Table of Contents
1-Sentence Description of Ultralearning by Scott H. Young.
The key to good and efficient writing lies in the intelligent organization of ideas and notes.
3 Key Ideas
Directness is one of the critical elements of Ultralearning. By applying directness, you learn the skill you need without wasting any time. Let’s take learning a language as an example. Yes, there are helpful apps if you want to learn a language. However, in the end, nothing beats talking to a real person. If you go to the corresponding country and try to speak right away, you don’t need an app, and you will progress much faster. This way, you also avoid learning to use the language in a way only the app uses it and is hard to transfer to real life.
Forgetting is a natural process. Nevertheless, we want to remember as much as possible. How can we achieve this? Space out your learning. This means finding the sweet spot between practicing too frequent, which isn’t bad but not efficient, and waiting too long that you already forgot what you’ve learned. In my experience, its best to at least get a good night’s sleep in-between sessions.
Make sure you know what you are talking about. We often tend to overestimate our understanding of a subject. An excellent way to avoid this trap is to use the Feynman technique. Take a piece of paper and write down the concept or problem you want to understand. Below, start to explain the concept or problem as if you had to teach it to someone new to the subject. Every time you are stuck, go back to your book, course material, or ask your teacher to find an explanation.
3 Quotes
In the words of the economist Tyler Cowen, “Average is over.” In his book of the same title, Cowen argues that because of increased computerization, automation, outsourcing, and regionalization, we are increasingly living in a world in which the top performers do a lot better than the rest. Driving this effect is what is known as “skill polarization.”
For those who know how to use technology wisely, it is the easiest time in history to teach yourself something new.
I find it useful to break down metalearning research that you do for a specific project into three questions: “Why?,” “What?,” and “How?” “Why?” refers to understanding your motivation to learn. If you know exactly why you want to learn a skill or subject, you can save a lot of time by focusing your project on exactly what matters most to you. “What?” refers to the knowledge and abilities you’ll need to acquire in order to be successful. Breaking things down into concepts, facts, and procedures can enable you to map out what obstacles you’ll face and how best to overcome them. “How?” refers to the resources, environment, and methods you’ll use when learning. Making careful choices here can make a big difference in your overall effectiveness.
1 Good Review
Most books on learning are narrowly focused on academic tests, but this book actually helps you learn skills you can use in real life. And I think learning to learn is one of the most important things we can do in life.
Some good learning principles from the book:
Directness: the best way to practice is to do very thing you want to do. Instead of reading about painting, actually paint. Instead of taking a test on vocabulary, actually practice speaking the language you’re trying to learn. Instead of writing papers on coding, create a program. Direct application is the best practice arena.
Retrieval: When asked, people say that good reviews make them feel like they are more prepared and will remember more. But it actually isn’t the best for locking things in our memory. Instead, pushing your brain to remember things is better than reviewing it more often–even when we can’t get the right answers. The hard work of racking our brains for the answer (which doesn’t feel as good as reviewing) is very productive.
Meta-Learning: Before learning all the specifics, spend time “drawing a map” and learn the big ideas and patterns behind all the specifics. When you have a frame to hang your ideas on, they will stick in your head and make sense.
So, good book, with more tips like this. But the book is focused on “ultralearning” (massive learning in short periods of time) so it’s not directly applicable to most people. And there are some missing ideas that I know from my own learning adventures, so while it’s very helpful, I couldn’t say this is a blow your mind, best book on learning ever. Worth reading, though. 4.5 stars out of 5.
1 Bad Review
Warning: The rating on Goodreads is wildly inflated!
“Ultralearning” is a really mediocre book on how to learn an arbitrary skill more efficiently, whether it’s a language, programming or playing the piano. I was really suckered in by the fancy title. “Ultralearning?? Shut up and take my money!”. But honestly, this book reads like a giant blog post and is exactly type of soft writing that I strongly dislike in non-fiction.
In any case, the book didn’t contain that many new insights for me, but here are some points that I did find useful;.– The Directness Principle. Whenever you want to learn something, try to figure out what the TRUE end goal is. You want to learn German? Well, what do you want to use it for? Is it for reading the newspaper online? Then start by reading the newspaper online. Is it to have drunken chats at the bar? Well, try to have drunken chats at the bar. Whatever it is that you want to learn, figure out the *true* end goal and try to place your practice as close to that end goal as possible. Don’t trade it off for other tasks further away from the true end goal, as gains in some other related task will not necessarily easily transfer to your true end goal.
– Drilling/Work your way backwards. Periodically, you should asses the skill you are practicing and try to pin point where your weakest points are, and then spend concerted effort on those parts until they stop being your weakest points.
– Deepening learning by explaining. If you want to cement your understanding on a topic, then try to explain the idea in writing to someone else. If you sense that you are stuck at some point, or if your reasoning isn’t particularly clear (You can scrutinise your reasoning by asking yourself WHY multiple times), go back and research the topic further until you fully grasp the topic. If you keep drilling deeper into a topic, this is a good method of learning something by “first principles” rather than just memorising an answer.
In any case, I can’t really recommend this book, but if you want a good book on learning and memory, I really recommend the book “Make it Stick”.