Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career

Top positive review

Learn How to Learn and Master Skills

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2021

The book Ultralearning teaches the reader how to learn better and get better results from what they are trying to learn. "Ultralearning is a strategy for acquiring skills and knowledge that is both self-directed and intense."

I read this book more from the perspective of a teacher rather than a learner. I may use the concepts at some point to do my own ultralearning projects, but since I am creating content to teach people new skills, I'm looking for ways to make my content more engaging. I want to know the best ways to teach people and help them learn what I'm teaching.

One of the things I really liked about this book was that the author provided practical information about ultralearning. He didn't just present a bunch of concepts; he gave strategies and tactics for getting results.

The Nine Principles of Ultralearning

Here are the nine principles of ultralearning, along with some things I've learned about each principle:

1. Metaleaning: First Draw a Map

Learn how to learn a topic. Find out how others who successfully learned the topic learned it. Don't just try the first tactic you discover because other tactics may help you learn more effectively.

2. Focus: Sharpen Your Knife

Focus on starting your project. Focus on sustaining progress on your project. Focus on ensuring that your learning is directed at what you need to learn to increase knowledge, not just make yourself feel good by focusing on the basics.

3. Directness: Go Straight Ahead

Learn by using the new skill you're trying to acquire in a situation similar to or exactly like the situation you would actually use the skill. For example, learning a new language is more direct when you try to use the language in conversation with someone rather than just listening to lessons or using fun apps.

4. Drill: Attach Your Weakest Point

Knowing what you really need to learn and deliberately practicing. Focus more on the areas that you are deficient in to improve your weakest skills. Practice an isolated component.

5. Retrieval: Test to Learn

Learning something doesn't do you any good if you can't remember it when you need it. Testing yourself on what you've learned is best done by doing retrieval exercises or tests rather than referring to books or content about the subject. Do your best to extract the information you are learning from your memory to help form long-term memories of the content.

6. Feedback: Don't Dodge the Punches

Find ways to get honest feedback from your learning initiatives through tests. It's easy to get feedback that stokes your ego, but this feedback does not help you grow and learn. Some feedback is noise and is not helpful. Other feedback is a signal and can help you build up the skill you're trying to learn by letting you know about things you need to improve upon.

7. Retention: Don't Fill a Leaky Bucket

Spending a lot of time learning something is almost useless if you don't retain what you've learned. Some things are essential to keep in your memory, while others can be looked up if needed in the future.

8. Intuition: Dig Deep Before Building Up

Knowing a skill so well that you can apply it to different situations. Having such a deep understanding of a subject, you know all the possibilities to solve a problem and when to use which solution.

9. Experimentation: Explore Outside Your Comfort Zone

Experimentation helps you learn because it forces you to try new things to accomplish a task or goal. Experimentation expands your knowledge and understanding of the topic in unexpected ways. Experimentation is accomplished by using different resources, techniques, or styles.

Some of my favorite highlights in the book:

• "Passive learning creates knowledge. Active practice creates skill."
• "Your deepest moments of happiness don't come from doing easy things; they come from realizing your potential and overcoming your own limiting beliefs about yourself."
• "What could you learn if you took the right approach to make it successful? Who could you become?"
• "Flow is the enjoyable state between boredom and frustration; when a task is neither too hard nor too easy."
• When learning, "Sometimes what's the most fun isn't very effective and what's effective isn't easy."
• "…enjoyment tends to come from being good at things."
• "…one of the most important educational tasks is to teach self-education."
• "It is when one learns to do something that nobody else can do that learning becomes truly valuable."
• "The better one gets, the more one recognizes how much better one could become."

Of course, there's a lot more in the book, and I have more questions than answers after reading it. Since ultralearning is a personal thing, I'm not sure I'll be able to apply it strictly to teaching others, but I've developed some ideas about how to improve my content by reading this book.

If you truly want to master a skill, you may want to check out Ultralearning and follow the book's principles, tactics, and strategies to start your own ultralearning project.

53 people found this helpful

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

Devin Michaud

Not great, not terrible either.

Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2020

I like the premise, and dont doubt its validity. But goodness was this a bore. Clearly, the author knows his stuff. Certainly there are useful nuggets here. But goodness did it take a herculean effort to finish this thing. Id have like to seen a bit more time on actionable examples rather than theory, concepts, and the authors own interpretations on learning. Those things are useful to be certain, and there are some foundational takeaways, but largely I found this to be a snoozefest on a topic I have great interest in.

9 people found this helpful

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From the United States

B. L. Keller

Learn How to Learn and Master Skills

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2021

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53 people found this helpful

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These things have horrible sound quality. Good value for price though.

inspiring.

Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2023

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I’ve had a few forays into ultralearning, specifically when I completed a B.S. in finance and my CFP in about 3 years time, but I didn’t know that I had employed “ultralearning”. Therefore, this guide provided me with great amount of reflection as well as insight into how I can take on other projects in a more strategic manner and I appreciated the tips on how to retain information. Great read.

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Douglas Goldstein

The solution for our failing government-run education system

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2020

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Although I don’t consider myself an obsessive ultralearner like the polyglots and “Jeapordy!” champion that Scott Young talks about in “Ultralearning,” I’ve always had an interest in how to improve learning. My first exposure started over 30 years ago when I read Harry Lorayne's “Page-a-Minute Memory Book,” which anyone serious about learning should read. Following his techniques, I learned enough Hebrew to pass a professional licensing exam in Israel, memorize two combined decks of cards, and commit to long-term memory many of the laws in the Bible. As Scott Young would point out, though, there is more to learning than just memorizing. (Harry Lorayne, on the other hand, would say that all learning requires having enough information in your head so that you can really think about it.)
In Young’s book, he tells about some of his amazing feats of ultralearning, including how he could learn the information of an MIT undergraduate degree by himself for free. He explains that such an undertaking requires a lot of planning, suggesting that someone devoting time to a such a project should allot about 10% of the total time to just preparing. He provides strategies for dealing with the unpleasantness of working too hard for too long, and also provides some practical suggestions to handling procrastination: “Try to get yourself to do five minutes of the project, since that is a small bite to start with. Once you’re able to get to do that, try the Pomodoro Technique: 25 minutes of work followed by a five-minute break. Once you are able to do that, then begin to put scheduled work periods on the calendar. From time to time, you will have setbacks, in which case go back to the beginning using the five-minute rule.”
He makes an excellent point about an educational term known as “direct learning.” Simply put, direct learning means learning the specific thing you want to know. If you’d like to know how to do algebra, learn algebra. Don’t study some more general fields to improve your skills of analysis and hope to apply that to algebra; that would be indirect. The research that Young offers in his book points out how unsuccessful indirect learning is, and, in fact, that it’s a waste of time. He briefly asks a question that I wish more people would ask: “Given the well-documented difficulty with indirect forms of learning, why are they still the default both in schools and in many failed attempts at self-education? The answer is that learning directly is hard. It is often more frustrating, challenging, and intense than reading a book or sitting through a lecture. But this very difficulty creates a potent source of competitive advantage for any would-be ultralearner. If you’re willing to apply tactics that exploit directness despite these difficulties, you will end up learning much more effectively…. In government run schools, they want to show that something is happening so they do all sorts of indirect learning which… does not really prepare people for anything… Direct learning is more difficult, and the schools don’t really want to challenge students.”
The conclusion that readers should take away from this book is that there are so many great ways to learn. My life changed decades ago when I read Harry Lorayne. Scott Young discovered that he could get an MIT degree in a quarter of the time as everyone else. And there are so many other options as well. If that’s the case, why don’t we let people direct their own education? Why do we rely on huge government bureaucracies to raise our children when we know that, on average, they do a pretty mediocre job? (Or worse! Consider that 75% of black California boys don’t meet state reading standards.) Read Scott Young’s book and I bet that once you’ve tasted the power of real education, you’ll wonder why you wasted your youth in government institutions instead of in a well-run, creative, small, educational setting. Perhaps home schooling, charter schools, unschooling? In the end, we need to stop the government monopoly on running our schools and allow freedom for courageous thinkers like Scott Young to inspire people to love learning and to succeed in self-education. For more on the topic of improving the education of all children, not just those select few lucky enough to come across Scott Young, read “The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan Douglas Caplan.”

18 people found this helpful

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Zachary

Very inspiring

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2023

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He did MIT in a year so I feel more confident in completing my less demanding skill in a few months.

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Joseph Oliver

The Best Learning Book I've Read

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2019

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I take two approaches when it comes to books:

1. I read the "original" book on how to do something. Example: For a book on sharpening people skills - How to Win Friends and Influence People. Most books today on people skills are reiterating something that Dale Carnegie wrote in his book.

2. I read the newest book that takes a massive amount of material and distills it into actionable, fundamental points. Example: Ultralearning. You would have to read dozens of books to get what Scott Young has organized in his latest book. Not only that, you would then have to separate the signal from the noise.

That being said, Ultralearning could probably serve two purposes well: it would either be the only book you will ever read on the subject and enough to get you through your self-guided educational journey or, it would be a primer on ultralearning and you could then go down the rabbit hole and read dozens of more books on the subject.

While I "knew" all of the things Scott has presented in Ultralearning, he has done a masterful job of organizing the latest research, combined with his own experience in learning projects, and formatted it into a roadmap you can use to embark on learning projects yourself.

If I had a complaint, I would say that it is not a very easy book to read. Cal Newport's books are the same for me - I just cannot breeze through them like I would something like The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. This is not a dealbreaker, and in fact, probably lends to the depth of information presented. It's not as easy to read because it has a greater depth of information and is more applicable.

I consider myself an autodidact, and I believe the book skews slightly toward being more easily understood by those who are already invested in self-guided learning. For the reader who wants to become a self-guided learner, the book is still a great introduction and is not highly technical or dry.

If you are still on the fence, I would recommend reading Scott's blog which has very HQ material published constantly. Also, it may be helpful to look up his MIT Challenge and Year Without English learning projects to get a better idea of what Ultralearning is centered around.

tl;dr - if you want to improve your ability to learn things quickly - a rare and valuable skill in today's fast-paced world - buy this book, read it at least twice, and use it to design learning projects. for ~$20, it will give you a potentially unlimited ROI.

22 people found this helpful

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C. Bliss

Great intro to upgrading your learning abilities - and Scott's work in general

Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2019

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I've been a fan of Scott's for at least four years now. I started out reading his blog and have worked through most of his course Rapid Learner. At the time, I was a student interested in learning more efficiently and retaining more of what I learned, and his personal projects (the MIT Challenge and Year Without English) and what he'd learned from them had really impressed me.

I'm familiar enough with Scott's massive body of work on learning that most of what I read in Ultralearning was review. That said, the book is short, punchy, and effective, and includes summaries of the necessary takeaways for planning your own projects. I enjoyed taking another tour through the more holistic view of Scott's learning philosophy and also found myself with renewed resolve for the projects I'm planning. (I think it's not acknowledged often enough that examples and applications are a big part of what is valuable about reading nonfiction - for me, at least, facts separated from context lead to information overload, not usefulness.)

But I want to talk about the big picture of Ultralearning for a minute. What's great about the insights Scott reveals in Ultralearning is that you can get great mileage out of applying any single one of them. You don't need to do the maximum-difficulty, super-disciplined version of Ultralearning in order to see results. I've been applying these techniques somewhat piecemeal--mostly I use Anki do quiz-and-recall and spaced repetition--in order to learn Python, SQL, and advanced math over the span of about a year. And guess what? I successfully switched careers into data science, from a completely non-technical background in psychology, and it feels incredible to have made it. Last fall I didn't even know basic linear algebra, and now I wrangle data and train deep learning models for a living.

This is what Ultralearning--and Scott's learning principles in general--can do for you. Whether you want to change careers to something more lucrative and fulfilling, conquer a subject you've always felt intimidated by, ace all your classes to snag a great scholarship, start creating art, start playing a new instrument, or just learn a lot of useful everyday trivia about sleep, nutrition, and exercise, this book is for you.

And again, don't feel like you have to do it all. Start small if you need to, and build adherence to that one little habit. Expand from there once you have the capacity. I can promise you that adding even just one of these insights to your current process will get you better results than whatever you were doing before, and a taste of that improvement may inspire you to do even more.

Happy learning!

45 people found this helpful

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Brian LaRocca

A Template on How to Learn

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2020

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The science of learning how to learn has taken off with the works of Tim Ferris and others.. This book is a useful addition. I am yet to use it on a topic but I feel it will reinvigorate some of the things on my bucket list I have been meaning to learn.

The author hits the nail on the head on why we learn:
Your deepest moments of happiness don’t come from doing easy things; they come from realizing your potential and overcoming your own limiting beliefs about yourself. Ultralearning offers a path to master those things that will bring you deep satisfaction and self-confidence.

Balancing the difficulty and ease of learning something seems to be his main piece of advice. You don’t want to get discouraged yet you only truly master things you devote time to. He offers a nine point plan and suggests you spend 10% of the time you budget to learning on focusing on this metalearning. Some points will invariably seem obvious but, like a pilot using a checklist before takeoff, some points are often forgotten. One very convincing point that is not always obvious is focusing on direct learning. That is if you want to learn to speak a language, speak it. Don’t waste too much time on other drills. General knowledge does not necessarily leak into direct knowledge. Go out and start speaking.

Creating his template first and reviewing it as you progress should insure you remain on the right course.

One person found this helpful

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Mohammed Al Alwan

If i have not taken Scott course rapid learner i would have given this book five star

Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2019

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I have taken two course with Scott ; rapid learner and learn more and study less.i had great results after completing these two courses and my learning and study skills improved dramatically .

scott system really works ,i have tried it in my preparation for CFA exam specially the essay part ,his strategy was very successful beyond my expectation .i also tried his system successfully in designing and completing a learning project on how to analyze banking stocks which has been new industry to me.i can tell you that his strategy work brilliantly .

So,naturaly when i saw his new book ultra-learning i pre-ordered it. What i liked about scott book is that he generalized 9 principles that ultra-learner share which provide an excellent framework on the principles of ultra learning.

One of the ultra learning principles discussed in the book is directness in which scott discuss the concept of transfer which is converting knowledge into actions.i believe that this book is a complement not a substitute for any one interested in mastering ultra-learning .so,if you are interested in the book i recommend you check his course because the course help you in converting these principles into actions much clearly than reading the book.

What I did not like about the book is that it lacks the directness and transfer of how to implement these principles compared with his course .The course is much more practical on how to implement the principles discussed in the book.As a result,i will give the book four star.

214 people found this helpful

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Freddy Kwok

A good systematic review of your lifelong learning journey

Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2020

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There are numerous strategies and tactics outlined in this book. The ultralearning method center around the self-driven, intense learning of any topic effectively. There is a planning phrase and an executing phrase The planning phrase is called metalearning. It is to determind why you know certain topic, what is in the scope of your learning project and how to obtain the information, material, technique to learn. Then, one must remain focus during learning to optimize the effectiveness. By changing your environment, eliminate distraction, you could attend flow state which is a euphoric state of mind of focus. Then, different technique such as spaced repetition system, active recall and mnemonics are introduced to reader to retain the learning. To accelerate learning, we could drilling down a specific component and obtain constructive feedback. For more advanced learner, Feynman technique of teaching someone else what you learnt and experimentation to explore the boundary of your knowledge and skills could push you to a broader understanding and even mastery. In all, I highly recommend this book as a systematic overview to improve your learning. Combining with the Learning How to Learn by Barbara Oakley, you could accelerate your learning or get motivated to start an ultralearning project of your own.

2 people found this helpful

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Jimmy

An Autodidact's Dream

Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2019

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Disclaimer: I haven't finished the book in its entirety. I will edit this review if necessary.

For the passed 15 odd years I have been in search of a comprehensive, yet comprehensible system of learning to learn. You might say it's been a bit of a quixotic journey, as the results of my efforts have been mixed.

Over that time I have encountered and tested various methods, strategies, and systems. I've explored spaced repetition and its software implementations. I've dabbled in increasing my working memory through n-back programs. I've read and attempted to implement a variety of books on learning to learn. I have read Ericcson's work on deliberate practice. I've read Adler's book on how to read a book. And quite a few more.

However, something has always been lacking. Whether it has been my inability to implement a given system or the authors' inability to communicate actionable strategies is hard to say. But, Scott Young's book seems to be the genuine article.

The book is based in solid cognitive psychology research. But, I believe its major advantage is in Mr. Young's clear prose and seamless communication style. It's my best bet that the attempts at learning to learn that I have made have been somewhat unsuccessful due to the author's ability, or lack thereof, to communicate ideas in such a way as to be actionable over the long term. This is not the case with Ultralearning. The system appears to be a cogent, well-thought-out way to truly master learning.

I'm excited to get started on an Ultralearning project.

277 people found this helpful

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