Ultralearning. Scott H. Young

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СКАЧАТЬ his usual test-prep strategy: last-minute cramming.” Although that approach faltered once he reached the pinnacle of his field, the fact that he breezed through classes for so long points to a powerful mind rather than some unique strategy. Genius is a word thrown around too casually, but in Tao’s case the label certainly sticks.

      Terence Tao and other naturally gifted learners present a major challenge for the universality of ultralearning. If people like Tao can accomplish so much without aggressive or inventive studying methods, why should we bother investigating the habits and methods of other impressive learners? Even if the feats of Lewis, Barone, or Craig don’t reach the level of Tao’s brilliance, perhaps their accomplishments also are due to some hidden intellectual ability that normal people lack. If this were so, ultralearning might be something interesting to examine but not something you could actually replicate.

      PUTTING TALENT ASIDE

      What role does natural talent play? How can we examine what causes someone’s success when the shadow of intelligence and innate gifts looms over us? What do stories like Tao’s mean for mere mortals who just want to improve their capacity to learn?

      The psychologist K. Anders Ericsson argues that particular types of practice can change most attributes necessary for becoming an expert-level performer with the exception of the innate traits of height and body size. Other researchers are less optimistic about the malleability of our natures. Many argue that a substantial proportion, perhaps most, of our intelligence is genetically derived. If intelligence comes mostly from genes, why not use that to explain ultralearning instead of ultralearners’ use of a more effective method or strategy? Tao’s success in mathematics doesn’t seem to be owed to something easily replicable by normal human beings, so why assume that any of the ultralearners are any different?

      I take a middle position between those two extremes. I think that natural talents exist and that they undoubtedly influence the results we see (especially at extreme levels, as in the case of Tao). I also believe that strategy and method matter, too. Throughout this book, I will cover science showing how making changes to how you learn can impact your effectiveness. Each of the principles is something that, if applied appropriately, will make you a better learner regardless of whether your starting point is dull or brilliant.

      My approach in telling stories for this book, therefore, will not be to try to determine what the sole cause is of someone’s intellectual success. Not only is this impossible, but it isn’t particularly useful. Instead, I’m going to use stories and anecdotes to illustrate and isolate what are the most practical and useful things you can do to improve how you learn. The ultralearners I mention should serve as exemplars you can use to see how a principle applies in practice, not a guarantee that you can achieve an identical result with identical effort.

      FINDING TIME FOR ULTRALEARNING

      Another doubt that may have formed in your mind when reading so far is asking how you’ll find time to do these intensive learning projects. You may worry that this advice won’t apply to you because you already have work, school, or family commitments that prevent you from throwing yourself into learning full-time.

      In practice, however, this usually isn’t a problem. There are three main ways you can apply the ideas of ultralearning, even if you have to manage other commitments and challenges in your life: new part-time projects, learning sabbaticals, and reimagining existing learning efforts.

      The first way is by pursuing ultralearning part-time. The most dramatic examples of learning success tend to be those where the ultralearner put impressive amounts of time into the project. Spending fifty hours a week on a project will accomplish more than spending five hours a week on it, even if the efficiency is the same, and thus the most captivating stories usually involve heroic schedules. Though this makes for good storytelling, it’s actually unnecessary when it comes to pursuing your own ultralearning projects. The core of the ultralearning strategy is intensity and a willingness to prioritize effectiveness. Whether this happens on a full-time schedule or just a couple hours per week is completely up to you. As I’ll discuss in chapter 10, a spread-out schedule may even be more efficient in terms of long-term memory. Whenever you read about an intensive schedule in this book, feel free to adapt it to your own situation, taking a more leisurely pace while employing the same ruthlessly efficient tactics.

      The second way is by pursuing ultralearning during gaps in work and school. Many of the people I interviewed did their projects during temporary unemployment, career transitions, semesters off, or sabbaticals. Although these aren’t as reliable to plan for, a burst of learning may be perfect for you if you know you’re about to have this kind of time off. That was one of my motivations for pursuing my MIT Challenge when I did: I had just graduated, so extending my existing student life another year was easier than pushing it out for four. If I had to do the same project today, I might have done it over a longer period of time, over some evenings and weekends, since my work is less flexible today than it was in that moment of transition from school to working life.

      The third way is to integrate ultralearning principles into the time and energy you already devote to learning. Think about the last business book you read or the time you tried to pick up Spanish, pottery, or programming. What about that new software you needed to learn for work? Those professional development hours you need to log to maintain your certification? Ultralearning doesn’t have to be an additional activity; it can inform the time you already spend learning. How can you align the learning and studies you already need to do with the principles for maximizing effectiveness?

      As in the section on talent, don’t let the extreme examples dissuade you from applying the same principles. Everything I will share with you can be customized or integrated into what already exists. What matters is the intensity, initiative, and commitment to effective learning, not the particulars of your timetable.

      THE VALUE OF ULTRALEARNING

      The ability to acquire hard skills effectively and efficiently is immensely valuable. Not only that, but the current trends in economics, education, and technology are going to exacerbate the difference between those with this skill and those without it. In this discussion, however, I’ve ignored perhaps the most important question: Ultralearning may be valuable, but is it learnable? Is ultralearning just a description of people with unusual personalities, or does it represent something that someone who wasn’t an ultralearner before could actually become?

CHAPTER 3

       How to Become an Ultralearner

      “I’d love to be a guinea pig.” It was an email from Tristan de Montebello. I had first met the charming, half-French, half-American musician and entrepreneur seven years earlier, at almost exactly the same time as my fateful encounter with Benny Lewis. With tousled blond hair and a close-cropped beard, he looked like he belonged on a surfboard on some stretch of California coastline. De Montebello was the kind of guy you liked immediately: confident, yet down to earth, with only the vaguest hints of a French accent in his otherwise perfect English. Over the years, we had kept in touch: me with my strange learning experiments; him hopping around the world, going from working with a Parisian startup that made bespoke cashmere sweaters to guitarist, vagabond, and eventually web consultant in Los Angeles, much closer to the beaches that suited him so well. Now he had heard I was writing a book about learning, and he was interested.

      The context of his email was that although I had met and documented dozens of people accomplishing strange and intriguing learning feats, the meetings had been largely after the fact. They were people I had met or heard about after their successes, not before; СКАЧАТЬ