Ultralearning

Author: Scott H. Young

• Ultra learning requires learning with high intensity and commitment.
• Source of happiness is not achieving simple things, but constantly pushing ourselves and overcoming our own limitations.
• Ultra learning needs a practical reason to learn something (where would you apply your learning?) + an inspiration that excites us (we’ll feel smarter after learning this)
• Ultra learning project - A project where you apply principles of ultra learning to learn something of value.
• It isn’t easy to do an ultra learning project.

Principles for learning more effectively and efficiently

Meta learning

1. Chart out a rough plan for what we want to learn. Research early by figuring out source material, where we’d learn things from, what is the timeline we are looking for etc.
2. Figure out why, what, how of ultra learning project
3. Don’t spend too much time. Stop researching (or meta learning) when the incremental benefits are marginal
4. Divide the project into
   1. Concepts
   2. Facts
   3. Procedures

Focus

1. The ability to focus is under rated. Develop it and if it helps stop using things that ruin your focus (related: Social media bad)
2. Complex tasks require deep focus, low arousal (so that we don’t wander off easily) and relaxed atmosphere
3. Listening to music while working might be increasing our arousal levels.
   1. If we are not well rested and our arousal levels are very low, music might help. But if are well rested and our arousal levels are okay, music and other things might increase the arousal level a bit too much
   2. High arousal makes your mind wander off because we are in very alert mode. This is the reason we might not be able to focus on a single complex task when we have a high from coffee

Directness

1. Apply our learning directly to a practical situation
2. Learning with directness is tough and requires us to be an Active participant. That is why we might descend to passive learning (eg: just watching lectures instead of applying that knowledge, reading book instead of solving problems)
3. Supports the idea of just in time learning. Learn something which we can apply in our day to day contexts
4. Organize our learning around producing something

Drill

1. Drill down on most important/critical parts of an ultra learning project (eg: learning about the internal workings of CNNs completely in Computer Vision domain)
   1. It is worth spending extra time on critical core fundamentals

Retrieval

1. Practice retrieval of facts and procedures specially in different contexts
2. Whenever we retrieve a topic in different contexts, it strengthens the concept of the topic and ties it to different topics in our minds
3. Retrieval together with feedback improves longevity of the topic in our minds

Feedback

1. Immediate feedback on one’s performance is important to improve the process of ultra learning
2. Fear of feedback can hold us back and affect the speed of ultra learning
   1. It’s tough to get over fear of feedback, but once we put us out there for feedback, we’ll notice negative feedback is not so bad. It can indeed help us improve. It’s just uncomfortable in the starting
3. 3 types of feedback
   1. Outcome feedback: Least granular, receiving feedback only at the output of the process. Also, most easy to get.
   2. Informational feedback: Tells us what we are doing wrong.
   3. Corrective feedback: Shows us how to correct what we are doing wrong. Most granular and best kind of feedback. Given by a coach or a mentor.
   4. Don’t process feedback on your ego and be selective on what kind of feedback we want to process.

Retention

1. Spread learning sessions over a more intervals so that we have some gap between learning sessions
2. Try to convert all kinds of learning into procedural knowledge because it stored for longer in our minds than factual knowledge
3. Practice a lot of concrete examples. Once we have practiced, we’ll start finding patterns in the problems and build abstract ideas around the topic

Intuition

The illusion of understanding is very often the barrier to deeper knowledge, because unless that competency is actually tested, it’s easy to mislead yourself into thinking you understand more than you do.

1. Intuition is built after repeated retrieval and retention of topics.
2. It is built after we can have solved a lot of problems and we have a pattern in our minds to solve those kinds of problems.

Experimentation

1. During the course of an ultralearning project, it is recommended to experiment on our learning styles to find the best that works for us.
2. Experimentation has a simple core belief that we can grow and learn new things. These things are not possible if we are not ready to explore new things, techniques, and topics
3. Adopting an experimentation based mindset also relates to growth mindset mentioned in Mindset book

Quotes

A hungry person can eat only so much food. A lonely person can have only so much companionship. Curiosity doesn’t work this way. The more one learns, the greater the craving to learn more. The better one gets, the more one recognizes how much better one could become.