How to Become an Expert in Anything Fast | Ultra Learning Principles

In 2011 an interesting thing happened, a student named Scott Young completed the entire syllabus of MIT for a computer science degree in just one year, which usually takes four years to complete.

A lot of people thought, wow, what a genius he is. But later on, they came to know that he completed all these things by watching the YouTube videos and the courses provided by MIT on their courseware website.

Later on, people came to know that he learned to draw from basic painting to advanced in just 30 days. Along with that he also learned a completely new language, Spanish.

After that people started to ask him how do you learn things so quickly.

Then he started to write a blog and after that, he wrote a book called Ultra Learning in which he revealed  9 secrets by which we can learn anything.

In this article, we are going to talk about these nine secret principles which he revealed in his book. So, without further ado let's get started. 

1.Meta-Learning

This principle implies that all the knowledge that you have divide into 4 parts:

1. Known Known: These are the known that you know for example, you know how to write.
2. Known Unknown: These are the things that you don't know for example, you know that you don’t know how to make a rocket, or you know that you don’t know how to fly an airplane and so on.
3. Unknown Known: this is the segment of knowledge that you don’t know you already knew about, for example, you tied your shoelace without thinking, and you forgot that you knew about it.
4. Unknown Unknown:  This is the quadrant of knowledge about which you don't know anything even though you don't think that this knowledge exists. For example, if you are a class 12th student you don't know that in engineering there is this concept called Fourier series, the Laplace transform.  

So, this Meta-learning concept tells you that the knowledge that is in your Unknown Unknown quadrant you have to bring it into the Known Unknown quadrant.  It means that you have to first find out what are the things that you don't know.  

For example, if you are reading the theory of computation subject for the first time, what you have to do is just look at the contents or the topics of the book and watch small videos on YouTube for those topics to get ample knowledge about all those topics it will give you the benefit of learning more things and knowledge about the subject.

Moving on to our next principle which is,

2.Focus

In the 18th century, there was a girl named Mary Somerville who loved to learn mathematics but at that time girls were not allowed to learn mathematics, they were just allowed to learn Swing. 

One day their neighbor's aunt came and saw Mary learning Mathematics and told her mother why is your daughter learning maths like men do, your daughter doesn't know how to sew clothes.  After that day for a maximum of the time, her mother used to keep her away from learning mathematics.

And when she used to ask her mother for a candle during the night to learn, her mother used to refuse and didn't give her the candle. 

Then what she used to do is, when the lights were off she used to think about the equation in her mind and solve the equation completely in her mind.

After marriage when she became the mother of a child, while breastfeeding the child she used to do the same thing just focus on the equation in her mind and use it to solve those.

In short, she used to say no to other things and just focus on a specific thing and with the help of this Mary Somerville became the first lady who was elected to the Royal Astronomical Society.

Now, when we know that after Meta Learning, we have to focus on some the things at a time, then comes the third principle which is,

3.Directness

Vatsal Jaiswal shifted from India to Canada to become a good architect. After completing the architecture degree he started to apply for the job but faced rejection at all the places.

Then he made a brilliant move, he started to work at a printing shop. Now you might be thinking what's new in that?  The printing shop where he started to work was not common, so basically all the brilliant and amazing architects used to print their designs at that shop.

Vatsal started to study those designs, and day by day he started to learn the designs of all the master architects. After that, he made his portfolio and he started to create new plans.

Then he gave his plans to the three firms and finally, he got job offers from all three companies.

This point is called directness, meaning if we read books all the time without executing anything in actuality, we will be behind the world.

So, don't just read, implement it in real life by putting yourself in a place where that knowledge is used actually. And then your learning will start to take an exponential curve.

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 Now come the fourth point which is,

4.Drill

Benjamin Franklin wanted to become a writer but his writing was not good at all. The people to who he used to give his writings were not able to read anything from it and started to feel bored.

At that time Benjamin used to read a popular magazine called “The Spectator”. Benjamin noticed that the authors of The Spectator were writing interesting stories but he was not able to write that type of stories.

Then he started to do is, read the stories from the spectator magazine, close it and write those stories in his own words in the same interesting way.

After that, if he had any of his own story he used to write in the same way that the authors of The Spectator were following. In this way, he started to improve and finally, he wrote his own story.

Benjamin’s brother had his own publishing company so he thought if he would give this story to his brother he would reject him again. So, he added the wrong name of the author and gave it to his brother. This time his script was selected.

So, the point here is that we have to drill ourselves. By Drill it means that we should know that “we don't know this thing” and then exactly practice the thing again and again.

Generally, what we do is if we know anything we always improve in that but we start ignoring the negative points where there is scope for improvement. So, we do have not to do it.

5.Retrieval

In normal exam what happens is that we study for the entire year and at the end we are tested for it once. But if we have to do ultra learning, after learning something we have to test for it in the real world. The more we will minimize this process the more we will learn.

This step will work with our next step which is,

6.Feedback

We all hate taking feedback from others regarding the things we do but this is not the case we have to take feedback from others and it will improve the things in us.

So you have to take feedback from others. It will help you to understand or identify what are the things that you are doing wrong.

By positive feedback, we do not make any improvements. So improvement is made because of the negative feedback. The more quickly you know about the wrong things you are doing the more you will learn fast.

In the process of Ultra Learning, the 7th step is,

7.Retention

Nigal Richard had won the World Scrabble Championship, people were thinking what's the big deal in it, he had already won it 3 times before. But the twist was he had won the French World Championship. The person who speaks English, how would he win the Scrabble championship in French?

He never used to tell anyone how he learned things. But in between an interesting thing happened, after winning this championship he travelled for 200 miles on his bicycle and won the Cycling competition.

After that his friends told him now you have won the two competitions, let's have a party. He said no, instead he went to his home by traveling 200 miles again on his bicycle. 

After detailed research and when a lot of articles were published about how he is doing all these things, it came to be known it's because of “retention”.

It means that humans can be good at two or three things and you have to practice those things again and again. For example, if you are a fitness freak and you have good muscles, then suddenly you stop going to the gym to train your muscles, day by day your muscles will start becoming weak because your muscles need that resistance.

The same is the case here you have to practice again and again to retain more.

Now moving to our next point.

8.Intuition

Richard Feynman, the favourite physicist of Albert Einstein, was an intelligent person. Once he took an exam in mathematics, and the median score of that exam was 0 meaning the maximum people used to score negative in that exam. 

He took that exam and came back home at half-time and he scored Rank 1. After combining the scores of others who ranked 2nd, 3rd and 4th, they were not even close to the score of Feynman.

Why did it happen? The answer would be because of Intuition. Intuition for anything builds when the feedback cycle for something is small. 

If you are ignoring the feedback for something then intuition for that field doesn’t build. 

The next thing in the process of Ultra Learning is,

9.Experimentation

When you learn something for the first time you start thinking ok now I'm the master in it. Let's suppose you started to learn a programming language, after learning the syntax of a language you start thinking ok now I know the language but that's not the case, unless or until you are not making projects in that language you would not learn.

So, keep experimenting with new things and learn by doing.

Conclusion

That’s how you become an expert in anything fast by using the 9 principles of ultra Learning by Scott Young.

If you follow all these steps you will learn new things easily and score better. 

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