ML20: Scott Young on Ultralearning Projects, the MIT Challenge and The Year Without English

Discover the core skills needed to become a self-directed learner, the advantages of different media sources for MetaLearning and the key principles that cognitive science has proven help people learn faster and more efficiently.

ML20: Scott Young on Ultralearning Projects, the MIT Challenge and The Year Without English

Scott Young is a lifelong learner and online entrepreneur who runs the business ScottHYoung.com where he tries to answer the question: “What’s the best way to learn?” through free articles, and a series of books and courses.

In a world of limitless access to information, it's become possible for all of us to direct our own learning like never before. And Scott is a great example of someone doing this - taking on ambitious ultra learning projects which include:

  1. The MIT Challenge, where he successfully learned MIT’s 4-year computer science curriculum in a year without taking classes
  2. The Year Without English, where he travelled the world with a friend to learn four languages in a year – Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin and Korean.

In this episode we discuss a wide range of topics including:

- The core skills and habits someone needs to become a self directed learner
- The advantages/disadvantages of the different forms of media for learning like blogs vs books and podcasts vs videos
- The principles that cognitive science has proven help people learn faster


So whether you're building a business, learning a language or learning to code, this episode will give you the tools and techniques needed to direct your own ultralearning project.

Podcasts

🎙 ML46: Barbara Oakley on Learning How To Learn, Retraining Your Brain and The Secrets Behind Great Online Education

🎙 ML40: How To Learn a New Skill

🎙 ML39: How To Find Your Learning Style

Selected Resources

Scott's Projects

The MIT Challenge

The Year Without English

30 Day Drawing Challenge

Other Resources

📖 Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning - Roediger & McDaniel

📖 Human Memory - Alan Baddeley & Michael Eysenck

▶️ Medical Neuroscience Course - Duke University on Coursera

🖥 Daniel Willingham's Blog

🖥 Study Hacks - Cal Newport

🖥 Better Explained - Khalid Azad

🖥 Fluent in 3 Months - Benny Lewis

🖥 Hacking Chinese - Olle Linge