Transcription
What if there was a proven way to pick up in-demand skills quickly without having to go back to school? This is what Scott Young talks about in his book, "Ultralearning." He argues that traditional educational methods are inefficient and outdated, and they don't teach us the most important skill to succeed, which is how to become self-reliant; to take control of our lives through learning.
So I'm going to show you how to implement the nine rules of ultralearning, and by the end, you'll have a step-by-step playbook to quickly learn high-value skills to gain a competitive advantage and increase your earning potential.
The first rule comes before learning even begins, and it might be the most important one of them all. Imagine I wanted to learn how to grow an educational YouTube channel from scratch. Funny enough, I would search on YouTube "how to start a YouTube channel." I'd ask ChatGPT, and I'd probably do a few Google searches. My goal here is just to get a big picture overview of the process and start building a strategy.
This is rule number one: meta-learning—figuring out the what, why, and how of what we're about to learn. Because if it's not clear, it's confusing, and the more you can break it down and simplify this, the better. This is why in school we get a syllabus when we start the year, or when you start a new job you get onboarded; you have expectations set before you so you know what goals you're working towards.
So, looking at those three things for starting this YouTube channel: what are the two to three core learning objectives? Then decide when—and I would physically block out in your calendar when you're going to do that. What? And then finally how—what courses, what resources, what coaching are you going to use to get started? You want to have a big picture overview of the exact things you need to learn and in what order. Get specific here so you know exactly what to do every day.
But even with meta-learning, we won't make any progress without rule number two. So, let's say I've just meta-learned how to grow my educational YouTube channel and now I'm at my desk with a hot cup of matcha, ready to learn. But right when I open up Notion, I get a notification. I get text messages. Now I'm scrolling social media—I'm completely distracted from my plan and before I know it, four hours have passed and not a single thing has been learned. All because I'm missing a key ingredient for ultralearning.
Rule number two is to focus deeply when learning. Concentrated effort leads to higher quality and more efficient learning. I recommend building a deep work routine—something that you can use and rely on to prepare your mind and your environment for focusing. You might decide to spend two hours in deep work in the mornings, focused on building the channel, or if you're more of a night owl, maybe you do this in the evening.
During this deep work time, you enter Do Not Disturb mode; you put your phone in another room, you close all the other tabs—all the programs you don't need—and you just hyperfocus on learning. If you want to use my protocol, I'll leave a link up here; it's the exact same one that we teach all of our students in Study Quest.
So stop trying to create more time for learning and instead, make your time worth more. You need to build a habit of focus so that we're ready for the next rule of ultralearning. So let's say that I focus deeply for two hours every day this week, following my meta-learning plan. I consumed all my resources; I've watched through the courses, and I've read books on ideation, scripting, and video editing. I did all this, but I never actually sat down, hit record, and filmed a YouTube video.
This is one of the most common mistakes that hold us back from learning faster. Rule number three is directedness—being actively engaged in the process that we want to master. It's about learning by doing. Within our nervous system, there are two pathways for learning: the declarative path, which involves learning concepts, facts, and definitions; and then we have the procedural path, which involves learning by doing.
Knowing facts about things doesn't really mean you understand it or truly know it, right? We need that procedural element—the application—to actually round out our learning. Directedness is about applying what we learned, and this is why it's always more effective to build a project while you're working on a skill because projects force you to apply what you're learning.
So, if my goal is to create better educational YouTube videos, I can't just study it all day. I actually have to sit down and record educational YouTube videos, right? Directedness rounds out the procedural pathway and helps us solidify what we're learning. But where we direct our focus plays a huge role in how fast we learn, and that's where this next rule comes in.
Let's say that now I'm publishing YouTube videos; the ideas are better, the audio sounds nice and crisp, the script is tight and packed with value—everything seems great—except the thumbnails kind of suck. Even though the thumbnails are the only thing struggling, it's actually the biggest problem holding us back from learning faster.
Rule number four is to drill the skills that need the most improvement. It's natural to avoid working on the things that we aren't good at, or we'll try to compensate by doing everything that we are really good at even better. But to develop mastery, we have to work on all areas, especially the ones that we're bad at, because learning is all interconnected, and everything works together.
Usually, by fixing one problem area, suddenly it'll work synergistically to improve all of our learning. But the same is also true in the opposite direction. Think of this like your grade point average (GPA): even if you ace every single class, if you just fail one class, that's going to pull the average of your GPA down a lot. You're only as good as your weakest link.
So if the problem is thumbnails, I should spend the most time drilling and improving thumbnail creation, and in doing so, every other area of my videos is going to get better as well, right? It's going to make the title make more sense, it's going to improve the idea of the video—the concept overall—and it's going to increase the chances that people will actually watch the video and get that juicy value that you're trying to provide.
But how do we know when our learning sticks? Let's say I'm drilling thumbnails hard now. Whenever I design a new thumbnail, I pull up all my resources and my notes and I follow along to make a really good thumbnail. But after a few months, I still find it hard to remember some of the techniques that I've been practicing. This is another common mistake that prevents us from learning faster, because if I always rely on my notes and look up the answers, then my brain never has to put in any effort to remember how to do it.
Rule number five is to learn using retrieval. Retrieval is actively recalling the information and the skills that you learned from memory, and it's been shown in hundreds of studies as one of the most important strategies for strengthening and cementing what we've learned into our long-term memory. But most learners avoid it because it's uncomfortable; it requires a lot of effort.
Think about how much more challenging it would be to give a presentation without speaker notes. If you always use speaker notes, the first few times you're going to struggle a lot, but over time, with enough repetitions, it's going to become easier and easier to do. I think teaching is a super powerful way to use retrieval; by teaching something, you get to learn it twice—that's assuming that you're not looking at your notes.
So if I could teach the process of designing a fire thumbnail and someone follows only my instructions and also creates a fire thumbnail, that's a learning win. Retrieval is one of the best learning methods, but if we combine it with this next rule, you'll become unstoppable.
So let's say that I've nailed the process of designing thumbnails and I can crank them out now from memory, but for some reason, the views on the channel aren't flooding in. After sleepless nights and frustration, I finally decide to ask people what they thought about the content. Little did I know that by doing that, I was implementing the rule that has the biggest potential to improve our learning.
Rule number six is to receive and implement frequent feedback. Feedback helps you see what you can't see yourself. To be more specific here, Scott Young states that the least valuable form of feedback is something called ego feedback, or praise that just makes you feel good but doesn't identify any area of improvement. For example, if the feedback I get is that this mustache is sexy, that I'm perfect, and that the algorithm is rigged and it's pulling my channel down, I don't really know what to change.
The best form of feedback is constructive and corrective. So as I'm growing my channel, I should be looking at the comments, I should be looking at the analytics, and I should be asking people to roast my content. Figure out what they like and what they don't like. I should be sending out surveys and doing things to seek that constructive, corrective criticism to learn faster.
So with these six rules so far, you should be speed learning, right? Devouring this knowledge like Oreos. But how do we make sure we don't forget it, or worse, have to relearn it? Well, that's what these last few rules are all about.
So now let's say the YouTube channel is growing nicely, and we're starting to get people asking us if we have a coaching program or service that we can help them with along the way. So I spend the next six months building a coaching program to help them solve the problems. But when I return to making YouTube videos, my skills are kind of rusty. The meta has changed, and my content strategy is so 2023 that it feels like I'm starting from scratch again.
I could have avoided all of this if I implemented rule number seven of ultralearning, which is retention. Retention means regular practice with your knowledge and skills to stay sharp. Because if you don't use it, you lose it. This is why only 20% of Americans are bilingual, even though everyone has to take like three or four years of a second language going through school. If we don't practice, we don't retain.
So try to set up systems and revisit what you've learned. A really powerful strategy is to repackage what you've learned into a different use case. For example, if I was growing an educational YouTube channel, I probably got pretty good at making educational videos, right, to teach people. So as I'm building my coaching program, I would consider making videos to complement it—like a self-paced course that you can do alongside. This is exactly what we did when we built Study Quest.
It was an easy way to practice scripting, filming, and editing videos just used for a different context. It's not just about revisiting your notes or looking at flashcards to surface ideas; it's actively seeking opportunities to apply and implement the skills that you've learned.
But what does it mean to be a master of your craft? Because the smartest thinkers think on a completely different level, and that's where this next rule comes in. As I continue to use these rules over time, I start to develop a kind of sixth sense for educational YouTube videos. I begin to question my mentors; I'm starting to doubt some of the resources and the knowledge out there in the world about making YouTube videos. Because once you get to a certain level of mastery, you start to develop a different type of mindset.
Rule number eight is intuition—or the gut feeling that just comes with experience. Right when you know it, you just know it. You know, this is why surgeons who've performed thousands of surgeries on a particular organ don't even blink an eye when something unexpected happens; they just know exactly what they're supposed to do. They're so familiar with how to adapt and implement those skills that it just becomes play.
So immerse yourself in what you learn; you know, eat, sleep, breathe, dream about that stuff. And over time, your mindset will change, and you'll develop a deep intuition. So for the YouTube stuff, I might start to notice nuances in details and structure. I might notice that some of the words I say resonate with some people, I might notice that some of the B-roll changes and some of the transitions that I make are more effective than others. Intuition is a sign of deep expertise, and that's what we should be seeking with learning.
At this point, I'm extremely confident with growing the channel, and we're starting to get a lot more views. But three years later, the views start to drop, growth plateaus, and the content starts to feel a little stale. On top of that, I'm also starting to feel a little bored with making videos. To reignite the passion and desire to continue learning, we decide to rebrand the channel and spice up the content.
Rule number nine is experimentation—trying new approaches to refine and optimize your process. Not only does it make learning more fun, but it actually dramatically improves our learning. To learn is to create. The reason why innovators love learning so much is that it's enjoyable, and as a byproduct of figuring out how things work, they create products. These are solutions and services that impact society and help us live better lives.
So once you get really, really good at what you do, it's experimentation that brings your learning to the cutting edge. Come up with new formats or styles of teaching in videos that no one else has ever seen, or remix your ideas in such a unique way that people can't help but watch. There are endless ways to get creative with educational content: short-form, long-form, podcasts, challenges, case studies, listicles—this is where learning becomes play, and it's through experimentation that you also maintain high curiosity and interest for what you're learning to continue getting better at your craft.
So, follow these nine rules for ultralearning to acquire skills quickly and increase your earning potential. The next question becomes: what skills should you ultralearn and what kind of system will help you stay organized? Well, I answer all of those questions in this video here.