TRJ #17. Scott Young: How To Learn Skills Faster & Retain More Knowledge

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My guest today is Scott Young, the WSJ bestselling author of Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career.

Scott is a prolific writer who writes about learning, productivity, and habits. He is known for documenting learning challenges such as completing 4-years of MIT computer science classes in one year and learning four languages in one year.

In our conversation, Scott talks about how to learn skills faster, the paradox of learning and why sometimes learning strategies that feel that easiest are the least effective, how to remember more from the books you’ve read, how to prevent yourself from forgetting a skill, and much more.

TIMESTAMPS:

  • [00:44] - What is Ultralearning?

  • [04:02] - How Scott completed 4 years of MIT classes in 12 months

  • [08:37] - How to deal with distraction and procrastination

  • [13:08] - The importance of direct learning

  • [20:20] - The paradox of learning (sometimes learning that feels easy is the least effective)

  • [26:31] - How to remember more of what you’ve learned & prevent yourself from forgetting information

  • [29:25] - Why you want to space your learning and not cram for an exam

  • [31:15] - How to remember more from the books you’ve read

  • [37:55] - Advice to people starting their first ultralearning project

  • [40:26] - How to maintain skills and prevent yourself from losing them

  • [45:40] - How to raise your kids to be ultralearners

  • [50:50] - Two books that changed Scott’s life

Learn more about the author:

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