert Haskell, who states, "Despite the importance of transfer of learning, research findings over the past nine decades clearly show that as individuals, and as educational institutions, we have failed to achieve transfer of learning on any significant level...Without exaggeration, it’s an education scandal." Haskell suggests that transfer of learning is most limited to those with the least knowledge in a subject. The more you know about a subject, the easier it is to transfer new learning to application. Young also suggest that this can be overcome by learning more directly (principle #3) with project-based learning, immersive experiences, and the "flight simulator method", where a learner practices in a simulated real-world setting. Second, why spend all of that effort learning something only to forget it just as quickly? Our brains are forgetting machines; you can't fill a leaky bucket. Young describes the three predominant theories of why our brains forget: decay, interference, and forgotten cues. We forget most things almost immediately, however once we retain things for long enough they seem to be fixed (the holes in our leaky bucket are at the top). Spaced repetition is a common technique for locking things into memory. "Procedurization", shifting the knowledge to muscle memory, is another option. Overlearning is the practice of learning so much that you allow for forgetting some trivial content but through it lock in the more important core concepts (e.g., learn calculus to lock in algebra). (Young does not mention a PKM like this one, but its another option for avoiding leakage). Probably the most important principle, in my opinion, is #8 intuition. Young revisits his famous Feynman Technique for building an intuition while learning. The Feynman Technique helps overcome forgetfulness and overcome the "illusion of explanatory depth," where you think you understand better than you do. Young also points out that Feynman's style was in the "spirit of playful exploration," probably the most important characteristic for making ultralearning sustainable over the long term. In the final two chapters, Young provides a guide for starting your first ultralearning project and some thoughts on how to maintain your learning over time. Throughout, the book has lots of great tactics and ideas for taking on an ultralearning project. It's worth another read before you take on your next ultralearning project. > [!tip]- Additional Resources > - See [Axel Casas](https://medium.com/@axel.em.casas) on Medium for a thorough coverage of the book across multiple articles ([start here](https://medium.com/cogni-tiva/learn-anything-with-ultralearning-bcab0b2c4a65)). Casas is developing his own brand of ultralearning called Super Learning. > - [Python Programmer - A math GENIUS taught me how to LEARN ANYTHING in 3 months (it's easy)](https://youtu.be/y1JMaJ_OkWM?si=fdjlN7otweDA4SRh&t=339) (start at 5:39) provides a simplified 7-step process.