Ultralearning

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44770129-ultralearning

Core idea is combining everything we know about effective (as opposed to traditional) education to learn skills dramatically faster than is generally believed to be possible.

The better one gets, the more one recognizes how much better one could become.

Don't need talent to be competitive, because most people are so bad at deliberately developing skills.

Principles of ultralearning:

• Metalearning: Draw a map
  • Why
    • Instrumental - to achieve some goal
      • Make sure it's the right skill
      • Expert interview
    • Intrinsic - rewarding in it's own right
  • What
    • Concepts (understand)
    • Facts (memorize)
    • Procedures (practice)
  • How
    • Benchmarking
    • Syllabus
    • Problem sets
• Focus: Sharpen your knife
  • Procrastination
    • Try for 5 minutes
    • Pomodoro
    • Block out work schedule
  • Distraction
    • Remove distractions from environment
    • Foreground activities eg take notes, read aloud
    • Mindfulness techniques
    • Remember that training concentration is valuable in itself even if you're not getting much else done
  • Width of focus
    • Optimal arousal level is not at either extreme
• Directness: Go straight ahead
  • Train as close as possible to the actual skill you want to develop
  • Subtle details of the real world matter
  • Styles
    • Project-based
    • Immersion
    • Simulation
    • Overkill - try a harder version of the skill
• Drill: attack your weakest point
  • To improve complex skills, first isolate components and then recombine once mastered
  • Detect and attack weaknesses
  • Alternate direct and drill
    • Direct training drives drill selection
    • Repeating drilled skills in direct training aids transfer
  • Ideas for drills:
    • Time slicing - drill small moments of the larger skill
    • Cognitive components eg grammer vs pronunciation vs vocabulary
    • Copycat - copy the non-drilled aspects from elsewhere to more easily focus on the drilled aspect
    • Magnifying glass - enlarge the drilled component out of proportion
  • Mindless repetition just encodes bad habits - practice must be deliberate
• Retrieval: test to learn, test before feel confident, actively retrieve
  • Free recall > cued recall > multiple choice > passive review
  • Use direct practice to discover what is important to remember
• Feedback: don't dodge the punches
  • Types of feedback
    • Outcome - pass/fail
    • Informational - what was wrong
    • Correctional - what would have been right
  • To improve feedback
    • Improve signal / remove noise eg for writing track full reads instead visits
    • Adjust difficulty so success and failure are both common
    • Metafeedback - track learning rate of each strategy eg elo, exam score
    • Moar feedback - high intensity situation, helps overcome fear of negative feedback
• Retention: aim to remember forever
  • Spaced repetition
  • Overlearn - practice until automatic/unconscious
  • Mnemonics eg memory palace - powerful but limited application
• Intuition: dig deep before building up
  • Practice struggling through eg use struggle timer
  • Recreate knowledge eg proofs
  • Build from concrete examples
  • Don't fool yourself - attack your understanding to find missing links
  • Explain things to people
• Experimentation - explore outside comfort zone
  • Experiment with:
    • Different learning resources
    • Different techniques
    • Different styles
  • Tactics
    • Copy from others, then create something original in same style
    • Compare methods side-by-side eg test retention for two different vocabs with different techniques
    • Add artificial constraints
    • Explore extremes - take a style and double it