Priscilla Xu

Reading time: 4 minutes

3-Sentence Book Summary

• Scott Young teaches you about how you can save your tuitions and learn in a self directed manner.

Ultralearning is a strategy for aggressive, self-directed learning. It’s a strategy—meaning a choice about how to pursue learning to get results. It’s aggressive—meaning aimed at doing what works, even if it’s a little harder or intense. It’s self-directed—meaning you’re the one in control

Scott H Young

Who should read it?

• Anyone who wants to increase learning skills to acquire skills and knowledge faster in a competitive field/industry

• If you want to save tuition and learn at your own pace.

Benefits of Self Learning

• Fill in classes you didn’t take in college.
• Time-efficient, but it can be cognitively demanding
• Self-designed and tailored.
• You can apply those skills in your free time. Even a bit will make a difference.

1. Meta-learning: figuring how to learn a subject or skill

• Why do you want to learn it?
  • Your method will be different from a professional or for a hobby.
  • Being proficient in Spanish is different.
• What do you want to achieve?
  • Conceptual, procedural, or facts-based?
• How are you going to learn?
  • Look at blog posts and experience sharing videos for this.
  • Talk to people who are in the direction you want already.
  • Information balance. Not too much info. Sweet spot.
  • Rule 10 percent: 10% of your time should be done for research.

2. Practice Focusing

• Meditation for focusing and perception of time
• Good state of high and calm arousal for work
• Set the timer for 5 minutes and get into learning
• Poor optimizations
  • Humans want instant rewards. So, of course, watching youtube videos is more satisfying than reading a book.
  • Have good task difficulty
  • Complex cognitive tasks require a quiet undistracted, or calm music environment. Great attention but relaxed arousal.
• Be present with your negative thoughts and emotions.

3 . Directness (aka applying knowledge into projects)

• We do not like to apply skills. You have to use the skill of direct practice for learning it.
• The world is not like the classroom. A classroom has everything controlled like a lab.
• Learn from projects
• Immersing yourself in the environment of learning
• Simulation of a real-life scenario.
• High standard and overachievement
  • Publicly sharing your work.

4. Drilling your weaknesses

• Project use, practice weakness, and project 
• Identify your weaknesses in one skill.
• Increase deeper learning with mindfulness. Work through frustration.
• You can add the skills back into the bigger picture once you have improved.
• For example, in filmmaking, mine will be the technical aspects of the camera. And screenwriting to make the story and content flow and plot the information I need.
  • I’m pretty good with ideation, post-production, and good music.
  • Not that good with music and sound design, but it is better than the technical camera things like IOS, shutter speed, aperture
• How to improve your weakness, though?
  • How to find your weakness?
• How to create a productive drill?
  • How to build an organic story?
  • Don’t have so many choices; I want concise and clarity. It happens in my academic writing and Youtubing too.

5. Retrieval

• Desirable difficulty
• Use visual cue association.
• Or write down as much as you can after learning.
• I need to retrieve things I learn from books and videos for screenwriting and how and when to apply them directly.

6. Feedback

• You want feedback for correction.
• Take overreaction with a grain of thought. Most feedback is not helpful.
• Outcome feedback is graded in the school setting.
• Informational feedback
• Corrective feedback. A gap between what you are doing and where you want to be. This should be from an authority.
  • This is why hiring a tutor for a skill is useful. You save time from finding what’s right.

7. Retention

• Fight the forgetting curve and practice.
• Overlearning is to practice a lot.
  • Practice the task until you can do the homework or skill multiple times
  • Challenge yourself, so it is burned into your brain.

8. Deeper knowledge and intuition

• Desired difficulty
• Aim to prove what you are for
• Make sure you actually understand what you are studying. Don’t feel good about learning.
• Prioritize concrete examples. We need it for understanding abstract things like physics. Make your own examples.

9. Experimentation

• Creativity then remix
• Try different materials
• Introduction of learning
  • Have simple goal
• List resources. Learning criteria, so you don’t replicate other people’s
  • Avoid pitfalls
  • Textbooks, videos, and books
  • Practice activities to input the skill
• Create your schedule
  • How much commitment and time you are putting?
• Live stream yourself?
  • I will do this in the future XD. And I can chat with people.
• Act on your plan and see how you did
  • Don’t mindlessly just do everything.
  • Do it intentionally
• Review your results
  • Reflect and adjust your future plans
• Create a plan for Long Term Retention
  • Integrate into your daily lives?