I first came across Scott Young when someone shared his art experiment online.
He progressed, in 30 days, from mediocre sketching skills to having expert portrait drawing skills.
Amazing. I was (and am) jealous.
Then, I heard him on a few podcasts promoting his book; when I finally got my dry and nimble little hands on his book this winter, (after waiting weeks and weeks on the library waitlist), I tried to dive into it.
Warning: this book isn’t what I’d call an engaging read.
Best parts= The (limited) case studies and stories (something Dale Carnegie got right in his best-selling books) Young includes. I wanted more.
That aside, it’s a wonderful exploration of learning theory and includes enough tactics to make it practical.
Now that three months have passed since I read the book, here’s what stuck.
1. Read this book if you want to learn how to learn a language quickly.
Young and a friend spent a year without English.
The pair traveled to Spain, Brazil, South Korea, and China, where they challenged themselves to become fluent in each native language. This book is heavy on the tactics Young used for mastering languages, quickly.
The secret? Speak the language as soon as you arrive, even if you only have a handful of words and phrases.
For many of us, it’s confidence that’s holding us back from becoming fluent.
We go to a country and seek out expats who share our tongue; or, we quickly give up attempts to speak when the other person switches to English.
If you want to become conversational, ya gotta have conversations.
That means getting comfortable with people correcting pronunciation, and learning how to say “I’m trying to practice X language. I’m trying to avoid English” (or whatever your mother tongue is).
Of course, Young shares more tips, such as ways to remember flashcards (a tactic he admits works best with language vocab study, and not many other subjects), and ways to measure your fluency.
An example he gives is taking foreign language exams to measure fluency at the end of the experiment.
2. Transfer doesn’t work. Direct practice does.
A handful of years ago I owned a home. I decided I wanted to re-do the kitchen floor and replace the linoleum with tiles.
I read plenty of guides, watched YouTube videos, talked to people, but when it came down to it, I only became better at cutting tiles and grouting them after I had gotten my hands dirty with a couple of square feet of surface.
That’s my example, and Young shares a few of his own (such as public speaking), as well as the study of transference.
At the end of the day, people who study learning are often bamboozled as to why studying something often doesn’t transfer to the skill itself.
So, rather than debate the best way to learn something, or how often to study something, just do the thing.
For language, that means speaking as often as you can. Get used to responding to a conversation in real time, to shaping your mouth around those sounds. Duolingo won’t help you in a real-life conversation.
If you want to be a yoga teacher, teach people. Of course study anatomy, yoga asanas, body mechanics — but you won’t become a better teacher by studying and taking yoga classes.
I think of this as the coach phenomenon. Think about how many coaches exist who aren’t experts themselves in what they coach, but they are expert coaches.
Why? Because they have their thousands of hours of teaching the thing, not doing the thing. Flip it around, and it works the same way. You can take an expert in the thing and in many cases they are awful teachers and coaches. They’ve spent their direct learning time doing the thing, not thinking about how to communicate it.
Drill is another component. Once you know your weakest links, drill them.
For my DIY example, it was cutting tiles. I had to cut repeated tiles until I could master a cut that wasn’t straight down the center.
No amount of video watching would have helped me. I needed to get used to the feel of the tile saw under my fingers.
Young uses computer science examples and language examples for drill; it all boils down to the same thing. Find your stumbling point and then devote time to mastering it.
Musicians do this. Breaking down a piece bar by bar isn’t uncommon. When they come to a section they stumble on, they practice it until they can play it smoothly, and then play the whole piece.
3. Seek feedback early and often.
Feedback keeps your learning train on its tracks.
You don’t want to spend hours and hours working on something only to find out you’re not actually learning the skill.
Young studied MIT’s computer science curriculum. He measured his progress by completing the projects and taking the tests. The feedback—of whether he was learning the concepts—was communicated by his test scores.
He describes three kinds of feedback:
Outcome feedback: Are you doing it wrong or right with no indicators if so.
Informational feedback: Specific yes no indicators.
Corrective: How to fix it and what is wrong.
Take a comedian, for example. Applause is outcome feedback. You finished the set, people applauded. If people walked out during your set, that would also be outcome feedback.
Informational feedback is whether people laughed at certain jokes.
Corrective would be specific feedback, generally from an expert source. In this example, it would be a seasoned comedian helping you work out why certain jokes received laughs and others didn’t.
4. Free recall is one of the best methods to remember and retain what you’re learning.
I’m writing this article using free recall; I’m not using other blogs or summaries to remember what I read (I might after, to fact-check myself, but I want this article to reflect what information from this book actually stuck).
For example, after you study a concept or learn something, try to write down everything you just learned. Try that immediately, and then at different intervals. Studying from a pre-written study guide will not help you nearly as much as free recall.
To structure this, you can write down the concept or problem at the top of the paper. Then, explain the idea as if you had to teach it to someone else.
How would you convey the idea to someone who has never heard of it before?
If it’s a problem, explain how to solve it, and why the procedure makes sense to you.
Summarize. Another tip from Young is to frame the chapter or section as just one question to sum it up.
Quiz yourself. You can also create self-generated challenges — like making yourself come up with an example or creating a quiz for yourself.
Young’s handy-dandy summary of his major components in ultralearning and questions to ask:
Metalearning — what are the typical ways of learning this subject?
Focus — cultivate and hone and spend time on the subject.
Directness — is the learning applicable?
Drill — am I working on the worst parts of performance, repeatedly?
Retrieval — am I testing myself? Can I explain what I’m doing?
Feedback—am I receiving the right kinds of feedback?
Retention — long term learning.
Intuition — do I understand or am I memorizing?
Experimentation—am I trying different ways and techniques to learn this subject?