Ultralearning – Scott Young – My Notes

Directness is the process of learning which involves you doing the thing that you want to learn. You need to practice – this then leads to skill development.

There are 9 principles of ultralearning.

Nine images of Scott Young's Ultraleaning principles.

Principal 1: Meta-learning: first draw a map.

Before beginning an Ultralearning (UL) project answer these three questions for your learning topics: Why – What – How

Why is the motivation. There are two types of why; instrumental and intrinsic. Instrumental leads to you achieving a non-learning result e.g. promotion, a new career; do your research here and find out will learning this new thing get you what you want. Intrinsic has no outcomes intended. A good place to start your research here is on people whose field you want to enter.

What is the knowledge that you will need to succeed. Write down on a piece of paper concepts, facts and procedures then brainstorm ALL the things you will need to learn in each of these three areas.

How are the resources, environment and methods that you will use when learning.

Principal 2. Focus: sharpen your knife.

The first problem is failing to start. The first step in overcoming this problem is to recognize that you are doing it. Use the Pomodoro technique. Use Cal Newport’s time block planner. The second problem is failing to sustain your focus. Aim for flow. When learning, don’t focus on one topic, instead cover a range of them. Choose and be very particular about the environment that you work in. Finally, become (non-sexually) aroused to maintain your focus.

Principal 3. Directness: Go straight ahead

This is simply about learning things in the area you want to get into. Eg you want to become a PYP teacher, then find out the requirements in a Job Description and learn how to do them. Young says that one of the most important things you need to learn is access to real-world problems.

He highlights that transferring what you have learned to what you need to do is the holy grail. When you learn something new you must be able to tie it to real life. The solution is to spend a LOT of time doing the thing you want to get better at. Is much more difficult than indirect learning, which is why most people maybe aren’t doing it. Young suggests the following tactics to achieve direct learning:

  • Tactic 1 – project-based learning; e.g. building a full LMS
  • Tactic 2 – immersive learning; surround yourself in the target environment
  • Tactic 3 – the flight simulator
  • Tactic 4 – the overkill approach; increase the skill level of the challenge. E.g. challenge yourself to pass an exam in that area HSK3.

Principle 4. Drill: Attack your weakest point

To calculate a drill in a given topic you need to simplify or boil it down to its component parts. This allows you to focus on a single aspect of it. Use the direct (broad) and then drill (specific ) and then direct approach.

When choosing a skill, trial and error is a recommended approach. Think about which skill will bring you closer to your goal or what is holding you back e.g. pronunciation of a particular word in Indonesian. The second issue is deciding. Young comes up with the following drills:

  • Drill 1 – Time Slicing. Practice your weakest area and repeat until you get it! E.g. repeating key phrases in a new language, or creating while loops in JS.
  • Drill 2 – Cognitive components. These are separate entities and not part of a whole. E.g. practising the no sound in Indonesian.
  • Drill 3 – The copycat. Copy parts of a skill that you don’t want to drill e.g. writing basic queries in SQL.
  • Drill 4 – The magnifying glass method. Spending a lot more time on a particular part of a skill than most others. This could be writing the introduction in academic essays, this helps signpost and plan your writing.
  • Drill 5 – Prerequisite Chaining. The ingenious idea here, start with a skill that you nothing about, then backward engineer or dissect it to find the component parts. Rather than start from the ground up and combine those skills. The learning curve here will be much increased.

Principle 5. Retrieval: Test to learn

This essentially involves you constantly testing yourself. Retrieval beats concept mapping and reviewing your notes by a mile. It would appear that doing this as often as possible will be beneficial. Don’t use multiple choice AND don’t text yourself immediately after learning the material, but don’t wait too long! Young suggests the following tactics:

  • Tactic 1 – Flashcards (spaced repetition systems tech) are good for simple things to memorize
  • Tactic 2 – Free recall. After reading something, close the book and then write down the main points
  • Tactic 3 – Question book method. Instead of taking notes about what you just did e.g. summarising the points. Write down questions about what you just studied instead.
  • Tactic 4 – Self-generated challenges. Better for more than simple retrieval e.g. concepts as you read through the material set yourself up with mini challenges.
  • Tactic 5 – Closed book learning. Generate concept maps without looking at the book.

Principle 6. Feedback: Don’t dodge the punches.

The process of receiving feedback is the most commonly used of all the principals. Note that quality feedback is much better than receiving a whole bunch of it. Feedback should inform you where you are going wrong. Be careful whom you get the feedback from and how you react to it. Young identifies 3 types of feedback:

  • Outcome feedback. This may come in the form of grades. But you might not show you how to improve. Think about getting applause at the end of a speech – this is outcome feedback. This type is very easy to get.
  • Informational feedback. This type tells you what you are doing wrong or right BUT it does not tell you how to fix it. For a comedian telling a joke but getting zero laughs from the audience is a type of informational feedback.
  • Corrective feedback. This is the best feedback, as it tells you what you are doing wrong and how to fix it. The best source of this type of feedback is from a coach, mentor or teacher. Flashcards work as well. AI chatbots would certainly come in handy here.

Feedback timing. Immediate feedback is better than delayed, however, ensure that you have given your best efforts with the application of that skill before chasing down the feedback as this can rob you of the learning process.

Tactics to improve the feedback received:

  • Tactic 1 – Separate the signal (useful) from the noise (non-productive).
  • Tactic 2 – Find the difficulty sweet spot. If you are failing too much then perhaps you have set the difficulty rating too high, conversely, if you are not succeeding too much you may be wearing your comfortable slippers!
  • Tactic 3 – Metafeedback. Feedback about your learning strategies. Not learning enough? Then change up your learning strategies.
  • Tactic 4 – High-intensity frequent feedback. Exposure to this type will most likely keep you on your toes.

Principle 7. Retention: Don’t fill a leaky bucket.

Active recall lists when you are out for a walk or at the gym. After learning something, we can forget the facts quite quickly, but the loss of knowledge slows over time. New knowledge can also overlap old, making it harder to recall. Some terms may be difficult to remember because they conflict with our existing understanding of them. Finally, when we recall something we are reconstructing it from memory. E.g. This can lead to incorrect eyewitness testimonies. Young puts forward 4 mechanisms to prevent loss of learning – SPOM. Spacing, Procedureization, Overlearning and Mnemonics.

Spacing
Don’t cram, instead space out the learning over some time. Eg. Rather than spend 8 hours at the weekend cramming Indo, do one and a bit hours each day over a week. Use SRS systems e.g. anki droid to help with this – useful for vocabulary and simple facts. However, for larger concepts consider small refresher projects e.g. writing SQL queries or loops in JS.

Proceduralize
This is when you begin doing something automatically. You don’t even need to think about it. Unlike declarative which can be abstract at first, e.g. dividing mixed numbers. Research suggests that most new skill learning starts as declarative before moving on to becoming procedurized. The best way to do this is through the deliberate repetition of the skill. Very useful for something that you will need to do a lot of. Another way of looking at this mechanism is to make habits out of the critical skill elements.

Overlearn
Once you have learned a new skill, extend the time practicing it as this has been shown to increase that skill’s durability. You can take this one step further and go to the next step with the same skill involved but in a different task – this will further increase how well you perform the skill.

Mnemonic
Think about Josh Foer’s book “Moonwalking with Einstein” e.g. The Memory Palace. Young does not favor this particular tool at all. He admits that is amazing for memorizing very long pieces of information, and can be bundled with other tools such as SRS. But they are not practical in the real world – I agree. I see them more as a party trick than a true learning strategy, but a fairly impressive one! I also loved Josh Foer’s book.

Principle 8. Intuition: Dig deep before building up

When solving new problems you need to work from a principles-first perspective. To do this you need to strengthen your intuition. Young puts forward the following rules:

  • Rule 1 – Challenge yourself with problems that are just beyond your reach. And, don’t give up quickly. Young suggests using a struggle timer. Essentially when faced with something too challenging, rather than give up immediately, give yourself an additional 10 minutes or so to try and solve it. Then will strengthen your resolve.
  • Rule 2 – If you want to understand something deeply, then you need to prove it. E.g. draw a picture of a bike with all of the correct parts, then explain how it works. Don’t be fooled by the so-called illusion of understanding; which is that you think you know how something works.
  • Rule 3 – When learning something new for the first time, build up a concrete example in your head.
  • Rule 4 – Don’t fool yourself. E.g. don’t tell yourself that you know something that you don’t. The Dunning-Kruger effect happens when you are learning something for the first time and you overestimate your ability to comprehend it. Because you have built up the required understanding to realize you know nothing! Also, ask all of the stupid questions as this helps you, and others, in proving your understanding.

Use the Feynman technique when; learning something new/don’t understand; when faced with a problem that you cannot solve and; when learning a core concept for that particular subject.
What are the steps suggested for the Feynman technique?

  1. Write down the name of the concept at the top of a new piece of paper.
  2. Now write down how you would explain and teach this concept to someone below the heading.
  3. When you get stuck on the concept go back to the book/resource to improve your understanding.

Principle 9. Experimentation: Explore outside your comfort zone.

When learning a new skill be tenacious, relentless, and try as many different styles as you can until you find something that fits.
Through this experimental style, you need to be your own person. Young provides 3 ways to experiment:

  • Experiment 1 – Pick one resource at a time, and be thorough in experimenting within that resource BEFORE moving on to something different
  • Experiment 2 – Choose your own learning pathway/technique
  • Experiment 3 – Research masters in the skill, then start to create your unique style.

Young then suggests the following experiment tactics:

  • Tactic 1 – Copy and create different people/exercises
  • Tactic 2 – Compare and contrast two different learning styles and then use the scientific method to see which is most effective.
  • Tactic 3 – Introduce constraints to enable your innovative practices
  • Tactic 4 – Combine your unique hybrid styles to create something that sets you out from the crowd
  • Tactic 5 – Experiment at the edges of the subject, don’t stay in the middle.

Picking your Project/s

  • Step 1 – Be very constrained. For example, don’t learn data analytics instead learn how to use data analytics to improve learning opportunities for students. Pick the one main resource that you will use as well as identify the direct learning activities e.g. conversing with people or mini coding projects.
  • Step 2 – Time. How long will you study each week? When will you study? How long will you give yourself to complete the project? Create a project calendar.
  • Step 3 Principles. Did you plan all 9?
  • Step 4 Review. Once a project is done, you will need to review the results. Be honest and critical. Spot what went well and what could be better.
  • Step 5. Maintain or Master. Yup, you need to choose a maintenance schedule for your new learning achievements if you want to hold on to all of that hard work. Or choose the mastery route and specialize like an insect!

Started reading on 18.12.23
Finished reading on 20.12.23