Intro

Pretty exciting to follow Scott Young on his cool book Ultralearning.

Seriously, made me reconsider how I approach all projects that I do. Including the one I’m currently on, which I would affectionately call my 100 book challenge.

Review

Well there’s a lot of things about this book that I don’t necessarily agree with, I think that the practical nature the practice , of this book  any reader regardless of skill level in any project that they find themselves in.

Where I do find that Scott young falls short is in his understanding of learning, from a psychological basis. In psychology learning is a really difficult thing to measure. So learning has kind of been defined to a change of behavior. Psychologists and scientists can determine whether learning has occurred if behavior has changed. This point is entirely missed by Scott Young, and I think not using a psychological definition of learning underminds a lot of the work that he’s doing in this book.

So ultimately, Scott Young’s book is describing how to learn, or change your behavior, at a very aggressive rate. Other than that, there’s nothing else that I would add or detract from the book. It was a great read through, lots of fun examples and exercises, and useful to anyone who takes self-education seriously.

You can find my bullet notes below:

Alixander’s Bullet Journal Notes

There are three kinds of learning: low-intensity habits, formal learning, and ultra learning

• There seems to be a subset of learners who take on the task of learning at a super accelerated rate.
• Barring genius, these learners rigorously test their limits by making learning an active process.
• There is a valid need to adopt ultra learning:
  • Specialization can easily be disrupted in the market space
    • Solution: learn new stuff fast
• Answer these questions when starting out:
  • Why am I learning X
    • Is this subject instrumental value (ie increases my marketability to employers)
    • Is it intrinsic (ie make me happy to do it or brings me value knowing I can)
  • What am I going to learn about X
    • What concepts am I going to learn, or have learned
    • What facts am I going to learn, or have learned
    • What procedures am I going to learn, or have learned
  • How am I going to learn about X
    • Seek scaffolds, like online syllabuses
    • Seek mentors who have done it before, or something like what you are trying to accomplish
• Focus: initiate, maintain, and optimize
• Direct or “hands on learning” is best
• Drills are what make the fundamentals stick
• Retrieval Testing is how you solidify knowledge
  • SRS (spaced repetition software)
  • Concept Mapping
  • Retrieval quizzing
• Feedback can lead to a greater level of learning
  • Self-assessment feedback is how did I do
  • Corrective feedback is choose the right answer from many
  • Information feedback is fill in the blank
  • Object feedback is pass/fail
• Remembering
  • SRS
  • Proceduralization
  • Over-learning
  • Mnemonics
• Intuition
  • Come up with examples
  • Start from the beginning like you don’t know
  • Try to make it concrete by making real the concept
    • The Feynman Technique
• Experiment
  • Meta-learning
  • Aggressive experimentation
    • learn from diverse realms
    • Drill down to learn more
    • Try different styles
  • Adopt a growth mindset
    • Copy (ie recreate another artist)
    • Compare (ie compare your work to theirs)
    • Constraint (ie try it again with your other hand)
    • Consistency (ie do it again and again and again)
• How to do an ultralearning project
  • Do research
    • Topic & Scope
    • Primary Sources
    • Benchmarking
    • Direct Practice
  • Schedule Time
    • How much time
    • When (consistency)
    • Length of time
    • Pilot week (trial run)
  • Execute
    • Metalearning
    • Focus
    • Directness
    • Drill
    • Retrieval
    • Feedback
    • Retention
    • Intuition
    • Experimentation
  • Review results in the end
  • Maintain or master