How to Learn PDF

**[how to learn]** transcript number 1. " \- Hey friends, welcome back to the channel. Today We\'re talking about learning. Now, learning has been probably one of my main superpowers since I was very young. And learning how to learn is one of those meta skills that no one ever really teaches...

**[how to learn]** transcript number 1. " \- Hey friends, welcome back to the channel. Today We\'re talking about learning. Now, learning has been probably one of my main superpowers since I was very young. And learning how to learn is one of those meta skills that no one ever really teaches us, but that can have an enormous impact on our life in basically everything that we do. For example, when I was in med school, I learned how to learn, and therefore I could study for everything that I was doing more efficiently, and that freed up my own time to do things like set up a business and set up this YouTube channel. And these days, even though I don\'t have many more exams to prepare for, learning is still a huge part of my life. Trying to get better at making these YouTube videos, trying to get better at running a business. All of this stuff involves learning. And so in this video, I\'m gonna share nine tips that I found really helpful that are evidence-based about how we can learn anything we want faster, let\'s go. **Sharpen the axe** ------------------- Tip number one is to sharpen the axe. Now this is from a quote that\'s attributed to Abraham Lincoln, where he famously said that if you gave me six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first four sharpening the axe. And he\'s really talking here about the power of preparation. And this definitely applies to learning anything as well. Let\'s say we are studying for an exam and we wanna learn it a little bit better, reading a great book called \"Make It Stick\" would be a great way of learning how to learn or checking out my Skillshare class on evidence-based study techniques. Equally, let\'s say we\'re trying to learn something like the guitar or chess or anything like that. Something that\'s not related to studying. We should still spend a decent amount of time figuring out the meta learning behind what we\'re actually gonna learn like how we are going to learn the thing. For example, when I was learning how to play the piano by ear, I spent a decent amount of time on the learn piano subreddit where people were explaining how to learn how to play piano by ear and just spending a little bit of time sharpening the axe before I actually sat down to learn the thing really helped accelerate my learning process. **Use crutches to optimise your focus** --------------------------------------- Tip number two is to use crutches to optimise our focus. Now, whenever we\'re learning anything it\'s really tempting to kind of learn it in the background like practising the guitar while watching TV or something like that. But obviously, when we\'re fully focused on the thing that we\'re learning, our brain learns the thing a lot better. And so I found a few different crutches or hacks that have been particularly helpful in helping me focus on things. One is the five minute rule which is a general tip for productivity as well, which is that if we wanna do something and we\'re finding ourselves having difficulty in starting out doing the thing, like actually getting started, overcoming the activation energy. The five minute rule says that, we just have to convince ourselves that we\'re just gonna do the thing for five minutes. And then after we\'ve done it for five minutes we\'re allowed to just not do it, but more often than not I find that if I\'ve been practising the guitar, or playing the piano for five minutes, I do then want to actually continue to practise. The other thing that\'s really helpful is to just chuck my phone away. I literally take my phone and I toss it onto the sofa or on the floor like a good tosser. And then I\'m ready to focus and not be distracted with the thing that I\'m trying to learn, all right? **Find opportunities for immersion** ------------------------------------ Tip number three is to find opportunities for immersion. So there\'s a great book called \"Ultralearning\" by a chap called Scott Young where he talks about his journey through learning languages in like three months at a time and becoming fluent in a language in three months. And the key to that as all language learners say is immersion. Just being as immersed in the language as possible. And the general principle here is that we learn best when we\'re in the environment where we\'re actually gonna be using the skill. So for example, when I was learning how to do magic to become a close-up magician, yes I was doing some practise in front of my webcam and in front of my mirror just to get the slight of hand down. But really my webcam or mirror is not the arena in which I\'m gonna be performing in. And so I made it a point to try and perform magic for real people, as much as possible. I would take a deck of cards to school and I\'d have cards in my room at all times, and so friends would come over, I\'d kind of, hey, be like, hey do you wanna see a magic trick? And eventually once I got okay at performing for friends and family, I started then reaching out and doing paid gigs, even though I was nowhere near good enough in my head to get paid to do magic. Eventually, I did end up getting paid to do magic. And those walk around to gigs at balls and parties helped improve my abilities in a way that just doing it in front of the mirror really wouldn\'t have done. **Figure out what your weak links are** --------------------------------------- Tip number 4 is to figure out what are our weak links and then use lots of drills and stuff to improve them. So if we use med school as an example, I had a few subjects that I was pretty weak in. Neurology was one of them. If you\'d asked me what is Guillain-Barré syndrome I\'d have been like, oh God, I have absolutely no idea. I didn\'t even have a mental module for where it would fit into the subject of neurology. And so when it came to studying efficiently for my exams, I knew that, okay, I have to drill the things that I\'m weakest on. And I spent just a whole day basically creating a one-page syllabus of just neurology, just focusing on that one subject. And just because I spent like eight to 12 hours that day they\'re doing it, I basically plugged it as an area of weakness, and that it was no longer an area of weakness. And the question I would keep on asking myself every day when I was sitting down to study was, if the exam were tomorrow, what topic would I be the least happy, or the most pissed off about? And then I would just study that topic. And this is really good because whenever we\'re learning or whenever we\'re studying or anything like that, it\'s very tempting to just do the stuff that seems familiar to us. If we\'re studying for an exam, it\'s very tempting to open up the book to page one even though we already know what\'s on page one. If we\'re learning the guitar, it\'s very tempting to just play through songs that we\'ve already played before. But really the learning only happens when we\'re trying to fix our weaknesses and we\'re trying to operate at a decent level of difficulty. If something is too easy, we\'re not gonna learn anything at all. And so if we wanna maximise the learning and learn anything faster, we wanna really hone down on what are these areas of weakness, what are these weak links, and how do we use drills to improve those as quickly as we can? **Test yourself** ----------------- Tip number five is to test ourselves. Now, this is a thing that in the world of studying is called active recall but it also applies to the world of learning anything in general. I have a whole video about that, that\'s linked in the card over there. And if you wanna find out more, you can definitely check out my Skillshare course about how to study for exams, also linked in the video description, by the way Skillshare is sponsoring this video. I\'ll tell you more about them a little bit later. Anyway, the idea behind active recall or retrieval practise is that we don\'t learn by trying to put stuff into our brains, we actually learn counter-intuitively by trying to take stuff out of our brains. And so if you\'ve had that experience where you\'ve read something in a textbook or on a website and someone asks you about it a few days later and you\'ve completely forgotten about it, that\'s just because you haven\'t tested yourself on that knowledge. And the word testing has all these negative connotations because we think of testing as like a school thing and we get graded and we get judged. But if we move towards thinking of testing ourselves as being a strategy for learning, everything becomes so much easier. That\'s why when learning play the guitar there\'s only so many tutorials you can watch before you actually start having to put it into practise. When you\'re studying for exams, there\'s no point reading the textbook and just summarising what\'s in the textbook, the point is you have to test yourself so that your brain has a chance to work to retrieve the information. And that is what really drives learning. And in the field of learning, there is this concept called the desirable difficulty concept. Which basically just means some things shouldn\'t be too hard, where for example if I were to try playing tennis against Roger Federer, it would just be too hard. I wouldn\'t really learn anything. But equally, if I were to try playing tennis against a 10 year old who doesn\'t know how to play, it wouldn\'t be fun, I wouldn\'t learn anything because the difficulty is at two different extremes. I wanna be playing tennis against someone who is at my level or a little bit better than me, because that is the real arena in which I\'m gonna be learning. And that\'s why having a coach for example, is really good because a coach can moderate their play style to be at my level and therefore I\'m more likely to learn as desirable difficulty. And so whatever we wanna learn efficiently, we wanna apply this concept to try and make it a little bit more difficult. Learning is not supposed to be easy, it is supposed to be hard. And if it\'s hard, then it means we\'re doing something right. **Get intense feedback often** ------------------------------ Tip number six is to get intense feedback as often and as quickly as possible. So feedback obviously is how we learn. We do something, we see that we\'re doing it wrong and then we improve the thing. And again, feedback is one of those words that can seem a little bit like dirty at times, especially if we\'re starting something out where we\'re not sure of our own abilities. If we get constructive or critical feedback, that can really be a blow to our ego. If you\'re that sort of person that needs the ego massage then at the start of learning something, what you need is praise and encouragement. For example, if I was just starting to learn how to sing, and people would just give me critical feedback immediately, I\'d probably feel a little bit like, oh, okay I don\'t really wanna sing. I\'m one of those people who just can\'t sing, Equally if I were to start drawing, and people would be like, oh, ha! Ha! that\'s really crap you should do this instead. I\'d probably feel pretty bad about it and therefore it wouldn\'t help me continue on the journey. So I think at the start of a journey for most of us we need that injection of positivity and enthusiasm rather than necessarily critical feedback. But if we do decide to switch gears and to start taking learning something super seriously, we wanna kind of avoid the praise and recognition aspect of it, which is kind of unhelpful, and instead focus on the critical, constructive feedback. What can we do differently? Again, this is why having a coach for stuff is actually really, really helpful. Ever since getting a personal trainer, everything in the gym has improved, my biceps has gotten bigger. I\'m at one-step close to becoming a gymshark athlete because now I have someone who is like there and then giving me feedback on the things that I should do differently. Whereas before maybe once in a blue moon, I\'d film a video of myself, send it to a friend, they\'d reply a few days later. It\'s not really a tight feedback loop. And really it\'s the tight feedback loops that encourage learning whether it\'s for exams or whether it\'s for anything else in life. **Overlearning** ---------------- Tip number seven is the concept of overlearning which is that when we\'re learning something we actually wanna try and understand or learn it in more depth than we necessarily need to. And the idea here is to continuously be asking why a thing works the way that it does. So for example, when I\'m working as a doctor and I see senior doctors who, you know, most of being a doctor, admittedly, is about following guidelines and following a prescribed set of rules and basically a flow chart for everything that we do. And so there are some doctors who have that view of, all I have to do is memorise the guidelines, and look them up but then there are other doctors who have a more first principles understanding approach to medicine which is that, okay, I know what the guidelines are, that I should prescribe this drug but I\'m actually gonna take a step to figure out why that\'s the guideline and why do they do that? What\'s the paper, what\'s the evidence around this. And, you know, in my experience, it\'s hard to say that camp two is objectively a better doctor than camp one, but certainly the sort of doctor that I want to be is the doctor who understands stuff from first principles and understands the rationale for doing stuff rather than just memorising the guidelines. This applies to music theory in the guitar as well. I had a guitar lesson this morning, and we were talking about how it\'s very easy to learn how to play anything by just following a tutorial. But when you follow a tutorial, the thing that you\'re learning is, my fingers are going in this particular position. Whereas what we wanna try and get to, and John Mayer talks about this a lot on his Instagram, what we wanna be getting to is just an understanding of music theory. So that instead of, I put my fingers in A, B and C positions, we think, okay, I\'m playing a C7 chord and the reason I\'m playing a C7 chord is because of this. And therefore my fingers are gonna go in A, B and C position. And so the end result is the same. We\'re still playing that chord and we could still probably just play the song. But when you have that deeper appreciation of the the reasons behind why things are the way that they are, it just makes learning anything else in that particular sphere, much easier and much more efficient. **Spacing** ----------- Tip number eight is all about spacing. This is something in the world of studying we call spaced repetition. Basically there\'s a concept called the forgetting curve that was discovered by a chap called Ebbinghaus in like the 1800\'s. And the forgetting curve is that whenever we learn anything, whether it\'s like a fact or a skill or whatever. We\'re just gonna forget it. And our memory for the thing is gonna decay over time. And so we have to keep on practising or testing ourselves on the thing to actually continue to have our brain kinda use up space for that kinda thing, because it\'s like with our muscles, when we don\'t use our muscles, our muscles are gonna atrophy and they\'re gonna get smaller, and we\'re gonna get less hench. Equally with our brain. If we learn let\'s say a language when we were five years old and then we don\'t use it for the next 10 years, we\'re actually gonna forget most of the language \'cause our brain doesn\'t need to have that information in it anymore. But thankfully we can combat the forgetting curve by using this concept of spaced repetition, this applies not just to exams, but to any other skill as well. Which is that if we kinda repeat the thing at spaced intervals, so let\'s say I might learn a song on the guitar on day one, and then I might repeat it again tomorrow. And then I might test myself on it again next week and then next month, and then six months from now. And if I\'ve spaced my repetition of this thing enough eventually playing that song is gonna go into my muscle memory, it\'s gonna go into my long-term memory and I won\'t need to practise it very much anymore to be able to play it whenever I want. Now, if you\'re trying to learn something that has specific facts, there\'s all sorts of different apps that you can use to help with spacing. The one that I personally enjoy the most, it\'s free and it\'s called Anki, after the Japanese for Ankishimmers which I think is to memorise. And Anki is just like an incredible app that completely revolutionised my experience of med school. It does have a bit of a learning curve, and so did you know, I have an entire Skillshare class about how to use Anki, the basics along with some advanced tips along with some guides and how to use Anki to learn absolutely anything along with bonus interviews from other students all around the world that are using Anki for stuff very effectively. If you wanna check that out and any of my other like 10 classes on Skillshare, you should hit the link in the video description because Skillshare are very currently sponsoring this video. So if you wanna check out my class on Anki, or my class on evidence-based study tips or any of my three classes about how to be more productive, then hit the link in the video description. When I was filming this video, Skillshare had an offer of giving you 30% off the annual premium subscription but it actually changed up that offer. So now, if you\'re one of the first thousand people to hit the link in the video description, you will get a one month free trial, completely free to Skillshare premium where you can check out my Anki class and all the other 10 classes I\'ve got on Skillshare. So hit the link in the video description, be the first 1000 people to hit that link to get a one month free trial. This is amazing, it\'s a no brainer, you can just watch all my classes. So thank you Skillshare for sponsoring this video. **Teach what you\'re trying to learn** -------------------------------------- And finally tip number nine is to teach what you are trying to learn. We often have this thing of like, oh I\'m not allowed to teach something until I become an expert at it. But there\'s this concept that C.S Lewis talks about that I talk about a lot called the curse of knowledge. Which is that, when we\'re trying to learn something, often we don\'t learn best from experts, we learn best from people who are just one step in front of us along that same journey. And so the way I think of it is that I would rather learn from a guide, than learn from a guru. Guide versus guru. And I would rather be a guide than try and be a guru. And certainly for me, I found that when I was going through medical school, my favourite revision sessions or lectures would be the ones that were given by medical students in the year above me rather than those given by world-class Nobel prize winning professors because those guys were old and like really far removed from the things that I needed at the time, whereas, another medical student just one year above me was like really, really helpful. And then when I started teaching medical students, when I started teaching guitar, when I started teaching piano, and YouTube as well with my part-time YouTuber academy, I found that anytime I try and teach something, it really solidifies my own knowledge and understanding and learning of the thing itself. And so now I have a general policy that whenever I\'m learning anything, I\'m documenting my process while learning it. And that helps me learn better because I know that I\'m possibly gonna be teaching this thing a few months or years from now. If you like this video, you might like to check out two specific books about learning. One is called, \"Make it stick\" and the other one is called \"Ultralearning\" And you can actually find summaries for both of those on shortform which is my favourite way of getting summaries of books. That\'ll be linked in the video description if you wanna check it out. And if you\'re interested in this science of effective learning, check out this video over here, which is from a few years ago, but it still genuinely one of my favourite videos of all time that I\'ve ever made. One of the best ones, I think as well. And that\'s all about the power of active recall and why testing ourselves is the best thing ever. And I talk about a lot of scientific evidence around it and loads of people have said that that video alone has changed their lives. So thank you so much for watching hit the subscribe button if you aren\'t already and I\'ll see you in the next video, bye-bye " transcript number 2"learning is a two-stage process and the learning I\'m referring to is specifically deliberate learning language learning skill learning learning knowledge of any kind learning how to navigate the emotional dynamics of a relationship anything two phases one is active engagement and focus uh much of the trigger for neuroplasticity is a process is engaged by dopamine and norepinephrine in a molecule called acetylcholine which is liberated from multiple sources that we always talked about how acetylcholine controls the the contraction of muscles but in the brain acetylcholine is mainly comes from two sets of neurons one in the brain stem and another in the basal forebrain and it serves as a kind of a highlighter marking particular connections or neurons that later stand a chance to become stronger let\'s say I decided I was going to learn conversational French I would learn some nouns or some verbs I would I would focus on this and the greater degree of focus that I bring the greater amount of acetylcholine is released at the particular locations in the brain they\'re involved in enunciating the words and writing the comprehension you know multiple spots within the brain that kind of marks those or Flags those areas as changing later but the actual rewiring of the nervous system happens during states of deep sleep or sleep-like states and so so when we say neuroplasticity the brain\'s ability to change in response to experience that\'s a two-part process it\'s a process it\'s not an event we always think about things as events but in biology almost everything is a process so the the takeaway from this is in order to learn at any age the most critical thing is that you bring as much focus and active engagement to the learning the the encoding of the information bringing in the information and then that you get into a state of deep rest as quickly as possible typically that would be the night after you learn there are some beautiful studies published in cell reports last year and the year before showing that people who take a 20-minute nap within the four hours after these uh triggering learning or people that do a non-sleep deep rest type protocol even just sitting there quietly and not doing anything they learn much faster in other words the brain rewires much faster that\'s interesting it\'s very interesting and what\'s happening is very interesting we\'ve long known that during sleep there\'s a replay of the neurons in the same sequence that they were played during the activity in the uh earlier in that day sometimes even backwards for some reason it\'s like the songs played backwards at night who knows why I don\'t think we should focus too much on that right now but that replay is the consolidation of the information you learn this is why you try something physically try it physically you can\'t do it you can\'t do it and then you come back a week later and voila you can do it these non-sleep deep rest are these shallow naps of 20 to 30 minutes also create a replayer of firing of the neurons there\'s a tool which is get as focused as you can but then relax as deeply as you for how long generally after about 90 minutes exist on these so-called 90-minute ultradian Cycles everything in sleep is a 90 minute cycle everything waking is a 90 minute cycle people think that the expectation is that you\'re going to be like a beam of focus for 90 minutes that\'s not the case you can flicker in and out you\'re gonna get distracted you bring yourself back I mean focus is an active process of bringing that Spotlight of attention back and that anxiety sometimes that we feel is adrenaline it\'s supposed to be stressful to learn it\'s this idea that we just sit back and learn or that you know movies have really destroyed the notion of learning the idea that you\'re going to like pick up the sword and suddenly have the skills you know forget it it\'s like this just doesn\'t work that way some days are good and some days are worse if you slept better generally it\'s better people are always trying to optimize how much caffeine background noise yes noise yes music no music you have to tweak things according to your circumstances but you nine after about 90 minutes should really take a break and let your mind go idle somewhat ideally you would take a 20 minute nap or a 30 minute nap or do a non-sleep deep rest protocol within the first hour to four hours after that sleep that you get that night is going to be the most powerful tool for wiring the nervous system but there\'s another thing that you can do which is that there\'s a beautiful literature on what\'s called Gap learning effects and this has been looked at for physical skill learning for music learning math Etc where if every couple of minutes just randomly during your intense learning or Focus you pause and you just take 10 seconds and do nothing just let your brain idle eyes open your eyes closed doesn\'t matter what happens is your rates of learning actually increase and the reason is now they\'ve done neuroimaging on this really excellent studies publish in great journals show that during those little gaps that you\'re taking there\'s a replay of the neurons very fast at something like 10 or 20x the speed that the normally they would be rehearsing is you\'re getting more repetitions during the by by stopping every once in a while now and how many of these to insert and it should be random just every once in a while while you\'re writing or trying to do something you just pause and do nothing and I think that the the science on this dates back about 20 years but it\'s only now that there\'s an enough of what I call a kind of center of mass around these studies that really point to the fact that Gap learning effects are really strong so it\'s Focus rest Focus rest Focus rest and that can be done on the micro level like within that 90 minute block let\'s just make up a number for fun so people have something to to Anchor to if you\'re gonna sit down and do an hour of work let\'s say for every 60 Minutes of focus or learning that you try and do introduce um 30 30 gaps of 10 seconds at random and and truly at random not on a regular interval and then sometime later that day if you can do an nsdr non-sleep deep breaths and if you can\'t okay no big deal you won\'t learn as fast but you\'ll still learn provided that you get into deep sleep that night and you let\'s say you have a lousy night\'s sleep you\'ll still learn but you\'ll won\'t learn as well and maybe the next night you stand a chance of encoding that information so neuroplasticity involves a very strong trigger and then deep relaxation is when the actual rewiring occurs when you think about the the tools that people use to enhance Focus Ritalin Adderall l-tyrosine excessive amounts of caffeine nicotine those all help with the trigger part but they don\'t help with the relaxation part and so a lot of people don\'t learn they just get really good at doing but they don\'t actually learn so very effective people in regardless of workplace or activity sport or cognitive work or otherwise perform very well because they\'re very good at regulating the Seesaw of focus relax Focus relax and in the long term it also is very health enhancing as opposed to health depleting I mean I know a dozen or more people who have done very very well in business or Academia who are a a mess they I mean they they\'re physically amassed they\'re emotionally a mess they\'re mentally messed their relationships are a mess people that I you know consider successful are people that are very successful in multiple domains of life and that almost always correlates with an ability to engage and disengage deliberately engage and and deliberately disengage it\'s a fact that in order to get good at anything unless you\'re just an absolute Talent you need to apply yourself and and work hard and sometimes work longer and harder than you feel like working or is healthy for yourself and that\'s that\'s a reality but sleep is important for Learning and a number of other aspects of Health I think that that the ability to toggle back and forth between engaged and disengaged States and to see that whole process engage and disengage in the dynamic control of that and deliberate self-control of that that is a superpower and we tend to only look at one side of the equation the leaning in the way I like to think of it is in so much as a seesaw is you can either be back on your heels flat-footed or forward Center of mass forward Center of mass is great but it\'s it\'s energetically demanding and you need to learn how to come up to just you know flat footed every once in a while now when you\'re back on your heels that\'s a sign that likely you were doing too much time forward Center of mass no one wants to talk about this but people who grind grind grind rarely succeed and then just take you know take off and do something else I think people humans have mastered this process of engaging and disengaging on a longer time scale Work Hard Play Hard or they\'ll take a long vacation but what I\'m talking about doing this is across the day I\'m talking about regulating your nervous system within the unit of the day or even within the unit of the morning or you\'re within the unit of the afternoon and I think that that\'s much more useful time bin to conceptualize this because the idea that you\'re gonna you know sell the company or launch the thing and then then you\'ll rest okay but you can be so much more effective if you know how to dynamically control your nervous system in real time and great athletes know how to do this great musicians know how to do this even Within the playing of a piece of music or within a race they know how to reserve energy so that then they can kick at the end Ford Center of mass can be done if you wanted through drinking caffeine the main way to do it is to get in that kind of inspired and motivated Pursuit but then physiological size non-sleep depressed all of that is very useful but the foundation of that whole process there\'s a third layer which is sleep when you\'ve when you\'re well rested you\'re able to engage this forward Center of mass flat-footed thing at will much more easily when sleep suffers everything suffers we want to always start with sleep great sleep makes everything bette " transcript number 3"imagine you can Master anything five times faster than everybody else anyways you know what it\'s like to feel behind comparing yourself to those who did The Impossible in one year three months 30 Days by the time they were 25 but no more this secret superpower is called meta learning which is learning how to learn instead of taking all this time you do it in a fraction of it there are six things I\'ve learned from the world\'s fastest Learners and if you don\'t know these you\'re gonna fall behind and this first one blew my mind when I first discovered it I think we\'ve all heard stories of people who fail for years at something before they became really good at it for example Jimmy Donaldson aka Mr Beef who made videos for years without getting any results but how did this initial failure keep them going it didn\'t one of the First videos Mr Bean ever put out went viral I was 11 I was playing the game a guy just started destroying me absolutely crushing me so I made a video saying this guy he got a bunch of views and his brain dumped a fat load of dopamine all over him dopamine being the chemical for motivation and desire which busy tells your brain whatever you just did to get that thing do it again and don\'t stop until we have it again and that kept him going that\'s what keeps anyone motivated when somebody\'s obsessed with something it\'s oftentimes because somebody told them early on wow you are really good at this Michael Jordan wasn\'t cut from the basketball team he was just too short at age 15 but he was already considered a great player that a lot of people cheered on but being the underdog makes for a better story so rule number one is get early wins get positive feedback as soon as possible which will get you excited allows you to learn faster and keeps you going when it gets hot for example what\'s the first simple sentence if you are learning Spanish yeah like I now have to I have a problem my friends and I have planned a trip to Mexico City five days from now I asked them anyone else to speak Spanish fluently and I sent it before realizing I don\'t my buddy Steven made fun of me with this meme my ego got hurt and I publicly announced to everyone I will only speak Spanish to locals in Mexico mark my words senorita which means my guy how long do you think it\'ll take me to learn Spanish do you know any Spanish it\'s like a totally different language it\'s got different grammar it doesn\'t translate in the same order learn Spanish in four hours I need some help so I\'m talking to YouTube\'s skill expert his name is Mike Shake get it because the mic is shaking maybe you can help me learning a language is actually one of the hardest skills for me by the way I only have two hours a day two hours a day damn that\'s that\'s hard how do you pick the right thing to learn from when you get into something new you want to learn from the highest experts the top people in that field right wrong in a lot of cases the everyday person gets this second thing wrong and it\'ll guarantee slow learning here\'s the thing when I dabbled in Jiu Jitsu I asked my instructor what\'s the fastest way to learn this and he told me there are no shortcuts my son you have to do the Reps and I\'ve said to him listen that sounds good in a motivational video like there are no shortcuts I\'m not talking about an overnight success here I mean I get a black belt in eight years rather than 10 years that\'s a shortcut okay and they always exist and then I grabbed him and choked him out I think that\'s what happened then at home a quick Google search later I found this guy hit Dale instead of taking the average 10 to 15 years to get a black belt he did it in less than four he\'s a two times BJJ World Pro champ and he\'s taught other students how to get their black belt much faster so number two pick the right teacher or strategy so who could be the kid Dale of learning languages do you know Justin he\'s like one of those quirky people that make fun of other language learning experts for me I do think that you could get at least tourist comfortable that\'s what I\'m looking for I\'m not looking for perfect you said I want the most frequent like let\'s say 300 words that this never works phrases will teach you a lot more so like the word cat for example oh I know the word cap and no one just walks around and says cats in school they dump all this complex grammar and useless vocabulary on you which is completely overwhelming demotivating and just inefficient so what can we do differently how do you approach learning a new skill I used to think that to learn something you just need practice and practice and practice \[Music\] if you only keep practicing over and over you are way slower compared to getting a reference before starting something like watching a tutorial this next one here is all about finding the key leverage points meaning what are the 20th percent of things that I can learn that already give me 80 of the results in Spanish for example the top 100 words can get you about 50 fluent all right this is insane words ending in a l can easily be converted to Spanish for example natural natural liberal ideal cultural Colonial I know hundreds of words now just by knowing this one rule making stuff complicated is probably the worst thing you can do if you want to learn something the key objective here is to avoid overwhelm at all costs it creates frustration and a feeling of losing and as we know from getting early wins feeling like you\'re winning is crucial because more wins means more dopamine more motivation you end up practicing more which means you get more wins so position yourself for winning by finding the key leverage points it is Sunday I have four days left and I haven\'t practiced anymore that\'s what I would I would classify for metric to pay attention to is can you pull them out of your brain without seeing any prompts to support your memory Leon um why\'d I commit to this and now I\'m not even making the time to to practice it I think as humans we all have this innate fear of falling behind or feeling like we are somehow flawed it\'s all these comparisons and expectations that we put on ourselves and when we don\'t hit those it feels like there\'s something wrong with us I\'m a big fan of this next one imagine the scenario it\'s two people learning how to meditate person one meditates for 20 minutes a day they blood the technique somewhere online and after three months they think they\'ve gotten better and person two is doing the same thing but they\'re wearing a device that measures their brain waves and it tells them within seconds whether they\'re doing it right or not it gives them feedback now if you put these two in a meditation Death Match who do you put your money on probably the best way to learn a language is throwing yourself into the culture or like a nation in which you can only speak that language I have many people that I could call right now to have you practice with um Vivo in Texas uh \[Music\] does that make sense do you know what I said nothing that you\'re born \[Music\] well I need to adjust my learning material the key thing is tightening that feedback loop by getting feedback earlier more immediate and more often flying to Mexico tomorrow all right let\'s get a couple more hours in last study session at the airport by now I maybe studied six hours in total I hope I don\'t embarrass myself I made it to Mexico City look who\'s here time to show him I know more than three words of Spanish I would like for you to quiz him see how good his Spanish is just ask me a few questions RC yeah he said he also do stuff on YouTube you also do and that\'s where a lot of people myself included get stuck what you\'ve learned to this point only gets you so far you hit a plateau you\'ve finally gotten good and you don\'t want to go back to sucking for example on our YouTube channel the last few videos have performed really badly because we\'ve been moving away from entrepreneurial content more into broader self-improvement things because that\'s what we want to make this is where most people freak out and they go back to what they used to do that\'s why you see so many creators who haven\'t innovated their content in years because there\'s a risk to innovate and this applies to almost anything in life where people get stuck they don\'t want to end a bad relationship because being alone sucks they don\'t want to go to therapy because they\'ll experience more pain first before they can start feeling better you need to have the courage to get worse first in order to get better I\'ll be honest my Spanish still sucks I wanted this to be an inspiring video where I do something really quickly and uh I just should have practiced more however for the six hours that I did practice I think I made a lot of progress you just totally missed it he was asking me all these questions I was like smooth as as anything I mean if Stephen was there he would peed his pants he would have crumbled what did he get Leon I don\'t know what I\'m ordering right now I think I\'m ordering a kilo of tortillas if I\'m too shy to go back now now we inform you here dude you are killing it seriously really yeah Hey Stephen Donna said my Spanish better than yours for the person that\'s learned like five days you\'re all right you\'re not too bad overall I believe there\'s one thing that makes all the other ones obsolete because it\'s so important there\'s a study done with Asian women where they put them through a math test and in one group they told them oh you\'re a woman good luck with the test in the other group they told them oh you\'re Asian good luck with the test just by changing that one label the first group performed worse and the second group performed better simply because of the story they were telling themselves in their heads if you have a self-image or identity that tells you I\'m just that good at this thing you\'re gonna do terrible at it Tony Robbins huge Idol of mine he\'s the best public speaker on the planet by a long shot his biggest tip is just by believing you\'re a great public speaker and people want to hear what you have to say you\'re already 80 there I was lucky that early on I was good at sports I was good at school and I was just good at stuff so I created this identity that when I tackle something I just get it done there\'s a lot of people who just keep replaying these failures in their mind and this identity creates this reality because they never really try and it reinforces that identity and maybe for some of you it\'s time to get out of that negative spiral and by shifting that and finding proof you can maybe shift that self-image this trip with my friends that I hadn\'t seen in years was so fun and so many beautiful memories were made learning Spanish or any skill in an environment like that that\'s the biggest hack I hope this was helpful to someone out there I\'ll see you in the next one " transcript number 4"Transcriber: Gustavo Rocha Reviewer: Marssi Draw Hi everyone. Two year ago, my life changed forever. My wife Kelsey and I welcomed our daughter Lela into the world. Now, becoming a parent is an amazing experience. Your whole world changes over night. And all of your priorities change immediately. So fast that it makes it really difficult to process sometimes. Now, you also have to learn a tremendous amount about being a parent like, for example, how to dress your child. (Laughter) This was new to me. This is an actual outfit, I thought this was a good idea. And even Lela knows that it\'s not a good idea. (Laughter) So there is so much to learn and so much craziness all at once. And to add to the craziness, Kelsey and I both work from home, we\'re entrepreneurs, we run our own businesses. So, Kelsey develops courses online for yoga teachers. I\'m an author. And so, I\'m working from home, Kelsey\'s working from home. We have an infant and we\'re trying to make sure that everything gets done that needs done. And life is really, really busy. And a couple of weeks into this amazing experience, when the sleep deprivation really kicked in, like around week eight, I had this thought, and it was the same thought that parents across the ages, internationally, everybody has had this thought, which is: I am never going to have free time ever again. (Laughter) Somebody said it\'s true. It\'s not exactly true, but it feels really, really true in that moment. And this was really disconcerning to me, because one of the things that I enjoy more than anything else is learning new things. Getting curious about something and diving in and fiddling around and learning through trial and error. And eventually becoming pretty good at something. And without this free time, I didn\'t know how I was ever going to do that ever again. And so, I\'m a big geek, I want to keep learning things, I want to keep growing. And so what I\'ve decided to do was, go to the library, and go to the bookstore, and look at what research says about how we learn and how we learn quickly. And I read a bunch of books, I read a bunch of websites. And tried to answer this question, how long does it take to acquire a new skill? You know what I found? 10,000 hours! Anybody ever heard this? **The 10000 hour rule** ----------------------- It takes 10,000 hours. If you want to learn something new, if you want to be good at it, it\'s going to take 10,000 hours to get there. And I read this in book after book, in website after website. And my mental experience of reading all of this stuff was like: No!! I don\'t have time! I don\'t have 10,000 hours. I am never going to be able to learn anything new. Ever again. (Laughter) But that\'s not true. So, 10,000 hours, just to give you a rough order of magnitude, 10,000 hours is a full-time job for five years. That\'s a long time. And we\'ve all had the experience of learning something new, and it didn\'t take us anywhere close to that amount of time, right? So, what\'s up? There\'s something kinda funky going on here. What the research says and what we expect, and have experiences, they don\'t match up. And what I found, here\'s the wrinkle: The 10,000 hour rule came out of studies of expert-level performance. There\'s a professor at Florida State University, his name is K. Anders Ericsson. He is the originator of the 10,00 hour rule. And where that came from is, he studied professional athletes, world class musicians, chess grand masters. All of this ultra competitive folks in ultra-high performing fields. And he tried to figure out how long does it take to get to the top of those kinds of fields. And what he found is, the more deliberate practice, the more time that those individuals spend practicing the elements of whatever it is that they do, the more time you spend, the better you get. And the folks at the tippy top of their fields put in around 10,000 hours of practice. Now, we were talking about the game of telephone a little bit earlier. Here\'s what happened: an author by the name of Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book in 2007 called \"Outliers: The Story of Success\", and the central piece of that book was the 10,000 hour rule. Practice a lot, practice well, and you will do extremely well, you will reach the top of your field. So, the message, what Dr. Ericsson was actually saying is, it takes 10,000 hours to get at the top of an ultra competitive field in a very narrow subject, that\'s what that means. But here\'s what happened: ever since Outliers came out, immediately came out, reached the top of best seller lists, stayed there for three solid months. All of a sudden the 10,000 hour rule was everywhere. And a society-wide game of telephone started to be played. So this message, it takes 10,000 hours to reach the top of an ultra competitive field, became, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, which became, it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something, which became, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something. But that last statement, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something, is not true. It\'s not true. So, what the research actually says \-- **The learning curve** ---------------------- I spent a lot of time here at the CSU library in the cognitive psychology stacks \'cause I\'m a geek. And when you actually look at the studies of skill acquisition, you see over and over a graph like this. Now, researchers, whether they\'re studying a motor skill, something you do physically or a mental skill, they like to study things that they can time. \'Cause you can quantify that, right? So, they\'ll give research participants a little task, something that requires physical arrangement, or something that requires learning a little mental trick, and they\'ll time how long a participant takes to complete the skill. And here\'s what this graph says, when you start \-- so when researchers gave participants a task, it took them a really long time, \'cause it was new and they were horrible. With a little bit of practice, they get better and better and better. And that early part of practice is really, really efficient. People get good at things with just a little bit of practice. Now, what\'s interesting to note is that, for skills that we want to learn for ourselves, we don\'t care so much about time, right? We just care about how good we are, whatever good happens to mean. So if we relabel performance time to how good you are, the graph flips, and you get his famous and widely known, this is the learning curve. And the story of the learning curve is when you start, you\'re grossly incompetent and you know it, right? (Laughter) With a little bit of practice, you get really good, really quick. So that early level of improvement is really fast. And then at a certain point you reach a plateau, and the subsequent games become much harder to get, they take more time to get. Now, my question is, I want that, right? How long does it take from starting something and being grossly incompetent and knowing it to being reasonably good? In hopefully, as short a period of time as possible. So, how long does that take? Here\'s what my research says: 20 hours. **Research** ------------ That\'s it. You can go from knowing nothing about any skill that you can think of. Want to learn a language? Want to learn how to draw? Want to learn how to juggle flaming chainsaws? (Laughter) If you put 20 hours of focused deliberate practice into that thing, you will be astounded. Astounded at how good you are. 20 hours is doable, that\'s about 45 minutes a day for about a month. Even skipping a couple days, here and there. **Method** ---------- 20 hours isn\'t that hard to accumulate. Now, there\'s a method to doing this. Because it\'s not like you can just start fiddling around for about 20 hours and expect these massive improvements. There\'s a way to practice intelligently. There\'s a way to practice efficiently, that will make sure that you invest those 20 hours in the most effective way that you possibly can. And here\'s the method, it applies to anything: **Deconstruct** --------------- The first is to deconstruct the skill. Decide exactly what you want to be able to do when you\'re done, and then look into the skill and break it down into smaller pieces. Most of the things that we think of as skills are actually big bundles of skills that require all sorts of different things. The more you can break apart the skill, the more you\'re able to decide, what are the parts of this skill that would actually help me get to what I want? And then you can practice those first. And if you practice the most important things first, you\'ll be able to improve your performance in the least amount of time possible. The second is, learn enough to self correct. So, get three to five resources about what it is you\'re trying to learn. Could be book, could be DVDs, could be courses, could be anything. But don\'t use those as a way to procrastinate on practice. I know I do this, right? Get like 20 books about the topic, like, \"I\'m going to start learning how to program a computer when I complete these 20 books\". No. That\'s procrastination. What you want to do is learn just enough that you can actually practice and self correct or self edit as you practice. **Remove barriers** ------------------- So the learning becomes a way of getting better at noticing when you\'re making a mistake and then doing something a little different. The third is to remove barriers to practice. Distractions, television, internet. All of these things that get in the way of you actually sitting down and doing the work. And the more you\'re able to use just a little bit of willpower to remove the distractions that are keeping you from practicing, the more likely you are to actually sit down and practice, right? **Practice for 20 hours** ------------------------- And the fourth is to practice for at least 20 hours. Now, most skills have what I call a frustration barrier. You know, the grossly-incompetent- and-knowing-it part? That\'s really, really frustrating. We don\'t like to feel stupid. And feeling stupid is a barrier to us actually sitting down and doing the work. So, by pre-committing to practicing whatever it is that you want to do for at least 20 hours, you will be able to overcome that initial frustration barrier and stick with the practice long enough to actually reap the rewards. That\'s it! It\'s not rocket science. Four very simple steps that you can use to learn anything. **Ukulele** ----------- Now, this is easy to talk about in theory, but it\'s more fun to talk about in practice. So one of the things that I\'ve wanted to learn how to do for a long time is play the ukulele. Has anybody seen Jake Shimabukuro\'s TEDTalk where he plays the ukulele and makes it sound like \-- he\'s like a ukulele god. It\'s amazing. I saw it, I was like, \"That is so cool!\" It\'s such a neat instrument. I would really like to learn how to play. And so I decided that to test this theory I wanted to put 20 hours into practicing ukulele and see where it got. And so the first thing about playing the ukulele is, in order to practice, you have to have one, right? So, I got an ukulele and \-- My lovely assistant? (Laughter) Thank you sir. I think I need the chord here. It\'s not just an ukulele, it\'s an electric ukulele. (Laughter) Yeah. So, the first couple hours are just like the first couple hours of anything. You have to get the tools that you are using to practice. You have to make sure they\'re available. My ukulele didn\'t come with strings attached. I had to figure out how to put those on. Like, that\'s kind of important, right? And learning how to tune, learning how to make sure that all of the things that need to be done in order to start practicing get done, right? Now, one of the things when I was ready to actually start practicing **How to play songs** --------------------- was I looked in online databases and songbooks for how to play songs. And they say, okay, ukuleles, you can play more than one string at a time, so you can play chords, that\'s cool, you are accompanying yourself, yay you. (Laughter) And when I started looking at songs, I had an ukulele chord book that had like hundreds of chords. Looking at this and \"Wow, that\'s intimidating\". But when you look at the actual songs, you see the same chords over and over, right? As it turns out, playing the ukulele is kind of like doing anything, There\'s a very small set of things that are really important and techniques that you\'ll use all the time. And in most songs you\'ll use four, maybe five chords, and that\'s it, that\'s the song. You don\'t have to know hundreds, as long as you know the four or the five. So, while I was doing my research, I found a wonderful little medley of pop songs by a band called Axis of Awesome. (Whistles) \-- Somebody knows it. \-- And what Axis of Awesome says is that you can learn, or you can play pretty much any pop song of the past five decades, if you know four chords, and those chords are G, D, Em and C. Four chords pump out every pop song ever, right? So I thought, this is cool! I would like to play every pop song ever. (Laughter) So, that was the first song I decided to learn, and I would like to actually share it with you. Ready? (Applause) Alright. **Gangnam Style** ----------------- (Music) (Singing) Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world, she took the midnight train going anywhere. I heard that you settled down, (Laughter) that you found a girl, that you\'re married now. Every night in my dreams (Laughter) I see you, I feel you, that is how I know you go on. (Laughter) I won\'t hesitate no more, no more. It cannot wait, I\'m yours. \'Cause you were amazing, we did amazing things. If I could, then I would, I\'d go wherever you will \-- Can you feel the love tonight. (Laughter) I can\'t live with or without you. When I find myself \-- When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, Sometimes I feel like I don\'t have partner. No woman, no cry. Yeah mama, this surely is a dream. I come from a land down under. (Laughter) Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong. Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, (Laughter) but here\'s my number, so call me Hey sexy lady, op, op, op, op, oppan gangnam style. (Laughter) It\'s time to say goodbye. Closing time, every new beginning comes from some other beginning\'s end. (Singing and music ends) (Applause) Thank you, thank you. I love that song. (Laughter) And I have a secret to share with you. So, by playing that song for you, I just hit my twentieth hour of practicing the ukulele. (Applause) Thank you. And so it\'s amazing, pretty much anything that you can think of, **Conclusion** -------------- what do you want to do. The major barrier to learn something new is not intellectual, it\'s not the process of you learning a bunch of little tips or tricks or things. The major barrier\'s emotional. We\'re scared. Feeling stupid doesn\'t feel good, in the beginning of learning anything new you feel really stupid. So the major barrier\'s not intellectual, it\'s emotional. But put 20 hours into anything. It doesn\'t matter. What do you want to learn? Do you want to learn a language? Want to learn how to cook? Want to learn how to draw? What turns you on? What lights you up? Go out and do that thing. It only takes 20 hours. Have fun. " transcript number 5"this book taught me how to learn it\'s how I learn SQL in order to pass my data science interviews and ultimately get my first data science job it\'s how I learn how to make videos and start this YouTube channel and this entire business it\'s how I learned Ai and most recently it is how I pass my driving test after less than 2 hours of study the Knowledge Test not the road test you should definitely study for longer than 2 hours on the road test anyways in this video I\'m going to cover the book Ultra learning by Scott young go through the concepts and talk about how to apply these in your life and how I appli them to my life this is the book that kickstarted my self- Learning Journey and it just changed my life and I hope it will for you as well okay homer I\'m ready to learn what\'s the first lesson this book is structured to cover the nine principles of ultra learning but before we actually get into that let\'s actually Define Ultra learning Ultra learning is a strategy for acquiring skills and knowledge that is both self-directed and intense the three keywords here are strategy self-directed and intense that is what describes an ultr learning project for example one of the first Ultra learning projects that Scott young the author did is to complete the entire MIT curriculum for a computer science undergraduate degree in only one year and without actually attending MIT were going to any of the classes by the way this was back in 2011 so there was not yet all of these like free resources and courses that are posted on YouTube and all over the Internet it was a lot harder back then so his strategy was to list out all the units and all the courses that he had to take and focus on passing their final exams and the projects it\'s self-directed because he wasn\'t actually attending the school and he was just like learning everything himself and it is intense he did everything in one year for example for his multivariate Calculus class he literally studied everything in 5 days and then did the exam and I finished single variable calculus I started the course on Monday and I finished writing the final exam Friday afternoon just to be clear Ultra learning is not confined to a certain topic or just for passing exams it is for learning anything that you want to learn Scott also use ultra learning to improve his art and be able to draw realistic faces in only 30 days Eric Baron I think his name is he used these principles in order to single-handedly learn game design and create a really really popular game called stard do value I\'ve gathered all the necessary strategy and tactics to finally defeat you principle number one is meta learning AKA designing a study plan according to Scott before you jump into learning you should spend roughly 10% of the Total Learning Time on figuring out what is the best way of learning the thing you want to learn and designing the study plan for example for his MIT challenge it was 12 months in total so around 10% of that is a little bit over 30 days 36 days which he devoted to figuring out what\'s the best way to learn so actually in a bit I\'ll show you how to cut down on that time period a lot but first let\'s cover how to design a study plan based on the why what how principle why is why do you want to learn something for example I want to learn Japanese because I want to be able to watch anime without \[Music\] subtitles what is what what are you learning I\'m learning the structure of the Japanese language the pronunciation of things and the vocabularies and the how is how do you learn these things doing research Maybe by like watching YouTube videos go on Reddit and maybe looking at different programs and course curriculums the book recommends spending a lot of time doing this designing your study plan because if you\'re on the wrong study plan then ultimately you know you\'re not going to be learning the right things he even goes as far as saying you should conduct expert interviews to check over your study plan but I have good news you can potentially cut down this time by like 80 90% even like 90 5% by using something like this prompt for Chachi BT or whatever your favorite AI model is since AI is trained on the knowledge of the internet and it can also search the internet if you\'re able to explain properly what kind of study plan you\'re looking for it is really good at making that custom study plan for you if you want to be extra sure maybe you can take that study plan and show it to somebody who for example already knows Japanese but yeah I find that for metal learning AI is a tool that can just save you so much time here\'s also a prompt that I use in order to come up with a study plan to learn JavaScript you can also switch that out for like python or any other language that you want I\'m not going to go into more detail about the prompt itself you can just check it out Link in the description okay now that we have our study plan we can get started studying and also move on to the next principle of ultra learning have you ever had to explain a process to someone like click this click this enter here and then enter here and they\'re like what and then you have to explain it to them again well I want to introduce you guys to a very Nifty little AI tool called guide guide is a GPD power tool that can explain the most complex task in seconds using AI generated documentation let me actually show you to to get started on their website just click on install free extension and then make sure that it\'s pinned on Chrome now here is the admin portal for lonely octopus where we add courses to people\'s custom study plans so say here I want to add a custom study plan for Tina I would click on guide over here click capture what are you capturing is knowledge and documentation and it\'s how to add courses to a custom study plan and then go through the process of adding a course say chat be technical self boot camp introduction to python maybe some pandas and introduction to AI product development so I got to rank these into order that they appear on a study plan and I click save then I go to guide and they app will generate this step-by-step video guide select the course you want to add to your study plan it has visuals it has voice over and it has like these call to action call out buttons as well so we already do have documentation for things because we are not Savages but it\'s like in this text form and I can like really long and it takes a really long time to do but now that we know about guide for the coming cohort we\'re actually going to be using guide to update our documentation cuz it\'s just so much like easier faster and just clearer you can easily edit the video the visuals the audio the voiceover and the motions and captions and once you\'re ready and satisfied you can just click on share or embed your guide anywhere for your team to see the best part is that this browser extension this app is 100% completely free you can check it out over here also linked in description all right now back to the video I want 100% commitment and laser focus right principle number two is focus how to be laser focused in your study sessions the book says that there are three major problems that people have when it comes to focus so problem one and two is covered in a lot of other books already so I will only briefly touch on them but problem three this is the only book that talks about this one and it\'s what I think has helped me the most problem one is failing to start AKA procrastination some types the combat does would be like the 5-minute rule in which you try to get yourself to study for 5 minutes and you\'ll find that the rest of the time would be a lot easier and pomodora studying for a specific period of time and then taking a break for a specific period of Time problem two is failing to sustain Focus like after you get over your procrastination but then you still cannot focus this is mostly about environment control like getting rid of distracting things like your phone food maybe your friends go away while you\'re studying and problem of three is failing to recreate the right kind of focus there is a relationship between arousal and task complexity by arousal I mean not that kind of arousal it\'s kind of like alertness um how alert you are how awake you feel and tax complexity is how difficult and complex the task is for example just having to memorize something will be considered low task complexity while say like building an entire application would be considered high task complexity the greater the arousal the more narrow your focus is and the more suitable that is for more simple task like memorizing something or practicing something repetitive like throwing a start or a layup while for more complex task like doing math writing an essay you want your arousal to be lower so your focus is wider because complex tasks require to use different parts of your brain okay so how does this relate to creating the right kind of focus well you can modify your arousal based on the task that you have to do for example like you know today that you\'re going to be memorizing flashcards you know that\'s a simple task so is better to have a higher level of arousal and you can increase your level of arousal by essentially increasing your stimulation both external stimulation like you can go somewhere where there\'s background music there\'s background noise like a coffee shop or internal stimulation um by doing something like drinking coffee or working out isn\'t that really cool like if you understand that relationship between arousal and task complexity you\'re able to modify your environment your external and your internal environment to create like Optimal amounts of focus depending on what it is that you want to accomplish ballseye the principle of directness means learning the task as close as possible to the situation where context that you\'re going to use it in when I Was preparing for my data science interviews I realized that a lot of the interviews were going to be in SQL the problem was I didn\'t know any SQL so I had to learn everything real quick uh before taking the interview which was in 11 days this is when the principle of directness saved my ass because in order to prepare for it there are a lot of things I could do I could try reading through a SQL textbook I could take like an online course about SQL I could watch YouTube videos about SQL but the most direct way of practicing for a SQL data science interview was by practicing SQL interview questions and specifically SQL interview CS from that company which was meta so I went on glass door and filtered meta data science interviews and I literally picked out every single interview question that people have done then I reverse engineered these questions to figure out exactly what it is that I need to learn and I did that for those 11 days practicing those questions in that interview style and it paid off because when I went into that interview two of the questions were almost exactly the same as questions I had already done some other examples of directness say you want to be conversationally fluent in French the best way of learning is literally to go find some French people and try talking to them the the oppose just be YouTuber if you want to learn to code the best way is to find a project and code the entire project yourself but you may be thinking at this point like isn\'t that a chicken or egg problem like how are you supposed to converse with someone in French if you don\'t know any french how are you supposed to code a project if you don\'t know how to code well that is where the next principle comes in you are the weakest link the principle of drill the principle of drilling is about attacking your weakest point so what you want to do is first apply the principle of directness and go do the task that you want to accomplish and while you\'re doing it especially in the very beginning you realize that you don\'t know like pretty much everything right for example if you were me and in the unfortunate situation where you had an interview in 11 days and you just saw your first metad data science interview question in sequ I don\'t even know what that means so I started making notes like okay I got to like figure out what\'s the actual structure of a SQL query what does the from mean what does select mean like this conditional part oh you\'re able to use something called wear which is you\'re able to filter certain parts of the table so yeah I kept on doing that writing out what I didn\'t understand going and learning that thing and then coming back and doing more of the questions and every time I ran into something that I didn\'t understand I would go learn that part specifically window functions for example I ran into window functions in one of the questions and I didn\'t really understand how it worked so then I just really focused on window functions and did a bunch of questions related to the window functions until I figured out how to use it a very common drooling tactic for musicians or for athletes is something called time sharing I think my handwriting is so bad I you can tell I can\'t read I will put this on I think it\'s time time slicing time slicing oh my God yes so time slicing this is when you take a task and you isolate and practice the most difficult part of it say as part of a song that you\'re rehearsing you will just keep practicing the part that is the most difficult or say you\'re a basketball player and you\'re focusing specifically on layups layouts you get what I mean this combination of directness and then Drilling and then just over and over again until you master a craft this is such a powerful combination of techniques I can testify that it is a game Cher okay next principle Pop Quiz everybody the principle of retrieval is about testing yourself to learn Scott says that the best way to learn something is to actually test yourself on it this may sound very counterintuitive until you understand the phrase neurons that wire together fire together you see anything that you\'re learning from a neuroscience perspective is simply encoding something into the neurons of your brain your brain cells specifically it\'s about certain networks of neurons that depict the information that you\'re trying to learn now the better you get us something the stronger the network of connections of your neurons is going to be for that specific task like the better you are are coding the stronger your coding networks of brain cells are going to be so what does that have to do with testing well testing yourself forcing your brain to activate and reactivate that network of neuronal connections associated with the task is the single best way in order to strengthen that Network when you\'re learning to code you could just like watch some tutorials of like other people code or just like I don\'t know like do some games about coding but that wouldn\'t really like activate that neuronal Network that much so you don\'t really like deepen your understanding of it that much but if you do something like force yourself to write an entire application you\'re testing your own understanding by forcing that neuronal network of coding stuff by reactivating and keep activating so by the time you\'re done building that application that skill of coding is so deeply encoded into your brain cells like literally into your brain cells some other retrieval tactics that the book talks about includes flash cards which is really good for vocabulary free recall which is just saying the thing that you learn but in your own words and self-generate ated challenges or the question book method where you rephrase the thing that you\'re trying to learn as a question for example when I was studying for the driving test I would ask myself what does it mean when there\'s a flashing green light by the way if you know the answer to that put it in the comments for some reason a lot of people don\'t know the answer to that very concerning I thought maybe you can give me your feedback feedback feedback feedback feedback feedback I\'m sure that you already know that everybody\'s told you you should always get feedback but did you know that there\'s actually three types of feedback the first type of feedback is called outcome feedback for example there\'s this very famous comedian called Chris Brock he would go to like these smaller shows like usually he has like big soldout shows right but he would go to like these smaller kind of like standup places and tell some of his new jokes in order to gauge the audience\'s reaction like do they laugh or do they not laugh that\'s how he knows that it\'s a good joke or it\'s not a good joke this is outcome feedback where you only know if the joke is funny or not funny when I first released a video I can tell that it\'s a good video or a bad video based upon how many people want to click on the video and watch it if you get this type of feedback it\'s already very very helpful but you can upgrade this feedback to informational feedback this would be like Chris Rock asking his audience why do you think that was funny or why do you think it wasn\'t funny or me looking at the comments to see what it is that people liked or didn\'t like about a video it tells you what it is that you\'re doing wrong or you\'re doing right but it doesn\'t tell you why or how to fix the things to improve the third type of feedback and the best type of feedback it\'s called corrective feedback this not only tells you whether your thing you did was good or bad why it\'s good or bad but also how to fix the bad parts how do you improve to the next level this type of feedback usually involves having to hire like a mentor or coach where they can like exactly look at whatever it is you\'re doing and point out like your golf swing for example maybe you should I don\'t know like adjust your grip exactly like this in order to improve it or if it\'s your code doing a code review and pointing out like here is exactly what you can do in order to make your code better this can be really really expensive but just by the fact that how many people are willing to hire like a personal coach just shows how useful this kind of feedback could be by the way this is also an area where AI is amazing as a learning tool because it\'s able to give you that individualized informational feedback when you feed it something like your code where you\'re writing and you ask it to like give you feedback as to how it is that you can correct it and make it better so I recommend playing on with Chach BT to get this kind of feedback at a fraction of the cost to ensure maximum retention principle number seven is retention imagine a bucket with some holes in it that is your brain now imagine that you\'re pouring water or knowledge or things that you\'re learning into the bucket so you\'re learning things but at the same time it is Flowing out you\'re also forgetting things at the same time unfortunately our brains are leaky buckets and they can be seen by what is called the forgetting curve after you learn something you immediately start forgetting about it the most amount of forgetting happens right after you learn it and over time the rate of forgetting decreases but you\'re still like slowly forgetting stuff in the book Scott explains that Ultra Learners not only focus on getting information into the brain they also address the fact that they need to prevent information from leaking out of the brain as much as possible the book talks about a few different tactics that you can use in order to combat the forgetting curve the first one is spacing out your learning so this is unfortunate news maybe for some of us like me who um have trouble with procrastinating and not cramming things but apparently if you\'re spacing out your study sessions like instead of cramming 10 hours one day before the exam but you know study 1 hour 10 days for the exam that is a lot better in remembering things there\'s also something called a space repetition system where if you\'re especially trying to like remember something and have some flash cards there\'s a way of like spacing the learning so that it\'s the most optimal for your brain there is a free app called anky that does this so definitely check that out if you need to memorize a lot of things another one is called proceduralization you might have heard the phrase that you never forget how to bike where like you never forget how to swim and that\'s because once you automate how to do something like biking or swimming it gets encoded into your brain differently so it\'s very difficult for you to forget in the beginning when you\'re trying to learn how to ride a bike it might be quite difficult CU you\'re trying to remember like oh I have to hold the handle like this I have to remember to balance I have to remember to pedal and all these things but after it becomes automated in your head it gets like encoded into your brain and even like 10 years later you get on a bike you still know how to bike so if you manage to learn something enough so that it becomes automatic and a procedure in your brain then the likelihood of you forgetting it is much lower okay at this point we\'re nearing Mastery and the last two principles are for people who really want to become expert my spidey sense is tingling the principle of intuition is about really digging deep into a concept into a subject until you gain like almost an uncanny ability of solving problems or just like understanding things a really good example of this is Richard Fineman he\'s said to have almost like a magical sense of understanding when it comes to like numbers and it comes to physics and that\'s because he has a very solid grass of fundamentals if you just tell him f is equal to ma force is equal to masstimes acceleration just memorize that he\'ll be like no why why is force equals m \* 8 why is there a linear relationship why is force measured the way it is why is mass the way it is why is acceleration the way it is like why why why why why why and he\'ll just keep digging and digging until he like truly understands all of the components that is the mindset of someone who becomes an expert I\'ll put on screen out the fan technique U this is what he asks himself every time that he\'s learning something so he\'s able to dig really really deep and truly grasp that information hey look experiment 78 the principle of experimentation this is a principle that is crucial to becoming a true master in your field you see whenever you learn something there\'s always the most amount of resources for beginners like if you just type introduction to python um onto Google there\'s like literally so many courses that are here and if you go on YouTube there\'s like countless videos covering introduction to python however once you start getting to the intermediate and to the Mastery level the amount of resources become fewer and fewer and this is normal because there\'s just like less people who are at like the Mastery level right and those who are at the Mastery level they\'re probably focused on like mastering their craft as opposed to like making courses teaching other people about the craft so that is where experimentation comes in Scott gives the example of enko the amazing painter that painted star KN and a lot of other masterpieces he is someone that embodies experimentation throughout his career he\'s experimented with so many different things different mediums different usages of color different styles of paints how thick his paint is different techniques the subjects of his painting his internal states he pushes the boundaries and tries things that are just outside of what anybody even imagined and that is how he became a master of his craft unlike artists like Leonardo da Vinci who was just kind of known as a genius van go a painter like van go became a master he became a genius because of his experimentation and pushing the boundaries maybe in some ways having a lot of talent and being known as a genius may actually PR vent you from pushing the boundaries of what is known but that is the topic of another video all right so thank you so much for watching until the end of this video I try my best to cover this book comprehensively and in like a more action-based way let me know comments if you like this kind of video cuz I\'ve never actually done a book review video before um you like it we might make it into a series all right thank you all so much for watching and I will see you guys in the next video or live stream "