Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career

by Scott H. Young, James Clear (Foreword by)

Overview

Now a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Learn a new talent, stay relevant, reinvent yourself, and adapt to whatever the workplace throws your way. Ultralearning offers nine principles to master hard skills quickly. This is the essential guide to future-proof your career and maximize your competitive advantage through self-education.

In these tumultuous times of economic and technological change, staying ahead depends on continual self-education—a lifelong mastery of fresh ideas, subjects, and skills. If you want to accomplish more and stand apart from everyone else, you need to become an ultralearner.

The challenge of learning new skills is that you think you already know how best to learn, as you did as a student, so you rerun old routines and old ways of solving problems. To counter that, Ultralearning offers powerful strategies to break you out of those mental ruts and introduces new training methods to help you push through to higher levels of retention.

Scott H. Young incorporates the latest research about the most effective learning methods and the stories of other ultralearners like himself—among them Benjamin Franklin, chess grandmaster Judit Polgár, and Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman, as well as a host of others, such as little-known modern polymath Nigel Richards, who won the French World Scrabble Championship—without knowing French.

Young documents the methods he and others have used to acquire knowledge and shows that, far from being an obscure skill limited to aggressive autodidacts, ultralearning is a powerful tool anyone can use to improve their career, studies, and life.

Ultralearning explores this fascinating subculture, shares a proven framework for a successful ultralearning project, and offers insights into how you can organize and exe - cute a plan to learn anything deeply and quickly, without teachers or budget-busting tuition costs.

Whether the goal is to be fluent in a language (or ten languages), earn the equivalent of a college degree in a fraction of the time, or master multiple tools to build a product or business from the ground up, the principles in Ultralearning will guide you to success.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062852687
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/06/2019
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	97,586
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Scott Young is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Ultralearning, a podcast host, computer programmer, and an avid reader. Since 2006, he has published weekly essays to help people learn and think better. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Pocket, and Business Insider, on the BBC, at TEDx, and other outlets. He doesn’t promise to have all the answers, just a place to start.

Table of Contents

Foreword James Clear ix

Chapter I Can You Get an MIT Education Without Going to MIT? 1

Chapter II Why Ultralearning Matters 25

Chapter III How to Become an Ultralearner 40

Chapter IV Principle 1-Metalearning: First Draw a Map 51

Chapter V Principle 2-Focus: Sharpen Your Knife 70

Chapter VI Principle 3-Directness: Go Straight Ahead 87

Chapter VII Principle 4-Drill: Attack Your Weakest Point 106

Chapter VIII Principle 5-Retrieval: Test to Learn 119

Chapter IX Principle 6-Feedback: Don't Dodge the Punches 135

Chapter X Principle 7-Retention: Don't Fill a Leaky Bucket 153

Chapter XI Principle 8-Intuition: Dig Deep Before Building Up 177

Chapter XII Principle 9-Experimentation: Explore Outside Your Comfort Zone 197

Chapter XIII Your First Ultralearning Project 216

Chapter XIV An Unconventional Education 233

Acknowledgments 259

Appendix 261

Notes 267

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

How do you master a difficult subject more quickly than by sitting through years of classes? Read Ultralearning for specific directions on structuring and absorbing complex topics in record time.  This short book provides you with a step-by-step guide to becoming an ultra fast learner.” — Robert Pozen, author of Extreme Productivity and Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management

“Ultralearning is the best book on learning I’ve ever read. It’s a beautifully written, brilliantly researched, and immediately useful masterpiece. If you are looking for the magic match to help light your learning, Ultralearning is it. If you want to learn anything, do yourself a favor and read this book. Now.” — Barbara Oakley, author of A Mind for Numbers and co-author and co-instructor of Learning How to Learn

This book is an invaluable tool to help you master complicated skills in a short period of time. Read Ultralearning and level up your life! — Chris Guillebeau, bestselling author of The $100 Startup and The Happiness of Pursuit

“Ultralearning is like a superpower in our competitive economy. Read this book! It will change your life.” — Cal Newport, author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work

“A truly great book about learning. Riveting, useful, practical, and applicable to anyone ready to learn something at their own pace. Ultralearning shows you exactly how to learn better than you thought possible.” — Derek Sivers, author of Anything You Want

From the Publisher

How do you master a difficult subject more quickly than by sitting through years of classes? Read Ultralearning for specific directions on structuring and absorbing complex topics in record time.  This short book provides you with a step-by-step guide to becoming an ultra fast learner.

Robert Pozen

Ultralearning is like a superpower in our competitive economy. Read this book! It will change your life.

Cal Newport

A truly great book about learning. Riveting, useful, practical, and applicable to anyone ready to learn something at their own pace. Ultralearning shows you exactly how to learn better than you thought possible.

Derek Sivers

This book is an invaluable tool to help you master complicated skills in a short period of time. Read Ultralearning and level up your life!

Chris Guillebeau

Ultralearning is the best book on learning I’ve ever read. It’s a beautifully written, brilliantly researched, and immediately useful masterpiece. If you are looking for the magic match to help light your learning, Ultralearning is it. If you want to learn anything, do yourself a favor and read this book. Now.

Barbara Oakley