Scott H. Young

I am both fascinated by, and weary of, the idea of Ultralearning.

I love it because it's a highly focused method to acquire the knowledge, skills and habits I desire to achieve. The daydreams of my life are suddenly in the realm of possibility. Or at least seem to be.

But I loathe it as well because it feeds the meritocracy treadmill that modern life has forced upon us and might not let up anytime soon. If I think about Ultralearning while in the wrong mindset, it all sounds terribly exhausting and outside reasonable expectations.

There's a preface here by James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits. These books are like fraternal twins and I recommend both if you want real solutions to learning. But the lesson isn't how to cut corners. If you desire to be better, then it's going to require focus and hard work.… (mehr)

Overall good book with a nice mix of storytelling and factual information.

The biggest thing I got out of this book was portions about "Directness" and how a lack there of leads to slow progress.
In particular how people will continue to try to learn something using a more easy and less stressful method even if a more direct method exists, because they don't deem themselves ready.
This resonated with me because this is what I was doing in my attempts to learn how to dance. I avoided the socials where people actually dance because I was afraid of being bad/embarrassed and instead was just taking group lessons because they were less stressful.
That section made me realize what I already knew, that I have to be willing to experience discomfort if I want to improve more rapidly...


A gripe I had was that there weren't many examples of mundane ultra learning projects. With the more extraordinary transformations, I have a harder time believing that the people doing them weren't predisposed to achieving those great things.… (mehr)