Mastering The Art Of Learning

Summary

In this article, I review the core ideas of Scott H. Young’s book, Ultralearning, and how it became a turning point in my learning adventure.

Introduction

My journey into self-education became earnest in 2020 when I decided to acquire a new skill and transition into software engineering after a stint in Data Analytics. For the first few weeks, I enjoyed combing through resources online: books, video tutorials, and websites with useful resources I could find.

After completing my courses, it was time to build personal projects! I found myself fumbling through the materials I thought I had understood and concepts I thought I had mastered. Then began a cycle of frustration and abandoned projects. For the first time, I realized how terrible I was at learning new things. It is easy to assume that the process of acquiring technical skills is not different from the conventional way of obtaining knowledge in the school system. I was wrong.

I decided to take a break from software engineering and learn about learning! How does the learning process actually work? What makes certain individuals acquire difficult skills in the shortest time possible? How do I master the hard skills required to give an edge in an ever-changing world? These questions formed the basis of my research into the subject of learning. In my search for books online, I came across Scott H. Young’s book - Ultralearning: Master Hard skills, Outsmart the Competition and Accelerate Your Career. I looked no further, that was exactly what I needed! The ideas in the book completely transformed my learning adventure.

Unveiling Ultralearning

Can you get an MIT Education without going to MIT? The writer introduces the subject of Ultralearning with this daunting question. It is not unusual for people to study a course in college and end up having other interests later in life. In fact, Tertiary Education, despite its cost, has largely failed to equip students with the hands-on experience and skills required to survive a competitive market or drive innovation in various fields.

The best careers demand sophisticated skills that you’re unlikely to stumble upon by chance. Not just programmers but managers, entrepreneurs, designers, doctors, and nearly every other profession is rapidly accelerating the knowledge and skills required, and many are struggling to keep up.

After graduation, the writer realized that he wanted something different out of life, something his business degree didn’t empower him for. Faced with the option of enrolling again for a second degree and the cost of attending a top university, necessity invented Ultralearning. An opportunity surfaced when he came across the MIT Opencourseware - an online archive of lecture materials including videos, curriculum, and exam questions available to the public free of charge, the MIT Challenge was born - an intense personal study that took 12 months and opened up a new ideology about acquiring knowledge and self-education.

Taking out student loans and giving up a half-decade of my life to repeat the bureaucracy and rules of college didn’t seem very appealing. There had to be a better way to learn what I wanted. I could approximate the education of an MIT student for a fraction of the cost, time, and constraints.”

The author’s tone was not dismissive of College Education altogether, as there are several benefits of attending a top college. The scope of the MIT challenge was not a quest to prove that the author could absorb an enormous amount of information, but that acquiring practical knowledge was beyond the confines of a classroom and he was determined to explore self-education.

Then came the project titled “The Year Without English” - a challenge to learn a new language by living in another country and deliberately refusing to speak in the language he was comfortable in, and many other learning projects. These self-directed learning adventures by the author and many others formed a web of strategies called Ultralearning - that could be employed in the quest to acquire new skills, learn new languages, simulate a university degree program, or become knowledgeable about a wide range of topics.

Ultralearning: A project-based strategy for acquiring skills and knowledge that is both self-directed and intense.

The focal points of this strategy of learning are intensity, directness, and its self-motivated nature. Ultralearning is intense, it requires unusual focus to maximize efficiency and it pushes the mind to the limit. Instead of settling for methods of learning that are more optimized for fun like passive reading, watching tutorials unending, or "choosing a language learning app because it’s entertaining instead of serious practice".

Ultralearaning pushes the learner to face the skill they seek to learn head-on, learning a thing by actually doing it. I was caught up with learning materials for months until I realized I wasn’t making the expected progress. Learn French by speaking French, and learn programming by building real apps.

Fearlessly attempting to speak a new language you’ve just started to practice, systematically drilling tens of thousands of trivia questions, and iterating through art again and again until it is perfect is hard mental work no doubt but it produces tremendous results.

The scheduling of an Ultralearning project can be full-time or part-time, but the cardinal points remain directness, drilling, and project-based learning. Several stories, scientific research, and projects are employed by the author to show the effectiveness of the Ultralearning mode of learning.

Ultralearning Principles

The Author exposes nine universal principles that underlie the strategy of learning described so far, these principles form a basis for any Ultralearning project learners embark on and how to maximize efficiency.

Meta-Learning - First Draw a Map

Proper research of the subject of learning helps to give direction to the learner’s quest and save time down the line. Many uncompleted learning projects result from failing to count the cost at the beginning of the journey. This step aims at answering the question WHY, WHAT, and HOW.

Why is the learner embarking on the project? Answering this question eliminates doubts and ends unnecessary quests before they begin. A strong reason keeps the momentum up when the going gets tough.
The answer to the what question refers to the concepts to be understood, facts to be memorized, and procedures to be mastered. This helps to “map out the difficulties of learning and how best to navigate them”.
How refers to the resources, environment, and methods needed, these vary depending on the kind of subject being studied. It is advised to spend 10 percent of the total time allotted to the learning project on meta-learning - gathering facts and counsel from experts and drawing up a comprehensive roadmap for the journey ahead.

Focus - Sharpen Your Knife

The usual initial excitement a learner experiences at the beginning of the journey soon fades out as he is faced with distractions, emotional swings, roadblocks, and many other factors that threaten the completion of the learning project. Ultralearning thrives on laser focus, the ability to “start, sustain and optimize the quality of one’s focus”. The problem of starting is called procrastination, an aversion to certain tasks or a craving to do something else. Discipline is required to ensure the chunks of time dedicated to learning are well utilized for efficiency.

Cal Newport in his book Deep Work offers very practical models to ensure learning sessions are effective. He describes Deep Work as “the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It is a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship” Focus is not a function of the amount of time available for learning, rather it is the ability to maximize the time allotted.

Directness - Go Straight ahead

“Directness is the idea of learning being tied closely to the situation or context you want to use it in”. Naturally, It is easier to go for more fun and less stressful mode of learning, like playing with a language app instead of actually conversing with people, reading a book about public speaking instead of actually speaking, and watching coding tutorials instead of building apps. We avoid the difficulty of these tasks and hope that by engaging in less strenuous activities, we can transfer the knowledge to real-life scenarios, but it doesn't work! In my case, I was coding along with tutorials and watching videos all day, hoping that somehow the skill would stick with me.

The error of the traditional mode of learning found in institutions of learning is assuming knowledge can be transferred, teaching theories, and assuming students can transfer the knowledge when it is required in practice. Schools have produced students who are theoretically knowledgeable but lack the practical skills required to thrive in the outside world. Speaking from experience, directness can be difficult at first, especially if the learner is a beginner, but it is a proven way to make real progress. Speak that language to someone today, start that project today. You may struggle with it - but that's what learning truly is when it starts. Some ways of being direct in learning include:

Project-based learning: this usually involves organizing your learning around producing something. Learn Python to build a web scraper or a game, or JavaScript to build your favorite website.
Immersive Learning: this involves being in an environment that encourages what is being learned and challenges the learner. Joining communities, and contributing to open-source projects(for programmers) are some ways to practice immersive learning
Overkill Approach: this involves optimizing directness by increasing the challenge slightly more than the learner's current level of knowledge and experience thereby pushing the learner beyond their limits.

Drill - Attack Your Weakness

This strategy involves identifying the aspects that pose the greatest challenge in your learning adventure and giving them special attention. The Author alludes to the concept of Rate determining step in Chemistry to explain this concept. The Rate determining step is usually the slowest part of the reaction chain and largely determines how long the reaction will take (apologies to readers who have never been to chemistry class). For example, in learning a language, vocabulary may pose the greatest challenge to the learner, it would then be strategic to isolate the concept and dwell on it for a substantial amount of time.

JavaScript, for example, is reputed for its difficulty to master. I certainly did struggle with it too. The key here is to recognize the most important concepts and give them the attention they deserve. A writer may realize he sucks at describing events and decides to write only about that. Drilling involves emphasis, resilience, and persistence.

Drills require the learner not only to think deeply about what is being learned but also figure out what is most difficult and attack that weakness directly rather than focus on what is the most fun or what has already been mastered.

Retrieval - Test to Learn

William James, a popular Psychologist opines that "It pays better to wait and recollect by an effort from within than to look at the book again.". This statement definitely invokes some serious thoughts about learning. A student preparing for an exam feels comfortable reviewing his notes over and over instead of closing the books and trying to retrieve information from memory. Surprisingly, experiments have shown that students who practice retrieval outperform passive reviewers. A possible explanation is that retrieval comes with feedback, the learner suddenly realizes the gaps in knowledge and fills them in before the next test of memory.

How many students thought they understood a course, only to get into the exam and realize they are completely alien to the questions being asked? What would you do if you had one hour to prepare for an exam, practice retrieval, or review notes? The obvious answer is to try and skim over the note, hoping to absorb as much information as possible. The opposite turns out to be the better option! Flashcards, self-generated challenges, and closed-book learning are some of the ways to practice retrieval. Don't just read, try and recall.

By preventing yourself from consulting the source, the information becomes knowledge stored inside your head instead of inside a reference manual.

Feedback - Don't Dodge the Punches

Feedbacks are a feared part of learning and rightly so, no one loves to be criticized. There are many unposted articles, unachieved goals, and unwritten books stifled by the fear of criticism. Ask any expert in any field of human endeavor and they will confirm that feedback was a major component of their growth. The ability to see beyond the, sometimes negative feedback and hold on to the facts can help learners improve geometrically. Not every feedback is useful, but some feedback can help your journey as a learner. I have learned to sift through the feedback in good faith and improve where necessary. A bruised ego is a small price to pay for growth and the joy of achieving set goals.

Retention - Don't Fill a Leaky Bucket

Why is it so hard to remember things? How do we humans forget things previously memorized? Experiments have shown at least three major reasons for losing access to previously-available information.

Decay(forgetting with time),
Interference(overwriting Old memories with new ones)
Forgotten cues(a locked box with no key).

How then do we prevent forgetting? How do we ensure hard-acquired skills are not lost to time? The Author opines that our minds are leaky buckets and a mnemonic system(a method or system for improving memory) is required to ensure we do not lose information previously stored. The Author suggests a few systems of strengthening memory:

Spacing: Repeat to remember - spacing learning sessions in intervals over a long period of time can help reinforce memory in the long term.
Proceduralization - the human brain tends to recall a chain of actions more than just pieces of random information. Connecting the dots can enhance memory in the long term.
Overlearning: Practice beyond Perfect - learning beyond what is necessary to perform optimally limits the loss of critical knowledge.
Imagery - It is said that a picture holds a thousand words, "translating abstract concepts to vivid pictures or spatial maps" is a great strategy for retaining information long-term.

Intuition - Dig Deep Before Building up

Have you ever marveled at how fast an expert thinks and solves seemingly difficult problems at a glance? How a chess grandmaster can see impossible moves many steps ahead of their opponents or how a senior software engineer can pinpoint and fix complex bugs in no time? The power of Intuition is incredible.

Intuition is instinctive knowing, knowing without the use of rational processes. Richard Feynman was a man known for his jaw-dropping intuitive prowess. He was known as a human calculator as he could give answers to random difficult math problems such as “e to the power of 3.3" faster than the calculator. He was also notorious for cracking encoded safes and fixing dead electronics.

But inside the mind of those regarded as geniuses, research has shown replicable processes, proof that intuition can be developed. Experts excel because they have amassed a large bank of information and patterns from real experience. Simply spending a lot of time studying something isn't enough to create a deep intuition*,* Memorizing code or solutions to problems does not develop intuition.

Understanding concepts must be deep to develop intuition in the long term. Digging deep to actually understand how things work is very important for learners who want to become experts in the subject being studied. Every complex concept is built from basic principles and understanding them sometimes requires breaking them down into these fundamental principles and then building them up. Some tips.

Don’t Give Up on Hard Problems Easily
Prove Things to Understand Them
Always Start with a Concrete Example
Don’t Fool Yourself

Experimentation - Explore outside your Comfort Zone

"When starting to learn a new skill, often it’s sufficient simply to follow the example of someone who is further along than you"

Originality is not usually a focus for amateurs, you simply want to grasp the basic principles at first. But as a learner advances, he must begin to experiment with what he knows, trying out new methods and sometimes inventing his own methods. Finding your own path is important for discovering the uniqueness every learner possesses.

In art, it was not only van Gogh’s skill but originality that made him one of the most celebrated painters to have ever lived. As creativity becomes valuable, experimentation becomes essential.

The difference between a novice and an expert is that although the novice may know ways to solve a problem, the expert knows the best, most efficient way to solve it. Experimenting involves unlearning and relearning until the learner not only gains a more solid understanding of the subject but can also begin to spot opportunities and unexploited fields of study.

CONCLUSION

I began my first Ultralearning Project (Training to become a Frontend Engineer in 12 months) after reading the book. I realized tremendous progress utilizing the principles of Ultraleaning, compared to random reading and devouring tutorials mindlessly. Check out some of the projects I built.

The most important skill of the century we live in is the ability to adapt quickly, acquire in-demand skills, and learn the latest trends. We live in a fast-paced economy, with things changing constantly. Avoiding obsoleteness is hinged on constant learning and self-development. The principles in Ultralearning by Scott Young launched me on a path of self-discovery and education and I hope they can do the same for you. Don’t stop learning, cheers!