Ultralearning: How it can change your life.

Don’t learn on a surface level.

There are many things that we don’t understand deeply, we only know things on a surface level. Ever felt like you studied so much and still got mediocre results? I’ll be covering it first, I’d like you to see this little experiment done In the book unschooled mind how children and students think, a group of psychology students couldn’t answer easy questions they learnt despite it being altered in a different context. That’s why students who went on to study A-level psychology don’t perform that much worse than students who did in GCSE’s it was simply a mental difference, a difference in confidence I believe. Richard Feynman when he struggled to understand a complex conversation amongst his colleagues despite his background understanding on the concept because he needed to understand the process of A to B of the concept not simply have it memorised. That cognitive process will help you intuitively know things because he always put an extreme amount of mental effort into figuring it out, rather than just knowing A to B he went a step further, which can be difficult when we feel confident, we know things, but it helps you greatly. A lot of successful people like David Goggins said “I used to fix things on the surface so whenever something hard raised its ugly head, I wouldn’t be prepared I didn’t go deep in the dungeons of my soul I had to ask myself what is making you afraid” “only way I become successful was going after the truth”. Many of the greats all went out their way to go deep in every field.

Here’s a little practical, draw a bike through memory, does the bike look exactly like a bike or is it a weird messy thing?  We all like to think we understand what a bike is and how it 

works but that’s probably not true. It looks pretty good, but this is my third attempt, and the first try looked pretty goofy like one of a 5-year-old now it looks like more of a 12-year old’s drawing. But how I drew the bike was through my understanding of how it works “the chain helps the bike rotate; the handles stick out like this to make it easy to hold” that’s probably what you thought when you were drawing a bike from your head. The point is we delude ourselves into thinking we understand things deeply like a bike but then we can barely draw it or understand the functionality of it.

When you’re learning something and you see a word or don’t fully understand a concept don’t just look at a fact and remember it go the extra mile, learn deeply the paragraph why its saying what its saying. I think its great technology has allowed us to immediately find the answer but I think it’s a problem when it comes to deeply learning, imagine those kids in the 90s 80s they had to go to libraries take 30 minute walks to the library to read books they would savour every minute of it and go home thinking about it for hours that’s why they seem smarter than us is probably because they deeply understood things more than us and appreciated things more.

Spaced repetition

Another important takeaway from the Ultra learning book for me was developing retention. Spaced repetition is the best practice for learning and maintaining memory and understanding of concepts. Humans naturally forget things; it’s been 9 months since I studied A-level maths, and I forgot 99% of it because I never went to do spaced repetition to maintain it. So, apps like Anki can help you for this or being in environments where you must consistently use that information. You can also use mnemonics to help learn things you struggle to memorise, so if a Spanish word sounds like cheese you can think of cheese when saying or writing that word but it should be used for a difficult word you can’t get through but it can be ineffective if you try go about it for everything, I made this mistake when I was learning my sciences. I kept doing it for almost everything and then it made everything even more confusing so it should be used very carefully it also made me get retroactive interferences where I removed stored information with new information with my analogies when they overlapped.

DO the exam before studying the exam.

A third key takeaway I gained was to do the prerequisite of the exam, the real deal. Not passively, but with all your mental fortitude so your brain makes these searching habits helps reinforce strategies for how information will be put into once knowledge is encountered. It worked for Eric Barone, he started off making a game, doing pixel art he made a lot of errors, learnt colour theory and improved leading to his game Stardew Valley.

Directedness is a powerful tool.

My fourth key takeaway was that directedness is very important. Often, the struggle to transfer skills amongst us as explained earlier from the psychology students experiment. When your pure theory, your knowledge is limited, knowledge and directedness go hand on hand with each other for that reason Job hunting doesn’t go well for graduates its because they view you as useless. They still think that they need to spend time, energy and money teaching you how they work so it’s important that you see the skills these job boards ask you to acquire. If you can’t practice directedness, say you are a surgeon you should do simulations like online, virtual internships. Eric Barone also found success through this method when creating Stardew Valley he made a program before joining a company which he never needed to because his game ended up being a success.

What skills can greatly impact your results?

Determine a skill that will greatly impact your learning/performance and isolate it, focus on improving it and it can exponentially improve your results, however be careful to not be counterproductive if the skill doesn’t greatly change your performance look for another skill or piece of knowledge improve it and see how it impacts your results. E.g., a science topic you’re in A-levels and you think that a topic in GCSE’s is important to learn you should isolate that whole section and work on improving it and see how it goes.

Take the extra steps.

Another important lesson I learnt from Scott Young’s Ultralearning book is that if you feel like you’re going to ‘burn out’ push for an extra 5 minutes, 10 pages. Block your mind from this weakness and you will find yourself 9 times out of 10 that you can keep going and your fine, realise that you are beating the competition knowing you’re going deeper and further knowing you’re gaining the advantage you’re ahead of some people right now even if it’s only to a mental perspective, I think we are a competitive species and we gain strength when we go gym after a long day, working extra hours when we don’t need to. This mentality will help strengthen your brain the same way your muscles become stronger when you do extra push-ups.

Summary

From reading this book I can say it’s worth the read and there are parts of the book that perhaps didn’t resonate deeply with me as it might have with you. I hope after reading this blog that you will want to read the book because it might open your eyes as it did with me. I probably wouldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for Scott Young’s book teaching me how important it is to learn and how we learn things.

• Deeply learn: As cliché as it sounds it greatly impacts our learning and performance it also makes it enjoyable. Go beyond memorization and understand the “why” behind concepts.
• Spaced repetition: helps retain knowledge over time using tools such as Anki or applying what you learnt consistently like a workplace for example
• Doing the exam before studying: Attempting problems before learning helps develop your brain’s problem-solving skills and strategies making learning and answering easier as the questions in your head have already been answered
• Directedness: Apply knowledge directly to real-world situations, Eric Barone did this in his game development journey when creating his game Stardew Valley
• Isolate impactful skills: Identify what skills or knowledge has a drastic impact on your performance and isolate and develop that skill.
• Push your limits: When you feel exhausted, push a little further to strengthen your mental endurance. Like a muscle.