Summary of Ultralearning

This article is a summary of the new book "Ultralearning" by Scott Young, a blogger I greatly admire. The book mainly introduces the related concepts and principles of ultralearning.

Definition

What is ultralearning? Literally, it's ultra + learning, which can be understood as learning beyond the ordinary. The definition given in the book is:

A strategy for acquiring skills and knowledge that is both self-directed and intense

• strategy: It's a learning strategy (just a strategy, not a necessity)
• self-directed: Self-guided (self-arranged/planned)
• intense: High intensity

Overall, this is more like a learning methodology. Talent is not necessary (of course, having talent will inevitably enhance the effect), anyone can do it, and it can cultivate good learning methods/habits/attitudes/concepts.

Principle

Looking at all the ultralearners the blogger has encountered, what makes them so successful in learning? The author has summarized 9 guiding principles through many examples. These are the essence of the book, explaining the important factors associated with ultralearning.

1 Meta-learning

Literally, meta- can be understood as meta, and meta-learning is learning how to learn, analogous to meta-data in databases. Meta-data is data that describes data, and meta-learning is learning how to learn. In addition, meta-learning in the book also has the meaning of pre-learning, which is the overall arrangement design before learning.

The specific content includes:

• How to learn efficiently: Cultivation of learning ability
  • Analysis/search/planning
  • This is the most overall and important content, universal to all projects
• The structure of the knowledge being learned: composition/relationship/rules
• Design/arrangement/execution of the learning plan
• Learn from past learning experiences

For specific projects, meta-learning can be initiated through three steps:

1. Why? Consider carefully why you want to learn this content? Consider whether the goal of learning meets one of the following factors
   • Interests/goals. The content of learning can bring benefits to oneself, such as learning a certain skill can bring opportunities for promotion/increase in salary; or it can help oneself achieve a certain goal, such as passing an exam/obtaining a degree
   • Hobbies
2. What? How to choose the learning content
   • Benchmarking. Choose a similar benchmark as your own benchmark content. For example, if you want to learn about CS, you can find the training programs of some universities' CS degrees and choose the same courses to learn. These contents can come from the internet/schools/experts/peers
   • Emphasize. Strengthen the part of interest/importance and increase the weight
   • Exclusive. The relatively unimportant/uninteresting part can be excluded.
3. How? Design the learning plan, mainly considering the following factors:
   • Selection of learning content. The content here refers to learning resources
   • Goals. To what extent you want to learn
   • Time arrangement.

2 Focus

Focus, as a highly efficient state, is a very useful tool in both learning and work. This chapter mainly talks about focus from three aspects:

1. How to enter a focused state? We need to avoid procrastination. Procrastination mainly comes from the fear and disgust of the difficulty or discomfort of the thing that needs to be focused on. Therefore, we can start from the easy part of the thing, and gradually switch to the difficult part after entering the state. In addition, we can use the 5-minute rule. According to the 5-minute rule, no matter how difficult the thing is, you will not feel like giving up within 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, you can alleviate the discomfort by reducing the intensity or changing the goal.
2. How to maintain a focused state?
   • Enter the [flow state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) (but don't force it
   • Avoid interference.
     • Environment/task/mind
     • Accept stray thoughts, let them develop, and observe their rise and fall
   • Time. Long enough to enter a state, but not too long to cause fatigue and inefficiency
3. How to optimize? Stay correct/creative while stuck

In addition to using focus as a highly efficient tool, we should also treat it as a skill to be exercised. This ability is best exercised through daily use, get used to focus, try to focus. When you can't focus, you might as well think about the situation you are in; when you can't get into focus, you can try to start from the small, start from the small details.

3 Directness

As mentioned in the definition, one of the features of ultralearning is self-directed, so naturally, directness is an important guiding principle. This principle guides us that learning needs to have a clear direction, and the content of learning is best directly aimed at the required goals. In layman's terms, it is learn-by-doing. If what you are learning is a skill, then start trying directly; if what you are learning is a language for communication, then talk directly with others; and if the goal is to pass an exam, practice questions/real questions are undoubtedly the best tools.

Why do we need to practice directly? The main reason is the problem of knowledge transfer. Generally speaking, different learning contents have different application context scenarios, which makes it difficult for knowledge to be transferred in the process of use. The same knowledge point may be applicable in one scene, but it may be useless in another scene. This can also be said to be the limitation of knowledge. Therefore, it is best for us to learn towards the goal at the beginning.

This guiding principle is simple to say, I believe many people know it, and feel surprised: Isn't there anyone who doesn't directly learn the target content they need? Indeed there are. There are two reasons. One is that indirect learning is mostly simpler. For example, like learning a foreign language, the purpose itself is for communication with others, so the most direct goal should be to communicate with others directly in a foreign language? But in fact, the most chosen method for most people to learn foreign languages is to memorize words. The reason is that, compared to the discomfort caused by communicating with others in a foreign language, more people are willing to stay in the comfort zone of memorizing words. The second reason is that some contents are difficult to practice directly, or find opportunities to practice. Like the practice of surgeons for surgery, they basically cannot practice through actual surgery (this is also not allowed), lack of actual practice opportunities, can only accumulate experience through observation and being pointed out.

In response to the above situation, the book gives several methods.

1. Learn based on projects. For example, for a programmer, learn a part and do a part with a program project as the goal.
2. Construct an immersive environment. Language learning/community circle communication
3. Simulation.
4. Overkill. Reach the extreme/exceed the requirements.

4 Drill

Drill. This principle guides us that we should focus on learning, focusing on places that significantly affect the learning rate, such as the bottleneck of skills, the most important places, the most difficult places. When these parts are overcome, the overall improvement can be great. This is also a fairly obvious principle. Our cognitive ability often has limitations and cannot take into account all parts, so we need to focus on learning. The drilling process can be divided into two steps: first, you need to find the parts worth drilling, we can find the most important/most influential parts through decomposition and experimentation; then design the drilling plan, there are the following 5 methods:

1. Time segment practice. When the content of learning can be divided into segments according to time, such as some skills (the layup action in basketball), focus on practicing some segments after division.
2. Cognitive resources are biased. For example, language learning focuses on one aspect of listening, speaking, reading and writing.
3. Replication. When you only want to practice a part of some content and other parts still need to be completed, you can copy the other parts of others, and you only do it yourself, complete the drilling part.
4. Magnifying glass. Magnify the weight of the part you want to focus on, increase the time/energy invested.
5. Pre-learning. Learn well the preceding part of the drilling part.

This principle also corresponds to the previous principle - Directness. For the choice of learning content, we first use Directness to select the overall content, then decompose, select the Drill part, drill, and finally combine them.

5 Retrieval

As for review, compared to passive reading for review, active recall without a textbook is much more effective. Through active recall, we can test ourselves on knowledge and deepen our memory and impression of what we have learned. There are three general explanations:

1. Knowledge transfer.
2. Feedback.
3. JOL (Judgement of Learning). People can hardly perceive their own learning situation correctly, judge how they have learned.

As for how to practice this active review method, the book gives the following ways:

• Memory cards.
• Free recall.
• In the form of questions.
• In the form of challenges

In addition, the book also provides several related experimental data, informing us of some factors affecting the effect of active recall, which are: start time, no need to prepare to start, too late, knowledge is easy to forget, too short, not as passive methods; difficulty, the more difficult the content, the better the effect than passive methods

6 Feedback

During the learning process, appropriate feedback is needed. Although receiving feedback sometimes makes people feel uneasy and fearful, good feedback can provide us with a lot of information, including performance evaluation, problems, improvement suggestions, these information can help us better improve the next step of the learning plan.

What is good feedback?

1. Can provide useful information
2. Correct information
3. Can be correctly received and can cause a response
4. Promoting effect

Types of feedback

1. Result type feedback. Only provides an overall result, such as grades/scores
2. Information type feedback. Provided the location of the problem
3. Correction type feedback. Provided modification suggestions

How to reasonably receive feedback/improve the quality of feedback?

1. Ignore noise
2. Make the result unpredictable (can be achieved by increasing difficulty
3. Accept feedback from meta-learning (planning, schedule arrangement, resource selection) in addition to the learning content itself
4. Create a high-intensity or immersive environment

7 Retention

Memory is also a very important part in learning. Knowledge concepts need to be remembered, and skill steps also need to be remembered. However, maintaining a long-term good memory is not an easy task, because every person has unavoidable factors - forgetting.

Forgetting mainly has three reasons

1. Time erodes memory. The longer the time, the harder the memory is to keep
2. Memory interference. New memories replace/conflict/confuse old memories
3. Memory is inaccessible. Although the content is still remembered, the path/factor triggering the memory cannot be found

Therefore, to reduce forgetting, some tricks can be used in response to the reasons for forgetting

• Spaced memory. Through dividing time and knowledge for memory, memorize parts each time and repeat frequently. Daily use of word cards is a typical example
• Step-by-step memory. Compared to knowledge on paper, skills that need to be hands-on are harder to forget
• Over-learning. Learn a little more, go a little deeper
• Mnemonics. Memorize through special memory methods, such as keyword method, association method. But it has certain limitations, such as a narrow range of applicability, and it is laborious to recall

8 Intuition

Build related intuition through learning. The so-called intuition can be understood as being able to automatically categorize and induct the problems encountered, when encountering new problems, can spontaneously decompose/grasp the core/combine/connect the problems, and come up with a paradigm for solving the problems. Among them, for concepts, we need to understand; for problems, we need to accumulate a lot and through practice, summarization, come up with a general solution mode.

Methods to help build intuition in learning include:

1. Increase difficulty. It is easier to study when the difficulty is greater.
2. Understand concepts through proof.
3. Specific examples help understanding and memory.
4. Ask more questions. Don't avoid dump questions.

In addition, we can also use the Feynman technique to help us understand/master better. The core of the Feynman technique is to force oneself to process and output knowledge in the way of explanation/teaching, which can help oneself learn better on the one hand, and can also test one's own learning situation on the other hand. The specific steps are:

1. Choose a concept/problem
2. For the concept, try to explain it in plain language to a person without a foundation and make him understand
3. For the problem, form a feasible solution independently

9 Experimentation

Engage in abundant experimentation. The process of ultralearning is an exploratory journey. There is never an absolutely correct solution, only the one that is currently suitable for you. Thus, we must rely on exploratory experiments to determine what works best and is most appropriate. Specific areas for experimentation include resources, techniques, styles, and levels of proficiency. Throughout the learning process, we need to maintain this experimental mindset, adopting a growth-oriented thought pattern, rather than a fixed one.

Below are some tips that can be helpful in experimentation:

• Copy and create. In the beginning, you can follow someone else's learning plan verbatim, and moderately modify it according to your personal circumstances.
• Comparison. Compare different methods/resources/conditions/techniques.
• Add new constraints.
• Blend.
• Extremes.

How to Start an Ultralearning Project

1. Research: Gather relevant information for meta-learning.
   • Define the target field and its scope that you want to learn.
   • Identify the resources you will use.
   • Refer to the standards of successful learning methods from others.
   • Identify activities for direct practice.
   • Identify backup learning resources and areas to delve into.
2. Plan your time: This depends on your personal schedule, the expected level of learning, free time, etc.
   • Plan how much time to invest.
   • Plan when to invest the time.
3. Execute the plan: Frequently ask yourself whether it aligns with the guiding principles mentioned above during the execution of the plan, and adjust/optimize accordingly.
4. Check the results: Analyze the plan and its results, and learn from the experience.
5. Maintain learning results/Continue learning: This is to avoid abandoning the learning achievements.
   • Review regularly.
   • Relearn.
   • Continue learning.

Cultivation of an Ultralearner

This section illustrates how to cultivate an ultralearner by introducing the example of the Polgar sisters. As there is currently no one to cultivate, there is little interest, so I simply skimmed and excerpted the relevant key points for record-keeping.

Raise

1. Start early. The earlier, the better. The brain functions better and is more suitable for learning during childhood.
2. Focus. There can be multiple learning contents, but there should be one emphasis, and focus should be on this emphasis.
3. Learning through play. Transform learning/practice into games to enhance interest and persistence.
4. Positive reinforcement. Provide positive reinforcement through victories, encouragement, etc.
5. Refuse coercion. Forced learning is useless, guidance for learning is needed.

Suggestion

• Inspiring Goal.
• Be Careful with competition.
• Make Learning a Priority.