Daniel S.'s Key Ideas from Ultralearning
by Scott Young

Learning is no longer something that stops when you graduate. Life long learning is a valuable skill because of:

• Economics: Average is over. But even if the economic landscape is rapidly changing may, we can engineer our response to it by aggressively learning the hard skills we need to thrive.
• Education: Ultralearning can fill some of those gaps when going back to school isn’t an affordable option.
• Technology: The space of learning possibilities is immense, just waiting for ambitious autodidacts to come up with new ways to exploit it.

1. Meta-learning: Start by learning how to learn
2. Focus: Carve out time in your day
3. Directness: Learn by doing.
4. Drill the weakest points: Break down complex skills into small parts.
5. Retrieval: Test yourself to grow
6. Feedback: Don't let your ego get in the way
7. Retention: Understand what you forget and why
8. Intuition: Develop your intuition through play and exploration.
9. Experimentation: Get outside your comfort zone by cultivating an experimental mindset.

Distractions (a lot of them driven by technology) are the biggest blockers in the way of your knowledge accumulation. What to focus on?

• Your environment: be aware of what environment you work best in, and test it. Multitasking may feel like fun, but it’s unsuitable for ultralearning.
• The task you’re trying to learn: certain activities, due to their nature, are harder to focus on than others.
• Your mind: negative emotions, restlessness, and daydreaming can be some of the biggest obstacles to focus.

You can't improve without feedback. But not all feedback is the same. Learn to distinguish between the 3 types:

• Outcome feedback: this tells you something about how well you’re doing overall but offers no ideas as to what you’re doing better or worse.
• Informational feedback: this feedback tells you what you’re doing wrong, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you how to fix it.
• Corrective feedback: the best kind of feedback to get is corrective feedback. This is the feedback that shows you not only what you’re doing wrong but how to fix it.