78: Ultralearning by Scott Young

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1. 00:00:00 All right, Joe, both you and I have the same follow up from last time, which is to talk
2. 00:00:04 about our failures.
3. 00:00:06 I think we should probably start by talking about how we failed so we can complete this
4. 00:00:11 one.
5. 00:00:12 Okay.
6. 00:00:13 How did you fail?
7. 00:00:14 How did I fail?
8. 00:00:16 Well, this is harder than I thought it was going to be.
9. 00:00:19 Like I knew I was going to do this, but now that we're here, it's kind of difficult.
10. 00:00:23 Actually, so like as in, it's harder to talk about it or it's harder to admit it or...
11. 00:00:28 Yeah, it's easy to conceptually say, "Yeah, I want to talk about my failures."
12. 00:00:32 But actually doing it is something totally different, which is kind of the point why
13. 00:00:36 I decided to open with this.
14. 00:00:39 So I guess I'll talk about one of the things that I consider a failure over the last couple
15. 00:00:44 of weeks is that I have been trying to arrange things in my life so that I am not stressed
16. 00:00:52 out by a long list of things that I should be doing, but I found myself creating a situation
17. 00:00:59 where I couldn't live up to my own expectations.
18. 00:01:01 It wasn't even impacted or influenced by somebody else saying, "Hey, you should really be doing
19. 00:01:06 this."
20. 00:01:07 I just kind of did it to myself, but last week it kind of all came to a head.
21. 00:01:12 I couldn't keep up and I noticed I was in a bit of a funk for a couple of days.
22. 00:01:18 And I feel like it took somebody calling me on it for me to even realize that this was
23. 00:01:27 happening and it was affecting my relationships with other people, not just my family even,
24. 00:01:32 but people at church, people that are around me every day.
25. 00:01:36 They saw it, I didn't, and right away I'm like, "I did it again, failed again, and I
26. 00:01:44 better talk about this on bookworm since that's what we said we were going to do."
27. 00:01:48 Nice.
28. 00:01:49 I'm sorry.
29. 00:01:50 So, Mike is a failure.
30. 00:01:52 Have you failed?
31. 00:01:53 Yes.
32. 00:01:54 I can't say that I have something that's like that large to say here, but I had quite
33. 00:02:03 a few cases.
34. 00:02:05 I work in IT, so I screw things up a lot.
35. 00:02:08 I've just become more willing to talk about those failures.
36. 00:02:14 One of those in particular that I was doing this, I think it was right after we recorded,
37. 00:02:22 actually.
38. 00:02:23 A couple of days after that, I got a phone call on a Sunday afternoon and it was from
39. 00:02:29 our youth worship band leader who had a very simple question.
40. 00:02:35 Do you know where our keyboard is?
41. 00:02:37 Yep.
42. 00:02:38 It's in the back of my truck.
43. 00:02:40 Whoops.
44. 00:02:41 Totally screwed that one up.
45. 00:02:45 I was supposed to have set up a handful of things on that stage for them before Sunday
46. 00:02:50 night and I just completely spaced.
47. 00:02:54 I had it written down.
48. 00:02:55 I just didn't even get to the list, so it didn't even register.
49. 00:03:01 I had to, last minute, after dinner, hustle, take a keyboard back to the church, set it
50. 00:03:07 all up, make sure they were ready to go, and then come home, put the girls down for bed.
51. 00:03:11 Don't do that again.
52. 00:03:13 But, you know, I simply told them, I'm sorry, I just completely screwed this one up.
53. 00:03:22 I will do my best not to make this happen again.
54. 00:03:25 So yes, despite all the Omni-focused stuff and reminders and do app and all the things
55. 00:03:32 that are supposed to tell Joe what he should be doing, I still forget things and screw them
56. 00:03:37 up.
57. 00:03:40 Such is life.
58. 00:03:41 Yeah.
59. 00:03:42 It's kind of interesting, I think, like our examples here, and I hope this kind of inspires
60. 00:03:46 some other people to think about maybe some of the ways that they've failed because my
61. 00:03:51 takeaway from doing this exercise live on the air is that...
62. 00:03:55 Which he did not warn me about, by the way.
63. 00:03:58 Nope, I just threw this on you.
64. 00:03:59 Figured it's about time I got you back somehow.
65. 00:04:04 No, but the interesting thing observation right now, I think, is that as we share these things,
66. 00:04:13 no matter how big the failure happens to be, it doesn't have to be a fatal mistake.
67. 00:04:21 Like, once you verbalize these things and you recognize that, yeah, I made a mistake,
68. 00:04:26 it's kind of like the act of expressing that you have failed as the words come out of your
69. 00:04:34 mouth that lessens the gravity of the thing.
70. 00:04:38 It's like that's the thing that allows you to move on to the next thing, which I think
71. 00:04:44 was kind of what Ed Catmull was getting at when he was talking about in the last book
72. 00:04:48 Creativity and How They Were.
73. 00:04:49 I'm trying to fail as fast as they could because it's like, okay, until we fail and recognize
74. 00:04:55 that we failed, then we're never going to get to where we really want to go.
75. 00:04:58 So we're not looking to fail, but when it happens, we just recognize it.
76. 00:05:02 And then from there, we can course correct.
77. 00:05:04 That's kind of like a save point for us, you know, and we can continue on our journey.
78. 00:05:09 So there, now we can both check off our action items.
79. 00:05:16 I do have one more action item.
80. 00:05:18 I do.
81. 00:05:19 Yeah, you want to talk about this one?
82. 00:05:20 Yeah.
83. 00:05:21 I'm trying to take the concepts and principles that came from the book, Creativity, Inc, about
84. 00:05:25 how to build a culture and an organization that is able to continue to be creative and
85. 00:05:31 successful in that creative endeavor.
86. 00:05:34 I was trying to figure out how does this apply to our church because I feel like our nonprofit
87. 00:05:42 religious organization could follow a lot of these same principles and go down that
88. 00:05:48 same path.
89. 00:05:49 And although I don't have anything really concrete I can share here, I can say that
90. 00:05:54 it's a fascinating endeavor to at least explore with other people in leadership at the church
91. 00:06:01 because the two or three, four people that I talked to about it all immediately saw how
92. 00:06:09 the church is a very creative organization and had all kinds of questions about it.
93. 00:06:15 So those have at least started, but I don't know that I could really share that.
94. 00:06:20 It's not really my place to do that because it comes from my leadership at the church
95. 00:06:24 and all buying closed doors at this point.
96. 00:06:28 So sorry, I can't say much more than that.
97. 00:06:31 So, but it has been a fascinating conversation to say the least.
98. 00:06:35 Nice.
99. 00:06:36 There's that.
100. 00:06:37 One last thing before we jump into today's book, and I told Mike this as we were jumping
101. 00:06:44 on here, I've been doing a bunch of things on Instagram lately and trying to get that
102. 00:06:49 where I want it to be and have been doing some things with like the Instagram stories
103. 00:06:53 here and there.
104. 00:06:54 So if you are on Instagram and you want to see some book stuff and you want to keep up
105. 00:07:00 with Bookworm link in the show notes, click the link, follow us.
106. 00:07:04 I never thought that of the two of us, you would be the one driving all the social media
107. 00:07:11 stuff, but good job.
108. 00:07:13 I know, right?
109. 00:07:14 It's one of those things where I don't like a handful of people have already reached out
110. 00:07:19 to me and said, "Joe, you must be on this a lot."
111. 00:07:21 No, no, I just spent some time early on in the week and set it all up.
112. 00:07:26 And then I mostly just sit back and watch.
113. 00:07:30 So I get to watch it just like everyone else.
114. 00:07:33 Oh, yeah, I forgot I said that.
115. 00:07:36 Yeah.
116. 00:07:37 Oh, right.
117. 00:07:38 I did set that up.
118. 00:07:39 That's kind of cool.
119. 00:07:40 Nice.
120. 00:07:41 That's a cool picture.
121. 00:07:42 Good job, Mike.
122. 00:07:43 Today's book is "Ultra Learning" by Scott Young.
123. 00:07:48 This was my pick.
124. 00:07:49 It was a highly recommended book from the Bookworm Club.
125. 00:07:55 And the basic premise of this is applying this idea called "Ultra Learning" to advance
126. 00:08:04 the skills that you want to develop without doing it the traditional way.
127. 00:08:10 I think about this as a book that teaches you how to learn outside the traditional learning
128. 00:08:18 mechanisms.
129. 00:08:19 Yeah.
130. 00:08:20 So it actually starts in the first part here, which I've labeled what is "Ultra Learning."
131. 00:08:28 Let's actually just briefly talk about the structure of this book because you probably
132. 00:08:31 could break it down into a couple of different sections, but he doesn't.
133. 00:08:34 He's got a bunch of different chapters.
134. 00:08:36 There's 14 different chapters.
135. 00:08:38 We're not going to try to go through all of them.
136. 00:08:39 I've attempted to put them into sections in our outline here.
137. 00:08:44 So chapter one is, "Can you get an MIT education without going to MIT?"
138. 00:08:49 This is based off of an experiment that Scott Young did.
139. 00:08:54 We'll get into that in a second here.
140. 00:08:56 Chapter two, "Why Ultra Learning Matters."
141. 00:08:59 Chapter three, "How to Become an Ultra Learner."
142. 00:09:03 So these three, I think, maybe comprise a section, but I've broken it into two points.
143. 00:09:08 What is "Ultra Learning?"
144. 00:09:09 Then "How to Become an Ultra Learner?"
145. 00:09:10 Because there's a couple different things inside of each of those that will unpack.
146. 00:09:14 And then the majority of the book is nine different principles of "Ultra Learning," which
147. 00:09:20 in the mind of a file is kind of weird because it's like chapter four, principle one, chapter
148. 00:09:23 five, principle two, chapter six, principle three.
149. 00:09:27 Yeah.
150. 00:09:28 Because there is no section header for these, right?
151. 00:09:29 Right.
152. 00:09:30 But there are nine principles that he talks about.
153. 00:09:32 So the first principle is, "Metal Learning," principle two is, "Focus," principle three
154. 00:09:37 is, "Directness," principle four is, "Drill," principle five is, "Retrieval," principle
155. 00:09:42 six is, "Feedback," principle seven, "Retention," principle eight, "Intuition," principle nine
156. 00:09:48 experimentation.
157. 00:09:50 And then picking up in chapter 13, your first "Ultra Learning Project."
158. 00:09:53 I've got steps for you to apply this stuff and pick an "Ultra Learning Project" for yourself.
159. 00:09:58 And then chapter 14, "An Unconventional Education," talks about how you can encourage others to
160. 00:10:04 embrace "Ultra Learning," whether those be children, coworkers, etc.
161. 00:10:09 So that's the bones of the book.
162. 00:10:11 We're going to start here with what I'll call the first section, just what is "Ultra Learning."
163. 00:10:16 Because again, we're not trying to recreate everything that's in this book.
164. 00:10:19 We want to tease out some of the key concepts that really stood out to us.
165. 00:10:23 But it is interesting how he starts with what he terms as the MIT challenge.
166. 00:10:27 Before you get too far into that, can I, a couple of things here?
167. 00:10:31 One, the forward on this is written by James Clear.
168. 00:10:35 This is after, so it's a recent book.
169. 00:10:38 It's a 2019 book, right?
170. 00:10:40 Yes.
171. 00:10:41 And...
172. 00:10:42 I think so.
173. 00:10:43 James Clear wrote this after "Atomic Habits" was out, or at least in its process of coming
174. 00:10:49 out.
175. 00:10:50 And he absolutely loves a lot of the stuff in this book.
176. 00:10:53 It also has a lot of accolades from Cal Newport as well.
177. 00:10:57 So between those two, I can't say that this was a book that was on my radar.
178. 00:11:03 But because those two have such high remarks about this, it kind of put it at another level
179. 00:11:09 for me before I even got into it.
180. 00:11:11 So just wanted to point that out.
181. 00:11:13 There is quite a bit of credibility behind this, even though it's been out very short
182. 00:11:18 amount of time.
183. 00:11:19 Yes.
184. 00:11:20 Yeah.
185. 00:11:21 Thanks for pointing that out.
186. 00:11:22 It's kind of funny if you look at the very last, like at the end of the book, he's got
187. 00:11:26 like his page of thanks.
188. 00:11:27 Right.
189. 00:11:28 Right.
190. 00:11:29 And he says, "Thank you to Mr. Calvin Newport."
191. 00:11:32 Yes.
192. 00:11:33 Or some of her heard him called Calvin.
193. 00:11:36 I'm like, "Wait a second.
194. 00:11:38 Oh, Cal Newport."
195. 00:11:39 Right.
196. 00:11:40 Who are you talking about?
197. 00:11:41 Who's Calvin?
198. 00:11:42 Yeah.
199. 00:11:43 Makes sense, though.
200. 00:11:44 I mean, these three guys seem like peas in a pod.
201. 00:11:48 Yes.
202. 00:11:49 Yes.
203. 00:11:50 So Scott Young, going back to chapter one, his story, which kind of lays the groundwork
204. 00:11:57 for everything that's in this book is what he calls the MIT Challenge.
205. 00:12:01 This is when he wanted to get an MIT degree.
206. 00:12:07 So a little bit of his background briefly, he went to the University of Manitoba.
207. 00:12:12 He got a bachelor's of commerce degree.
208. 00:12:14 He didn't like it, but he also didn't like the idea of going back to school, taking out
209. 00:12:17 more loans and investing several years to get a different degree.
210. 00:12:21 So he found some MIT classes online for free.
211. 00:12:24 He signed up.
212. 00:12:25 He decided to try to get a degree without the paperwork through these free online classes,
213. 00:12:30 because all he wanted was the skills.
214. 00:12:32 So he tried to recreate an MIT computer science degree using these free online courses and
215. 00:12:39 then challenge himself to do it in only 12 months.
216. 00:12:41 So the book starts with the story of him right before he takes a final exam for one
217. 00:12:48 of these classes that he signed up for.
218. 00:12:51 And he's basically cranking through one of these classes every week.
219. 00:12:54 So he's like, this is really stressful.
220. 00:12:57 I'm taking his final exam on stuff that I just started learning this week.
221. 00:13:00 And next week, I have to do it again, which is not something you really want to hear if
222. 00:13:04 you're going to MIT.
223. 00:13:06 Yeah, true.
224. 00:13:07 Oh, this guy just went through my entire class in a week.
225. 00:13:10 Yep.
226. 00:13:11 That's that's not something you really want to hear.
227. 00:13:13 Yeah.
228. 00:13:14 Well, I have my own buyer's remorse around this from when we went through the personal
229. 00:13:20 NBA to tell you the truth, because I went to a private liberal arts college here in Wisconsin,
230. 00:13:28 which was super expensive and got a business degree.
231. 00:13:32 And when we went through the personal NBA, I think I learned more about business from
232. 00:13:35 that book than I did in the year.
233. 00:13:37 I remember that.
234. 00:13:38 100,000 plus, you know, I invested in the degree.
235. 00:13:41 So yeah, there's a lot of other reasons you may want to go to college.
236. 00:13:46 But to get the skills that are going to help you in the workplace is not the primary one,
237. 00:13:52 especially for something like a business degree.
238. 00:13:55 I remember looking at the $100 NBA by Omar Zenhome when it came out.
239. 00:14:00 Yeah.
240. 00:14:01 Omar is a pretty smart guy.
241. 00:14:03 And his story, I think, kind of articulates this really well.
242. 00:14:06 I'm going to paraphrase it.
243. 00:14:07 But basically, he was teaching business at a university, if I remember correctly, and
244. 00:14:14 he wanted to implement some new material into the curriculum because everything in the curriculum
245. 00:14:19 was basically like, here's how you manage people in a factory.
246. 00:14:21 He's like, well, that's not going to help my students in the 21st century.
247. 00:14:25 So he found some stuff.
248. 00:14:27 He submitted it and like, all right, we'll review this and we'll get back to you in 18
249. 00:14:31 months.
250. 00:14:32 He's like, what?
251. 00:14:33 By that point, like everything will have changed again.
252. 00:14:35 Yeah.
253. 00:14:36 So he's like, this is ridiculous.
254. 00:14:38 Like I want to equip people with the skills they need to be successful.
255. 00:14:41 Maybe the university setting isn't the right way to do it.
256. 00:14:44 So he just took what he knew and created an online video course called the $100 NBA,
257. 00:14:49 which I had gone through.
258. 00:14:51 And there's some good stuff in there.
259. 00:14:53 I don't know that you could do like an apples to apples comparison of like that versus an
260. 00:14:59 actual NBA.
261. 00:15:00 Same thing with like the personal NBA, the book.
262. 00:15:02 But the long and short of it is if you're looking for something that's going to move
263. 00:15:06 the needle, especially respective to the amount that you're going to invest in it, you can
264. 00:15:10 do a lot better than a college degree for a lot of things.
265. 00:15:14 Now, some careers, you need the degree, you need the certification, whatever.
266. 00:15:20 So that's a little bit different.
267. 00:15:21 But just in terms of what you're going to learn, ultra learning is kind of challenging
268. 00:15:25 the idea that you have to do it this way.
269. 00:15:28 For a lot of different reasons, I mean, there's something specifically about the university
270. 00:15:33 setting, the classroom setting that Scott Young argues isn't set up for ideal success.
271. 00:15:40 So you're kind of working with a broken system if you're really just trying to maximize
272. 00:15:44 the amount that you're trying to get from what you're doing.
273. 00:15:48 But therein is another principle, which I'm sure we'll unpack as we go is like, do you
274. 00:15:53 really have to pick the most effective way to do everything in your life?
275. 00:15:59 I've been thinking a lot about that lately.
276. 00:16:01 And I don't know.
277. 00:16:03 I mean, I think personally, I'm at this point where, and I've been here for a little while
278. 00:16:09 where it comes to the efficiency, like, I just am done with that.
279. 00:16:13 I want to be effective.
280. 00:16:14 But I guess what I'm realizing more and more is that effective doesn't even mean the shortest
281. 00:16:18 distance between two points necessarily.
282. 00:16:21 Sometimes it's worth going a little bit slower.
283. 00:16:23 So you can enjoy the journey.
284. 00:16:25 Yes.
285. 00:16:26 And you can apply that a lot of different ways to your specific situation.
286. 00:16:30 Only you can really define what the best way to do that is for you.
287. 00:16:35 But the tone of ultra learning is just go, go, go, on the next thing.
288. 00:16:41 And that I have to admit kind of rubbed me the wrong way.
289. 00:16:44 Sure.
290. 00:16:45 Well, I kind of have a different, a little bit different take on this because so my degree
291. 00:16:52 is an agricultural business.
292. 00:16:54 So I've got a quasi business degree as well.
293. 00:16:58 In my case, there was a lot of agriculture classes that came with that, which were extremely
294. 00:17:04 helpful and I actually still use in a lot of ways today.
295. 00:17:08 But when I went to work outside of that, I was doing soybean seed research and learned
296. 00:17:15 about all the data that goes into seed research and got into the statistical side of things.
297. 00:17:21 And although I had never taken like a statistics type of class, I had to deep dive statistics
298. 00:17:28 and understand it at a much deeper level in order to do my job well with the data side
299. 00:17:35 of it.
300. 00:17:36 And I kind of did a miniature ultra learning project.
301. 00:17:42 If you would call it that in that sense in just doing tons and tons of online research
302. 00:17:48 and reading books on it.
303. 00:17:51 And that allowed me to then pick up a job as a data analyst where I continued to work
304. 00:17:57 on those analysis skills, but it also taught me how to work with computers at a higher
305. 00:18:03 level.
306. 00:18:05 That then led to me doing a lot of the online web development stuff that I still do on the
307. 00:18:11 side today.
308. 00:18:12 So I've taken like a couple of these different scenarios, done some of these, I would call
309. 00:18:18 them small ultra learning projects in order to continually grow my overall career.
310. 00:18:25 But like what you're saying, I think Mike is like that particular, like that journey
311. 00:18:30 that I just explained to you was a 10 year journey.
312. 00:18:34 Like those two, maybe three of these projects took 10 years to work through that.
313. 00:18:40 It was not something like, Oh, I want to do this next in my career.
314. 00:18:44 I'm going to go pick up statistics and then I'm going to run with that.
315. 00:18:47 No, that wasn't the case at all.
316. 00:18:49 This was a process of me just like, Oh, this is interesting.
317. 00:18:53 My current job needs me to do this.
318. 00:18:55 So I'm going to pick up that and then it allowed me to continue to grow with that.
319. 00:19:00 But I think what he's like, I didn't come away from this thinking that everything you
320. 00:19:05 do needs to be an ultra learning project.
321. 00:19:07 You need to go at it with full force and learn it at the deepest levels.
322. 00:19:12 I don't see that.
323. 00:19:15 Like I didn't see that from this book, but maybe that's because I just didn't catch it.
324. 00:19:20 That was my take on it.
325. 00:19:21 Whenever there's something that you want to deep dive or that you want to learn a deeper
326. 00:19:27 skill or an adjacent skill, like that's when you can use this process to do that.
327. 00:19:33 Do you follow me, Mike?
328. 00:19:35 Yes.
329. 00:19:36 So I kind of think my career path is probably similar to yours where I have implemented
330. 00:19:42 pieces of this.
331. 00:19:43 And as we go through the different principles, I've applied some of these, but I also am
332. 00:19:50 projecting here, but I believe that Scott Young would say you guys weren't ultra learning.
333. 00:19:56 That could be because the examples that he shares, like it's a very short timeframe
334. 00:20:02 that you're doing this stuff in.
335. 00:20:05 And in the first chapter, he's got a couple other examples of people who like learn to
336. 00:20:10 speak and master a language in three months.
337. 00:20:15 And the popular belief when it comes to the best way to learn a new language is immersion,
338. 00:20:21 right?
339. 00:20:22 And he's even saying like immersion, going to the place where they speak the language,
340. 00:20:25 that's not good enough.
341. 00:20:27 Because if you're there with a friend, you're going to speak English when things are hard
342. 00:20:30 and you have to push yourself into those positions that are hard and force yourself to do the
343. 00:20:34 thing.
344. 00:20:36 And I'm guessing that both you and I didn't put our necks on the line when we were trying
345. 00:20:42 to develop a new skill, we did it on the side.
346. 00:20:45 There was a safety net there.
347. 00:20:46 We could always go back to doing what we were doing previously.
348. 00:20:48 Yeah, that's true.
349. 00:20:49 It wasn't like, okay, I'm going to walk away from my job and I'm going to become a writer
350. 00:20:52 I've never written before, so I'm just going to write as much as I can in three months
351. 00:20:55 and by the end of it, boom, I will be a professional writer.
352. 00:20:59 That wasn't the process we took.
353. 00:21:01 So I don't know, maybe that's just my definition, but I do think in this first chapter here,
354. 00:21:06 he talks about ultra learning and how it's pursuing these extreme self-directed learning
355. 00:21:10 projects.
356. 00:21:11 And either of ours were really extreme.
357. 00:21:14 And I also think maybe you don't have to push yourself to the extreme all the time.
358. 00:21:19 As he's talking about all these different ultra learning projects, I'm like, well, yeah,
359. 00:21:21 you're acquiring a lot of skills quickly, but aren't you going to burn yourself out?
360. 00:21:27 Like, at some point, you're just going to be like, this is dumb.
361. 00:21:29 Why am I doing this?
362. 00:21:30 You're going to walk away.
363. 00:21:31 Sure.
364. 00:21:32 There's no way you're going to do this till you're 85, buddy, you know?
365. 00:21:37 And if you do, you will be a very wide learned, why would it be a wide ranging expertise on
366. 00:21:44 that person?
367. 00:21:45 You're going to be an expert in these things, but you're not going to have any friends.
368. 00:21:51 Or that while speaking so many different languages, they can't all get together.
369. 00:21:54 Yeah.
370. 00:21:55 Yeah.
371. 00:21:56 And that's a little bit unfair of a characterization, but it's a couple of other characteristics
372. 00:21:59 here of ultra learning, just to kind of paint the picture for what Scott Young defines
373. 00:22:02 as as all ultra learners are unique.
374. 00:22:04 He says, but they do share some common characteristics that usually work alone.
375. 00:22:08 Their interests tend towards obsessions.
376. 00:22:11 They're aggressive about optimizing their strategies and they care about learning above
377. 00:22:15 all else.
378. 00:22:17 And that's the thing that doesn't really sit well with me is like, well, why do you want
379. 00:22:21 to learn this stuff?
380. 00:22:22 Is it so that you can check a box is that so that you can say I have achieved a certain
381. 00:22:26 level of mastery?
382. 00:22:27 Or does it actually impact your day to day?
383. 00:22:32 But I'm more and more realizing the older that I get is that the day to day really is
384. 00:22:36 not about what you get done during the day, but about the relationships and the people
385. 00:22:40 that you you interact with.
386. 00:22:42 And Chris Bailey is the one who said the reason for productivity is people.
387. 00:22:46 You know, I'm realizing that more and more.
388. 00:22:48 And so it doesn't matter if I write 10,000 words a day.
389. 00:22:53 If I don't make a positive impact in somebody's life, because I'm too busy, that's a failure
390. 00:22:58 of a day.
391. 00:23:00 And not every time, obviously, there's different scenarios and different seasons and all that.
392. 00:23:08 You know, you got to keep the right thing at the right time, keep the main thing, the
393. 00:23:12 main thing.
394. 00:23:14 But more and more, my main thing is less about what I'm able to crank out and more about
395. 00:23:20 how I'm able to make people feel.
396. 00:23:22 That part is like completely missing in this book, I believe.
397. 00:23:25 I think that maybe depends on how you approach your ultra learning project.
398. 00:23:30 Sure.
399. 00:23:31 Because there were cases and even one of the principles when it comes to like drilling
400. 00:23:38 and such, you don't necessarily want to spend 12 hours a day doing this in order to learn
401. 00:23:47 a skill.
402. 00:23:48 Like you do need to space it out somewhat.
403. 00:23:50 And I think a lot of how you come at the project and how successful it is with the definition
404. 00:23:58 of success being you're learning an extreme amount of information and an extreme skill
405. 00:24:03 in a very short time frame and maintaining relationships like that, to me, success in
406. 00:24:09 this ultra learning project would have both aspects tied to it.
407. 00:24:14 I think if you were to understand that going into it, it would have a very different feel
408. 00:24:21 than this is your one and only thing you're going to do.
409. 00:24:25 I get where some people, because he tells stories of folks who wanted to learn a language
410. 00:24:31 and they go spend three or four months in Spain in order to pick up Spanish kudos to
411. 00:24:37 them.
412. 00:24:38 I think that's going too far.
413. 00:24:41 It's taking you to the point where you're abandoning all relationships in order to pursue your
414. 00:24:47 own internal goal.
415. 00:24:50 That's very inward focused in that.
416. 00:24:54 This comes back to some of our complaints with the four hour work weekly.
417. 00:24:57 It's very inward focused.
418. 00:24:59 I was just thinking that.
419. 00:25:01 It's not necessarily outward, but I think in this particular scenario, I don't think
420. 00:25:05 Scott would say that we're wrong in saying that.
421. 00:25:11 I think it's just all and what your intent is behind it, because I didn't really get
422. 00:25:16 that this has to be internal focused.
423. 00:25:18 Yeah.
424. 00:25:19 That makes sense.
425. 00:25:20 Did I misinterpret it?
426. 00:25:21 I don't know.
427. 00:25:22 I mean, the definition that he uses of ultra learning in the next chapter is a strategy for
428. 00:25:26 acquiring skills and knowledge that is both self-directed and intense.
429. 00:25:29 The key thing that I get stuck on in the previous section is that the interest tend towards
430. 00:25:36 obsession.
431. 00:25:37 When you're obsessed with something, nothing else matters.
432. 00:25:41 The people who go to a country to learn a language in three months, I think that's fine.
433. 00:25:46 I don't necessarily think that act is inherently selfish or anything like that, but let's just
434. 00:25:54 paint out hypothetical here, assuming you don't have somebody at home that's waiting for you.
435. 00:25:58 You have the flexibility and the freedom to do that.
436. 00:26:01 You go to a new country and your objective is to learn this language.
437. 00:26:06 So every person that you talk to, the value that you're ascribing to them is as a tool
438. 00:26:12 to help you learn that language, correct?
439. 00:26:15 That's fair.
440. 00:26:16 Yeah.
441. 00:26:17 So you go there, you meet somebody who is completely enamored with you, but you're just
442. 00:26:23 so obsessed with, no, I really don't have even have time for that right now because I got
443. 00:26:27 to learn this language.
444. 00:26:28 You're missing out.
445. 00:26:30 You're missing the main thing, right?
446. 00:26:32 So recognizing that the people in the relationships, that's the valuable thing.
447. 00:26:36 And that's the piece that's missing here because it's by definition self-directed.
448. 00:26:40 There's nobody else involved with this.
449. 00:26:43 And if you're obsessive about it, this is dominating your time.
450. 00:26:46 It's dominating your attention, like nothing else or at least everything else is secondary
451. 00:26:50 to this.
452. 00:26:51 And I know like, as he talks about how you can apply this, you can do it in small chunks,
453. 00:26:57 but that's kind of going against the picture that he's painting here at the beginning of
454. 00:27:02 like, you just got to go hard on this thing for a short period of time, then you've got
455. 00:27:05 it, then you move on to the next thing.
456. 00:27:08 I don't know, that just doesn't seem appealing to me.
457. 00:27:13 Yeah.
458. 00:27:14 No, I think I get your point.
459. 00:27:18 I think this is potentially a classic example of I'm trying to translate it into how I
460. 00:27:24 could use the information here.
461. 00:27:27 And as opposed to taking it as he says it, like point blank.
462. 00:27:32 So this is where I think I'm coming at this from the stance of, yes, I'm okay doing smaller
463. 00:27:39 pieces because I do have some projects that I am going to apply some of these principles
464. 00:27:44 to.
465. 00:27:45 I still haven't figured out how to word it into an action item.
466. 00:27:49 So maybe by the time we're done here, I'll get it figured out.
467. 00:27:52 But this is where I'm trying to extrapolate the principles or his way of coming at this
468. 00:28:00 because I think the core of what I picked up from the definition of ultra learning and
469. 00:28:08 the examples he gives of people who have done it is that if you want to learn a skill and
470. 00:28:12 you want to retain that and be extremely good at it, this is an excellent way to do that
471. 00:28:19 really fast.
472. 00:28:20 Now, do you have to do it really fast?
473. 00:28:23 No, of course not.
474. 00:28:27 Should you do it fast?
475. 00:28:28 That's your call.
476. 00:28:30 It really depends on how quickly you need it for whatever your mission is, whatever your
477. 00:28:34 intent or purpose is behind wanting to learn the skill.
478. 00:28:38 Like I tell students this all the time who want to get into programming, well, show me
479. 00:28:42 the apps that you're building.
480. 00:28:45 If you want to get into programming, that's the way you need to do it because I talked
481. 00:28:48 to a high school student here just two days ago who is taking programming classes and
482. 00:28:54 they're teaching Java.
483. 00:28:55 I don't know anyone firsthand who is building applications in the real world on Java.
484. 00:29:01 Everyone is leaving Java from what I can tell and they're still teaching it.
485. 00:29:05 So come at me if you're a programmer and you love Java, but I just don't understand why
486. 00:29:10 they continue to do that.
487. 00:29:12 So that's why I ask these students, like, what are you building?
488. 00:29:15 What is it you're doing in the real world because that is where you're going to learn
489. 00:29:19 all the nuances and the subtleties of that particular skill set.
490. 00:29:24 That's I think the mindset that I'm pulling out of this in order to apply it to what I
491. 00:29:30 do on a day to day basis because I would love to take some of these ideas and potential
492. 00:29:37 skill sets and condense down the learning process on them so that I could become more
493. 00:29:43 proficient in them quicker.
494. 00:29:44 I could see doing that in some cases.
495. 00:29:46 Like I've wanted to pick up photography for a long time.
496. 00:29:50 I could see taking a lot of this methodology and using that in order to pick up photography
497. 00:29:56 at a higher level.
498. 00:29:59 Do I have the time to just say I'm going to go make money at being a photographer and
499. 00:30:03 then dedicate three months of doing that?
500. 00:30:05 No, that's ridiculous to me.
501. 00:30:07 Like I would not do that, but I would maybe spend three or four hours a week in 30 to 45
502. 00:30:13 minute chunks working on it using this mindset.
503. 00:30:18 Like I would definitely do that.
504. 00:30:20 But again, I'm simplifying it, which is what I tend to do.
505. 00:30:25 Well, that's actually a good jumping off point for how to become an ultra learner.
506. 00:30:29 There's a couple different things that he mentions here in chapter two about why ultra
507. 00:30:34 learning matters.
508. 00:30:35 He has three cases where ultra learning new skills can apply and that is accelerating
509. 00:30:41 the career that you have transitioning to a new career, cultivating a hidden advantage
510. 00:30:45 in a competitive world.
511. 00:30:46 The thing that's missing from all of those is obviously the personal stuff, but he does
512. 00:30:49 say that you can apply ultra learning to either your personal life or your work life.
513. 00:30:55 There's a lot of reasons why ultra learning is important if you are looking to climb the
514. 00:31:01 corporate ladder or develop the skills that are going to set you apart from everybody
515. 00:31:06 else in the workplace.
516. 00:31:07 I think that's where a lot of the Cal Newport deep work stuff maybe comes into play.
517. 00:31:11 Ultra learning is the method that you can use if you want to get to the point in the
518. 00:31:16 quickest possible, the shortest possible path, to setting yourself apart from everybody else
519. 00:31:21 would be applying ultra learning.
520. 00:31:24 And there's three ways to do that, which there's new part time projects like you were
521. 00:31:29 talking about where you're doing it in smaller chunks.
522. 00:31:32 He says that one, but I kind of feel like it's a concession.
523. 00:31:35 Like he's got to throw it out there because he knows otherwise no one else will.
524. 00:31:38 Everybody who's working in nine to five is going to be like, well, there's no way I can
525. 00:31:41 do this.
526. 00:31:43 But the other two are learning sabbaticals and then re-imaginating it, re-imagining existing
527. 00:31:48 learning efforts.
528. 00:31:50 So if you are going to school for something, you know, how can you create your own education
529. 00:31:56 system where you can develop those skills faster, I really like the idea of the learning
530. 00:32:00 sabbatical where you just take off three months to go to a country and learn a language.
531. 00:32:05 That's his kind of definition of a learning sabbatical.
532. 00:32:08 Don't think that that one applies to me re-managing existing learning efforts, probably not applying
533. 00:32:13 to me new part time projects.
534. 00:32:15 Yeah, that one could apply to me.
535. 00:32:18 And it's interesting because some of the stories that he shares in here, like kind of
536. 00:32:23 hit a chord with me.
537. 00:32:25 There's one in chapter three about actually how to become an ultra learner where he mentions
538. 00:32:31 he did this test and there were 12 readers of his blog.
539. 00:32:34 One of them was this guy named Tristan DiMontabella who decided to try and apply ultra learning
540. 00:32:40 to public speaking.
541. 00:32:42 And if I remember right, English was his second language.
542. 00:32:47 So he joined a Toastmasters group and then six weeks after he joined was the deadline
543. 00:32:55 for competing for the world championship of public speaking.
544. 00:32:57 I'm pretty sure it was two weeks.
545. 00:32:59 Maybe I typed that wrong.
546. 00:33:00 It was pretty short.
547. 00:33:01 It was quick.
548. 00:33:02 Yeah, he had to do 10 speeches in a couple of weeks basically in order to qualify to even
549. 00:33:09 compete in this world championship of public speaking.
550. 00:33:12 Now there's several different levels to this.
551. 00:33:14 I have competed in this, not at the world championship level, but there's the club level.
552. 00:33:21 And then I always get these mixed up.
553. 00:33:22 There's like an area level and then a division level, I believe.
554. 00:33:27 And then from there, if you make it past the division level, that's where you're competing
555. 00:33:31 against everybody in the, they picked the world champion, which by the way, a derivative
556. 00:33:39 of that is the humorous speech contest.
557. 00:33:41 I think I've told the story before.
558. 00:33:43 I entered the humorous speech contest because it was a skill I wanted to develop and I recognize
559. 00:33:49 I didn't have.
560. 00:33:51 And I ended up going as far as I could with that, which is a division level.
561. 00:33:55 There is no world championship of humorous for the humorous speech contest in Toastmasters.
562. 00:34:00 But the division level for the division I'm in is the entire state of Wisconsin and the
563. 00:34:05 UP of Michigan.
564. 00:34:07 So I lost in the finals of the humorous speech contest to a professional comedian.
565. 00:34:14 So it did not feel bad about that.
566. 00:34:16 Well I was there.
567. 00:34:18 I met the keynote speaker there was a guy named Aaron Beverly and he actually did some coaching
568. 00:34:24 with me and he recently, last year was the world champion of public speaking for Toastmasters.
569. 00:34:33 So that's pretty cool.
570. 00:34:34 I'll put a link to his speech in the show notes.
571. 00:34:37 Josh pointed that out to me.
572. 00:34:39 He's like, hey, didn't she used to work with Aaron Beverly?
573. 00:34:40 Yeah.
574. 00:34:41 And he's like, well, he won.
575. 00:34:42 Oh, that's cool.
576. 00:34:43 I just looked it up.
577. 00:34:44 DeMannabelo showed up to his first Toastmasters meeting 10 days before the deadline to be eligible
578. 00:34:51 to compete in the world championship of public speaking.
579. 00:34:53 Yeah, so you were right two weeks.
580. 00:34:55 10 days.
581. 00:34:56 Let's nuts.
582. 00:34:57 Now I cranked through, I thought, my speeches and I, when you do those first 10 speeches,
583. 00:35:03 you get what's called a CC a competent communicator.
584. 00:35:07 And then there's different levels after that all the way up to distinguished Toastmaster,
585. 00:35:11 your DTM, that's kind of like the highest level you can have just from the accomplishments
586. 00:35:15 that you do in the club.
587. 00:35:17 And then there's like these contests too.
588. 00:35:20 But he wasn't really worried about achieving a certain level he just wanted to do what he
589. 00:35:24 needed to do in order to compete.
590. 00:35:25 So he gave us 10 speeches and then then he qualified.
591. 00:35:29 Now I understand how hard that is because I did mine and people thought I was flying
592. 00:35:36 through these in about 10 months.
593. 00:35:38 I basically did like one a month, which is difficult, especially for someone like me
594. 00:35:45 who tends to memorize their speeches.
595. 00:35:47 Yeah.
596. 00:35:48 But so I have a frame of reference here for what he actually did.
597. 00:35:55 And I was completely fine going through it in the period of 10 months.
598. 00:36:00 There is absolutely no way I would even attempt to do this in 10 days.
599. 00:36:03 That just seems stupid to me.
600. 00:36:04 Yeah.
601. 00:36:05 Like good job Tristan, but there's no way I'm going to do that.
602. 00:36:10 I'll sit back and watch.
603. 00:36:12 Well, here's the other thing, right?
604. 00:36:14 So he's competing and I forget in the book they mentioned like what place he took.
605. 00:36:18 So he actually did do pretty well.
606. 00:36:20 He made it into the top 10.
607. 00:36:21 Top 10, that's right.
608. 00:36:22 And then from there he started a coaching business with his mentor that he found in
609. 00:36:26 his Toastmasters group and it kind of changed his professional life.
610. 00:36:30 I think that's kind of the impact story that Scott was going for there.
611. 00:36:35 It was like, look how this changed his life.
612. 00:36:38 But you're not completely changing your life every 10 days.
613. 00:36:41 Like he got to pick the projects that are really important.
614. 00:36:45 But to me, I knew I wanted to develop my public speaking skills.
615. 00:36:50 So I applied myself and developed these skills and me speaking into a microphone even right
616. 00:36:56 now is very different than me before I attended a Toastmasters meeting.
617. 00:37:00 I listened back to some of my old podcast episodes and hear all the umbs and all the filler
618. 00:37:05 words and I'm like, man, you're horrible.
619. 00:37:07 Of course, I don't listen to you hear that because I always edit those out.
620. 00:37:12 Oh, of course you do.
621. 00:37:13 But the live people know it, the live people know.
622. 00:37:16 So um, there we go.
623. 00:37:18 What I'm trying to wrap my head around here is like, is there something wrong with my
624. 00:37:24 approach because on the surface, I've kind of got the same goal.
625. 00:37:30 In fact, when I started working with Aaron Beverly, he asked me what my goal was and I'm
626. 00:37:35 like, well, I want to compete at the world.
627. 00:37:37 I want to be a finalist in the world championship of public speaking.
628. 00:37:40 I know you've gotten there.
629. 00:37:41 Like you can help me get there.
630. 00:37:42 I'm willing to do the work, right?
631. 00:37:45 And then a bunch of work stuff happened and we kind of lost touch and I didn't have the
632. 00:37:48 time to do it and trying to feed my family, all that kind of stuff, right?
633. 00:37:52 So life happened basically.
634. 00:37:55 And that got put on that got put on pause.
635. 00:37:58 But even before then, I was okay with developing the proficiency and the skills without getting
636. 00:38:05 the award.
637. 00:38:07 So while initially I wanted to, yeah, let's go for something big, right?
638. 00:38:14 What I realized as I progressed on that journey was that I achieved a level which for the
639. 00:38:20 time being was good enough.
640. 00:38:23 And with ultra learning, I don't think there's any room for that, I guess, in the definition
641. 00:38:32 that Scott Young puts forth.
642. 00:38:34 Like you're either doing this to achieve a certain level of mastery or you are failing
643. 00:38:41 because you're not doing it fast enough.
644. 00:38:45 And the whole goal is to get to the finish line, put a bow on this one and then go do
645. 00:38:50 it again somewhere else.
646. 00:38:54 And so my Toastmasters experience, I feel like I'm one through one perspective is kind
647. 00:39:00 of a wines with this.
648. 00:39:03 But from another perspective is like a textbook case of how not to ultra learn.
649. 00:39:08 Sure.
650. 00:39:09 Well, I think that there's, I think there's a lot to come from this and I get some of the
651. 00:39:17 qualms that can come from trying to be an ultra learner or the process of that.
652. 00:39:24 But let's dive into, he's got nine principles here of ultra learning that help you in achieving
653. 00:39:36 the best possible way of learning a skill or knowledge at the best of your ability.
654. 00:39:43 That's essentially what this is.
655. 00:39:46 Now his concept here is to condense it down, of course.
656. 00:39:51 But let's just kind of walk through these, Mike and try to explain each one.
657. 00:39:56 But I don't want to spend a ton of time on these because it really is a whole methodology
658. 00:40:02 of following and just being aware of each of these principles.
659. 00:40:06 And then I want to know if you're going to do an ultra learning project.
660. 00:40:09 That's ultimately what I want to know when we're all done with this.
661. 00:40:12 So principle number one, meta learning.
662. 00:40:17 Now whenever you choose your project, because this all starts with you choose your project
663. 00:40:22 and you decide what your mission or your goal is for that.
664. 00:40:27 So with public speaking, like in Mike's case, making it a finalist in the world championship
665. 00:40:31 of speaking.
666. 00:40:33 So if that's the goal, first what you'd have to do is figure out what are the metrics
667. 00:40:40 around that.
668. 00:40:41 What are the specific pieces of it?
669. 00:40:43 So you're planning your project and learning what it is that you need to learn.
670. 00:40:48 So you have to start with a research base and learn about the thing you want to then
671. 00:40:54 learn in the reality, thus meta learning.
672. 00:40:57 You're learning about the learning process for that.
673. 00:41:00 Now if you're into computer programming or want to learn computer programming, you would
674. 00:41:04 learn like, what is a computer program?
675. 00:41:07 What does it look like?
676. 00:41:08 I even had some relatives at one point asked me like, people talk about coding all the
677. 00:41:13 time.
678. 00:41:14 I don't even know what code looks like.
679. 00:41:15 What is code?
680. 00:41:16 Like here, let me show you.
681. 00:41:17 Like I've got it on my phone.
682. 00:41:19 Like I will put it right here in front of you.
683. 00:41:22 Even that level can be helpful.
684. 00:41:25 But before you get anywhere, you have to learn what the mechanics are of the skill that you
685. 00:41:30 want to pick up before you ever jump in.
686. 00:41:32 Yes.
687. 00:41:33 So as I, as you were describing that, I was thinking back to Tim Ferriss and how he won
688. 00:41:39 the Chinese kickboxing championship.
689. 00:41:43 A cheating?
690. 00:41:44 Because he was meta learning and he was doing the research prior to competing and he found
691. 00:41:47 the loophole that he could exploit.
692. 00:41:50 Right.
693. 00:41:51 Finding the loopholes and exploiting them, I think definitely fits into this definition
694. 00:41:56 of meta learning, which doesn't necessarily leave a great taste in my mouth.
695. 00:42:02 But I think it's a good example of what he's saying and you don't have to use it in a negative,
696. 00:42:08 in a negative sense where you're trying to game the system, so to speak.
697. 00:42:11 Right.
698. 00:42:12 Really, it's like you said, doing the research before and after your ultra learning project.
699. 00:42:17 So in the short term, you know, and then in the long term, the more ultra learning projects
700. 00:42:21 you do, the larger you set a general ultra learning skills become because you start to
701. 00:42:24 connect all these things and tie them all together.
702. 00:42:27 So this is something that probably a lot of people, and I think myself included kind of
703. 00:42:34 struggle with where you get an idea for I want to do this thing and then you just start
704. 00:42:39 doing it without really digging into what are all the moving pieces here.
705. 00:42:46 Now I kind of think that's okay.
706. 00:42:50 You can start doing something and then realize that well, actually this thing in this form
707. 00:42:56 isn't what really moves the needle for me, but it does show me that this ancillary thing
708. 00:43:03 over here, that sounds really intriguing.
709. 00:43:06 I'm going to try that thing.
710. 00:43:08 I feel like without doing all the research, you can kind of experiment and make those
711. 00:43:13 connections.
712. 00:43:14 If you're trying to find some stuff that really is fulfilling to you in that sense, maybe
713. 00:43:21 you don't want to to all train, maybe you want to, I don't know what what the opposite
714. 00:43:27 of that would be experiment.
715. 00:43:29 That's part of the process though.
716. 00:43:30 So I don't know.
717. 00:43:32 But I just think when it comes to the research prior to embarking on a project, you don't
718. 00:43:39 want to overthink it necessarily.
719. 00:43:41 And that's what I tend to do.
720. 00:43:44 I will either, okay, so let me back up a little bit.
721. 00:43:46 I will either jump in with no clue of what I'm doing and just try some things or I will
722. 00:43:52 sit there and research it to death.
723. 00:43:54 I have trouble reading this section on meta learning and finding the point where, okay,
724. 00:44:00 this is enough research that now this is the optimal point for moving forward in learning
725. 00:44:05 this skill or embarking on this project in the most efficient way possible.
726. 00:44:12 That just doesn't seem to work for me.
727. 00:44:14 Yeah.
728. 00:44:15 My wife does this.
729. 00:44:16 She researches to no end.
730. 00:44:18 There are a lot of times I've told her, it's like, okay, here's a deal.
731. 00:44:22 You get one hour.
732. 00:44:24 I want a decision in one hour.
733. 00:44:26 Yeah.
734. 00:44:27 And that's really the way to fix it.
735. 00:44:29 I mean, he does give you a rule of thumb that if you're going to spend a budget of so many
736. 00:44:34 hours on this thing, you should invest about 10% of your expected learning time doing the
737. 00:44:38 research prior to jumping in.
738. 00:44:40 Right.
739. 00:44:41 And then you do continue to do the research as you learn, but at that point, there's diminishing
740. 00:44:45 returns.
741. 00:44:46 Yeah.
742. 00:44:47 So you're not doing as much of it.
743. 00:44:48 So principle number two, focus, sharpen your knife.
744. 00:44:54 When you think about it, whenever you start your project, whenever you have your sessions,
745. 00:44:58 when you're doing your ultra learning, you essentially need hyper focus to stay on task.
746. 00:45:05 Yep.
747. 00:45:06 Essentially, what I came away from this was this is a summarized version of how you should
748. 00:45:12 do deep work.
749. 00:45:14 Obviously, Scott Young is a fan of Cal Newport.
750. 00:45:18 And this is kind of a quick and dirty tips and tricks for beat procrastination, avoid
751. 00:45:24 distraction, stay focused on your task.
752. 00:45:28 That's what this is.
753. 00:45:29 Yes.
754. 00:45:30 So this section, I've got really two different breakdowns in my mind.
755. 00:45:35 Notifile.
756. 00:45:36 One is the three problems of focus, feeling to start focusing, feeling to sustain focus,
757. 00:45:40 feeling to create the right kind of focus.
758. 00:45:42 And then he's got tactics that go along with each one of those.
759. 00:45:45 If you have read anything in the productivity space in the last 10 years, you already know
760. 00:45:49 what's in there.
761. 00:45:50 Yes.
762. 00:45:51 The other section is how you can develop your ability to focus.
763. 00:45:56 This is interesting to me because the two things he really says here are recognize where
764. 00:46:02 you are and start there.
765. 00:46:04 And I quote, "Start small and slowly increase."
766. 00:46:10 So apparently, you can't ultra learn the ability to focus.
767. 00:46:16 That's a fascinating point.
768. 00:46:18 I didn't catch that one.
769. 00:46:20 Well done, Mike.
770. 00:46:21 Did you just find a loophole in the whole ultra learning process?
771. 00:46:23 Well, I don't know.
772. 00:46:26 I do admit that as soon as I read that, I'm like, "Okay."
773. 00:46:32 So this is very different than all the other advice that you've given us.
774. 00:46:35 And yeah, it's a little bit different because this is like, there's physiological stuff going
775. 00:46:38 on here that you really can't control.
776. 00:46:42 You're not going to go to the gym and ultra learn the ability to bench press 400 pounds
777. 00:46:47 either.
778. 00:46:48 You know, you have to, there are certain limitations there.
779. 00:46:51 But when it comes to your brain, it's kind of like those all get, those all get, get,
780. 00:46:58 get shocked like they don't really matter.
781. 00:47:01 Sure.
782. 00:47:02 And I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle that maybe your brain is a phenomenal
783. 00:47:08 supercomputer that can move a little bit faster than other things that you might, you might
784. 00:47:15 imagine.
785. 00:47:16 Like if you were to chart growth physically from going to the gym and mentally from ultra
786. 00:47:23 learning, that curve probably is quite a bit higher because of the neuroplasticity and
787. 00:47:29 stuff like that.
788. 00:47:31 But there are, I believe, limits there, which come out in the advice that he gives you right
789. 00:47:37 here.
790. 00:47:38 Sure.
791. 00:47:39 So the whole idea of ultra learning then does have to be framed of there are places where
792. 00:47:46 this works and places where it doesn't.
793. 00:47:49 And I don't think that's necessarily a knock against ultra learning, but it also opens
794. 00:47:56 up the argument of, well, maybe ultra learning isn't the right thing here.
795. 00:48:02 Insert whatever arena you might be considering applying this to.
796. 00:48:06 Sure.
797. 00:48:07 Yeah.
798. 00:48:08 I don't know.
799. 00:48:09 I think the focus piece here is helpful.
800. 00:48:12 Like I get that.
801. 00:48:15 But again, it's a muscle that you need to build up over time.
802. 00:48:20 I like your point about you can't just go ultra learn how to lift 400 pounds on the bench,
803. 00:48:25 but you also can't go ultra learn how to stay focused for six hours straight.
804. 00:48:31 Like that's, this is not going to happen without a long period of time and building up that
805. 00:48:36 muscle.
806. 00:48:37 So there is a bit of a physical and physiological barrier here, but he does call out meditation
807. 00:48:43 here, Mike.
808. 00:48:44 He does.
809. 00:48:45 Of course, I noticed that still on my, my, my current trajectory of meditating regularly.
810. 00:48:52 So and you're using Oak.
811. 00:48:54 Correct.
812. 00:48:55 I'm not using 10% happier.
813. 00:48:57 Are you?
814. 00:48:58 So did you subscribe?
815. 00:48:59 I did.
816. 00:49:00 That's how I got myself to do it.
817. 00:49:01 This is interesting.
818. 00:49:02 I figured if I put money towards it, I would actually follow through.
819. 00:49:05 Did, okay, this is a tangent now, but I did you play with like headspace or calm or any
820. 00:49:13 of the more major ones.
821. 00:49:15 I used to be a calm user way back when I first tried it.
822. 00:49:20 I was on calm and then they moved to a subscription model that was like 40 bucks, 50 bucks a
823. 00:49:26 year or something like that.
824. 00:49:28 Yep.
825. 00:49:29 And in my mind, that was ridiculous.
826. 00:49:32 Currently it's 60.
827. 00:49:33 Is it?
828. 00:49:34 Okay.
829. 00:49:35 Maybe that was the discount price because I was a part of their system before that.
830. 00:49:40 But then I played around with Oak for a while, but then it's like, well, I like Oak, but
831. 00:49:45 I kind of wanted some of the guided stuff.
832. 00:49:48 So I looked at headspace for some reason.
833. 00:49:50 I just didn't like it.
834. 00:49:52 And I figured, well, if anything, I'm going to give 10% happier a try and I liked it.
835. 00:49:59 So they at least have a trial that I could play around with it before I jump in.
836. 00:50:04 But I like that one.
837. 00:50:05 Well, it's interesting.
838. 00:50:06 I'm experimenting with all of these for an article that's going to come out on the
839. 00:50:09 sweet setup at some point.
840. 00:50:11 Yeah.
841. 00:50:12 So literally this week I've downloaded all of these.
842. 00:50:15 Interesting.
843. 00:50:16 They basically all have a trial now.
844. 00:50:17 Yeah.
845. 00:50:18 I don't know if that's an iOS 13.
846. 00:50:20 Some of them you can use the sign in with Apple things so you can keep your email private
847. 00:50:25 if you want to cancel it.
848. 00:50:27 And I know I know 10% happier does that now too.
849. 00:50:30 Yep.
850. 00:50:31 10% happier.
851. 00:50:32 Definitely has the best design.
852. 00:50:34 It supports the native dark mode.
853. 00:50:35 It looks great, but it's also the most expensive.
854. 00:50:38 It's a hundred bucks a year.
855. 00:50:39 It is.
856. 00:50:40 And even Headspace now is I think the same price as Calm are very similar.
857. 00:50:44 It's here $60 or $70 a year.
858. 00:50:46 It used to be like one of those you get 40% off the first year, then it recurs at like
859. 00:50:51 $130 a year.
860. 00:50:53 Right.
861. 00:50:54 And that's not the case anymore.
862. 00:50:55 It seems like the market for meditation apps has kind of leveled out.
863. 00:51:00 Do about that $50, $60 a year.
864. 00:51:02 I will say this.
865. 00:51:03 The 10% happier.
866. 00:51:05 Like they a lot of like Headspace and such like they have these guided lessons, if you
867. 00:51:13 will, as either part of or before the meditation itself.
868. 00:51:20 And the 10% happier lessons really resonated with me.
869. 00:51:25 Okay.
870. 00:51:26 Like they for whatever reason, the way that they are explaining things because they do
871. 00:51:30 kind of like an interview process with a couple of folks before the actual guided meditation
872. 00:51:36 to teach you the purpose of that meditation before you do it.
873. 00:51:42 That to me was gold like that.
874. 00:51:45 That's what sold me on it.
875. 00:51:46 Yeah, those are cool.
876. 00:51:47 So anyway, let's move past focus.
877. 00:51:50 Principle number three, directness.
878. 00:51:53 The easiest way I can think to explain this is with an example and it might be a dig on
879. 00:51:58 you in the process, Mike.
880. 00:51:59 All right.
881. 00:52:00 Apologies before I get there.
882. 00:52:01 Let's do it.
883. 00:52:02 Directness.
884. 00:52:03 If you want to learn a language, taking yourself to an area where people speak that language
885. 00:52:11 is the most direct way that you can learn that like putting yourself in the scenario
886. 00:52:15 where you are actually using those skills all day long every day.
887. 00:52:23 Another example of this would be like if you wanted to learn to do programming, like
888. 00:52:27 what I mentioned earlier, go build software.
889. 00:52:30 Like that's what you would do.
890. 00:52:32 That would be the direct route with the language piece.
891. 00:52:36 He actually in this book on page 90 because I wrote it down.
892. 00:52:40 He actually has a dig on Duolingo.
893. 00:52:42 He does.
894. 00:52:44 Of how Duolingo uses gamification of sorts in order to help you memorize things, but it
895. 00:52:52 doesn't allow you to fully engage with the language in its entirety.
896. 00:53:00 I know that Duolingo is your primary way of learning a second language at the moment,
897. 00:53:05 so I'm curious what your thoughts were on this particular chapter.
898. 00:53:09 Yes.
899. 00:53:11 The quote that I wrote down in this section on Duolingo because I definitely wanted to
900. 00:53:17 talk about this too.
901. 00:53:18 He says it provides English words and sentences and then asks you to pick words from a word
902. 00:53:22 bank to translate them.
903. 00:53:25 That is the description that he gives for Duolingo, which is in my experience, limited
904. 00:53:33 experience admittedly as a Duolingo user.
905. 00:53:37 That is the surface level of the app.
906. 00:53:39 So the way that it's broken down, there's basically like a knowledge tree that you work
907. 00:53:44 your way down from top to bottom, it gets progressively harder and there's built in
908. 00:53:47 checkpoints.
909. 00:53:49 And to move your way down the tree, you have to complete level one in each of these little
910. 00:53:53 areas, but there are up to five levels in each of those areas.
911. 00:54:00 So you can complete level one and get exactly what he's describing.
912. 00:54:06 When you get to level four, you're hearing the words being spoken in English or Spanish
913. 00:54:13 and then you're typing out the sentence.
914. 00:54:16 So I don't really think that's fair.
915. 00:54:19 And he does say in the footnote, in fairness to Duolingo, there are ways of using the app
916. 00:54:23 to get more direct forms of practice, but these tend to come only from repeatedly practicing
917. 00:54:27 the same lessons on the mobile version of the app.
918. 00:54:29 Not exactly true, Scott.
919. 00:54:32 If you're not just trying to fly through it to say there, I did it, then you're going
920. 00:54:37 to experience this the right way.
921. 00:54:40 But I do also, in fairness to him, see how he got to the conclusion that he did.
922. 00:54:50 My opinion on this is that Duolingo is not built for ultra learning, and that's the way
923. 00:54:56 I like it.
924. 00:54:58 Nice.
925. 00:54:59 All right.
926. 00:55:00 I was curious because he really did rip on it for quite a while.
927. 00:55:04 So that's why I was asking.
928. 00:55:05 He did. Now also, keep in mind, my goal is not to become fluent in Spanish and achieve
929. 00:55:11 a certain level.
930. 00:55:12 He talks about this.
931. 00:55:13 I forget what the language tests were that he mentioned, but there are tests that you
932. 00:55:21 can take and there's two levels at the very top and he was always shooting for at least
933. 00:55:27 the second level when he was trying to learn a language.
934. 00:55:29 That was his friend who learned like 18 languages.
935. 00:55:33 Yep. And then he basically was like, oh, that sounds like a good idea.
936. 00:55:36 I'm going to do it that way.
937. 00:55:38 And that's not what I'm trying to do.
938. 00:55:42 Number one, I don't know when I'm going to go to a Spanish speaking country again, or
939. 00:55:46 if I'm going to go to Spanish speaking country again, I probably will at some point, but
940. 00:55:50 the goal is not to, by the time I get there to be fluent and be able to speak Spanish and
941. 00:55:55 converse with people whenever I get there.
942. 00:55:57 It's just that I recognize that I have removed a bunch of things, which are time wasters
943. 00:56:04 on my phone, but the most effective way to break those bad habits and create new ones
944. 00:56:09 is to replace that with something else.
945. 00:56:12 So I'm going to put something that to me and Duolingo is entertaining and I'm learning
946. 00:56:17 something along the way.
947. 00:56:19 So that's going to have a whole bunch of ancillary benefits, not necessarily just associated
948. 00:56:24 with learning the language itself.
949. 00:56:27 Not for checking the box, but just causing my brain to have more dots to connect if that
950. 00:56:33 makes any sense.
951. 00:56:35 So that's really my objective here.
952. 00:56:37 And Scott Young would be like, well, that's dumb.
953. 00:56:42 Right.
954. 00:56:43 So different, different goals here, but I do want to share this because I was looking
955. 00:56:47 at this the other day.
956. 00:56:48 I'm going to post this in the live chat.
957. 00:56:52 I found a link and this is admittedly on the Duolingo forum, but it links to a study, which
958. 00:57:00 was an external study, which was started to chart the effectiveness of a tool like Rosetta
959. 00:57:07 Stone.
960. 00:57:08 And they found that if you buy Rosetta Stone and you practice 55 hours in Rosetta Stone,
961. 00:57:15 that's essentially the equivalent of one semester of college.
962. 00:57:19 Duolingo is completely free.
963. 00:57:22 Yes, there is a plus plan you can buy, but you can go through the whole thing for free
964. 00:57:27 and just watching the occasional ad.
965. 00:57:29 Duolingo takes 34 hours to achieve the equivalent of a semester of college.
966. 00:57:37 So I am happy to pick away at that 34 hours, five minutes here, five minutes there, rather
967. 00:57:43 than get a plan and put my life on hold so that I can learn a language.
968. 00:57:48 And again, different strokes for different folks.
969. 00:57:50 Like my situation is different than Scott's.
970. 00:57:53 I'm not going to walk away from my family for that length of time.
971. 00:57:57 Maybe he doesn't have those things holding them down.
972. 00:57:58 Maybe that is honestly the better, better option for somebody like him.
973. 00:58:05 But I don't know.
974. 00:58:07 I thought the whole description of Duolingo here kind of showed a certain level of ignorance
975. 00:58:16 of the product.
976. 00:58:17 I personally would not have said what he said about Duolingo because even for somebody like
977. 00:58:24 me who hasn't been using it super long, I think I sent you a screenshot.
978. 00:58:28 It's like 52 days in a row or something like that now.
979. 00:58:32 So I'm no expert in Duolingo, but I've been using it consistently and I can spot the
980. 00:58:38 holes in his arguments.
981. 00:58:39 And what that does is destroy credibility right or wrong.
982. 00:58:44 Not only is he attacking one of my preferred applications on my phone at the moment.
983. 00:58:51 So there's a little bit of defensiveness right there.
984. 00:58:53 But when you can see what he's saying and it's a very brief section, he doesn't unpack
985. 00:58:58 this all the way, right?
986. 00:59:00 He's just throwing something out there.
987. 00:59:01 And then you're like, "Well, you don't understand this.
988. 00:59:04 Maybe he does understand this."
989. 00:59:05 But the way he phrased it makes it seem like he doesn't completely understand it.
990. 00:59:10 And at that point, you're like, "Well."
991. 00:59:13 You done lost me.
992. 00:59:14 Exactly.
993. 00:59:15 And I feel like there's so much in here and there's so many different topics that he touches
994. 00:59:19 on where there are page, two pages.
995. 00:59:23 They could be entire books.
996. 00:59:25 It's very dangerous to try to summarize all of that stuff into just a couple of sentences
997. 00:59:30 or a couple of paragraphs.
998. 00:59:32 You've really got to be skilled in doing that or you're going to ostracize some people
999. 00:59:38 like me.
1000. 00:59:39 Sure.
1001. 00:59:40 Well, I'll take your word for it because I have no clue.
1002. 00:59:45 But the thing I do know is that the easiest way to learn a skill and to learn it really
1003. 00:59:49 well is be very direct about it.
1004. 00:59:51 Yep.
1005. 00:59:52 I'll pull this back onto the outline here.
1006. 00:59:53 I've got one other thing here for directness.
1007. 00:59:56 Oh, yeah.
1008. 00:59:57 You got more.
1009. 00:59:58 Yeah.
1010. 00:59:59 So I have worked for many years with a family business that sold software to special education,
1011. 01:00:06 specifically special education programs in schools.
1012. 01:00:10 And we have worked with programs that teach students with moderate to severe needs, which
1013. 01:00:17 at that point they're sometimes nonverbal, but a lot of times like can't read and you're
1014. 01:00:25 focusing on life skills, independent living skills.
1015. 01:00:29 So for many years, the family business has had a product called the functional skills
1016. 01:00:34 system where we will shoot live action video basically as soon as digital video was a thing.
1017. 01:00:40 We were doing this.
1018. 01:00:42 We would shoot live video of the correct way to perform a social skill in a specific situation
1019. 01:00:49 or even just like basic sign and word recognition so that when somebody is at school and they
1020. 01:00:55 can't read, they can still function independently because they know which is the boys restroom
1021. 01:01:01 and which is the girls restroom because they recognize the signs.
1022. 01:01:04 Makes sense?
1023. 01:01:05 It does.
1024. 01:01:06 Okay.
1025. 01:01:07 The interesting thing about this, because this has been effective for a very long time,
1026. 01:01:11 specifically with students with autism, this has kind of become the defacto way to develop
1027. 01:01:18 these skills with people.
1028. 01:01:20 Is this concept of video modeling?
1029. 01:01:22 So teachers and special education programs know this stuff works.
1030. 01:01:26 They know they can get these videos and that means that they don't have to physically take
1031. 01:01:29 the person to a job situation and put them in that, that have them experience your boss
1032. 01:01:36 asking you to come in on a Saturday when you don't want to.
1033. 01:01:39 And if you can show them the correct behavior, they can generalize that and they can apply
1034. 01:01:44 that to their situation.
1035. 01:01:47 So that's really the transfer that he's talking about in this directness chapter where you
1036. 01:01:52 learn something in one context and you transfer it to another.
1037. 01:01:56 And he talks about how this is a big problem in education.
1038. 01:02:01 So this whole idea of video modeling is interesting to me and he didn't really touch on video
1039. 01:02:07 modeling here, which I was kind of surprised that he didn't because I think this is one
1040. 01:02:12 of the most effective vehicles that anybody can use to transfer knowledge.
1041. 01:02:19 A lot of athletes use the concept of video modeling.
1042. 01:02:24 Michael Phelps famously, not only watch video of the right way to do things, he'll rehearse
1043. 01:02:31 it in his head.
1044. 01:02:32 There's kind of a famous story of his coach before he jumps in the pool.
1045. 01:02:35 He's like, "Put in the videotape."
1046. 01:02:37 And he's playing through in his head this mental rehearsal visualization basically that's
1047. 01:02:41 kind of at the heart of this video modeling concept.
1048. 01:02:44 He's visualizing himself in everything he's going to do the entire race and then he just
1049. 01:02:48 goes out and does it.
1050. 01:02:49 He doesn't have to think about it in the moment because he's seen it and he's rehearsed it
1051. 01:02:54 mentally so many times.
1052. 01:02:56 And there's a really interesting study about this, which it's kind of hard to find out
1053. 01:03:02 exactly where this was done.
1054. 01:03:04 There's a couple different places it's attributed to.
1055. 01:03:06 The most popular one I think is University of Chicago.
1056. 01:03:10 And just trying to summarize this real quickly.
1057. 01:03:11 They took three groups of students and they were all basketball players.
1058. 01:03:17 For 30 days, the first group practiced shooting free throws for an hour a day.
1059. 01:03:22 The second group did not touch a basketball, but they visualized themselves taking and
1060. 01:03:29 making free throws every single day.
1061. 01:03:31 And the third group did nothing.
1062. 01:03:34 So after 30 days, the difference, forget the specific numbers, I think it was like 28%
1063. 01:03:39 improvement for the ones that actually did it.
1064. 01:03:41 And there was only a 1% difference for the ones that practiced mental rehearsal visualization.
1065. 01:03:45 It was like 27%.
1066. 01:03:46 I may be screwing up those numbers, but the basic idea is that it was essentially the
1067. 01:03:51 same without physically doing the thing, which is kind of crazy when you think about it,
1068. 01:03:58 right?
1069. 01:03:59 Sure.
1070. 01:04:00 But that's what a lot of really successful athletes do is they'll look, they'll video
1071. 01:04:04 themselves doing something and then they'll just kind of redo that over and over and over
1072. 01:04:08 and over again in their head.
1073. 01:04:11 So I wanted to call that out in this directness chapter because I think depending on the skill
1074. 01:04:15 that you're trying to develop, obviously learning vocabulary, you can't apply video
1075. 01:04:20 modeling to, but pretty much anything physical.
1076. 01:04:23 This is a tool that you should definitely be using.
1077. 01:04:26 Sure.
1078. 01:04:27 No, I think that makes a lot of sense.
1079. 01:04:28 Alright, principle four, drill.
1080. 01:04:31 Attack your weakest point.
1081. 01:04:33 I don't really have a lot to say here other than once you're learning your skills, you
1082. 01:04:39 have to come up with ways to test yourself and make sure that you understand things.
1083. 01:04:45 If you go into the world of blogging, drilling yourself might be releasing blog posts because
1084. 01:04:50 they're kind of small tests to see how they work and get some of the feedback, which is
1085. 01:04:57 a later principle here we'll get to soon.
1086. 01:05:00 That concept of drilling yourself in order to continually improve is what you need to
1087. 01:05:04 be doing.
1088. 01:05:05 Yeah, there's one key concept I think which is worth calling out here.
1089. 01:05:09 The rate determining step, the story that he uses to illustrate this is kind of interesting.
1090. 01:05:15 By the way, each one of these principles he does open up with a story.
1091. 01:05:18 Some of the stories we've heard before, some of them were new.
1092. 01:05:22 This one on Benjamin Franklin at the beginning of this chapter was interesting because Benjamin
1093. 01:05:26 Franklin, the success that he had was because he was a great writer.
1094. 01:05:30 It was a skill that helped him in all of his other professional endeavors, but the way
1095. 01:05:36 that he became a good writer was that his father pointed out his arguments weren't very
1096. 01:05:41 good when he was engaged in a debate for the education of women.
1097. 01:05:47 He's like, "Well, I'm going to fix that."
1098. 01:05:48 He focused first on the mechanics of writing, then he moved on to vocabulary, and then style,
1099. 01:05:52 that would be persuasive.
1100. 01:05:53 This skill has provided benefit to him in all these different areas, but he had to recognize
1101. 01:05:59 that there was this thing that was holding him back, and then he attacked that thing.
1102. 01:06:04 And that thing changed as he developed those skills, but recognizing the rate determining
1103. 01:06:08 step actually in chemistry, this is like the bottleneck.
1104. 01:06:11 It's the slowest part in the chain reaction.
1105. 01:06:14 Scott Young is saying, "The same thing happens in learning, so what you should do is you should
1106. 01:06:19 pick that rate limiting step and you should drill on it over and over and over and over
1107. 01:06:24 and over again."
1108. 01:06:26 I think the easy application and example of this would be something like a musician.
1109. 01:06:32 I grew up playing Suzuki violin, classically trained.
1110. 01:06:36 I could play the four seasons by the time I was 12, but I couldn't sit down and jam with
1111. 01:06:42 somebody because this is how I was taught.
1112. 01:06:45 You listen to this thing and you find this tough section in the piece, and then you play
1113. 01:06:51 it slowly, and then you play it faster, and you play it faster, and you play it faster
1114. 01:06:55 until you're doing it at normal speed, and you play that one section maybe a hundred
1115. 01:06:58 times before you can actually play it without thinking about it.
1116. 01:07:03 So I have an example of this from my childhood that I can fall back on, but I can't think
1117. 01:07:09 of another one where I would actually want to apply this.
1118. 01:07:13 So can you help me out?
1119. 01:07:16 You have anything?
1120. 01:07:17 Well, that's why I brought up the blogging thing, because that's kind of where I do that.
1121. 01:07:23 Maybe newsletter too, but publishing things and actually releasing things is a form of
1122. 01:07:30 a drill in my mind.
1123. 01:07:32 So anytime I'm releasing...
1124. 01:07:34 Is there a rate determining step in there?
1125. 01:07:37 Not really.
1126. 01:07:38 Yeah, exactly.
1127. 01:07:39 I can't find another one.
1128. 01:07:41 I'm sure they're there, but I don't know, this whole chapter on this principle is kind
1129. 01:07:47 of like, "Look for this thing and then fix this thing."
1130. 01:07:50 Yeah.
1131. 01:07:51 And then I'm like, "Nah, I'll just write.
1132. 01:07:54 I'll just publish."
1133. 01:07:55 I'll do it the old school away.
1134. 01:07:58 Yeah.
1135. 01:07:59 I mean, this one for the long haul, I'm not trying to do it quickly.
1136. 01:08:03 And you know, maybe that's an argument against the whole doing it quick thing, because Benjamin
1137. 01:08:06 Franklin, which is his example, he did that over decades.
1138. 01:08:11 His writing process was not one that he perfected in a short amount of time and then just kept
1139. 01:08:15 doing it.
1140. 01:08:16 He spent a long time writing.
1141. 01:08:20 So how much of that was because he did the drills and how much of that was because he
1142. 01:08:26 just wrote a lot and published a lot.
1143. 01:08:29 Who knows?
1144. 01:08:31 Maybe a little bit of both.
1145. 01:08:32 So I think drilling does have some value.
1146. 01:08:35 If I were to summarize this though and kind of put it in terms for just about anybody
1147. 01:08:40 can apply this, I would say, forget the thing on the rate determining step for the most
1148. 01:08:44 part.
1149. 01:08:45 If you can really identify that, if it's really obvious, go for it.
1150. 01:08:48 But otherwise, just be intentional about drilling intentional practice.
1151. 01:08:53 It kind of comes back to the Anders Erickson book, Peak, that we read a while back.
1152. 01:08:58 In fact, Scott Young mentions Anders Erickson in that book specifically several times throughout
1153. 01:09:03 this.
1154. 01:09:04 The deliberate practice is really the thing.
1155. 01:09:06 You don't have to pick your weakest thing and make sure that this is the bottleneck and
1156. 01:09:11 that's the thing that you should be focusing on every time you sit down and practice or
1157. 01:09:14 drill, I would argue.
1158. 01:09:16 Sure.
1159. 01:09:17 Principle number five, retrieval, test to learn.
1160. 01:09:20 In other words, test yourself and figure out where you're at in the process.
1161. 01:09:26 But it's very important that your mechanism for retrieving the information or testing
1162. 01:09:33 yourself is done in a very certain way.
1163. 01:09:36 Now think about how you go about doing final exams and in college with cramming last minute.
1164. 01:09:44 You're trying to go over things quickly beforehand.
1165. 01:09:46 It's like one of the worst ways you can prepare for a final exam.
1166. 01:09:51 Another way of doing this is to rewrite the questions in a way that you can, like you're
1167. 01:10:00 forced to come up with the answers, but you don't really have the facts in front of you
1168. 01:10:04 to review them.
1169. 01:10:06 That's kind of a second, but you're still using material to get those questions.
1170. 01:10:10 The third way here and the one that he highly recommends and the one where his story comes
1171. 01:10:14 from is where you just try to write down what the answers are or even what the process
1172. 01:10:22 is, like what the methodology is.
1173. 01:10:25 You're trying to get this out of you without prompts.
1174. 01:10:30 And that is by far the best way to retrieve information.
1175. 01:10:34 Now, the story that he tells here is about a man named Srinivasa Ramanajan from India
1176. 01:10:41 who was an amazing mathematician.
1177. 01:10:46 And he had one book that had some equations in it, but it didn't explain where the equations
1178. 01:10:52 came from.
1179. 01:10:53 So he was trying to, without having the information of where these equations came from, was manufacturing
1180. 01:11:01 how to come up with this in his own ways, having no training whatsoever in mathematics.
1181. 01:11:07 And he was discovered because he sent some of his proofs solving these renowned problems
1182. 01:11:15 that no one could solve.
1183. 01:11:16 He had solutions to them and he sent them to people.
1184. 01:11:19 I forget the college.
1185. 01:11:20 It was an Ivy League school that he sent them to.
1186. 01:11:23 And this seems right, but his mechanism for getting there is just so weird that they couldn't
1187. 01:11:32 explain it.
1188. 01:11:33 If you want to know more about that story, there's actually a movie on Netflix about
1189. 01:11:36 it.
1190. 01:11:37 I've actually seen this.
1191. 01:11:38 It's actually a pretty good film.
1192. 01:11:39 So whenever they mentioned Ramanajan in the book, when Scott mentioned him, it's like,
1193. 01:11:44 "Oh, I know this story."
1194. 01:11:45 So some of what I just told you, I think I may have given more than what was in the
1195. 01:11:50 book, but if you want to know more about it, the man who knew infinity, it's on Netflix.
1196. 01:11:56 Go watch it.
1197. 01:11:57 All right.
1198. 01:11:58 I don't have a whole lot else to add to this section other than the desirable difficulty
1199. 01:12:05 thing.
1200. 01:12:07 He talks about how there's a certain level of hardness that helps things stick and low
1201. 01:12:17 intensity learning strategies usually involve U.S. or easier retrieval so they don't stick
1202. 01:12:23 as long.
1203. 01:12:24 I think there's some truth to that.
1204. 01:12:26 You should do hard things.
1205. 01:12:28 That kind of comes back to the discussion on grit that we had, the book by Angela Duckworth.
1206. 01:12:34 But I also don't think you have to apply ultra learning to something that is hard necessarily
1207. 01:12:41 to get the benefit from doing the hard thing.
1208. 01:12:44 I think these are two separate concepts here.
1209. 01:12:46 They're not tied together.
1210. 01:12:48 I think the process of ultra learning combined with desirable difficulty produces something
1211. 01:12:58 like cramming.
1212. 01:12:59 In fact, he says in this section, "The quicker you test yourself after learning something,
1213. 01:13:04 the more you're going to retain."
1214. 01:13:05 Anybody who has ever stayed up the night before a test to cram and then passed the exam recognizes
1215. 01:13:11 that that helps you in the short term, but in the long term, maybe not so much.
1216. 01:13:17 I don't know exactly.
1217. 01:13:20 He does kind of say later on that cramming is really not the right approach here.
1218. 01:13:26 In this section on desirable difficulty, it sounds like the goal being to pass a test.
1219. 01:13:33 Yeah, go ahead.
1220. 01:13:37 And I don't know.
1221. 01:13:40 Another example of how you can manipulate the system, I think, to achieve a desired outcome.
1222. 01:13:49 But holistically, that doesn't really jive with sustainability.
1223. 01:13:58 Not just in terms of retaining the information and being able to retrieve it later, but just
1224. 01:14:04 are you going to be alive when you're 16 years old if you continue to try all these different
1225. 01:14:10 ultra learning projects?
1226. 01:14:11 I think these got to be spaced out.
1227. 01:14:14 You got to pick and choose these.
1228. 01:14:16 The more sustainable long term thing is to not ultra learn, but to go at your own pace.
1229. 01:14:23 All right.
1230. 01:14:24 Well, the next principle is feedback, which-
1231. 01:14:27 I like this one.
1232. 01:14:28 This one I get, if you're going to continue to learn things, you really got to have good
1233. 01:14:33 feedback mechanisms that tell you if you're doing better or if you're learning what you
1234. 01:14:38 actually set out to learn.
1235. 01:14:40 This is one that just- it's what you would think it is.
1236. 01:14:44 You need feedback to know if you're progressing or not.
1237. 01:14:47 I don't really have anything else other to say than that.
1238. 01:14:50 This one, I'm trying to find this in my Amazon orders, but I read a book not too long ago.
1239. 01:14:58 It was not, I think, a gap book, but it was something that somebody in my mastermind group
1240. 01:15:05 told me about.
1241. 01:15:07 It was essentially how to give and receive feedback.
1242. 01:15:11 If I find it, I'll put the link in the show notes here.
1243. 01:15:16 But I do think this whole idea of feedback, this is really interesting.
1244. 01:15:19 Again, I've got a whole book on this that he's trying to condense it down into a couple
1245. 01:15:24 of pages.
1246. 01:15:25 It's Thanks for the Feedback by Douglas Stone, the science and art of receiving feedback
1247. 01:15:29 well.
1248. 01:15:31 I think that this chapter specifically, he mentions outcome feedback, information feedback,
1249. 01:15:37 creative or corrective feedback.
1250. 01:15:40 I think there's a lot of gold here.
1251. 01:15:42 The outcome feedback, the question this is really trying to answer is are you doing it
1252. 01:15:46 wrong?
1253. 01:15:47 It's going to tell you something about how you're doing, but it's not going to offer you any
1254. 01:15:50 ideas as to what you're doing better or worse.
1255. 01:15:52 It comes in the form of a grade like a C on a report card.
1256. 01:15:56 This is the easiest type of feedback to get, but it's not that useful.
1257. 01:16:00 The next one up is information feedback where you find out what you're doing wrong, so
1258. 01:16:04 it shows you what you need to fix, but it doesn't tell you how to fix it.
1259. 01:16:08 The example he uses here is a blank stare from somebody you're trying to communicate
1260. 01:16:11 with in another language.
1261. 01:16:13 Then there's corrective feedback, which is how can you fix what you're doing wrong?
1262. 01:16:17 This is typically available through a coach mentor or teacher.
1263. 01:16:20 This requires someone who can pinpoint your mistakes and correct them for you.
1264. 01:16:23 This is the highest level of feedback, but requires a correct answer from somebody who
1265. 01:16:26 knows what they're talking about.
1266. 01:16:29 This is where something like a mastermind group really is valuable.
1267. 01:16:32 In my opinion, he talks in this section about the problem of giving and receiving feedback,
1268. 01:16:40 being that sometimes people will receive it wrong.
1269. 01:16:43 They may say, "I want to know the truth," but you tell them the truth and they get offended
1270. 01:16:48 because you're attacking them in their minds, even though what you're trying to do is attack
1271. 01:16:54 the wrong behavior, if that makes any sense.
1272. 01:16:57 This is something that I think everybody should meditate on this for a little bit and think
1273. 01:17:02 about how they can apply this to life.
1274. 01:17:05 I feel like if you understand the sources that you're receiving feedback from and you
1275. 01:17:10 recognize whether they're any good and also grading the quality of the feedback that you
1276. 01:17:16 are getting from those sources, and if you're getting feedback from not high quality sources,
1277. 01:17:21 changing some of those sources, and then also being able to disassociate any corrective
1278. 01:17:27 feedback that you might get from an attack on your character, that is one of the quickest
1279. 01:17:32 ways to see positive improvement in your life, because you will quickly see the things
1280. 01:17:36 that you're doing wrong.
1281. 01:17:37 Sometimes you'll have people who will give you a prescriptive plan for fixing those things.
1282. 01:17:43 Other times, just recognizing that the thing is wrong, that's enough to correct it going
1283. 01:17:47 all the way back to the beginning of the episode where I was sharing my failures about
1284. 01:17:50 trying to make all this stuff work.
1285. 01:17:52 I recognized just because somebody had pointed out, "Hey, you're doing this wrong."
1286. 01:17:56 "Ah, you're right.
1287. 01:17:57 I'm doing it wrong again."
1288. 01:17:58 "I already know what to do to fix it."
1289. 01:18:00 I just get caught up in the default that it takes one of those outside perspectives to
1290. 01:18:06 put my focus backwards should be.
1291. 01:18:08 Sure.
1292. 01:18:09 Principle number seven, retention.
1293. 01:18:12 How do you hold on to all this stuff you're learning?
1294. 01:18:15 There's some science that goes into this, but the core of what I came away from this,
1295. 01:18:22 because I'm extrapolating out a little bit here in that maybe this is where I've got
1296. 01:18:28 some of the transfer from other things.
1297. 01:18:31 To me, whenever it comes to retaining information, it has to do with connecting it to existing
1298. 01:18:36 information in some form, whether it's a song, whether it's artwork, whether it's programming
1299. 01:18:44 concepts.
1300. 01:18:46 It could be mathematical number patterns.
1301. 01:18:50 I use a lot.
1302. 01:18:51 I don't know why number patterns work for me, but the whole concept to me is that you need
1303. 01:18:57 to connect the new information with something that's existing.
1304. 01:19:01 You have a note here on sketch noting, which I'm sure plays into this wholeheartedly.
1305. 01:19:09 For me it does.
1306. 01:19:10 Again, this is not something that I would say I have learned or developed because #ultrallearning.
1307. 01:19:17 I've been sketch noting for a couple of years now and it really has helped me.
1308. 01:19:24 It ties back.
1309. 01:19:25 The reason I got into this is I came across this study, which I will again put in the
1310. 01:19:31 chat here for the people who are listening live.
1311. 01:19:33 This is an Oppenheimer and Mueller study, I believe.
1312. 01:19:36 The pen is mitered in the keyboard.
1313. 01:19:38 The gist of this study says that students who took notes by hand tend to retain more
1314. 01:19:43 information than those who took notes with a computer because the people who typed their
1315. 01:19:49 notes could keep up word for word, but all they ended up with was an exact copy of what
1316. 01:19:54 people were saying, whereas when you're taking notes by hand, you can't keep up so you have
1317. 01:19:58 to synthesize this stuff.
1318. 01:20:00 That helps you retain the information.
1319. 01:20:02 For sketch noting, for me it does that to the nth degree because not only am I not able
1320. 01:20:08 to keep up with the words, I am taking those words and I am formulating them into a picture
1321. 01:20:15 and then that picture that I create, that is something that gets imprinted in my brain.
1322. 01:20:20 I've had this happen over and over and over again where I've captured something via SketchNote
1323. 01:20:24 has nothing to do with the quality of the drawing that I create.
1324. 01:20:28 I don't really think I'm that much of an artist to tell you the truth.
1325. 01:20:31 There's a lot of people who can do sketch noting a lot better than I can.
1326. 01:20:34 In fact, Mike Rodey, the SketchNote guy was recently on an episode of Focus, so we'll
1327. 01:20:40 put that in the show notes too.
1328. 01:20:43 I think that this is something that you can do to retain more information which again
1329. 01:20:51 doesn't necessarily jive with ultra learning necessarily, but I do think that it is a form
1330. 01:20:57 of the memory mechanism number four where he talks about how to prevent forgetting where
1331. 01:21:01 it's kind of like a mnemonic.
1332. 01:21:04 He says that the keyword method is something that he uses to take a foreign language and
1333. 01:21:09 convert it into something that sounds familiar and that's kind of how he remembers these things.
1334. 01:21:15 Sketchnoting takes these ideas which may be new and you create a picture based off of
1335. 01:21:20 things that you already know kind of to your point and then that helps it stick regardless
1336. 01:21:24 of how artistic you are.
1337. 01:21:28 Nice point.
1338. 01:21:31 Let's get through these last two.
1339. 01:21:33 Principle number eight, Intuition.
1340. 01:21:35 I have to say this is the one where his explanation I really struggled with.
1341. 01:21:42 The rest of these I can see, yep, get that one.
1342. 01:21:45 Check.
1343. 01:21:46 Oh, got that one.
1344. 01:21:47 Check.
1345. 01:21:48 But this one, I think I followed what he was saying, but all I came away from this with
1346. 01:21:56 was develop, experience and intuition will follow.
1347. 01:22:00 That's really all I came out of it with and I'm still not even sure that that's his point
1348. 01:22:05 in this.
1349. 01:22:06 Did you get this one?
1350. 01:22:07 Yeah.
1351. 01:22:08 So, the point he's trying to make is that people who are intuitive, people who are intuitive
1352. 01:22:14 problem solvers solve problems differently.
1353. 01:22:18 They use a principles first way of thinking whereas beginners will look at the superficial
1354. 01:22:25 features of the problem.
1355. 01:22:28 I don't have a great example of that, but basically the more you develop your skill and
1356. 01:22:36 intuition, you're able to see the connections of like things and it's not always surface
1357. 01:22:43 level.
1358. 01:22:44 Sometimes you have to dig a little bit deeper.
1359. 01:22:46 The one example I think where you can wrap your head around this maybe is the idea with
1360. 01:22:51 like the chess grandmasters.
1361. 01:22:54 They showed that somebody who is a chess grandmaster can memorize much more of the pieces on the
1362. 01:23:00 board than a beginner can, but when the pieces are just placed randomly like they would never
1363. 01:23:06 be in an actual game, then they are just as bad as the beginners at recreating that scenario
1364. 01:23:15 because they've played enough chess to create all of these mental patterns in their head.
1365. 01:23:21 So they just flip through those mental patterns and they piece them together when they recreate
1366. 01:23:26 the setting on the chess board.
1367. 01:23:29 It's kind of like the guy from Peak where he was learning to memorize all of the numbers.
1368. 01:23:36 Same sort of thing.
1369. 01:23:37 He's not trying to memorize all the individual numbers.
1370. 01:23:38 He's memorizing the patterns.
1371. 01:23:41 I don't think there's a very clear for me anyways process to developing intuition by memorizing
1372. 01:23:47 patterns in specific situations.
1373. 01:23:49 The one thing I can think of is as a guitar player kind of like the fretboard patterns
1374. 01:23:57 and the fingerings and things scales basically for the different keys and stuff like that.
1375. 01:24:02 I don't have a action item with that though.
1376. 01:24:08 There's nothing I'm going to do differently about learning scales.
1377. 01:24:10 I'm just going to play the scales on my book.
1378. 01:24:11 I'm not going to play ultra learning to this.
1379. 01:24:13 Okay, this pattern plus this pattern plus this pattern.
1380. 01:24:15 I'm just going to do it.
1381. 01:24:17 I'm not going to do it super fast.
1382. 01:24:18 I'm going to do it over time and it's going to provide the benefit I'm looking for.
1383. 01:24:24 My experience is I feel like I've tried to build up a lot of intuition over my work
1384. 01:24:29 life especially and I've been very intentional about how do I develop intuition in different
1385. 01:24:35 areas.
1386. 01:24:38 I find that personally the way that I do that is actually from his ninth principle, experimentation,
1387. 01:24:45 explore outside your comfort zone.
1388. 01:24:46 To me what I've found is like, okay, if I'm going to learn how to build a Rails application,
1389. 01:24:55 the best way for me to do that at one is to actually do it but then to play around with
1390. 01:24:59 it and figure out how it works.
1391. 01:25:01 And then as I've done that, I learn a bunch of ways that it does work and a bunch of ways
1392. 01:25:06 that it doesn't which means that whenever I come to it again in the future, my intuition
1393. 01:25:11 then tells me how I should be coming at it in a different way.
1394. 01:25:14 Or like whenever someone asks me, how would you do X?
1395. 01:25:18 Well, my gut tells me to do it this way.
1396. 01:25:22 Whether I've done it or not doesn't matter but my gut tells me to do it this way because
1397. 01:25:25 I've done so many things around it and I've experimented with things in so many different
1398. 01:25:29 ways that I can get there very quickly.
1399. 01:25:33 So that's ultimately what I learned.
1400. 01:25:36 So like to me those two should almost be lumped together but he broke them apart so we talk
1401. 01:25:41 them out them apart but all that to say, principle nine, experiment, get outside your comfort
1402. 01:25:47 zone, try new things, play and have fun.
1403. 01:25:50 Yeah and if I were to recreate this book based on my own system, this is the one that I would
1404. 01:25:57 start with.
1405. 01:25:58 Yeah, yeah.
1406. 01:26:01 But he puts it at the end and the reason that he does that is I think for ultra learning,
1407. 01:26:08 you start off with a very specific goal and so experimentation at this point in the process
1408. 01:26:14 really is just tucking in the corners of the thing that you have decided to focus on.
1409. 01:26:23 Whereas I think it's valuable at the beginning of the process because when you start a project,
1410. 01:26:28 you don't know a learning project let's say.
1411. 01:26:31 You don't know what you want this project necessarily to look like six months, six years
1412. 01:26:38 from now and he would say it doesn't matter because in three months you're going to be
1413. 01:26:41 done and you're moving on to the next one.
1414. 01:26:43 So I get it how he applies it here but again my advice would be do this at the beginning.
1415. 01:26:51 Yeah.
1416. 01:26:52 Learn all the things you don't know or at least experience all the things that you don't know
1417. 01:26:58 because there may be something in there that you really enjoy going back to my rock climbing
1418. 01:27:02 story from the last episode.
1419. 01:27:05 Right.
1420. 01:27:06 Had I not been forced to experiment, I never would have realized that I actually enjoy that
1421. 01:27:10 quite a bit.
1422. 01:27:12 Yeah.
1423. 01:27:13 And that doesn't mean I'm going to radically change my day to day but it could and I think
1424. 01:27:20 that's where doing it at the beginning of the process has the most value is you may stumble
1425. 01:27:24 upon something that you had no idea it wasn't even on your radar and you're like oh my gosh
1426. 01:27:28 this thing is amazing.
1427. 01:27:30 That's kind of how I got to where I am with a lot of the stuff that I do.
1428. 01:27:34 I started writing, I wasn't a writer, I started speaking, I wasn't a speaker, I started podcasting
1429. 01:27:41 like none of these things were on the radar at the beginning and it was experimentation
1430. 01:27:45 that kind of helped me find these things that really move the needle for me.
1431. 01:27:50 Sure.
1432. 01:27:51 Well after he goes through these nine principles so again those are meta learning, focus, directness,
1433. 01:27:58 drill, retrieval, feedback, retention, intuition and experimentation.
1434. 01:28:04 Once he goes through those nine, he then gets into your first ultra learning project which
1435. 01:28:11 at this point we're very well aware that Mike is going to be 100% on board with picking
1436. 01:28:16 out an ultra learning project.
1437. 01:28:17 Oh absolutely.
1438. 01:28:18 I'm quite certain.
1439. 01:28:19 I'm going to do my research, I'm going to schedule my time, I'm going to execute my plan, review
1440. 01:28:23 my results and then choose to maintain or master what I've learned.
1441. 01:28:26 That's exactly what I'm going to do.
1442. 01:28:28 Okay, sure.
1443. 01:28:29 Basically I saw this as a pep talk.
1444. 01:28:33 That's the way I saw it.
1445. 01:28:35 What's fascinating about this chapter is he actually talks about alternate strategies
1446. 01:28:40 here.
1447. 01:28:41 Low intensity habits in my mind, no file I put, this is my preference which works well
1448. 01:28:46 when the learning is spontaneous, there's a low frustration level and the learning itself
1449. 01:28:50 is automatically rewarding.
1450. 01:28:52 That's what I'm trying to do with Duolingo and learning Spanish.
1451. 01:28:54 There's nothing goal oriented attached to that whole practice for me.
1452. 01:29:00 It's just the act of doing it that's rewarding for me.
1453. 01:29:03 I don't know.
1454. 01:29:04 That's again a page or two but I feel like maybe at the end it's almost like a concession
1455. 01:29:11 where here's ultra learning.
1456. 01:29:14 By the way, this isn't going to work all the time so here's some other stuff but really
1457. 01:29:18 ultra learning.
1458. 01:29:19 I think if I'm going to do anything, I don't think I'm going to devote as much to this
1459. 01:29:25 and have it in a short time frame like what he calls for but I am going to be trying to
1460. 01:29:30 up my game with photography.
1461. 01:29:33 Primarily iPhone photography because I ain't spending money on it yet.
1462. 01:29:39 Maybe at some point I'll pick up a whole DSLR but until that time my phone is on.
1463. 01:29:44 The phone will do just fine.
1464. 01:29:47 I've already been pursuing that to some degree but I'm grateful for having read this because
1465. 01:29:53 there are a number of these principles that I want to apply to that.
1466. 01:29:58 In a small way here or there, I didn't mean to jump in action.
1467. 01:30:04 If I'm going to be doing anything, that's what it's going to be.
1468. 01:30:07 Most of this in my mind is just a great thing to learn.
1469. 01:30:12 I guess this is maybe a meta learning thing like the book itself is a meta learning process
1470. 01:30:17 just to like what is the learning process look like and how does that compare to say
1471. 01:30:21 the school system?
1472. 01:30:23 How is this different?
1473. 01:30:24 That to me was the big part.
1474. 01:30:26 I should know the last chapter in the book is called an unconventional education and
1475. 01:30:33 we've talked about the Polger sisters before the ones who yeah, had taught them chess from
1476. 01:30:38 the time they were like negative six days old and he trained them up to be chess champions
1477. 01:30:45 and to this day they are phenomenal.
1478. 01:30:48 That story is one that he tells.
1479. 01:30:51 It was kind of hard for me to read it because I felt like I've been told this story.
1480. 01:30:54 I don't know how many times now how many books have we had this story in.
1481. 01:30:58 It came out yet again and I kind of--
1482. 01:31:03 Interesting details with it though.
1483. 01:31:05 Yeah, I mean there are some more pieces to it that I didn't know beforehand but I kind
1484. 01:31:12 of got the impression that he was making a call for the opposite of what we read in range
1485. 01:31:19 like trying to become a generalist.
1486. 01:31:21 He's calling for people to become experts and specialists.
1487. 01:31:24 He's like, "No, that's not right."
1488. 01:31:27 That's what I was screaming in my head at the book as introverts do and this was something
1489. 01:31:34 that I was like, "No, not doing this."
1490. 01:31:38 He even has a section on how to raise an ultra learner and the steps are start early, specialize,
1491. 01:31:44 make practice into play, positive reinforcement and don't course learning.
1492. 01:31:48 But as soon as I read specialized, I immediately thought of range too.
1493. 01:31:51 Yep, it was hard to ignore at that point.
1494. 01:31:54 So I will not be doing that.
1495. 01:31:58 We'll likely try to use some of the principles in deep dive in a wide variety of areas but
1496. 01:32:04 I'm not going to focus on one, especially not in my kids.
1497. 01:32:07 Agreed.
1498. 01:32:08 Do you have any action items?
1499. 01:32:09 What are you going to ultra learn?
1500. 01:32:11 I really wanted to have an action item but I can't.
1501. 01:32:15 I mean we went through this point by point for the different principles.
1502. 01:32:19 I kind of thought we were going to just skip over a bunch of them but as we talked about
1503. 01:32:24 it, I realized that I basically was saying this is what he says but this is what I think
1504. 01:32:29 for every single one of these.
1505. 01:32:31 Yep.
1506. 01:32:32 So I think I disagree with a lot of this book.
1507. 01:32:36 I think Scott, well actually before we move on, do you have any action items?
1508. 01:32:41 Well, I'm just going to do the photography thing like trying to apply principles to
1509. 01:32:46 that.
1510. 01:32:47 I like maybe that'll come out on my Instagram feed.
1511. 01:32:51 So if you really want to go see some of those experiments and I'm Joe Buleg there like I
1512. 01:32:57 am everywhere else.
1513. 01:32:58 But that's likely the only thing I'm going to be doing but not really anything beyond
1514. 01:33:04 that.
1515. 01:33:05 To me, it's mostly a book of this is kind of cool information to know and just be aware
1516. 01:33:09 of.
1517. 01:33:10 I don't think I'm actually going to go through with this.
1518. 01:33:12 Right.
1519. 01:33:13 Okay.
1520. 01:33:14 So style and rating since I kind of started on that anyways, I'll go first.
1521. 01:33:19 The majority of this book, I found myself trying to understand what he said and then
1522. 01:33:24 immediately being defensive and stating it in a different way of how I think it actually
1523. 01:33:30 works.
1524. 01:33:31 That being said, I think the method that he uses can be effective.
1525. 01:33:38 You kind of can't argue with the results that he's been able to achieve with like the
1526. 01:33:42 MIT challenge.
1527. 01:33:44 I just hear him doing that and I'm like, why would anyone do that?
1528. 01:33:49 Again, my situation versus his probably where I just can't figure out how and why I would
1529. 01:33:56 want to go so hard on some stuff that really doesn't matter to me.
1530. 01:34:01 That's the thing.
1531. 01:34:02 I don't see a direct path forward to applying ultra learning on any specific skill for me
1532. 01:34:09 at the present.
1533. 01:34:11 But I do think that some of the stuff that he talks about is valuable.
1534. 01:34:15 I do think you kind of have to spit out the sticks.
1535. 01:34:18 You have to recognize that he's trying to condense a ton of principles into a simple
1536. 01:34:25 system.
1537. 01:34:27 To be honest, I don't think it really works.
1538. 01:34:29 I think that for the, like he's trying to be brief and that works against him sometimes.
1539. 01:34:37 I have no doubt that he is a brilliant guy.
1540. 01:34:39 He's got to be if he's hanging out with James Clear and Kell Newport.
1541. 01:34:44 Kind of when I saw this recommended and I saw that James Clear had written the introduction,
1542. 01:34:50 I'm like, oh, this book's going to be awesome.
1543. 01:34:53 I kind of feel after reading this that my opinion, James Clear, has kind of taken a
1544. 01:34:57 hit from this book.
1545. 01:35:00 That's quite a statement.
1546. 01:35:01 Yeah.
1547. 01:35:02 Well, like I said, there's a lot of stuff in here, like dual lingo thing specifically,
1548. 01:35:06 where it's like, oh, you don't really know what you're talking about here.
1549. 01:35:09 Maybe you ultra learned dual lingo and it then wasn't effective.
1550. 01:35:13 You don't really understand it and which is why you're saying these things that aren't
1551. 01:35:17 necessarily true.
1552. 01:35:18 And again, totally opinionated.
1553. 01:35:20 I could be wrong.
1554. 01:35:21 I recognize that, but this is what people sign up to here, right?
1555. 01:35:27 These are the opinions.
1556. 01:35:29 So having read this, I don't know what to do with this.
1557. 01:35:35 Like I'm not going to try and teach ultra learning to my kids or really encourage it.
1558. 01:35:43 I think in anybody else that I come in contact with, I don't have an ultra learning project
1559. 01:35:49 that I want to work on right now.
1560. 01:35:51 I'm happy to pick away at my Spanish and develop positive habits.
1561. 01:35:57 I don't know.
1562. 01:36:00 I do think that the stories at the beginning of the chapters are good.
1563. 01:36:05 I think that he is a decent writer.
1564. 01:36:08 And I will say that it's not really my cup of tea, how he wrote it.
1565. 01:36:14 It felt very formulaic.
1566. 01:36:17 Almost every single chapter is story, principal tactics.
1567. 01:36:22 And some of the connections I thought were a bit of a stretch.
1568. 01:36:26 Some of the tactics I felt were just grabbing the stuff that was fairly easy.
1569. 01:36:33 And not, I don't know, like a lot of the tactics I read them, I jotted them down and
1570. 01:36:37 I really didn't think they were all that valuable.
1571. 01:36:40 Which is not what I expected from this book.
1572. 01:36:42 I really kind of thought this was going to blow me away, but did not have that effect.
1573. 01:36:47 I do think there's some good stuff in here.
1574. 01:36:49 I'm not going to necessarily recommend this to anybody, but I'm going to put it at a 3.0.
1575. 01:36:55 It's a good book.
1576. 01:36:56 It's not one that I'm looking to reread at any point in the foreseeable future.
1577. 01:37:02 Okay.
1578. 01:37:03 Well, I'm going to contradict you on this to some degree in that I think, so for example,
1579. 01:37:10 I've read Scott Young's blog for a while.
1580. 01:37:14 So this is not my first interaction with him.
1581. 01:37:19 And he has some intense blog articles that he puts out.
1582. 01:37:25 They are very long whenever he does these.
1583. 01:37:28 He just put out one on the complete guide to self-control.
1584. 01:37:32 Like he's very good at deep diving things.
1585. 01:37:35 It's kind of what he does.
1586. 01:37:37 And I think this is another case of that where he deep dives the deep diving process, which
1587. 01:37:43 is where this comes from.
1588. 01:37:44 Like he's basically explaining his own learning process.
1589. 01:37:48 He's never learning.
1590. 01:37:49 Yeah, totally.
1591. 01:37:51 And I think that this is a system, like I've got a couple of things right now that I could
1592. 01:37:57 see applying this to.
1593. 01:38:00 One is in the process of building a business around a web application.
1594. 01:38:05 Like what is that process?
1595. 01:38:07 I could see deep diving that right now because I've got us pieces of software that I'm about
1596. 01:38:12 ready to launch in the next few weeks.
1597. 01:38:15 It's very specialized, so it won't be available for most people.
1598. 01:38:18 But like that thing I could see applying this to, I could see applying it to the photography.
1599. 01:38:24 Like I've got a handful of these that I could see doing this with.
1600. 01:38:27 I just don't know how it fits into my scheduling because I'm already saying yes to too many
1601. 01:38:31 things and need to say no more often.
1602. 01:38:34 And I feel like saying yes to this is just adding.
1603. 01:38:39 It's putting too much on me right now.
1604. 01:38:42 So as much as I would love to say, yeah, I'm going to go do an ultra learning project
1605. 01:38:45 because I think that there is a lot of potential in this process.
1606. 01:38:51 I don't think I would follow it to the letter.
1607. 01:38:53 Most of the times whenever I see something like this, like, okay, I get your beginning
1608. 01:38:57 point, you know, do the planning process and then get going and then get your plan and
1609. 01:39:02 then try to follow it.
1610. 01:39:04 And the rest of these pieces are just like little tidbits to be aware of as you go through
1611. 01:39:08 it.
1612. 01:39:09 Like I'm not going to follow it to the letter, but the principle behind it behind all the
1613. 01:39:14 principles is one that I could see jumping on board with.
1614. 01:39:17 There's a couple of points in here like the intuition piece.
1615. 01:39:19 I'm just like, I just don't follow you.
1616. 01:39:22 Like I just don't understand you.
1617. 01:39:24 Like that happened a couple times, which is weird because the vast majority of the book
1618. 01:39:28 I found myself thinking like, he's a pretty good writer.
1619. 01:39:31 Like I genuinely enjoy reading this.
1620. 01:39:33 I kept looking forward to picking it up.
1621. 01:39:36 I don't think that this is one I would recommend to very many people because I think it's too
1622. 01:39:40 intense for most people.
1623. 01:39:43 The number of people I know that would be interested in doing something like this is
1624. 01:39:47 quite small.
1625. 01:39:49 So to just put a blanket, you should read this statement out there.
1626. 01:39:53 I don't think I would do that without knowing you or knowing your situation.
1627. 01:39:57 Like I need to know more about why you're interested in this book before I would say
1628. 01:40:01 you should read it.
1629. 01:40:02 So all of that said, I have some qualms.
1630. 01:40:04 I have some things I really like about it.
1631. 01:40:07 So I'm going to put it at a 4.0.
1632. 01:40:09 All that to say, I did enjoy and I'm glad to have read it.
1633. 01:40:12 I just don't think I would reread it.
1634. 01:40:14 I'm like you in that sense.
1635. 01:40:15 All right.
1636. 01:40:16 There we go.
1637. 01:40:17 I should say that I think I agree with you that in the right situation, this book could
1638. 01:40:23 be very, very beneficial.
1639. 01:40:27 And if you have a project that you know is kind of like a tipping point for you personally
1640. 01:40:33 or professionally, it may be worth looking at this prior to embarking on that thing.
1641. 01:40:40 I totally understand and admittedly recognize that I'm not the person this is really written
1642. 01:40:47 for sure.
1643. 01:40:48 No, that's fair.
1644. 01:40:50 Now with all that said, let's put ultra learning on the shelf.
1645. 01:40:55 Next time we talk, Mike, we're going to cover super better by Jane McGonigal, a revolutionary
1646. 01:41:01 approach to getting stronger, happier, braver and more resilient.
1647. 01:41:06 Jane McGonigal is the sister to drawing a blank on her name right now, Kelly McGonigal.
1648. 01:41:12 There we go.
1649. 01:41:13 And we did a book by her.
1650. 01:41:14 It was the second book we ever did.
1651. 01:41:16 Willpower Instinct.
1652. 01:41:17 Yep.
1653. 01:41:18 And I'm looking forward to going through this one.
1654. 01:41:19 The main reason I picked it is because of fighting Lyme disease.
1655. 01:41:22 I want to know her process because one, it's a long book and two, it's about the process
1656. 01:41:27 of gamifying like the healing and strength process.
1657. 01:41:31 So I'm very curious.
1658. 01:41:33 I know she's a big gamer.
1659. 01:41:35 So this will be an interesting book for sure.
1660. 01:41:37 On the topic of gaming, I have to share that I have a new game that I'm obsessed with.
1661. 01:41:43 My whole family is obsessed with and that is the untitled goose game.
1662. 01:41:48 See, like this is like making the rounds like everywhere.
1663. 01:41:52 I really thought you were going to say like Mario Brothers or something or Tetris like
1664. 01:41:56 something old.
1665. 01:41:57 No, this is amazing.
1666. 01:41:58 It's number one on the best seller's charts right now for the Switch.
1667. 01:42:01 Of course.
1668. 01:42:02 And the whole idea is that you're this goose who just gets into all this mischief.
1669. 01:42:06 It's hilarious.
1670. 01:42:07 I play it in my kids just like sitting in laugh at the stuff you have to do.
1671. 01:42:11 Yep.
1672. 01:42:12 It's amazing.
1673. 01:42:13 It's a good game for the URL.
1674. 01:42:14 Goose dog game.
1675. 01:42:15 All right.
1676. 01:42:16 Well, one after that is Principles by Ray Dalio.
1677. 01:42:20 So thanks to all the bookworm members who have voted for that one.
1678. 01:42:24 This has been on my radar for a long time.
1679. 01:42:26 Joe, I know you read this a while back as a get book.
1680. 01:42:28 Yep.
1681. 01:42:29 I read it a while back.
1682. 01:42:30 So I have it.
1683. 01:42:31 I'm looking at it right now.
1684. 01:42:32 So that'll be a good one.
1685. 01:42:33 That'll be a good one to talk about.
1686. 01:42:34 I recognize this is a big one, but it's a big one that I want to read unlike Sapiens,
1687. 01:42:39 which I just keep putting off.
1688. 01:42:40 I think it's funny that you.
1689. 01:42:42 We're going to read it at some point.
1690. 01:42:43 At some point, we will.
1691. 01:42:44 I think it's hilarious that you're putting off a long book because it's a long book with
1692. 01:42:49 a long book.
1693. 01:42:50 Like that.
1694. 01:42:51 Well, this is so weird.
1695. 01:42:52 Exactly what's going on here at this point.
1696. 01:42:54 That's putting off the long book because there's a better long book.
1697. 01:42:59 Oh, okay.
1698. 01:43:00 I am going to let.
1699. 01:43:01 Okay.
1700. 01:43:02 So mark this.
1701. 01:43:03 If you rate Sapiens higher than principles, you are wrong in saying it's a better book.
1702. 01:43:09 It's true.
1703. 01:43:10 It's true.
1704. 01:43:11 I'm wrong.
1705. 01:43:12 I'm wrong.
1706. 01:43:13 I'm not afraid to admit my failure is anymore.
1707. 01:43:15 All right.
1708. 01:43:16 Fair enough.
1709. 01:43:17 What do you got for a gap book, Mike?
1710. 01:43:18 I don't really have a gap book, but I will put here because we started to go through
1711. 01:43:23 this with some of the guys at my church, Extreme Ownership by Jack O'Willink and Life
1712. 01:43:28 Babyn.
1713. 01:43:29 So I'm reading it again, basically.
1714. 01:43:31 Nice.
1715. 01:43:32 And yeah, don't have any other.
1716. 01:43:34 Don't have time in the next couple of weeks to really tackle another book.
1717. 01:43:37 Sure.
1718. 01:43:38 So I'll put that one there.
1719. 01:43:39 Makes sense.
1720. 01:43:40 But between here and super better, I'm reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.
1721. 01:43:46 I found this for $2 at a local thrift store and I had opinions about Malcolm Gladwell
1722. 01:43:53 before and I'm sure I'm either going to reinforce those or deny them.
1723. 01:43:58 I don't know.
1724. 01:43:59 We'll find out, but it'll be an interesting read regardless.
1725. 01:44:03 All right.
1726. 01:44:04 I want to say thank you to all of the Bookworm Premium Club members.
1727. 01:44:08 If you want to become a Premium Club member, you can get a couple bonuses.
1728. 01:44:12 You can get access to the Mind Node files, the Gap episode, audios that Jozen put together.
1729. 01:44:19 You can attend the live Bookworm recordings and join us in the chat.
1730. 01:44:23 Thank you to everybody who is already a Bookworm Premium Club member and willing to pitch in
1731. 01:44:27 a couple bucks a month to make this thing go.
1732. 01:44:30 We really appreciate that.
1733. 01:44:31 And if you are interested in becoming a Premium member, you can do so by going to club.bookworm.com
1734. 01:44:37 .fm/membership.
1735. 01:44:40 And in Overcast, which is where the vast majority of people listen to podcast scenes, you just
1736. 01:44:47 have to tap on the little button on the bottom and it'll take you right there.
1737. 01:44:50 So thanks to our Bookworm Premium Club members for supporting the show.
1738. 01:44:56 Thanks to Marco for making it easy.
1739. 01:44:57 I also absolutely love the wallpaper that members get.
1740. 01:45:02 You made this thing and I love it.
1741. 01:45:03 I use it all the time.
1742. 01:45:05 Well done, sir.
1743. 01:45:06 Thank you.
1744. 01:45:07 So like I mentioned early on, I've been doing a bunch of stuff on Instagram.
1745. 01:45:10 So if you're going to do anything today, follow us on Instagram, Bookworm.fm on Instagram.
1746. 01:45:16 Keep it simple.
1747. 01:45:17 That said, pick up super better.
1748. 01:45:19 We'll go through that one next time and figure out how to game our health.