Scott Young - Ultralearning

10/16/19 • 61 min

On today’s episode of the Financial Independence Podcast, I’m excited to introduce Scott Young!

I first heard about Scott when he decided to complete MIT's entire computer science curriculum in a year.

Scott has taken on a lot of these types of impressive learning projects and he just wrote a great book about it – Ultralearning.

As you know, I’m attempting to tackle a very intimidating project myself so what better way to kick off that effort than with my own 3-month ultralearning project!

In today’s interview, we dive into the details of ultralearning and we design a new ultralearning project from scratch.

Ultralearning projects seem perfect for anyone who is FI or hopes to achieve financial independence one day so hope you get as much out of this discussion as I did!

Highlights

Why ultralearning can help you get to FI quicker (while making the journey more enjoyable)
How Scott was able to complete MIT’s computer science curriculum in one year
Why the first part of learning something new is the hardest and how to use ultralearning to get past that phase sooner
How to learn new languages as quickly and efficiently as possible
Details about my own ultralearning project and how Scott suggests I design it
The imporantance of breaking big goals into concrete stages
Why limiting scope is so important when diving into something new
What is meta-feedback and why it’s important
The power of direct practice and how to use drills to fix specific issues
What to do when you hit a block or a plateau in your learning

On today’s episode of the Financial Independence Podcast, I’m excited to introduce Scott Young!

I first heard about Scott when he decided to complete MIT's entire computer science curriculum in a year.

Scott has taken on a lot of these types of impressive learning projects and he just wrote a great book about it – Ultralearning.

As you know, I’m attempting to tackle a very intimidating project myself so what better way to kick off that effort than with my own 3-month ultralearning project!

In today’s interview, we dive into the details of ultralearning and we design a new ultralearning project from scratch.

Ultralearning projects seem perfect for anyone who is FI or hopes to achieve financial independence one day so hope you get as much out of this discussion as I did!

Highlights

Why ultralearning can help you get to FI quicker (while making the journey more enjoyable)
How Scott was able to complete MIT’s computer science curriculum in one year
Why the first part of learning something new is the hardest and how to use ultralearning to get past that phase sooner
How to learn new languages as quickly and efficiently as possible
Details about my own ultralearning project and how Scott suggests I design it
The imporantance of breaking big goals into concrete stages
Why limiting scope is so important when diving into something new
What is meta-feedback and why it’s important
The power of direct practice and how to use drills to fix specific issues
What to do when you hit a block or a plateau in your learning

Previous Episode

Third Year of Freedom

I can’t believe it but it’s already been three years since I left my full-time job!

To commemorate this special anniversary and to recap the things I’ve learned during this last year of post-FI life (which happened to be the best one yet), I recorded a short podcast episode.

Next Episode

Coronavirus Market Crash - Is This Time Different?

Bear markets are a normal part of investing but is this time different?

As the coronavirus COVID-19 spreads around the world, governments are struggling to limit the economic impact of the disease.

In today’s unplanned episode of the Financial Independence Podcast, JL Collins (author of The Simple Path to Wealth) joins me to talk about this stock-market crash, how it differs from previous crashes, and what you should do about it.

Note: Apologies for the audio quality of this episode. Since this wasn’t planned in advance, I didn’t have my normal microphone so I had to use the microphone on my iPhone headphones :/