This is article 7 of 7 for The Tech Progressive writers community, where we will post 1 article for the next 7 days.
Every class you have ever taken was designed to cater to the slowest student.
Infinite think pieces have been written on the problems with modern education, so I won’t belabor the point. Instead, I want to describe an ideal learning process - one that’s radically faster and more effective than what you’re accustomed to. It’s something that anyone can do and, in most cases, it’s free.
Scott Young coined the term “ultralearning” in his eponymous book released in 2019. My own learning process borrows heavily from his. In this article, I will outline a framework for learning things faster than I ever believed possible.
The underlying theme of ultralearning is leverage. There are many ways to learn, but they are not created equal. Some are more effective than others. Learning is most optimal when you maximize high-leverage learning strategies and avoid low-leverage strategies.
Ultralearning Principles
Principle 1: Learning by doing is easily 10x more effective than simply reading about something or watching videos on the subject.
The first few coding classes I took didn’t really stick because we never left the emulator. Coding didn’t “click” for me until I built multiple web pages from scratch.
Principle 2: The Internet has rendered information “too cheap to meter.” The best teachers in the world can be found online, often for free. There’s no reason to settle for second-rate teachers. Take advantage of this.
Principle 3: You are limited only by your time. In school, you were often limited to a single, one-hour class, three to five days per week. In real life, you can learn 12 hours a day, if you have the time and the stamina. That’s what Scott Young did for his MIT challenge.
Let’s put those principles into action. Ultralearning often follows this basic loop:
The learning loop operates as follows:
Go through learning materials to gain basic concepts.
Use the concepts to practice skills, in as close to a real-world context as you can manage.
Identify weak points and double down on them until you’ve got it.
Maintain your skills with spaced repetition.
Begin again to learn the next skill.
Here is a practical example that I’ve used to learn programming.
Run through the lessons in freeCodeCamp to gain familiarity. This is the easy part.
Begin the practical assignments at the end of the lesson plan. This is the hard part. Oftentimes, learners are blindsided when they realize that they actually have no idea how to build, say, a webpage from scratch. Resist the urge to just copy code from the example they provide. Instead, refer back to the materials you breezed through and try to construct it all yourself. It will be slow and painful. It will also teach you more than all of the video lectures on YouTube that you could ever watch. You want to build up a portfolio of projects, not check off boxes.
Once you’ve got a basic prototype working, you can check your work against their example solution. Then you can clean things up.
As you progress through the certifications, you’ll want to maintain your previous skills. I recommend dedicating one learning session per week to reviewing past content. If your first certification was in HTML and your current certification is in JavaScript, then take one day per week to review HTML, ideally by creating a new web page from scratch. After you’ve done this for a month or two and your skills are starting to stick, you can gradually decrease the frequency to clear up your schedule - first review once per week, then once per two weeks, then once per three weeks, etc.
Begin again with your next certification (if needed).
To me, one of the most interesting aspects of ultralearning is the freedom to learn at your own speed. Maximizing the quality of your learning can take you far, but maximizing the time spent on learning can take you to a new level. Not everyone has the free time for something as radical as the MIT challenge, but if you’ve cultivated your personal runway, then it’s possible to re-skill yourself for a new career in just a few months.
Learning has never been easier - or more valuable.
Great read!