{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"[Repost] Scott Young (Author of Ultralearning)","description":"This is a holiday repost, which pairs very nicely with the recent episode with Cedric Chin discussing tacit knowledge, expert intuition, and deliberate practice. If you enjoyed that episode, you will hopefully also find Scott Young's work fascinating\u2014since he distills research-based best practices in learning and skill acquisition into highly actionable strategies and tactics. Here's the original episode post: I\u2019ve long been a Scott Young fan from my early days of reading blogs (miss you, Google Reader), so I was thrilled to get the chance to interview him about his new book Ultralearning. As a relentless consumer of information and a sometimes autodidact, I\u2019ve found Scott\u2019s blog to be very insightful in terms of approaching new projects and learning skills like coaching and coding without going through a formal educational process. With the current ubiquity of information \u2013 including entire college curriculums, endless video interviews with world-class experts, and entire industries of online courses \u2013 we should be able to learn just about anything we want. However, as anyone who has either attempted to learn a new skill or, God forbid, teach someone else a skill has experienced, learning is really, really hard. How can we actually transfer what we learn from theoretical lectures and books to real-life application? How can we practice skills in a way that makes us better at the skill itself \u2013 not just at random drills? If you're enjoying the show, the best way to support it is by sharing with your friends. If you don't have any friends, why not a leave a review? It makes a difference in terms of other people finding the show. You can also subscribe to receive my e-mail newsletter at www.toddnief.com. Most of my writing never makes it to the blog, so get on that list. Check out more from Scott here: Website: www.scotthyoung.com Book: Ultralearning Show Notes: [1:50] Scott seems to understand that learning is most successful in an environment of doing and not in one of reading, lecture attendance, and video watching. However, he\u2019s published a book about learning \u2013 so what exactly is its purpose and why did he choose to write it? [4:21] There\u2019s a lot more to learning than simply practicing, as certain skills seem to involve endless amounts of practice while others have more apparent, speedy transfer. Learning becomes more difficult when the type of practice performed deviates from how the skill is used in a real-life setting. Scott gives some examples of when these transfer problems arise and how transfer problems can arise even in learning about theoretical ideas. [8:46] Directness and actual application are significant in order to learn all skills, but the order in which they\u2019re performed matters. A learning strategy is likely transferring effectively when exposure to a skill is direct prior to performing any sort of drill and, once drills are introduced, it becomes important to return back to those situations of direct exposure regularly. [13:01] Skills can be built up individually while lacking functionality outside of largely abstract situations, meaning that drills must be specific and relative to real performance of the skill. Feedback on those drills (and, generally, on performance of the skill being learned) shows to be a nonessential piece of the learning process. [20:12] We can get knowledge into our heads, but accessing a learned skill isn\u2019t done by pulling out a \u2018saved\u2019 memory from the brain and feedback is self-generated through realization of what is not able to be recalled \u2013 that aspect of retrieval is vital to performance of any skill, making the sophistication of recall more effective than repeated exposure. [24:38] Studies may not be representative of all populations since skills vary so greatly in context \u2013 amount of acquired knowledge and ease of retrieval positively correlate, and sample sizes tend to be small. Giving learners opportunities to apply what they\u2019ve learned can be a step toward bridging the gap in education where people review and \u2018understand\u2019 concepts but cannot seem to make any real change behaviorally. [25:54] Experience is one of the many reasons experts perform better than novices at almost any skill \u2013 an expert\u2019s experience in a particular skill allows them to chunk things together and to see prior patterns, obvious mistakes, and recognition of solutions to problems more readily than a novice, who likely attempts to piece together a multitude of individual parts of a larger concept. [33:13] Learning a skill in order to solve problems rather than to simply know the information and to have it \u2018stored\u2019 can improve one\u2019s ability to transfer. Autonomy is a necessity though: being able to apply a skill that you don\u2019t really want to use is unlikely, no matter what super effective strategies or level of established intelligence or personality traits are present. Anyone can learn almost anything if they want to. [43:04] Many people have negative experiences with learning and associate learning struggles with failure. Once you know how to put together a puzzle, it isn\u2019t a puzzle anymore, but confidence and persistent engagement are keys to keep trying at that puzzle. [53:10] Knowledge decay isn\u2019t as serious as many believe because large ideas are retained \u2013 making a habit of performing physics problems or speaking in a particular language can help in maintaining those learned skills, but even more abstractly reminding yourself of formulas that exist can be helpful. [57:38] Attitudes surrounding learning are the difference between either merely knowing about many concepts and drowning in self-doubt or having the confidence to succeed in complicated areas of work such as ultra learning. Can we make it prestigious to be a motivated self-educating person? [1:04.35] Being able to copy someone else\u2019s behavior or learn how someone else performs well at a particular skill by being able to watch and communicate with them about the subject can enhance and expedite the learning process. However, it\u2019s possible that this is true in skills with more clearly defined \u2018rights\u2019 and \u2018wrongs.\u2019 [1:14.10] How to get Scott\u2019s book if you want it. And you probably want it. And you probably also want to check out some more Scott content. So here\u2019s how to get all of that. Links and Resources Mentioned Duolingo \u201cLearning With Retrieval-Based Concept Mapping\u201d by Janell Blunt and Jeffrey Karpicke Many-worlds interpretation (Quantum Mechanics) Copenhagen interpretation (Quantum Mechanics) \u201cThe Classical Theory of Fields: Volume 2\u201d by L D Landau and E.M. Lifshitz \u201cThe Secret of Our Success\u201d by Joseph Henrich Speedrunning Roger Bannister \u201cThe Roger Bannister Effect: The Myth of the Psychological Breakthrough\u201d from The Science of Running ","author_name":"Todd Nief's Show","author_url":"http:\/\/toddnief.com","html":"