Sean Murray 3:27
I think we can learn a lot from people who operate at epic extremes. And you start your book with a story about the MIT Challenge. I would label it an extreme project, where you took the entire MIT computer science curriculum in less than one year, and verified it by taking the final exams, and passing them, which is just incredible! So what got you started in that? And how did you push through?

Scott Young 3:53
This is sort of the first big project that I did, and I think that the motivation for it came from what a lot of people I think might be motivated for is that you feel like you studied the wrong thing. And how many of us, you know, you go down some path in life, and then, you feel like, “Ah, I should have done that other thing instead.” And so for me what my motivation was when I was going into university is that I kind of had this idea in my head of I want to run my own business. I want to be an entrepreneur. So I’m going into school, and I’m thinking, what should I study? And so what better to study than business, right? For me, when I was making this decision, this motivation of, “Okay, let’s study business because it’ll help me be an entrepreneur.” It was only after a couple years of being in school that I start to realize, “Oh, wait a minute. This is not really so much prepping for being an entrepreneur, but how do I be, you know, some vice president of such and such in some big company, where I have tasks, and subordinates, and all these things, and I can fit within that big organization.” And so I was thinking about this at the end of my sort of degree program. That what I really should have studied is that I wish I’d studied computer science. Because if you think about like great entrepreneurs, you think about Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, all the people who are doing startups these days, it involves technology. It involves the internet. It involves making things, right? And computer science was the faculty, where you actually got to make things. And so I even was looking online and be like, “Hey, well, what, what would the process be of going back to school? What would I have to do if I went back to school? And you know, okay, where would I get my credits and stuff?” And honestly, I think a lot of people listening to this right now might be sympathizing with that. That, you know, when you’ve already gone through school for a long period of time, that’s not really what you want to be doing. You don’t want to go back for another four years. You don’t want to take out student loans. You don’t want to live in a dorm room and just really delay your life that much. And so, around this time, I was looking online, and I found a class that was taught by MIT and uploaded online for free. So you can find these. Anyone can find these. They’re MIT’s OpenCourseWare. You can go online. They have hundreds and hundreds of classes that are actual MIT classes that they’ve uploaded some of the material online. And so I took one of these classes, and I was really blown away that–how much better the instruction was in a lot of the classes I paid thousands of dollars to attend in university. And so, I was looking through this class and seeing that there were a bunch of other classes, I kind of thought, “Has anyone ever tried to do something like a degree before?” I mean, obviously, you could try to do one class. But has anyone ever tried to figure out, well, what is in a computer science degree that MIT teaches? And how close could you get to doing something like this on your own? And so this was sort of the initiation of this project for me. When I started working through it, I realized that not going to MIT in some senses is actually an advantage in some ways. I’ll give some examples. So when you are taking normal classes, let’s say, the class starts at 10 a.m., you have to show up a little bit early. You have to sit through the professor shuffling through their notes. You sit through the whole class, then maybe you got a little break before the next class, and you have some time to kill. Whereas when you’re watching a lecture video, you can just start it whenever you’re ready. And you can watch it at one and a half or two times the speed, you know? Like a lot of people do listening to podcasts. And if you ever get confused, you just pause, and hit rewind. You don’t have to have perfect verbatim notes because you have access to the actual video you watched. Or things like assignments, if you are trying to learn a difficult subject like calculus, instead of doing a whole assignment, trying your best, and then submitting it, and then waiting a week to hear about your response, you do one question at a time. So I don’t really understand how this question works. You go to the solutions. You figure it out. You learn from that example, and you go further on it. And so using these and some other ideas, I was sort of motivated to see, you know, not only would you be able to get something that approximates the MIT education experience, but also would it be possible to do it even a bit faster? And so this was sort of what ended up resulting in, you know, not trying to do everything in an MIT degree, but trying to learn the content, and pass the final exams, and do the programming projects, and trying to work over it in 12 months. So I, I started the project in October of 2011. And I finished and passed the last exam in September 2012.

Sean Murray 7:56
That’s just an amazing accomplishment. I love how you flipped it around to say what about the advantages of doing this online versus the traditional way. Everyone thinks, “I gotta go to the traditional learning process to get the certificate.” We have this new medium. I think we’re just sort of figuring out how to use it. Could you have done this without the internet?

Scott Young 8:16
Oh, no. Definitely not. I couldn’t have even done it without all of MIT’s resources. So this is also just the fact that people ask, okay, “Why MIT? Why that school?” And it’s because MIT actually uploads a lot of their classes. You go to, you know, No Name University, whatever. Maybe they’ve got one or two little experimental classes they posted online. MIT is kind of was a forerunner for really, even before a lot of other universities started doing this. Just uploading tons and tons of their actual materials. Like they know that people who can get an MIT degree will go to MIT. And so they don’t really risk that much cannibalizing their incoming student body by giving away their materials because an MIT diploma is just so valuable. That sort of position that they have also makes it really valuable because people who can’t get into MIT, or can’t afford MIT, or you know, which is the vast majority of us, can still benefit from this kind of world-class instruction, and all the materials they put together.

Sean Murray 9:09
I have a lot of respect for your accomplishment. I’ve got a degree in mathematics. And I know how challenging it can be to learn a technical subject like this. And as I was reflecting back on my time in university, I was thinking about the times when I had a question, or I was confused, I could raise my hand, and ask the professor a question. And that wasn’t an opportunity that you had. Was that a challenge for you? And how did you overcome that?

Scott Young 9:36
Yeah, it can sometimes be a challenge. And I think that’s part of the reason why if I were to advise people to who are wanting to do something similar, I would look for communities, where you can do that online. We were talking about the benefits of the internet. And for instance, if you wanted to look–we’re talking about computer science–if you want to learn programming, you can go to Stack Exchange. You can basically ask any question you want. And if it hasn’t already been asked, like you do a Google search and someone hasn’t already exact–asked the exact question you’re asking, there’s already been an answer. You can ask and get a response. I did have a few friends that were programmers or were–I even had a friend who was doing his PhD in computer science at the time. And so I did have some friends around me who could kind of offer pointers. But one of the things that I talked about in my book as well is: How do you self diagnose your own difficulties with understanding? And I think that’s also an important process because often the best way to use teachers; the best way to use your peers, and classmates, and, and resources is if you can really diagnose, what exactly you don’t understand about something; down to a really specific level. So you ask a very specific question, you get a specific answer. And then the trouble’s cleared up. I think the challenge for a lot of people, particularly, with classes like this, when you don’t understand something, it just feels like, “Well, I don’t get anything,” right? And because you don’t get anything, it can be very hard to move forward. And so that’s another kind of part of this ultralearning tool kit is: How do you break down your own misunderstandings or your own confusion? So you can solve your own problems that way.

Sean Murray 11:03
You’re hitting on one of the big advantages I see in ultralearning–this more self-directed, intense, focused form of learning. And that is that you get to design your own learning experience, which is going to be designed for you, you know, where you are today. What’s worked for you in the past? I want to transition to another benefit of ultralearning. And this benefit is revealed in the book, as you tell the stories of other people, who have used the techniques of ultralearning to master things like public speaking, or learning to play an instrument. And what you basically reveal is that, “Hey, these people didn’t have any special gifts or superpowers. They have regular abilities like you and me. And yet, when they apply these principles of ultralearning, they’re able to achieve incredible results.” And I found that extremely motivating.

Scott Young 11:56
Yeah, thanks! And, and you know what, I would also add, because we’re talking about MIT Challenge, and we’re talking about this as a sort of way of approaching things that you might otherwise learn in an academic setting. But I think the real value of approaching learning in this way is for all the skills that they don’t teach in school, or they don’t teach very well in school. People like Tristan de Montebello, who I talked about in my book, who spent seven months basically, intensively learning public speaking. And he ended up going from having, you know, almost zero experience public speaking to being a finalist for the World Championship of Public Speaking in about a seven-month timeframe. And so that’s an example, where I think public speaking is a skill that’s not often taught in schools. Or if it’s taught, it’s not taught particularly well. Maybe you do one or two classroom presentations, but that’s not the same as really becoming a great public speaker. I think in our professional lives, particularly, a lot of people will make the comment, “Well, I don’t use anything I learned from school.” And so I think there’s a disconnect often between what we study formally, and what we actually need to learn to be top performers in our careers to, you know, have successful hobbies; to have successful relationships. All the skills we need to really live life are often not taught in the classroom. And so really understanding the learning process isn’t just about, you know, how do you avoid getting another degree or, or something like that. But really, how do you get good at the things that matter to you, particularly, when there isn’t a clear roadmap or isn’t a clear will do this and this, and take this class, and then you’ll be good at it.

Sean Murray 13:25
One of the principles that I found refreshing, and it’s something I’ve already started to employ since reading your book is directness. Jumping into the deep end. Just going for it. Getting right into it. It’s the exact opposite of the approach we experienced in school that we’re all so familiar with, which is very passive. Sitting down; listening to a teacher lecture, while we take notes. That’s a very passive form of learning. But being direct is very active. And it turns out, it’s through that activity and that action that we learn. So talk a little bit about going direct.

Scott Young 14:02
So this was actually one of the most interesting things to do research for, when I was writing the book. There are studies that go back literally over 100 years that show how a lot of our assumptions about how learning works, and indeed, how education works are actually not very accurate. The kind of metaphor that I try to inveigh against, or I try to caution people against accepting is that a lot of us think about the brain like a muscle. And this sort of idea’s kind of like, when you go to the gym, and you do some bicep curls, and then your arms are stronger for like lifting things in the real world. And so this kind of idea of the brain being like a muscle extends to a lot of our popular discourse about how you should learn things. That, well, it doesn’t matter if what you’re learning right now isn’t very useful because it’s going to make you just a better thinker. And what we have is we have again, just thousands of studies going back over 100 years that show that this just isn’t how the brain works. That when we learn things, particularly in the beginning, we tend to learn them not only quite specifically, so we learn exactly what we were taught, and we don’t generalize it very much. But also they tend to stay welded to the situations we learn them in. So some of the studies that I encountered, which I just thought were fascinating. One study found that economics majors did not do better on questions of economic reasoning than non-economics majors. I mean, they’re passing their classes. They’re doing their things, but are they getting better at economic reasoning? Maybe not. Another study showed that students who had taken a high school psychology class did not do better at college level psychology, which is something you would expect them to be able to transfer. They would be able to take that knowledge from one to the other. What this shows is that a lot of our ideas about how we ought to learn things, where you end up doing some activity that’s very different from the thing that you want to get good at. And you just assume that by working on this thing that’s different, it will transfer the new situation. This turns out to be wrong. Because it’s wrong, we can also take advantage of that fact in our own learning. That when we are trying to approach new skills, if you approach it with this idea of directness, that you’re going to–from the very beginning–identify what is the situation you want to use this skill in, and try to at least do something that very closely approximates that as a form of practice early on. You will proceed much, much more rapidly than if you spend months and months doing something else, and then, try to transfer it in. So the classic example for this is language learning, where not only do we learn languages in a classroom; where you like sit and the teacher lectures at you; and you memorize a list of vocabulary. But even when we’re doing it on our own, we play with Duolingo, and you know, tap words on our phone, instead of actually speaking to people. And so the people, who are quite good at learning languages and having conversations actually practice having conversations, and they do this much earlier than most people do, when they are, you know, passively studying. And so this applies to many, many skills. But I think particularly, the things that we want to get good at in our life, it depends on having this kind of direct practice.

Sean Murray 16:52
And you talk about an interesting character in the book: Benny Lewis, who travels the world and learns a language. He becomes fluent within three months, and you sort of took that, and put it upon yourself to take on your own challenge to learn languages, which I thought was fascinating.

Scott Young 17:07
Yeah, so Benny Lewis was really the first person I met, who I would describe as a ultralearner; someone who takes on this aggressive, kind of efficiency-minded learning projects. And so this is about 10 years ago. And the way that I met him is kind of a funny story that this was still, when I was in my actual undergrad of business school. And I went on exchange for a year in France, and I was really keen to learn French. I thought it would be really cool to come back after that year, and “Parlez-vous français?” and, and speak another language. I thought that would be really cool. But when I was talking to people, so I, we had this like little meeting, where the people from the previous year, who went on exchange met the new people. And I asked people who went on exchange before I was like, “Well, did you learn the language?” Because this is what I want to do, so I, I should ask if other people were able to achieve it. And the crazy thing was of the people who had not studied it for a number of years already, so they–the person who’s spent, “Oh, I spent four years studying Spanish in university, and then I went to Mexico, so I’d practice my Spanish,” not those people. I’m talking about people who hadn’t studied it, which I was in that group. None of them came back being able to speak the language. And this was very surprising to me. Because I think a lot of us have this sort of intuition that, well, if you want to learn a language, you just have to go to that other country, and you’ll just automatically learn it. And so the fact that this didn’t seem to be the case was kind of surprising. And it was when I went to France and I started to realize why that was the case because they were transferring our grades from the host school back to the home school. So what language are you going to study university classes in? Well, the only language you speak right–English. So you enroll in English classes. And then you meet other exchange students, and they speak to you in what language? English. And then you meet French people who speak to you in English, and then you form this English bubble around yourself. And for me, I found it very difficult to actually really learn French, and it was meeting Benny Lewis and realizing that he didn’t just have some trick. It wasn’t like he had one simple method that he used and that just allowed him to speak languages and learn them really quickly. Brother, his whole philosophy was geared around from very early on, he’s going to actually start speaking to people in this language. So instead of having this idea that, “Well, I’m going to wait, you know, six, nine months until I’m ready to start speaking with people.” He’s there the very first day. He’s got his phrase book in hand, and he’s talking to people on the street, and trying to order things at the restaurant, and using this little kernel of immersion to build out his own progress. And so he’s now learned probably over 10 languages, and he’s done many of these three-month projects, where he tries to get as proficient as possible in a short period of time. And my own experience of meeting him and struggling with French led me to do my own project that was kind of similar several years later, which I went with a friend, and we called it, “The Year Without English.” We went to four countries. We went to Spain, Brazil, China, and South Korea. And we tried to learn the languages in each of those places by using the method that when we landed, we would only speak in the language, or try to learn with each other, and with people that we would meet. So we were ensuring essentially that we will be getting this direct practice most of the time.

Sean Murray 20:04
And how did that work out?

Scott Young 20:06
Pretty well, pretty well! I think, you know, I’m always hesitant to use words like “fluent.” I think fluent is kind of a dangerous word because for some people, it just means: Can you have a conversation with someone? Like, can we have a discussion? And then for other people, it means perfection like are you perfect in this language? That’s a real tricky distinction because it’s actually possible to get to a level where you can have conversations, and make friends, and do the things that you want to do, and not be perfect in the language. But to be perfect in the language where, you know, let’s say you could give like university lectures on the topic. That might require a lot more time. For me, when we were in these countries that was sort of the benchmark. I, I like to use the word “conversationally fluent,” but when we were in Spain, for instance, we were definitely conversationally fluent. We had friends we were living entirely in that language, you know? I was even dating a girl from Spain at the time, who wasn’t speaking me in English. And so all of these experiences were possible from a relatively short period of time because we were able to use this approach. And I mean, it was more difficult in China and Korea, so you definitely have more to learn and, and there’s more barriers there. But even there, we were able to get to a point, where you can have those sort of conversations, and get by in day-to-day life.

Sean Murray 21:16
It sounds like the bottom line is this more direct, immersive technique you used in Spain was way more effective than the technique you used as an exchange student in France.

Scott Young 21:27
Yeah, like I would say, without hyperbole that my three-month experience in Spanish, I learned my Spanish was better after three months than my French was after a year in France. That was me living in the country, and also really trying hard. I think the thing that people don’t–I think the idea that you can become a proficient quickly by doing some extreme version of immersion is not too surprising to people. I think people kind of naively accept that. I think what is more surprising to people, what I really try to put across is that the method that we use, when we were in Spain, was actually easier in the long run than the method I used in France. And I think this is sort of the surprising result. Because when you imagine speaking a language that you barely speak, and you’re doing 100% immersion, it sounds exhausting. It sounds maybe a little awful. But that period where you just are getting habituated only lasts a short period of time, where you’re getting used to it. And then after a while, even if you’re not perfectly proficient, you’re used to it. It’s, it’s something that is–you’re comfortable with, whereas if you are not in an immersive environment, where most people do have kind of by habit, the habit of speaking to you in English, you’re constantly fighting against that tendency. So you’re constantly trying to, “Okay, now let’s try to switch to French.” And that’s very difficult. So if you and I, let’s say, have an established relationship in English, yeah, I’m meeting you every once in a while, you know? Hanging out in our circle of friends, and then I try to switch from one language to another, there’s going to be a lot of resistance there even if you speak the language I’m trying to learn.

Sean Murray 22:57
You know, I was talking to my wife about your book, just this week as I was reading it, and our kids, we have two kids, 15 and 13. And they’re learning Spanish in school. And we thought the idea we threw around was, “Why don’t we just speak Spanish as a family for a week or 24 hours?” And we threw it around at the dinner table a couple nights ago, and it was a really wonderful conversation. I don’t know if we’re gonna do it, but you motivated us to think about that. I thought it was–it sounds like a wonderful experiment. Let me transition to another aspect of your book that I love, which is going back, looking at some of these almost towering geniuses, historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Van Gogh, Richard Fineman, you tell their story. You break down how they learned; how they developed their skills. And it’s easy to look at these towering geniuses really–that we consider geniuses today–and forget that, you know, they started just like we did at some point. Benjamin Franklin had to learn how to write at some point. He wasn’t born this incredible writer, and when you break it down, what I took away from that was they were ultralearners. And maybe the key to their genius was their ability to learn.

Scott Young 24:05
Yeah, I think that’s definitely a contribution. And one of the things that I wanted to do is, you know, you read biographies, or you read stories of people who achieve really tremendous intellectual feats. And there’s a tendency, I think, of biographers or people who talk about these pundits to try to…and it’s part of the, you know, when you’re writing a biography, what you want to do is make this person seem interesting and important. And so you get all these kinds of descriptions of this person of like, what a tremendous genius, and they did this when they were, you know, two years old, and they did this. And I think one of the things that’s often missing there is, is what you said is: What was the process that this person used to learn? Because even if they were quite intelligent, no one is born knowing quantum physics. No one is born knowing how to write. No one is born knowing how to paint. So even if this person was very intelligent; was very talented, they still had to acquire these skills. And so from digging through a lot of these accounts and these biographies, you pick up these little notes. Well, yes, this person did have quite a bit of talent. In some cases, I mean, Van Gogh is certainly a case where someone who doesn’t seem to have talent, nonetheless becomes one of the famous painters of all time. So it’s not universally the case that everyone is perceived as having talent, when they’re young. Sometimes that’s something added in later that a biographer or historian looking back at this person says, “Well, obviously, this person was, was really brilliant from a young age.” And you’ll hear correspondence from contemporaries at the time, and they’re like, “Ahh, this person, not so much!” But at the same time, I think it’s important to realize that these people often had a kind of obsessive intensity for learning. They often did things that were not normal for people even in that era for learning and for really investing in things. To what role that contributed to their talent, I don’t know. But I think that it probably helped someone. Like if we’re thinking about Richard Fineman, you know, he talks about all the things that he went to, to really deeply understand things, and you see that he has had kind of an unusual tenacity even then, so maybe genius as well. But, as well, his kind of willingness to spend, you know, hundreds of hours learning to pick locks is just the kind of thing that most people wouldn’t do. Or Mary Summerville, you know, once she was had to go to bed and the candle was put out, she just mentally going through Euclid in her, in her bed, while she’s trying to sleep to sort of master the geometry and stuff. Like how many people would do that? It’s useful to highlight some of these things, and in any kind of extreme story, I think it’s important to note kind of what are the ingredients that went into this person becoming successful. Because even if you don’t want to be Albert Einstein, or Richard Fineman, or you don’t have that level of ambition or tenacity, by using some of the same ideas, you can accomplish some of the goals that you have, which are probably a little bit more modest than revolutionising physics or something like that.

Sean Murray 26:50
Speaking of Richard Fineman, you describe in the book a methodology that Fineman uses when he’s trying to learn something new, a new subject, and you call it “The Fineman technique.” And he uses it in order to ensure that he really understands at a deep level what’s going on, when he tackles a new subject. Tell us a little bit about the Fineman technique.

Scott Young 27:11
Sure. So he has been one of my intellectual heroes for years. And this is around the time I was doing the MIT Challenge. I just read his biography. And I was very inspired by his kind of eclectic approach to learning things. He was very focused on really deeply understanding things. And he didn’t like approaching something, where he didn’t feel like he really understood what they were talking about. And I think that’s a useful trait to approach difficult subjects with. Because a lot of people approach you with, “Oh, that’s too difficult. I should just memorize this. Or, you know, let’s just do a lot of practice, and just hope that eventually by rote, I’ll just have it memorized.” Whereas, he was very focused on “Well, what’s really going on here? What’s the deeper understanding? What do I really have to do to understand this?” And so I kind of came up with this technique that was sort of loosely inspired by his biography, which I called “The Fineman technique.” And it’s very simple. Basically, what you do is you take a piece of paper out, you write the concept or idea that you’re trying to understand at the top of the paper. So in a physics class, and you’re saying that understanding torque, or understanding voltage, or, or it could be something more specific like understanding how to do this exact procedure for this kind of problem. So specificity also helps. But anyways, you take it for something that you don’t quite understand. And then you walk through attempting an explanation as if you were trying to teach it to someone else. So you write out an explanation as if you were trying to teach this to some other person. And I found that is just two things when I have applied in practice. One of the things is just by the act of writing the explanation, you often understand things better. It helps you organize your thoughts. It helps take a bunch of complicated ideas and explains them in a sequential fashion. And so sometimes an idea that seemed really confusing, you can write out a page or two of this, and it’s “Oh, okay! I actually get it now.” And then the other reason to do it is that sometimes you will hit roadblocks, where “Oh, I can’t (*inaudible*)–what, I don’t understand why you’re doing this in step three, or I don’t really understand this about the problem.” And what you’ve done in that is that you’ve narrowed the scope. So instead of dealing with a really big amorphous problem that you don’t get, you have a quite specific thing that you don’t get. So then you can go to a textbook, or lectures, or Google, or a teacher, or colleague, and then ask quite a specific question, and get a specific answer in order to solve your problems. So I think this is a very useful tool. I certainly found it useful doing the MIT Challenge. I have, you know, notebooks full of hundreds of these things, where I was trying to understand some of the difficult concepts that just didn’t click at first.

Sean Murray 29:31
Where the Fineman technique comes into my life is through my writing. And I write a blog on subjects related to the good life, and themes, and topics we cover in this podcast. And I’ll think I’ll know enough about a subject to write an article, and I’ll sit down, and start writing. And in the course of writing, I’ll find myself asking, “Wait, how does that work?” And you know, I’ll realize there’s a gap in my knowledge. So I’ll go back; do more research; figure out what I missing, so I can finish the article. And the fact that so many examples from your book includes some aspect of writing in the learning process is not a coincidence. Because writing forces us to reflect, which you point out is very critical to learning. And it forces us to recall from our own memory, and it, it forces us to sort of test our knowledge as we go.

Scott Young 30:21
Oh, absolutely. And I think writing is often very valuable because there’s this phenomenon in psychology known as the illusion of explanatory depth. And basically, the idea is, if I ask you a factual question like: What’s the capital of France? Then, either Paris pops up into your head or it doesn’t. And so you have a very good sense of self assessment just by your own head of how well you remember facts. Because you either have it or you don’t, right? But on the other hand, when we talk about explaining, attempt (*inaudible*) something, or how well do you understand something? This is difficult because when I say to you, “Well, do you know how a bicycle works?” It’s very often the case that you’re overconfident because you have some familiarity with the thing in question, so you think about it, and you’re like, “Well, I know how to ride a bicycle. And I know there’s pedals and this kind of thing.” However, there’s been studies that have been done, where if you ask someone to draw a bicycle, and not like to do an artistic rendering, just to be like, you know, where do the chains connect? And where do the pedals connect, and handlebars, and this kind of thing? And people draw spectacularly, nonfunctional bicycles. They’ll draw things where like the gears touch both the wheels. If you just think about mechanically, that would not work, you wouldn’t be able to move the pedals, and various things like this. Despite the fact that a lot of the people in this study actually rode bicycles almost every day, and then they were listed as regular users. And I think that this happens because when we ask the question, we’re kind of dealing with this amorphous set of thoughts in our head. And it’s only when you actually try to draw it, or in the Fineman technique, try to write down the explanation, that you are exposed to actually the limits of your own understanding. You’re exposed to what you know and what you don’t know. Taking what’s in your head, and externalizing, and creating something with it is often a good way to check how well you actually have learned something.

Sean Murray 32:03
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is famous for asking his team to write essays, you know? 4-5-6-7-page essays on subjects. Well, if you’re going to pitch an idea, you’re going to pitch some kind of an investment, the typical way you do that in corporate America is you put together a PowerPoint. You get some bullet points up there; maybe a graph or two. Bezos doesn’t want to see PowerPoint. He’s banned it. He wants his people to write it out. And I think this is why. It’s going to test the limits of your knowledge. And it’s going to force you to really understand; think through your logic and your reasoning behind your idea.

Scott Young 32:39
Well, this goes back to what you were saying earlier, when you were talking about, you know, well, “I like to be able to raise my hand, and be able to interact with other people.” And I think that is very helpful. And I think we often do get insights from interacting, particularly with people who know more than we do. But I think it’s very important as learners, as workers, as you know, human beings living on this planet that we all also have the ability to do the work to get at the bottom of our own understandings. Because like you were saying with this Bezos example, what a lot of people will do is they’ll pass the buck. They won’t do the hard work of figuring out what they think about something; what they know; and what they don’t know. They’ll just kick it to someone else, and say, “Okay, well, you tell me or you teach me.” And it turns out that when you rob someone of the ability to do that work of forming their own understanding, they often only have a shallow version of what you’ve explained to them in their head. So if you just read a book, you are going to understand that subject way, way less than if you had to write that book. It doesn’t mean you have to write every book that you read. But it does mean that for things that are really important for you to understand deeply, having some exposure to writing or having some exposure to creating something is probably going to do a lot better than if you just sit passively, or you just get in a “brainstorming session” where you just sort of pass-the-buck, and let a bunch of other people throw out ideas, and then you’re no longer really have to think deeply about what you’re trying to create.

Sean Murray 33:57
One of the questions that came up for me as I read your book was the question of education today. What would you do to redesign how we learn in schools? And I guess this is a two-part question, what can we do to get kids more excited about learning? And to use some of these ultralearning techniques to engender a love for learning?

Scott Young 34:17
I’ll tackle the first question because I think that the problem is not that we need to have a “better education system.” I think the problem is that we need more education systems. We need more ways that people can gain knowledge and learn skills. And I think the challenge is that we’re trying to push every single person with all their diverse life situations, strengths, weaknesses, personalities, backgrounds through a very narrow funnel, and often with the very purpose of pushing them through that funnel, so we can see who came out on the other side. And I think that, that often has to do with the sort of side purpose of education, which is not teaching people things, but seeing how we can filter people into “Well, you went to this school or you pass this hard exam, and you did this thing.” Rather than you know, do you have the skills and knowledge that actually matter? What I would probably recommend, and what I try to focus on in ultralearning is not sort of a one-size-fits-all solution for every single person. But trying to at least at the start, try to open people up to the idea that there’s many, many, many different ways that they can learn skills, and to just have their mind expanded to that if you had struggled with this in the past, maybe there’s a different way that you can approach it. And maybe there’s a way you can approach it that goes through school, but maybe there’s a way you can approach it that doesn’t have to go through school. I think when we’re talking about the way that typical classrooms operate, I think there’s definitely areas for improvement. Some of those areas of improvement have been kind of well recognized by educational psychologists. You know, over the last 30 years, things like practice testing and direct instruction works a lot better than passive learning and this kind of thing. But these also have their own difficulties. And some of those difficulties are the fact that when they’ve done studies, students prefer the ineffective lectures where they don’t actually have to challenge themselves to the ones that actually create learning. And so these kinds of trade offs I think, are probably going to make me, I don’t want to say I’m a pessimist, but they make me somewhat less than hopeful, that there’s some easy quick fix is going to revolutionize our education system. I think the fact is that if we want to improve how learning works for us, and for our employees, and for our children, we have to take it into our own hands and not expect for the world to fix it for us. To your second question where you’re asking about children, I think there’s a lot of things that we can do. And I think one of the things that I think is important is to view the person who you’re trying to help, whether they’re a child or teenager, a university student as someone who has their own goals; has their own things that they want to be proficient in; their own values that they’re trying to reach; and trying to work effective learning; and setting up goals; and setting up learning projects into the things that they’re trying to do in life. I think too often there’s a prescriptive attitude of “Well, I know best! So go do this thing that looks totally unimportant for you and grind at it for 40 hours a week.” And then, we wonder why this person doesn’t have a lot of motivation. Because would you ever want a motivation if someone gave you some obscure goal that you don’t quite understand and forced you to do it for a long period of time. You know, what I would recommend is trying to get people to love learning is to figure out what they’re already interested in, and figure out how you can stoke those existing passions, and figure out how you can create these kind of structures, so that they know how to approach something that they’re interested in; how they could get better at it; how they could learn more. And, you know, if they’re a student, and they’re struggling in school, you know, teach them about things like retrieval, and practice testing, and spacing effect, so that they could be, you know, let’s set up a studying plan, so that you don’t have to work quite as hard to get the same grades, and you can have more time for the things that you care about.

Sean Murray 37:39
You describe ultralearning as self-directed and intense. One of the struggles I see with my kids and learning is we asked them to take on these subjects that they aren’t intrinsically motivated to learn. And I struggle with this. I guess it applies to more than just children; to everyone. But there’s a certain amount of knowledge you just have to learn. He may not wake up in the morning and just go, “I can’t wait to learn more about multivariate calculus.” But you know…

Maybe that is–there’s a certain amount of knowledge we all need to know. So I think there’s going to be some struggle there. The second thought that comes to mind, as you’re talking there about learning and children is that I’ve asked my kids on several occasions, what’s your favorite subject right now? And sometimes the answer is well, “It’s health because the teacher’s easy. They just don’t push me.” That gets to this idea in ultralearning, which is, it’s in the pushing that the real learning happens. You know, it can be easy to step back and say, take the easier path. What you pointed out in the book is that the path it, it seems a little harder at the beginning, but if you do it, it actually is easier in the long run. And that’s something I’m trying to pass along.

Scott Young 38:03
Yeah!

So I think there’s so many issues. It’s such a complex and nuanced topic. I don’t think it’ll easily reduce to a sound bite, “Well, just do this!” Because obviously, I think motivation and how you get someone to be inspired and eager to learn is very difficult. I mean, a big part of the reason I wrote this book was that I hope someone would pick it up and get excited about starting a learning project. So that more than just the techniques I was trying to offer, I wanted to show people, you know, this is possible! You might be able to do something like this, and get people excited about the potential for learning things in their own lives. So certainly motivation, and enthusiasm, and inspiration is there’s no simple formula. But at the same time, I think for subjects themselves, the more you can connect things to the things that the student already cares about, I think that that’s very valuable. Now that’s easier for some subjects than others, but that often requires creativity on the part of the educator or the parent. And I mentioned it kind of briefly is that even if you are not thrilled about multivariate calculus, like you just said, you can still approach it from the perspective of “Okay, let’s understand how learning works.” So that we can create a study routine that will minimize the stress and effort and pain that the student has to go through in order to get the results that they want to get. Because I think most students; very few students go into the classroom thinking of why I want to fail this. They want to do well. They just might have other goals that interfere with all the work they’d have to put in. Maybe they also want to have friends. They also want to socialize, or play sports, or play video games. And so I think if you even approach subjects from that angle of “Okay, well, how could you organize your learning schedule so that you don’t have to be cramming right before the exam being totally stressed out? Or how do you organize it so that you do have time for these other things that you love?” I think even for the times when you have to do something unpleasant, you can take it from that perspective of, “Well, how do we work together so that you can get more of what you want with less of the things that you don’t want?

Sean Murray 40:29
That brings up the subject of the role of learning in the life well-lived. And if we want to live a life of meaning and purpose, what is the role of learning in that life? And this is a subject you take on in the book, and it’s one of the more powerful sections where you discuss the impact of that learning can have in one’s life. So where do you see learning in the pursuit of the good life?

Scott Young 40:51
Learning is essential to living well. And I think that we often think that what will make us happy is, you know, making a lot of money, or having some achievement, or having someone else giving us a thumbs up, and recognizing us, and respecting us. And this is often how we drive our lives is we orient it around doing these things. But I think if people really deep down, think back to their best memories or the moments in their life that were the most fulfilling, they usually involve some kind of moment, where you are able to overcome something that was difficult for you before. So you are able to do something you weren’t able to do before. You’re able to see something that wasn’t obvious for you before. You have some kind of insight. You have some kind of epiphany. And so all of these things are based around learning. And so I think the more you engaged in the learning process, the more you understand how it works, the more you open yourself up to having these kinds of peak experiences. You have this ability where you can say, you know, I wasn’t able to learn another language before, but now I speak Spanish, and this is some accomplishment that makes me feel really good about my life. Or I was really worried about transitioning from this job to that job, but I was able to do it successfully. And now I feel like my life is less constrained; less straightjacketed. And so I really feel that learning is at the core of what makes us happy, and, and this feeling of expanded possibility.

Sean Murray 42:07
Absolutely. And there’s a point in the book right after the MIT Challenge, where you sort of ask yourself, “Well, if I could do this, what else could I do?” I thought that was very powerful. It just opened up these possibilities.

Scott Young 42:20
That’s what I’m hoping. And I think, for me, my first real kind of exposure to this was through meeting Benny Lewis. And sometimes, you know, we need to do things. We need to go out and accomplish things for ourselves. For a lot of us, the world is sort of constrained by what we feel we have permission to do like why, are you allowed to do that? Are you able to do that? And the answer is usually yes. But I think it helps to have an example where you see someone do something and you’re like, “Oh, okay! Well, maybe it isn’t crazy for me to want to try to do this, or to learn a language even though you’re ‘too old’ or to try a sport even though you’re clumsy, or, or you know, learn math, even though you were bad in it in school.” If you can challenge those sort of limiting beliefs about yourself, I think it just expands your conception of yourself. Again, like you said, once you’ve done one thing, you start to think about what other things might be possible.

Sean Murray 43:06
If your goal in writing the book was to motivate people to take on some of these challenges, I think you absolutely did that as far as for this reader. But you also did one other thing, which was you brought it home or you made it more realistic, you basically laid out the playbook, and also made the argument. Built the case that you can do this. You don’t have to be a genius. This is how humans learn. You’ve got a brain that if you put it through the cycles of learning; if you use deliberate practice; if you put feedback into your system; if you go direct, you can learn, and that brings a certain amount of joy to life and excitement around possibilities. There’s a thrill of new experiences. You’ve ignited in me, “Hey, what else could I learn?” That’s what I took away from the book. What’s next?

Scott Young 43:52
That’s exactly what I like to hear. And I, I think there’s a lot of these sort of outside-the-box ways of thinking about things and learning is often difficult. It often has frustrations, so I don’t deny that. But I think at the same time, if you really invest in kind of understanding the process, I don’t know, for me, this has been my whole life, and I feel like everything that I’ve done has been moving me in this direction of just realizing really what potential there is for people to do things. And you know, the way I like to think about is just the way that your heart is an organ of pumping blood; or your lungs are for breathing; your brain is for learning that is what it is an organ of. And so the idea that some people aren’t good learners or that, you know, you’re bad at learning things is usually a kind of belief that you attach to yourself because of a bad experience in the past, and it’s not usually some really deep reality that it’s impossible for you to learn something. Anyone can learn anything if you have the right motivation and effort.

Sean Murray 44:42
Well, in closing, I’d like to share one of the insights I felt was very profound and moving. And, and then, let you comment. And it’s this idea, “The more one learns, the greater the craving for learning.”

Scott Young 44:56
This is the one thing that I like to leave people with is that the people who are the most curious; the people who have the most unanswered questions aren’t the people who know the least, they’re the people who know the most. And so in some ways, I think it’s a positive reinforcing cycle that the more things you learn, the more things you are aware of. “Oh, wow! I could also do this. And I can also learn this. And this is also exists.” The way I like to think about it is part of the thing when you’re learning is that you’re not just learning to have a particular skill, but you’re also learning to see. So things that were previously invisible to you suddenly pop out in your environment. You see something that it was just in the background. You just didn’t see it before. And so I think that power to be able to see things that were previously invisible is worth cultivating.

Sean Murray 45:36
Well, this has been a great conversation. I’ve learned a lot. Where can the audience find out more about you, Scott?

Scott Young 45:42
Sure. So you can go to my website, which is that scotthyoung.com. That’s S-C-O-T-T-H-Y-O-U-N-G.com. You can also get my book, wherever books are sold: Amazon, Barnes and Noble. There’s also an Audible version, which is narrated by me. So if you’re not too tired of listening to my voice, at this point, you can also listen to the audio book.

Sean Murray 45:59
Scott, thank you for being on The Good Life Podcast.

Scott Young 46:02
Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Outro 46:04
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