With 4 months of summer stretching across the horizons, I know I want to embark on a personal learning journey where I can make the most use of my summer. Coincidentally, as I was planning, my friend Esther introduced me to this book, Ultralearning by Scott Young, famous for his MIT challenge where he learnt 4 years of MIT-undergraduate computer science curriculum in a year. Naturally, I was curious not just at his dedication, but his efficiency, and wanted to implement it with my summer plan. After reading and taking notes, I feel the need to share them, so more people can understand the framework, and work on it as well. Thus, I present the following two posts:

In post 1, I will re-structure the framework that was given by Ultralearning and create a checklist as to how to learn most effectively.

In post 2, I will lay out how I plan to apply the Ultralearning principles into my summer plan. This is mostly personal, but I do hope it gives some ideas as to how to apply them in a specific context, outside of learning at school.

These are, by no means, a substitution for the book itself. This is meant as a condense summary to go over after you have finished reading the book, and understand the principles deeply. In many ways, this series is a commitment for me to apply what I have already learnt from the book into real life.

With that in mind, let’s begin.

3 Fundamentals behind Ultralearning

• It is hard.
• It is self-directed.
• It varies.

Number 1 is the most important: this is not going to be easy. It’s not going to give you tips and tricks on how to pass an exam in a night, or master something in two seconds. If you are looking for last-minute tips and tricks, this is not the framework for you. But it is going to be rewarding, to say the least.

Number 2 means, you are in control. You can set the goals and the directions. It means if you succeed, it’s you who claim that success entirely.

Finally, there is no one way of doing this. Common themes emerge, but everyone has a different way of approaching it. There is no right or wrong way. But there are better ways than others.

Principle 1: Metalearning

What it is: Learning about learning. Research on the topic before you start.

Why it’s important: To ensure 1. You are learning the right skills. 2. You are getting the best resources for that skill.

How to do it:

• 10% rule: Spend roughly 10% of your total learning time doing research
• Identify Why you want to learn. For instance, are you learning it for enjoyment, or to further your career?
• Identify What you want to learn specifically. Mandarin is vague, speaking Mandarin with a native speaker for 15 minutes is much better.
• Interview experts: ask people who are in the position you hope to be in whether what you are learning will be relevant, and how to go about doing it.
• Benchmarking — have something to measure your progress. For instance, a school curriculum, or a recording every day.
• Emphasize things that align with your goal, and Remove those that don’t. eg. If you want to speak Mandarin, emphasize listening and speaking, and remove writing and reading.
• Be flexible — Change your plan as needed.

Principle 2: Focus

What it is: The ability to concentrate on the task at hand.

Why it’s important: To do something hard, you need to put efforts in.

How to do it:

• Be aware of your procrastination habits: how it arises and why it arises.
• Challenge yourself slowly. Have crutches: if you don’t want to start, set a 5-minute timer to do the work at hand. If you are not focused after multiple 5-minute timers, try a 25-minute Pomodoro Technique timer. Build it slowly. Create your rules.
• Have an environment that works. This means no distractions (eg. phone notifications), have the right amount of “arousal” — eg. some tasks may work with music, others do not.
• Don’t multitask. Do interleave. Don’t try to do 4 things at once. But you can vary 4 different concepts in 1 session instead of focusing on just one.
• Use better sources. The more active the source, the better you will learn. Eg. instead of watching a lecture and falling asleep, try the problem sets. Or if lectures are unavoidable, try to create a flowchart as you are watching/listening.
• Take a break. A lot of problems get solved when you are not actively thinking about it. Have time for the problem to permeate.

Principle 3: Directness

What it is: Do not just observe, play an active role.

Why it’s important: It’s difficult to transfer knowledge in a new, different context. So whenever possible, learn and apply what you learn straight away.

How to do it:

• Project-based learning: eg. Create an app to learn programming.
• Immersive learning eg. living in the country you want to learn the language from.
• Simulation: Be as close to the real experience as possible. eg. Do a practice test in a timed, closed-book environment. Play chess with a chess clock.
• Make it public: Try to set yourself against a public standard, whenever possible. This will also help with principle 6, Feedback.

Principle 4: Drill

What it is: Focus on a particular skill that you are weakest in.

Why it’s important: Usually there is a bottleneck skill that slow your learning down significantly. If you can get better at this skill, you will progress a lot faster.

How to do it:

• Time slicing: focus repeatedly on a particular segment eg. repeating the part you are bad at in a piano song.
• Isolate and focus on one component. eg. only drawing the eye instead of the whole face
• Copy what others have done to focus on the part you want to improve. eg. To improve writing style, copy a paragraph from the author, and try re-writing with your own words. Compare and contrast.
• Spend significantly more time in that particular skill when practicing
• Prerequisite chaining: Start doing, when you get stuck, go back one step, learn what is needed, and continue. eg. Start programming and integrating other libraries and frameworks along the way.

Principle 5: Retrieval

What it is: Not forgetting what you have learnt (similar to Principle 7, Retention, but this is more focused on the short-term).

Why it’s important: In whatever you learn, you will need to remember things. There are ways to learn and remember better than reading and re-reading.

How to do it:

• Flashcards. Mainly for facts. Use Quizlet or Anki
• After reading, try write down everything you remember before opening the book. Work well with concepts.
• Do it and retrieve along the way eg. writing/ speaking Mandarin after learning the vocabulary.
• Instead of writing notes, write questions that you can go back and answer. For big concepts.
• Close the book when answering the problem sets.

Principle 6: Feedback

What it is: Whether you have done well, and how you can improve further

Why it’s important: Not all feedbacks are good. But the good ones can help our learning a lot, especially in skills where answers are not clear-cut eg. writing/ public-speaking.

How to do it:

• Use outcome feedback where you know your general progress, but don’t know what exactly you are doing better or worse at eg. applause after a performance, as a motivational benchmark and update on your progress
• Use informational feedback — where you know what you have done wrong, but not how to fix it eg. people not laughing at your jokes — to look for patterns that you can improve
• Find corrective feedback — where you know both what you have done wrong, and how to do it better, and use them as much as possible. Eg. a teacher, mentor, model answer, answers to problem sets, etc.
• For metafeedback, when you feel like you’re slowing down, try different studying methods and see which one works.

Principle 7: Retention

What it is: How to make sure you remember — in the long run.

Why it’s important: Forgetting is the default. If you want to remember, you have to work for them.

How to do it:

• Spread out your practice. Learn Mandarin 7 hours in a singular day in a week is less effective than 1 hour in 7 days.
• Make part of the skill a process — process are easier to remember than facts eg. always start the drawing with a sketch, and you will remember the skill better.
• Repeat it more than necessary. Eg. It’s easier to remember Hello, and Thank you in a different language, because it’s repeated so many times.
• Create vivid mental pictures to link facts to — see Mnemonics
• Understand what you are learning, don’t just try to memorize it. See principle 8: Intuition for more ideas.

Principle 8: Intuition

What it is: Build an understanding focused on principles.

Why it’s important: The best learners do not just apply the skills blindly. They understand how it works. Also, a good foundation and understanding is crucial to your learning progress.

How to do it:

• Don’t give up on a hard problem easily. Give yourself a 10-minute timer whenever you feel like give up.
• Prove things to yourself instead of copying it from someone else.
• Think of concrete examples — the brain works better with concrete examples than with abstract ones. Use analogies.
• The Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that when you just start, you will think you are much smarter than you actually are. So ask questions, especially the dumb ones.
• The Feynman’s Technique: write down concepts you understand, then start explaining it aloud, as if you’re teaching someone else. Stop when you don’t understand something, go back and try to understand it.
• Make something original through brainstorming, visualization, etc.

Principle 9: Experimentation

What it is: Trying out new things — new techniques, resources, etc.

Why it’s important: 1. The deeper you go, the fewer resources you will have available. You will then need to explore more. 2. Experiments with different methods help you with loopholes that you may have missed. 3. It allows for creativity and originality.

How to do it:

• Copy, then recreate eg. Copy code, then try to rewrite it from scratch.
• Introduce new constraints eg. Only draw themes around an apple for the next 30 days.
• Combine skillsets that you already have eg. Arts and computer science for interactive design, natural science and journalism for science communications
• Go to the extreme eg. drawing using only one color

Conclusion

I’m well aware this is a long post. At the same time, I have condensed it as much as possible. My intention is for me and others to have a quick reference point when starting a new learning project, without the need to re-read the book. In addition, as promise at the beginning of the post, this is the checklist for every learning project, lightly edited:

Checklist for your learning project

I want to re-emphasize the fundamentals of the book: It is going to be hard, it is going to be driven by you, and there is no single right way. And if I can add one more, it would be it takes time. Be consistent and you will get there.

Hope you find it as useful as I did. Happy learning!