This is Tristan de Montebello.
He is a very interesting guy
based in Los Angeles, California
and, one day, he decided to challenge
his skills on public speaking.
Tristan did not have any
experience in the field.
However, he decided to compete in
Toastmasters World Championship -
the most famous public speaking
competition in the world.
He managed to become public
speaking expert within a few months
and, eventually, he made
it into the top 10.
How did he achieve all that?
The answer is Scott Young.
One of the most famous
self-development bloggers out there
and a person that devoted his
life in creating strategies
on how to accelerate the
process of learning.
His most recent book, Ultralearning,
is considered the autodidact’s dream.
It is a manual that offers
concrete and practical advice
on how to learn anything fast.
It draws inspiration from
Scott’s own experience
and also from significant
figures across history
that managed to
transcend the norm
and showcase unprecedented mastery
in their field of choice.
I loved the idea of ultralearning
because learning, in itself,
is an activity absolutely
elemental to our existence.
Thus, taking learning to the next
level isn’t something trivial,
rather it is something that can
prove momentous in one’s life.
The prefix meta comes from the Greek
word "μετά," which means beyond.
We use meta to signify
something related to itself,
i.e. something self-referential.
In our case, meta-learning
means learning about learning,
or learning how to learn.
“So again the idea of
metalearning is that
if you're going to embark
on a learning project
you should first spend a
little bit of time learning
how to do the learning project.
That seems a little bit
recursive, but it's also obvious
because if you're going
to learn a new language
and you've never
done this before,
there's many many many ways to
do it and many many pitfalls.
And so if you spend a couple hours
doing research ahead of time
you're going to get a much
more optimized path forward
than if you just, ah this
is the first book I saw,
this is the first research I saw.
Oh, this app seems to be
popular, let’s download it,
like that approach to learning things,
which is what most people do.”
The acquisition of every skill, in the
beginning, seems like a strenuous act.
The only way to
ameliorate this process
is to understand the mechanics
of the skill first.
“Learn how to learn” is the basic
motto behind ultralearning
and the core idea that
needs to be espoused
before embarking on
a learning journey.
In Scott’s words:
Metalearning forms the map,
showing you how to get to your
destination without getting lost.
When Bill Gates first
met Warren Buffett,
their host at dinner, Gates’ mother,
asked everyone around
the table to identify
what they believed was the
single most important factor
in their success through life.
Gates and Buffett gave the
same one-word answer: “Focus.”
There is nothing more
powerful than focus in life.
I can personally attest to that
and the aforementioned
parable reinforces my point.
Focus isn’t an easy thing and it often
constitutes a form of superpower
in a distraction-oriented world.
Every one of us has to face
daily numerous obstacles
that impede our ability to
stay concentrated in a task.
Obstacles like procrastination,
inability to maintain focus,
and even a failure to create
the right kind of focus.
But this can be normal.
Especially when we face
novelty and challenges
that seem arcane to
our environment,
resistance starts to creep in and our
ability to focus suffers as a result.
There is no easy way to
tackle that conundrum.
We need to just accept it as a
standard tenet of the learning process
and quit being too judgmental with
ourselves whenever we fail to overcome it.
As Scott states in the book:
Recognize where you
are and start small.
If you’re the kind of person who
can’t sit still for a minute,
try sitting still for half a minute.
Half a minute soon becomes
one minute, then two.
Over time, the frustrations you
feel learning a particular subject
may become transmuted
into genuine interest.
One of the major issues
one has to face
when dealing with a new skill
is that of directness.
Directness refers to the
ability of the learner
to approach the most crucial
aspects of the skill head-on.
Usually, instead of immersing
ourselves in the skill itself,
we try to find shortcuts or hacks that
can make the skill easier to acquire.
Scott explains that
beautifully in the book:
We want to speak a language
but try to learn mostly
by playing on fun apps,
rather than conversing
with actual people.
We want to work on collaborative,
professional programs
but mostly code
scripts in isolation.
We want to become great speakers,
so we buy a book on communication,
rather than practice presenting.
In all these cases the
problem is the same:
directly learning the
thing we want feels
too uncomfortable,
boring, or frustrating,
so we settle for some
book, lecture, or app,
hoping it will eventually make
us better at the real thing.
The best way to learn directly
is to immerse in projects
relevant to the field
from the beginning.
Despite the innate challenging
nature of such an endeavor,
the benefits are immense.
Benjamin Franklin was
considered by many
the greatest polymath of all time.
He was a politician, an entrepreneur,
an inventor, and a great writer.
Especially when it came to writing,
Franklin would constantly
try to come up with methods
that would allow him to improve
this extremely important skill.
For instance, he would
read “The Spectator”
and he would take notes on
articles that appeared there.
He would then leave the notes for
a few days and come back to them,
trying to reconstruct the
original article from memory.
By doing this many times,
he would familiarize
himself with the concepts
and eventually automate the
ways he would internalize them.
Such a method is considered a drill
and drills allow you,
through repetition,
to improve on weaknesses
in your learning process.
“So drilling is really I think a lot
of us have a bad feeling about drills.
We remember you know doing our
times tables when we were kids
or memorizing something and
it feels like drudgery
it doesn't feel as fun
and often it feels like it's
tedious or unnecessary.
And I think the problem is that
if you just give someone a drill
and say OK you're going
to do this 100 times
then they often don't know
why they're learning it.
And it's often not driven
by any kind of need.
It's just that's what's
next on the list to learn
is do this drill a hundred times
and the way I like to
think of drills is that
if you do drills properly
in an ultralearning project
then they actually
feel super useful
because what you're doing is that
you're encountering some
real learning challenge.
It's too difficult.
And so you're breaking it apart
or breaking it down so that
you're working on a simpler aspect
and then going back and
trying to reintegrate it
to work back into the
original problem.”
Let’s say you are a student and
you have to prepare for an exam.
You have three different options
apropos how to allocate your time:
Passive review – Go over
your notes and the book.
Create a concept map –
Write down the main
concepts in a diagram
and see how they are
related to each other.
Free recall –
Retrieve the knowledge from the
book and remember what was in it.
Passive review and concept
mapping are inefficient.
Free recall is the best way to go.
Humans beings can’t know with confidence
how well they’ve learned something.
Instead we need to constantly
test our knowledge
by evaluating how easy
it is to remember it.
“The thing is that free recall
is actually a lot more similar
to what you actually
have to do on tests
and it's a lot more similar to
what you have to do in real life.
Very often is that it's not just merely
“Oh I'm looking at this information,
have I seen this before,”
which is what this sort of
self-check is when you're reviewing.
But, here's a question,
what's the answer?
Or can you activate this knowledge
without having it in front of you,
and it’s a much more
difficult task,
and it's something that you actually
have to actively practice.”
“I told Chris Rock I was going to
the Comedy Cellar here in New York.
He said, I'm gonna come down.
I said, Chris yo I'm working
on some stuff come down
I wanna know what you think.
We're close and we always give each
other opinions on what we're doing
and where we feel this can go
or that can go just punch up.
So he comes down.
He's like, oh my God Kev funny.
I say, you going up?
He said, yeah I'm gonna try 
some stuff too. Chris goes up.
Dave pops in later that night. Me and
Chris we're talking Chappelle comes in.
We say, you going up?
He said yeah.
Me and Chris go downstairs
so we can watch Dave.
Keep in mind me and
Chris are excited.
We just worked on new material.
Chris gave me some good bits.
He went on, I gave him some 
good bits. Dave went on stage.
It was so good.
I mean Chris just took what
we had.We balled it up.
We threw it away.
We threw it in the trash.
We threw it.
I said I, I'm so disgusted with where
my level of thinking was at the scene
where Dave was I got to
go back in the gym. ”
Comedy cellar is a
comedy club in New York.
It is designed for a small crowd
and famous comedians go
there to test new material.
It is the best way for
them to gather feedback
and evaluate whether or not the new
material is worth using in bigger shows.
Feedback constitutes a great way
to assess one’s level of
competence in any a field.
But feedback can be tricky.
What is good feedback
and what isn’t?
Scott has done extensive
research on the topic
and his analysis can
be very enlightening.
“A lot of feedback isn't
actually very helpful.
And if the feedback distracts
from your ability to do the task
or, worse, it has a demotivating
influence on your performance,
then it can actually be bad.
And so if I tell you for instance:
“Oh you're so great at
this, you're so smart”
when you're learning, as a teacher,
that actually has a negative effect.
One of the things that they found is
praise is not useful for students
because praise, if it doesn't have any
information the student can use to improve,
has a demotivating effect.
“Oh I'm doing this really well, OK
I'm not going to work so hard now”
and so I thought that
was really interesting
because we often know that really
harsh and critical feedback,
“You're such an idiot,” you know,
no one wants to hear that,
but also the opposite is also
not great for feedback either.”
Feedback can oftentimes make us
feel harsh and uncomfortable.
Ego usually gets in the way,
as well as the intentions and experience
of the person offering feedback.
Extracting the signal from the
noise can be challenging,
but it is a challenge
we ought to embrace.
“Nigel Richards is a Scrabble legend.
They call him the Tiger
Woods of Scrabble.
But clearly only referencing
Tiger's abilities on the green.
Because, listen to these numbers.
Richards has won the Thailand
Kings Cup eleven times,
the UK open six times, the US
National Championship five times,
the English world
championship three times,
and his most recent victory was
the French World Championship
against an actual
French speaking player.
A friend of his told
the New Zealand Herald
that Richards studied the French
Scrabble dictionary for eight weeks
specifically to learn the
words and not the language.
I guess some of the
language rubbed off on him
because Richards actually won a
challenge against his opponent
who, just a reminder,
could speak French.”
Nigel Richards obviously
possesses a great memory,
but that’s not what made
him a scrabble champion.
In one of his interviews,
Richards said the following:
“It’s hard work, you have to
have dedication to learn,”
elsewhere adding
“I’m not sure there is a secret, it’s
just a matter of learning the words.”
It is self-evident
that a learning ethos,
combined with a good memory
can help you go a long way.
You forget for different
reasons, like time,
overwriting old
memories with new ones,
or inability to access
specific parts of your memory.
However, memory, despite
its obscure nature,
can be “maniputlated” through
different mechanisms.
Mechanisms like spacing,
proceduralization,
overlearning, and mnemonics.
These are all great techniques
used by ultralearners.
They can effectively counteract your
short- and long-term rates of forgetting
and end up making a huge
difference in your memorization.
Richard Feyman was one of the most
beautiful minds of the previous century.
What made him such a prolific
figure amongst scientists
wasn’t just his intelligence
but also his unparalleled ability
to continuously seek knowledge.
“But, if you realize, all the
time, what’s kind of wonderful,
is as we expand our experience in the
wilder and wilder regions of experience,
every once in a while we
have these integrations
in which everything is pulled
together in a unification
which turns out to be simpler
than it looked before.”
The surface wasn’t
of interest to him.
What mattered the most, was how
deep he could delve into a problem.
Because if you go deep enough,
anything can become interesting.
And through depth you
develop intuition.
Intuition occurs when we
do things naturally –
when there is no struggle
entailed in our thinking process.
When you do and feel
things intuitively
you operate on a level
beyond comprehension.
It is the level where you know
the outcome of something
before you even deal with it.
This is the secret
behind most geniuses
and this is probably the first
step to any form of mastery.
This is the starry night.
One of my favorite paintings
and a piece of art
that, along with others,
made Vincent van Gogh
one of the most influential
painters across space and time.
Van Gogh was a prodigy of his time.
He started painting
at the age of 26,
with no previous experience
in any form of art,
and within ten years he managed
to ascend to the upper echelons
of the art scene of his era.
The sad thing, however, is
that, like many great artists,
Van Gogh was celebrated
the most posthumously.
During his life, he was considered
weird and crazy by some.
He was extremely introverted and
shy and, more often than not,
he would be isolated by his peers.
What kept him going was his
unfaltering obsession with drawing.
He would draw for days straight,
changing sceneries and persistently
trying to improve his style.
Scott in his book raises a great point
with regards to Van Gogh’s evolution:
“How can we explain
these discrepancies?
How does someone who starts late,
with no obvious talent
and many handicaps,
nonetheless become one of the
world’s greatest artists,
with one of the most recognizable
and distinctive styles?”
Of course tenacity played a
significant role in his development,
but most importantly it was his
willingness to constantly experiment
that made him stand out so fast.
“To really master something,
to really reach the levels
of creativity and genius
that we associate with the kind of
end products of a learning goal,
you really need to experiment
because, eventually,
you get onto a path
that no one's been here 
before. Right?
When you are mastering a
skill at that high level,
you are doing something
that no one's done before.
So, learning in that
sense is not something
you can just ask some expert what's
the right way to learn this,
because you are often
approaching limits of things
that you know no one has done
it exactly that way before
and so you have to sort of
develop that approach yourself.”
All of these principles
are only starting points.
The art of learning will always be
projecting new challenges to one’s life,
but, when you get the
fundamentals right,
the substrate becomes more solid
and you become more ready to engross
yourself into new ideas and skills.
And as Scott eloquently suggests
towards the end of the book:
True mastery comes not just from
following the path trodden by others
but also from exploring possibilities
they haven’t yet imagined.
Hi guys,
This was my first collaboration
and something I was
yearning for long.
Scott is one of the most
interesting bloggers of our time
and it was a privilege to get
the chance to interview him
about such an important
topic like learning.
Learning is synonymous to evolution
whereas lack of learning is
synonymous to stagnation.
My advice to all of you
is to keep learning,
for it’s one of the things that
makes you feel truly alive.
As you can imagine,
today’s giveaway will be Scott’s
latest book, Ultralearning.
All you need to do to
enter is like, subscribe,
get notifications,
follow me on Instagram
and message me on Instagram
confirming that you did all
that with a screenshot.
The winner will be announced
in a week from now.
Most probably, he or she
will be decided randomly,
but you may increase
your chances of winning
if you are a little bit more creative in 
the message you will send me on Instagram.
Anyway, it was a
pleasure as always.
See you in the next video.
