Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career

by Scott H. Young

good way to do this is to write down on a sheet of paper three columns with the headings “Concepts,” “Facts,” and “Procedures.” Then

the first column, write down anything that needs to be understood. Concepts are ideas that you need to understand in flexible ways in order for them to be

the second column, write down anything that needs to be memorized. Facts are anything that suffices

the third column, write down anything that needs to be practiced. Procedures are actions that need to be performed and may not involve much conscious thinking at all.

Once you’ve finished your brainstorm, underline the concepts, facts, and procedures that are going to be most challenging.

suggest following two methods to answer how you’ll learn something: Benchmarking and the Emphasize/Exclude Method.

The way to start any learning project is by finding the common ways in which people learn the skill or subject. This can help you design a default strategy as a starting point. If

The Emphasize/Exclude Method involves first finding areas of study that align with the goals you identified in the first part of your research.

The second part of the Emphasize/Exclude Method is to omit or delay elements of your benchmarked curriculum that don’t align with your

The literature on self-directed learning, as typically practiced, demonstrates that most people fail to do a thorough investigation of possible learning goals, methods, and resources.

good rule of thumb is that you should invest approximately 10 percent of your total expected learning time into research prior to starting. If you expect

Metalearning research

so reassessing is a necessary step of the learning process.

In the realm of great intellectual accomplishments an ability to focus quickly and deeply is nearly ubiquitous.

The struggles with focus that people have generally come in three broad varieties: starting, sustaining, and optimizing the quality of one’s focus.

recognize when you are procrastinating. Much procrastination

The second problem people tend to encounter is an inability to sustain focus.

Directness is the idea of learning being tied closely to the situation or context you want to use it in.

that the learning activities are always done with a connection to the context in which the skills learned will eventually be used.

The easiest way to learn directly is to simply spend a lot of time doing the thing you want to become good at.

Many ultralearners opt for projects rather than classes to learn the skills they need. The rationale is simple: if you organize your learning around producing something, you’re guaranteed to at least learn how to produce that thing. If you take classes, you may spend a lot of time taking notes and reading but not achieve your goal. Learning to

Immersion is the process of surrounding yourself with the target environment in which the skill is practiced.

The last method I’ve found for enhancing directness is to increase the challenge, so that the skill level required is wholly contained within the goal that is set.