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

Metalearning: First Draw a Map.
- Why? Inspiring SMART goal.
- What? A good way to do this is to write down on a sheet of paper three columns with the headings “Concepts,” “Facts,” and “Procedures.”
- How? What are the typical ways of learning this subject or skill (benchmarking)? How do successful learners do this and with what resources? Do I use the Emphasize/Exclude Method? Have I spent about 10 percent of the total time on preparing my project? What would it look like if it were easy? How can I do this 10X faster? Is it essential?
Focus: Sharpen Your Knife. Cultivate the ability to concentrate.
- Questions: Am I time blocking? Am I focused when I spend time learning, or am I multitasking and distracted? Am I skipping learning sessions or procrastinating? How can I make it fun? Am I in flow?
Directness: Go Straight Ahead.
- Questions: Am I learning the skill in the way I’ll eventually be using it? Did I read a book on communication, or did I practice presenting? Project-Based Learning? Immersive Learning? The Flight Simulator Method? The Overkill Approach?
Drill. Attack Your Weakest Point. Break down complex skills into small parts; then master those parts and build them back together again.
- Questions: Am I spending time focusing on the weakest points / rate-limiting step? Does it feel as though my learning is slowing down and that there’s too many components of the skill to master? If so, how can I split apart a complex skill to work on smaller, more manageable components of it? Time Slicing? Cognitive Components? The Copycat? The Magnifying Glass Method? Prerequisite Chaining?
Retrieval: Test to Learn.
- Questions: Am I spending most of my time reading and reviewing, or am I solving problems and Free Recalling things from memory without looking at my notes? Do I use Flash Cards (Anki)? Do I use The Question-Book Method? Do I make Self-Generated Challenges? Do I use Closed-Book Learning? Do I take the final exam before the course begins?
Feedback. Don’t Dodge the Punches. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. —Mike Tyson
- Questions: Outcome Feedback: Are You Doing It Wrong? Informational Feedback: What Are You Doing Wrong? Corrective Feedback: How Can You Fix What You’re Doing Wrong? Am I getting honest feedback about my performance early on, or am I trying to dodge the punches and avoid criticism for my ego? Do I know what I’m learning well and what I’m not? Am I using feedback correctly, or am I overreacting to noisy data?
Retention. Don’t Fill a Leaky Bucket. “The cycling helps,” he explains, “I can go through lists in my mind.”
- Questions: Do I have a plan in place to remember what I’m learning long term? Am I Spacing my exposure to information so it will stick longer? Am I turning factual knowledge into automatic procedures that I’ll retain? Am I practicing beyond perfect the most critical aspects of the skill? Do I use Mnemonics, as A Picture Retains a Thousand Words?
Intuition: Dig Deep Before Building Up. Develop your intuition through play and exploration of concepts and skills.
- Questions: Do I deeply understand the things I’m learning, or am I just memorizing? Could I teach the ideas and procedures I’m studying to someone else? Is it clear to me why what I’m learning is true, or does it all seem arbitrary and unrelated? Am I Giving Up on Hard Problems Easily? Do I Prove Things to Understand Them? Do I Always Start with a Concrete Example? Am I Fooling Myself? Am I asking dumb questions?
- Do I use the Feynman technique for unsolvable problems / understanding complexity / expanding my intuition?
  - Write down the concept / problem at the top of a piece of paper.
  - In the space below, explain the idea as if you had to teach it to someone else.
    1. If it’s a concept, ask yourself how you would convey the idea to someone who has never heard of it before.
    2. If it’s a problem, explain how to solve it and—crucially—why that solution procedure makes sense to you.
  - When you get stuck, meaning your understanding fails to provide a clear answer, go back to your book, notes, teacher, or reference material to find the answer.
Experimentation. Explore Outside Your Comfort Zone.
- I see the experimental mindset as an extension of the growth mindset: whereas the growth mindset encourages you to see opportunities and potential for improvement, experimentation enacts a plan to reach those improvements.
- Questions: Am I experimenting with Learning Resources? Technique? Style? How can I go beyond mastering the basics and create a unique style to solve problems creatively and do things others haven’t explored before? Do I Copy, Then Create? Do I Compare Methods Side-by-Side? Do I Introduce New Constraints? Do I Find Superpowers in the Hybrid of Unrelated Skills? Do I Explore the Extremes?
Review Your Results
Choose to Maintain or Master What You’ve Learned

Ultralearning

Learning How to Learn