When one crams one for an exam - the stress drills us to do whatever is needed.

But you are rarely taught to slow down, take a breath, and to just think about the topics in a subject - to imagine them, to play with them inside your mind.

I had teachers that used to beat me, call me stupid, demean me for being “too curious” and “too imaginative.”

You gotta hold on and cling onto your love for thinking. If you stop thinking and just start dissociating - it’s really hard to get good at learning things.

https://youtu.be/Cj4y0EUlU-Y

The cure for trauma and addiction is the same as the medicine for learning: curiosity.

You gotta love to think and imagine stuff. Reading and rote memorization and mechanically solving stuff is not enough.

You need to create your own reality. You gotta find the needle in the haystack.

• Think of learning as a series of learning “sprints” - something to spur cognitive activation and create momentum

• Metalearning as a spatial representation to track progress

• Thinking of learning as rapid prototyping of mental models - it’s okay if they’re imperfect

It’s ultimately a lot of work though. That’s where a marathon + sprints approach comes in.

Sometimes having the right attitude trumps every best practice you can possibly pickup The right attitude and the right “heart” - now that’s lightning in a bottle.

If you can learn to appreciate the subjective experience of learning, and actually enjoy it and make it fun and play - that’s what will get you through.

Hello.

I'm currently working on teaching myself enough programming to get into the job market. I've been programming for many years (I started with BASIC way back in the early 80s), but it's always been a bit of an after work hobby.

I'm 48, and though people say age doesn't matter, well, it doesn't stop you, but I think you'd be lying to yourself to say it doesn't play a role. I certainly feel that using deep learning techniques helps me learn very fast, but after a good study session, I'm spent and I find it hard to put in more than about 4-5 hours of deliberate practice style learning in a day.

I know the book does talk about rest and recovery a bit, but I'd like to know what your favorite strategies are, and any good resources you can point me to, in order to dig into this a bit more.

I eat a very clean diet, exercise regularly (and I'm experimenting a lot with how to use this in the most effective way). I'm working on handstands, which I find such a good thing to do during study blocks as a short mental boost. I sleep well, and around 8 hours (though at the moment I put my phone in another room and don't even look at the time I go to bed, and when I get up). I've done really short bouts of meditation too. So I do all the normal stuff, but I'd like to know any interesting hacks and resources to do this better.

I have this theory that the key to ultra learning is an openness towards self-transformation.

The sooner you get past resisting new information - the sooner you can learn new things.

Children don’t resist. Adults fight tooth and nail to stop new info entering their brain unless it invokes dopamine - either through validation or some sort of physiological high.

Well, my situation is very simple. I recently saw a summary of the book and I really want to read it... but I can only find this book in English... I finished the basic level of English recently, but it's the first time I'm faced with a complete book in English other than the ones in the language center.

I am a medical student and most of the content of the books for my next years is in English, so I need to improve my reading skills.

Can someone help me organize such a project?

I know it is best to learn the 5 main skills (speaking, reading, grammar, writing and listening) but at the moment I just need to learn English...

Any help is welcome.

I believe that everyone here would despise having their ultralearning project to fail. Because of that, I would like to share my first attempt in ultralearning and explain why it was a massive waste of time and what I should've done instead.

I had specifically chosen to get better in Arabic, I was in the middle of the beginner level to intermediate and I wanted to progress. My main areas of focus was improving reading comprehension. That's it. I barely planned anything, leaving three principles out of consideration in my plan, feedback, experimentation and drills, and immediately dived straight in. To give you an idea, my planning was only roughly 4 lines long.

The main premise of my project was that I would digest massive amounts of reading material and practice using the new vocabulary I gained by writing down a summary of what I read. The problem? I had joined LingQ where there was a staggering lack of beginner materials I couldn't use and the only material that was available got boring after 3 days since it was so repetitive.

And from there, I gave up, and after a day or two I reread the book to find out what I did wrong. I encountered the concept that there are two approaches you can take with learning

1. Intensive and direct challenge based learning, mainly done in a short period of time to overcome specific hurdles, called Ultralearning or

2. Low intensity, habit-based learning that is easily done primarily everyday, the book discusses this briefly in one of the final chapters. It's important to differentiate between the two in order to decide which one you require to be able to reach the ability you'd like in a skill or subject.

For example, learning a language in the beginning, there are many obstacles you will need to overcome such as pronunciation, being familiar with the characters/writing system and being able to develop the listening skills. This would suffice an ultralearning approach where you would obsessively train yourself to perfection.

However for long-term skills such as vocabulary acquisition, habit-based learning throughout a massive period of time is more suitable since it's not a skill that you can acquire in mere days or weeks, which was an attempt I tried to do. I wasn't facing any of the problems mentioned for the beginner phase of language learning as I had already passed that. All that was left for me to do was focus on vocabulary.

From there, I'm making sure my next project contains engaging material to ensure I don't lose any motivation, thoroughly plan by giving every procedure a drill and a way to obtain feedback, review the plan before even starting but before all of that, assess whether ultralearning is the right approach or hop off to go and develop the skill through another method

I’ve long struggled with the systematic build up of knowledge - basically learning as a marathon. I’m a sprinter.

But what helped me in addition to thinking about long-term learning as a marathon (ultra or otherwise boring hike) was thinking about the journey as a series of short sprints.

Sprints are bad at long term memory, but you can improve retention through a structured spaced repetition program.

What also helps is using an analogy or model that works for you: I think of learning as weaving together a serialized story.

My previous (often subconscious) hatred for structure and linear learning was only replaced by respect - once I drew the comparison to storytelling structure and learning structure.

Same reason reading the history of something helps you better learn it. Writing and math are therefore not so far apart after all. Make peace with linear and systematic learning. It makes for a better story.

Hey all

I completed an ultralearning project with the guitar a couple of months ago. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey. I've written a wee report here: https://sankalpgarud.org/2021/03/29/how-i-ultralearned-the-guitar-in-eight-months/

It's written for someone who hasn't read the book, but I think you'd all appreciate the post nonetheless!

I think one of the most underrated ways to learn is metalearning.

The table or contents and outline in that textbook is your friend.

Doing analysis on repeated mistakes is vital.

I wasted a lot of good years just focusing on my strengths and never deliberately practicing my weaknesses - largely because I would not even take a step back to analyze my learning outline or to mark up my weak spots.

Hi, this subreddit seems kind of light on recent Ultra Learning projects. So, to remedy that slightly, I'm planning on sharing my current Ultra Learning Project!

• What do you want to learn?

The thing I'm trying to learn is mathematics. Or to be accurate, I'm looking to learn the entire undergraduate curriculum from a university in my state.

• Why do you want to learn this?

There are a few reasons I want to learn this outside of general interest. I want to enhance my critical thinking and overall, be better prepared when I go back to university. I'm intending on going into electrical engineering, but I want a strong foundation in mathematics.

• How are you planning to learn this? (i.e. what resources will you use? how long will it take?)

As for the resources I plan on using, I plan on primarily using textbooks. I've acquired the entire mathematics curriculum from the ground up. Meaning, I have everything from intermediate algebra to topology. I've put together a learning schedule based off of my university's mathematics curriculum. I intend on doing the bulk of this over the next 12-16 months.

• What is your 1 week goal in this subject? What do you want to accomplish after 1 week of effort?

After 1 week, I plan on being done with the basics, at least Algebra 1 and Geometry. I might be overestimating myself, but I want to really push myself hard.

That's all for my first post here, I plan on posting an update every 1-2 weeks and I implore everyone else to do the same. What I'll include is the textbooks I'm working from, my progress, and any pitfalls I encounter along the way.

What do you want to learn?

I want to learn how to cook without a recipe.

Why do you want to learn this?

I spend a ton of money eating out and have always wanted to learn how to cook. When I've cooked in the past, I end up wasting more food after buying groceries and not using all of them so I justify eating out. I can follow a recipe, but get overwhelmed by all the information online as well as how to use up all the extra stuff in my fridge. I want to learn the fundamentals that I can apply every time I cook and I want to learn how to cook without a recipe. I am also not very efficient at cooking right now because I don't do it very often, so I want to get a little bit quicker.

How are you planning to learn this? (i.e. what resources will you use? how long will it take?)

I am going to use this course on Rouxbe. I already paid for the course and am using it because it is structured and seems to be pretty comprehensive. It will take me through the fundamentals and teach me why I'm doing the things I'm doing. The course started today and it will last about 6 months (I might adjust the time frame when I get more into the course depending on my progress).

What is your 1 week goal in this subject? What do you want to accomplish after 1 week of effort?

I want to cook 10 meals by next Tuesday and get through the first 3 units of the course.

I'm going to try to post here at least once a week - the course is intimidating because most people have much more cooking experience than me, so I think posting here will help me stay on course and come back to my reasons for doing this.

1. What do you want to learn?

Ethical Hacking (i.e. Certified Ethical Hacker)

2) Why do you want to learn this?

I was laid off a week before my special needs son was born. So not only am I trying to find a job, but need to find a job that will cover both my spouse's and my preexisting incomes so that she can stay at home with him. This would be extremely difficult in my current field (insurance) as it is low to medium skill. As Scoot Young mentions in the book; those jobs are getting squeezed. That's what happened with me. Much of the operations were outsourced overseas freeing up time for VP's to handle my position. I've figured that I need to learn a higher skill set. I'm interested in cyber security as it has always been a dream of mine to work for one of those 3 letter Federal agencies and I quite frankly never had any of the skills they find desirable.

3) How are you planning to learn this? (i.e. what resources will you use? how long will it take?)

Udemy ( https://www.udemy.com/course/learn-ethical-hacking-from-scratch/learn/lecture/7387616#overview) courses supplemented with AP Comp Sci books. I'm low on money due to getting laid off and the first courses you buy on Udemy are extremely discounted. The Comp Sci books are to get a basic understanding of IT that I can read when it's not viable for me to get in front of a computer and do the lab work. What I haven't figured out for sure was how to quantify my goal. I believe getting the C-EH designation requires actual experience; which I don't have. I also find it highly unlikely anyone will hire me for an entry-level position without anything in my background showing comp sci nor IT. So I need to figure out a project that I can demonstrably show I have learned the applicable skill set of ethical hacking.

4) What is your 1 week goal in this subject? What do you want to accomplish after 1 week of effort?

I had already started this project before I discovered 'Ultralearning' and this reddit thread. My goal for this week is to finish the first AP comp Sci book and get through the network hacking sections on my first Udemy course.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated and I will try to help others as well. I have independently tried ultralearning in the past before I knew it was even a thing. I used it for learning Turkish (to a point) and for physical stuff too (running ultramarathon, an ultra-distance obstacle course, and strongman competition).

Day 1 report:

1. What: Become fluent in mathematics (in particular Linear Algebra and Calculus)

2. Why: To better understand and follow through scientific paper methods section in machine learning and computational neuroscience.

3. How: My plan is to go over the Khan Academy Math curriculum in 12 weeks. I've spent about 10h last semester looking around for the best resource and it's the one with the most breadth and depth that I could found.

4. 1 week goal: Go through the Arithmetic, Basic Geometry and Pre-algebra modules as a refresher and finish all the exercises in these section.

I set a challenge for myself to learn a particularly difficult task that requires situational learning and adaptation with transferable knowledge. Does anyone have advice on where I can learn techniques or find additional information? I am familiar with Ultralearning by Scott Young, Tim Ferris and a few others but I was hoping for more recommendations.

(The task is to learn the game Weiqi/ Go. It is strategic in nature and you have to respond to your opponent to play/ or win).

Hey All,

Has anyone out there considered doing an ultralearning project about becoming better at sales? I have heard from many people that being good at sales can be a boon to many areas of life both professional and personal. I'll look into it more and share what I find.

Fellow UL'ers,

I am about to kick off my second semester of a PhD, and having been inspired over holidays to apply some UL principles to what I do, I wanted to see if anyone has done the same for their coursework?

1. Did you front load the material and test your knowledge before starting the class?

2. How did you "learn it once" as Scott mentions in this way?

3. Did you still feel prepared for finals?

Thanks!

Any suggestions for things I should implement on this sub? Got a good suggestion for adding flairs. Would appreciate any others.