Episode 101
· 01:27:54
This podcast is brought to you by transistor.fm. Back in 2017, I was invited to go to this retreat that James Clear and Sean Blanc and Sean McCabe were organizing. And one of the folks I met there was Scott Young. We're both from Canada. He was born in Manitoba.
Speaker 1:And Scott was a really interesting character, around the campfire. Him and I very quickly would get into these really deep conversations. And when you talk to him, you realize he is a deep thinker, but he is able to articulate concepts that might be complex in a way that even a dummy like me could understand. And he's been blogging for quite a while at scotthyoung.com, mostly around this concept of ultra learning. And at first I was really kind of intimidated by his subject matter.
Speaker 1:You know, the idea of, you know, doing really focused, intense learning is kind of intimidating to me. But the more I've talked to him, the more I've realized that he's discovered these tricks really to mastering hard skills quickly. I was on the phone with him the other day describing how I had finally figured out how to teach myself programming. And he got really excited as I was describing my experience because he's been writing this book called Ultra Learning. It's out right now.
Speaker 1:You can go get it. And the principles I had kind of accidentally discovered, a lot of them were things he found in the book that were backed up by real scientific research. So I wanted to have him on the show just so we could talk a bit about that. Specifically, you know, how do you learn something like programming, especially if you've tried over and over again to figure it out? Let's get into the conversation.
Speaker 2:This sort of idea of ultra learning has kind of obsessed me over a while, and I kinda go into it, like, the the kind of story of it in the book. But, basically, I wanted to focus on not on, like, you know, how do you get do get good grades in school or something. Not to say that that's not important, but the idea of the book was people who sort of undertake these projects on their own to learn something hard, and they have, you know, some kind of impressive or incredible results. So there's a lot of really cool people I talk about in the book. You know, one of the guys, Tristan De Montebello, he went from, like, basically zero experience public speaking to being at the world championship and getting in the top 10 after seven months just by going through this process.
Speaker 2:And another guy I talk about in the book, Nigel Richards, won the French World Scrabble Championship, and he can't speak French. What? Like, these so these are yeah. I know. It's crazy.
Speaker 2:Right? So these are these are some of the stories that they're kind of a little extreme, but I wanted to use them to kind of paint a picture of, like, the potential that you have to learn hard things. It's a lot more than you think if you know how to go about it the right way. And it's so funny because you and I were just having this conversation about you finally getting into programming. And in my head, the whole time you're talking about what you're doing, I'm like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I actually, there's a lot of research on why that's the right way of doing it, which I think is cool.
Speaker 1:Okay. I wanna get into that. But let's just go back to this French Scrabble thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Nigel Richards. Yeah. Crazy guy.
Speaker 1:That must really piss off the French.
Speaker 2:Well, no. This guy is, like, he is he's a really he's, like, one of the most interesting people that I researched for the book because, first of all, like, he's he's kind of an odd looking guy. Like, he's got he's got really long hair with, like, kinda home cut bangs and, like, aviator sunglasses. And he he kind of, like, looks a little savantish, but I've heard him in interviews. He's he's very normal sounding.
Speaker 2:And he he he's very mysterious. Like, he doesn't, like, like, he doesn't do interviews with reporters. He declines all media, all this kind of stuff. But he has, like, been just dominating English scrabble, and then he just decided, you know what? Like, I'm so good at this.
Speaker 2:Let's let's go for a little bike ride in Europe. And he decided, you know what? There's a French word Scrabble Championship. Let's just try to do it. And he just won first place.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of funny when you dig into it, it doesn't seem as crazy because, yeah, not being able to speak the language is definitely a disadvantage, but actually being really good at Scrabble involves having a really impressive mnemonic ability even beyond the words that you normally encounter. So you have to learn a lot of words even if you're gonna do it in English. So he just learned words that are different words. They're not words that he knows how to speak. So it was kinda crazy, though, how he went about it.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, that's just one of the stories. There's lots of them like that.
Speaker 1:Crazy. Okay. I think this will be most interesting for folks if we use an example.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I think the example of me learning to program would be a good one to dig into. Yeah. And so let's just talk about kind of a little of my background because I think it's applicable, and then we can talk about what I've been doing, and then you can tell me if this is the right thing, if I'm on the right track.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:You know, we have Ditry in the comments here saying, is there a right way to learn programming? Which I think a lot of people are asking questions like that. Actually, that is one of my biggest anxieties. Yeah. Is, Am I learning things the right way?
Speaker 1:Like, you know, when you're learning to play guitar, and you're like, well, is this the right way? Like, maybe there's a better way. There's kind of, like, this learning FOMO of, well, maybe I'm missing out on the right way. And I think part of that is because often it's presented that there's just one way to learn something. Like there's gurus out there that'll say, Well, this is how you learn programming.
Speaker 1:And, you know, the narrative that develops is, well, if you didn't start when you're five years old and if you weren't like writing, you know, C by the time you were eight, and you're just never going be a programmer because that's how people learn to program. Yeah. So here's here's my story. My dad brought home a Commodore VIC 20 in 1985. VIC twenties came with BASIC, and I do remember writing a little bit of BASIC.
Speaker 1:There's like manual, and you could type things in and make little programs. Simple like input, and then it would save the input, and then you can reuse the input, you can print it somewhere. And I remember thinking that was cool, and I also remember just loving computers, like Mhmm. Just immediately being into it. And as I got older, I I kept being into computers.
Speaker 1:We, you know, we got other computers and I was always trying to figure out how to use them and work them. And then I think when I was around 10, I asked for a copy of Turbo Pascal. Mhmm. And this is where things kind of fell for me. I asked for a copy of Turbo Pascal six point zero, I remember this is a big deal, and I start trying to learn.
Speaker 1:And, you know, I try to learn the way other people do. Like they said, get a book I got a book. And I just remember it just didn't work. I kept trying and trying and trying. Maybe I was too isolated, I was a kid in the country on a farm, you know?
Speaker 1:I had really no one around me. Mhmm. I sometimes I think, like, I wonder if I was born in New York City, would it have changed anything? Where where are you from, actually? You're from Manitoba somewhere?
Speaker 2:I'm I'm from, like, yeah, I'm from, like, the middle of nowhere in so it's called DePauw, Manitoba. That's where I spent eighteen years of my life. So that's, like, Northern Manitoba. So talk about really, like, middle of nowhere. Not on a farm, but, like Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, same kind of thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. So why don't Yeah. Why don't you interject right here. Sure. What what do you think like, what am I encountering there as a kid who clearly had this desire Yeah.
Speaker 1:And but it it just didn't click. Is it Mhmm. Is there is there something you can see even at that stage that's going, well
Speaker 2:Well, so I wanna just jump in because there's already people being like, you know, is there a right way to learn a program? So my goal is here not to be like, there's one and only one way to learn a program. Yeah. And if you don't follow this, you're an idiot. No.
Speaker 2:So my goal isn't that. My goal is what are the principles behind learning so that you can kind of self diagnose your own mistakes. We can be like, oh, that's why it wasn't working because I was doing this Yes. And and that's why that works. So really, there's an infinite number of ways of doing it and you gotta find the way that you're gonna like.
Speaker 2:And a lot of what I talk about in ultra learning is really making these projects that are very unique so that it's kinda like your project. And that's what I'm trying to move away from is the kind of one size fits all education approach where you go to school and everyone follows the same curriculum and you don't care about this, but who cares what you think? Everyone else in the class has to do it too and and it's that approach. Yeah. So what I will say I can't say specifically what what you were doing because I'd have to look at what little Justin was doing with the computer and why it was so difficult.
Speaker 2:But I will say a couple things. So one of the things I think with programming, and we were just talking about it, and you were talking about spending a lot of videos, is that honest to God, the hardest thing about programming these days is getting set up. Mhmm. Like, all the tools, all the dev environments. Like, I've been programming probably now for half my life.
Speaker 2:I'm not a professional programmer, so I'm not gonna say that I'm some wizard and I'm talking from high on the mountain of what great programmers do. But I have been programming for a long time, and I can tell you, I still effing hate setting up a new programming language. Like, is like my least favorite thing to do. And it's because it's it's not like any other computer software. Like, if you become like, you know, you wanna use Photoshop.
Speaker 2:Okay. You download Photoshop. Bloop. You install Photoshop, and you set it up and you start to work. Programming?
Speaker 2:No. You gotta open your terminal. You gotta download this. You gotta type in some things. Oh, you're you're running 64 bit?
Speaker 2:Oh, it crashed, but you're not sure why. And it's like wrong system architecture. And then you you Google that and you copy this and you go again and again and again. Mhmm. And the problem is that people experience this initial thing and they extrapolate.
Speaker 2:Oh my god. If the first steps are this hard, well, then the rest of programming must be impossible. Yeah. And so I think it's just those rare kids that are, like, okay with being really frustrated in the beginning, and so they can get over that initial hump that they can start actually doing some programming. And then it's like, oh, actually once you make your first once you get that like hello world program where you get those first few lines of code happening, you can actually do a ton of stuff.
Speaker 2:So I think I think there's lots of ways around it. Some people are asking like what what should you do if you're like struggling with this? Honest to God, I like you were saying the book one of the things I've done is I just get like an O'Reilly book that tells you step by step because I am like an old man. Like, I don't like looking things up on tutorials. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I like getting the O'Reilly book that is like, okay. Alright. Step one, type this. And then I like type that. And you feel stupid, but you get through that and then you actually like, okay.
Speaker 2:Someone got me from step one to, you know, actually typing those first lines of code. Mhmm. The other thing I think that people get over is that I think this is the second big problem with programming, is that there's a million different things you can use. So there's a million tools and everyone's like, no. You gotta be learning JavaScript or no.
Speaker 2:It's Python. No. It's Rails. And then no. But you gotta have the, you know, node dot j s or you gotta be doing you gotta be doing that, and this and this and this.
Speaker 2:And so it also feels super overwhelming because you're like, oh my god. Where do I start? And it's only after you've been programming for a while that you realize, yes, the tools are different and there is some learning in those tools, but it's not as if programming like, all programming has a common vocabulary, a common set of concepts that work across. So you're gonna be dealing in almost all programming languages. You're be dealing with functions.
Speaker 2:You're gonna be dealing with variables. You're gonna be dealing with, you know, pointers. You're gonna be dealing with for loops, while loops, recursion. There's probably several textbooks worth of ideas that are the same in almost all programming languages. They're just superficially different.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. So even if you learn the wrong programming language, so you you learn Python and you're like, oh, I actually needed to learn, you know, JavaScript or c plus plus. It's a little bit of work, but it's not like, you know, going from Chinese to French or something. Like, it's it's like going from, you know, French in Montreal versus French in Paris. There's a little bit of different words, but you know a lot of the same concepts.
Speaker 2:So I think those are the two big problems.
Speaker 1:I wonder if there's how much research there is about the importance of having some sort of peer group that's going through it at the same time. One of the things I'm discovering now is I'm able to ask people, you know, just really dumb questions like how does this work? And when you have someone kind of sitting beside you, you can ask these almost what seems like inane questions. Like well, you know, maybe in Turbo Pascal it would have been something about like, you know, I don't know why does why do I need to compile this first or it doesn't really matter what it was but it feels like if I had friends that were also programming at same time and we were kind of like just batting ideas around and they they would go, oh, well, that's simple. You just, oh, you just step over that like this.
Speaker 1:Or a good example lately was I was installing a bunch of stuff with Adam Wavin who's a really good programmer. He's written a bunch of books for the Laravel community and I'm, like, look at all these warnings when you install, like, NPM install something, like, it's, like, warning warning warning. And I'm, like, what do you in the command line, right? And I'm like, what do you do about those? Don't those drive you crazy?
Speaker 1:And he's like, oh, yeah. You just ignore those. And I was like, and but when you're a beginner, you're often you don't know what to pay attention to. You don't know what's a big deal, what's not a big deal. And it feels like when you have peers that can go, oh, well, that's not a big deal but this is a So big what role does, like, the people around you play or is there is there anything in that?
Speaker 1:Like
Speaker 2:Well, I think it can go both ways. So what what you're talking about where you have like that's basically the model of tutoring. Right? Where that you have like kind of a one on one or one to a small group of that kind of coaching. That's the best kind of teaching because then it's tailored to what is your problem.
Speaker 2:Whereas if you're in a big class, someone's lecturing, you get confused, they're not stopping to explain why you're confused. Like, you're still stuck. Right? So so tutoring is very good. I think that, you know, we're in a little bit of a privileged position if you got, you know, some nice friend who's a superstar and is hand coaching you, that's great.
Speaker 2:A lot of us, you know, maybe five year old Justin doesn't have this coach who can tell him exactly what to do.
Speaker 1:Someone commented on that video and said Yeah. Wow. That was like that was like having Gandalf teach you a basic spell. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, yeah, there's obviously something there.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, I think there is something about actually, that's interesting because now that you bring that up like this idea of tutoring Mhmm. Or at least having some sort of pair, like for me, pair programming seems to make a lot of sense with my personality. So are you saying that's part of it is figuring out, like, what kind of learner you are?
Speaker 2:Well, individual yeah. Peers and coaches and tutors are often really valuable. And so that's a big part of the, like, when you're setting up a project, how do you get that scaffolding? So I think someone like you, you're an extroverted kind of person and you you you work in a social way and that can often be a big motivator. I was talking to some a woman who was talking about programming and she was saying the thing she didn't like about it is it is so isolating.
Speaker 2:And I was like, well, maybe you're just doing it wrong. Maybe that's what, you know, you're doing it in an isolated way. It doesn't have to be that way. Yeah. And so I think that peer groups can also backfire if you're not in that context.
Speaker 2:So if you're in a context, like, let's say giving a good example. Let's say you're in an intro programming class. So this is my third big thing that I think that people screw up and why they think they can't program, is you do your intro CS course.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And okay. So I have a story time. So I had I met this woman who got a master's in civil engineering. She's like writing papers on like fluid dynamics and stuff. She's wicked smart.
Speaker 2:Right? To to use to use the goodwill hunting, she's wicked smart. What
Speaker 1:fluid dynamics? Is fluid dynamics the the the dynamics of water? Or is it
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Water going in hydro dams and stuff. So she's this is really smart. This is like, you know, differential equations and this is like complicated, you know, high level stuff. And she told me with a straight face, you know what, I couldn't learn to code because I went to my intro programming class and I was no good at it.
Speaker 2:Interesting. And I was like, why is someone this smart saying they weren't good at it? And you know the reason why is because in every intro class, there's some kid who's been doing it for ten years and they throw the curve. Right? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So you're in this class and you're seeing the kid who hands in assignment in about twenty seconds, and you're like, wait. I don't get what what what is an if statement? What is, you know, what is why do I have to put this I n t before the, you know, the variable name that doesn't make any sense to me, this kind
Speaker 1:of thing.
Speaker 2:And you're getting frustrated and confused, which is totally normal because it's totally new for you. But there's some kid who's, again, been doing this since he was five Mhmm. With his computer learning basic, and you look in that and you make that comparison. You say, oh, I must not be very good at this.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So you don't you don't you don't discount the fact that this person has years of experience. Maybe you don't know that, but you say, I'm not good at this. And this is definitely what I feel happened in this woman's case, and I think can happen to a lot of us, is that you get in this situation where you make this comparison to other people that maybe isn't a fair one.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But it makes you, oh, if I'm at the bottom of the class, I must be bad at this. Yeah. Rather than I don't have the right experience or I'm not approaching it in the right way. And so I think the peer group can be this double edged sword that if you have a good peer group, they can, like, help you learn and support you, or they can just be this, like, well, I'm not good at this. I might as well give up and go do something else.
Speaker 1:Right? That also brings up this idea of convention. Mhmm. One thing that's been helpful to me is before I did look at programmers as if they were Gandalf. Like they are magicians doing things I do not understand.
Speaker 1:And what's been helpful now is to see that programming was just invented by humans that saw the world in a certain way and they came up with conventions that made sense to them. In the same way that, you know, if you got, like, a really weird way of, like even, like, think about the think about the the list you have to give guests if they stay at your house. Like, here's how to use the remote. Here's how to unlock our door. Things that seem Yeah.
Speaker 1:Completely normal to you that are, you know, conventions that make sense, when you actually have to write them out, you're like, this is darn confusing for somebody else. And when I saw that programming was just like, these are conventions. The reason people use this language, use this way of organizing like like even like functions variables, and as soon as you start saying that stuff, my eyes just glaze over. I'm just like, those words to me are are automatically blockers. And Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It's it's not until because I wanna get to how I was finally able to get some breakthroughs, but one of the things that really helped me was realizing these are just conventions and I feel like, maybe this is getting back to your earlier point, like a lot of what throws people off is just the the the kind of the stuff at the beginning that other people have just said, well this is how you learn math. You you've gotta sit down and you've gotta learn it this way and if you can't do it or that doesn't click for you, well, then you're screwed. Is it is any of that is there any kind of
Speaker 2:No. No. No. I I totally agree. And I think there's a lot of again, we're talking we're getting into these misconceptions about programming, I love it because, you know, one of the things I think is a huge misconception about programming is that programming is like a branch of mathematics.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And I'm computer science is. Like, I've done some computer science. I know, like, it is a branch of mathematics. That's a kind of math, especially discrete math.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And so people extend that. Like, well, it's it's technology. It's math. It's like engineering.
Speaker 2:It's like doing calculus or algebra. Not really. And the way that I feel is that programming in it it kind of at its core like, mean, there's certain types of programming that obviously, like, if you're if you're doing machine learning, there's a lot of, like, math and, you know, know, doing doing this kind of thing. But most programming is actually a lot closer to, like, creating a recipe or it's a lot more linguistic. It's a lot more, like, you know, if I were to explain to someone how to do it and I had to explain it like, I just had to assume that this person is going to just follow it, like, robotically and I had to, like, break it down in explanation.
Speaker 2:That's a linguistic kind of task. And a lot of what makes someone a good programmer once they kind of master the basics is not really like how, you know, how good are you at math, but like how organized are you? How good are you at communicating? What does this program do? And how can I explain how it does to someone else who's gonna later maintain this program or open it up and try to figure it out?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so it's a lot about being neat and tidy and organized and thinking through, okay. This is a complicated problem. How do I break it down into little components that, you know so, you know, I wanna build an app that does all these million things, but, like, how how do I okay. Let's figure out where I start.
Speaker 2:What would be the first thing I wanted to do? And like, how do I get it to do the next thing? Mhmm. So I think there's a lot of misconceptions about programming and a lot of that's reinforced by that those first few experiences where you're like, you know, my my vision of what people think of as programming is like the green letters are dropping down and you're entering into the matrix. And someone's like, if you don't you don't crack, they're gonna be through the firewall in fifteen seconds.
Speaker 2:And then they're like typing like 40, you know, million words per second. And like 18 windows are popping up and like there's a big skull with crossbones and like, the lasers are flashing. You you know what I'm talking about. This is how everyone promotes programming. When it's really more like, okay.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to do this first and then that. So I guess I'll put this thing first. And, like, it's it's a lot it's it's not actually that intimidating, but Mhmm. It feels that way in the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, here's the breakthrough for me. So I've the other thing I think that sets in that would be interesting to talk about is how I eventually just started believing this thing about myself. So I tried, you know, ages 10, 11, 12, which in some ways seems ridiculous, like I tried it when I was 10, 11, 12, and then all of a sudden I'm like, Okay, but as a kid, you just start to gravitate towards things where you're getting positive feedback. So I was getting, you know, I was getting feedback with my writing, so I was doing that.
Speaker 1:I was getting feedback on bulletin boards. I would make ANSI art and art for bulletin boards, so
Speaker 2:I was
Speaker 1:getting good feedback on that, so I just started doing that. In my family, I was the best at computers, and so I was just getting good, you know, positive reinforcement about being the best at computers. In my class I was the best at computers, and there was nobody else in my class going, well, but what about programming? I was already the best at computers, And so, you know, and then the web came along in 2013 when I was 13, and then writing HTML just seemed so much easier and accessible. Right?
Speaker 1:Fast forward a lot of years. Now I'm I'm 39 right now. But last year, I said well, actually, at that retreat, I was chatting with James Clear, and he hadn't published Atomic Habits yet, but he had we were talking in the airport, and I think I was being a little bit cynical to him at first. I was just kind of like, well, it's kinda like, this is not for me. You know?
Speaker 1:Like, James, that stuff might work for, like, you know, whatever, but it's not gonna work for me. Yeah. And to his credit, he was very patient. And also, I think the other thing that happened was I was just watching folks like you and people that I might have normally felt cynically were like, Oh, these people are too earnest. You know?
Speaker 1:Like, let's just all learn. Let's all, like, let's improve our productivity. Let's be ultra learners. I'm just I'm being honest. I'm just telling you that
Speaker 2:No. No. No. I like it.
Speaker 1:I like it. Cynical parts of me. That's what I was thinking. And then James said this thing, which was basically, you know, every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you want to become. And so if you you might not think you're a runner right now if you don't run.
Speaker 1:But if you got up tomorrow morning and you ran, and then you did it the next day, and the next day, and the next day, you might start to think of yourself as a runner. And his point was that a lot of these things don't follow our internal beliefs about ourselves. The our beliefs follow the actions that we do. Right? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Is that a good way of putting it, you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so my thought when I got back was, I've always wanted to learn to program. And now I'm building this new app with John called transistor.fm. I want to be able to contribute to this in some way. I don't want to just be the marketing guy. Right?
Speaker 1:And so I had to figure out something that would work for me. And what I figured out almost kind of by accident was every time I did a live stream, I'd be like, okay, I'm gonna I gotta get this done. I gotta I gotta start. So I just go live and I'd just be like, Hey, everybody. It's me.
Speaker 1:And I don't know shit about programming. And that that part was hard because I had to give up my ego of There's all this stuff I wanted people to know. I've been on computers since 1985. I was using Unix when I was 10, but I had to kind of almost let all of that go and be like, but there's a lot of stuff in the command line I don't know or I can't remember. And instead of me trying to hold on to this, like, you know, this perception of myself, I just said, you know what?
Speaker 1:I'm an idiot. I don't know what I'm doing. I almost played a bigger idiot than I was. But what was helpful about it is that when people showed up in the livestream, they were happy to help me. Right?
Speaker 1:Because I'm not making any I'm not trying to pretend that, you know, I'm not trying to hold it together. I'm just saying I'm here to learn and I want to accomplish this one thing. And that for me is the only thing that has ever worked. And we spent a lot of time, you know, a lot of those videos, they're all online. They're just me going through things with people and them going, you know, here's how to set up an environment or whatever.
Speaker 1:So what do you think is there anything in the research or anything? Because to me, that feels like I'm doing it completely wrong. Right? Like, I'm not reading a book. I still like, if you ask me to define what a function is, I'd be like, like, I don't really know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I have a loose idea of what a variable is. I have a loose idea of what a constant is, you know? Yeah. But I I'm starting to get it for the first time in my life.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And I wonder, is that is that the future of learning? Because I basically I I maybe not that specific thing, but me kind of figuring out, oh, wait. Maybe there's something that would work better for me than what worked for other people.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I think you're definitely doing right, and this was, one of the more surprising things that came up in the research for this book, is basically, you you know how classroom learning works, where you learn something in one context, maybe you study for a test or something. And the entire principle of classroom learning is based on the idea of transfer, based on the idea that you're gonna learn something in the classroom, you're gonna be able to transfer it to real life. And if you dig into the literature, you will find that actually the ability that we have to transfer things is abysmal. It is so bad. So, like, there are studies so for instance, one I just love these studies.
Speaker 2:One of them is that there was a study done that a high school high school students who had taken a high school psychology class did know better on a college level psychology class. Another study had economics majors did not do better on questions of economic reasoning than non economics majors. I mean, this is pretty obvious stuff. Like, one class to the next level class, you'd expect there'd be some transfer. Or economics, you spend four years studying it in college.
Speaker 2:You you really should be able to reason about economic problems better. You can't. And what what I think a lot of it is is that what's actually happening when you're learning is that if you learn things in a con it's that's divorced from the context, you actually have to apply it. There's a lot of the little I'll call it kinda like connective tissue. A lot of the little skills and abilities that you actually need to have to be able to perform it that you are lacking.
Speaker 2:And because you're lacking that, when you try to transfer it, it fails, or you're able to perform it but, like, way worse than you thought you'd be able to. And this can be very dispiriting. And so often, if you're in computer science classes, they'll do ridiculous things like getting you to do assignments with pencil and paper because it's easier to grade that way. But actually coding, you never do that. You're always like, oh, what's the syntax for this?
Speaker 2:And you Google it, and then you look it up, and you're like, oh, this is how you do it you put it So I would say one of the first principles of Ultra Learning, so I I divided the book into nine principles, is what I call directness. And that's exactly what you're doing, which is like, okay. I'm gonna work on this, and I'm gonna open this up, and I'm gonna work on it directly, and, like, screw the programming book, screw the textbook, I'm just gonna start working on it directly. And this is actually really good because not to say that books are always bad or that it's always bad to do those other things. You gotta do what you need to do to learn it.
Speaker 2:But in the same sense, if you just, like, I'm gonna work through this whole book and then I'm gonna start my first programming project, I think that's backwards. You should get in your head, okay. What is something little that I could maybe try to work for or try to aim at? And then even when I'm learning things, I'm starting to think about, like, how would that work in the thing that I'm trying to do or or even start working on the thing you're trying to do. So, honestly, I think that the way we conceive of classroom learning is actually backwards, and that the right way to learn things is a lot closer to apprenticeship, which is sort of what you're doing right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The I can't see. See, what you're saying in some ways is a little bit frustrating because our whole lives, we've been said, you take the class and then you go out later and you apply it. Right? Or you read the book and then you know what you're talking about, so then you can go do it.
Speaker 1:And it just seems like you and I both took business in school. Correct? Yeah. Yeah. So I've got my my degree in business completely worthless.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Mean, I'm sure there's some things that I picked up that were helpful, but it wasn't until I was doing my own business that I started to learn. Right. Like the, the theory, maybe except for accounting and, like, having a basic understanding of how accounting worked, everything else, in some ways, it was almost worse because it gave me the confidence that I could do it. Right?
Speaker 2:Man. I I totally know what you're talking about. So I have this feeling because I remember I remember it was probably my, like this was my last year when I was in business school. I was getting in these lingering feelings that business school was bullshit, like, like, a while before. But this was where I really sunk in.
Speaker 2:And this was I was taking a class oh my god. This was this class where the professor, instead of actually teaching the class, he decided, every class, we're just gonna have students present a case, and then we'll discuss it. Like, just super lazy. Like, I don't wanna do any work. So, like, you guys just teach the class.
Speaker 2:And it was an entrepreneurial finance class and basically, we're given these little case studies. This is very common in business school if you haven't done it, by the way. You have these little case studies and you have to, like, plan and you're, you know, you're, like, you're 22 and you're, like, you're so smart and you're, like, gonna write about, like, this is what this company should do with their business and this kind of thing. And I remember we were talking about it and basically every class, they were, like, sort of, like, so given the situation the company's in, like, do you would you invest or do you think this is a good company? And the answer was always no.
Speaker 2:Like, this is not a good company. There's always these all these problems with the company. This is not a good company. And the thing that I realized in this moment is that the skill we were learning there was how to, like, tear apart things and critique them. And the skill of being an entrepreneur is how do you put things together and build them?
Speaker 2:And they're completely different. And so maybe as an investor, you need to do that a little bit. But even as an investor, like, most businesses are bad. Most businesses are failures. It's not a skill to say a business is gonna fail.
Speaker 2:That's that's anyone can do that. You just say no to everything and you're already gonna get it right about 80% of the time. The the thing that's a skill is when to say yes. Or the skill is how to take problems and like, oh, your supplier is like not supplying you anymore. What do you do?
Speaker 2:Or you don't have any customers or this just failed or your business partner is suing you. Like, what do you do? This is this is what it actually means to start a business. And so we were talking about programming, but it's exactly the same way that you learn how to do these things in computer science classes is like real fancy little algorithms. So like, I, for instance, know how to write the algorithm for a quick sort.
Speaker 2:You know how many times I've used that in writing an actual program? Zero. You know why? Because you never write the quick sort algorithm. They've already implemented the language.
Speaker 2:You just like sort that list. Right? And so there's a usefulness in knowing these things, but at the right time. And so I think often learning is a question of sequencing. What do you do first?
Speaker 2:What do you do second? And in school, they're kinda like, well, you're gonna learn it all anyway, so it doesn't matter what the sequence is. And I completely disagree that it really matters where you start because that's where you build momentum. That's where you start actually doing things. And so, you know, don't teach them the quick sort if they don't need the quick sort until they're at the level where it's like, no.
Speaker 2:I actually need to implement a more efficient sorting algorithm because I this huge, huge, you know, application and then this is what is important. So really, there's a lot of things that I think we've internalized about the right way to learn things that are just like completely completely normal.
Speaker 1:And and in that in that example, it is way more motivating to build something small and then figure out the limitations of what you've built or run into a roadblock and then go, Oh, wait. Yeah. That built in quicksort function, that's not gonna be enough. Because it's, you know, it's slowing down or my dataset's bigger or whatever. And at that point, to be able to to to go, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, now I can see the need for this other thing. Right?
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah. Or if you, like, you need to do something that's not built in, it's like, okay. There's no easy way to do this anymore. Now I better actually learn some things.
Speaker 2:So it again, it's not to say that learning quick sort is a bad thing or that you shouldn't have done that or that I shouldn't have done that. Obviously, like, knowing how the quick sort works is is a good thing to learn. It's just a question of what how do you sequence it? How do you order things when you're learning? And what are you doing when you start learning?
Speaker 2:Because, again, these transfer issues you know, we were talking about business school and I gave a talk where I was kinda, like, criticizing my business school education a little bit. And I go up to this speech and this woman comes up to me after and she's like, you know what? I teach entrepreneurship in business school. So there's a little bit like, oh, jeez. Okay.
Speaker 2:Alright. And she was saying, you know what? We already or like her specifically. He's like, I already agree with everything you're saying, and I really try to get the students to, like, apply and go doing things. And they don't want to.
Speaker 2:They're like, no. No. This No. Isn't gonna be on the test. I'm not doing this.
Speaker 2:And so this is also kind of the message in my book is not to, like, you know, attack the teachers or, you know, missus Brownlee who, like, taught you wrong in grade 10 and that's why everything's bad in your life. It's rather that we need to, as learners, as students, to take initiatives and try to actually go out there and, you know, design our own things like what you're doing right now and make up for our own weaknesses and our own deficits and not just blame everyone else around us for not giving us the ideal education we
Speaker 1:need Yeah. So if you were gonna design redesign school, how would you change it?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the starting point is trying to get out of thinking things in terms of schools in the first place. This is one of the things that I've been having these conversations and this is sort of like a very common question, guess. Would you do differently in school? And I think the problem is that we try to learn a lot of things in the school box where the school box is maybe not the best box to put it in. A good example of this is learning languages.
Speaker 2:We can talk about this as well, but I've I've learned a couple languages. And I think it's it's very difficult within the structure of how a school typically works, where you have one teacher, maybe 20 to 30 students to be economical, and you have a classroom environment, and there's, like, a lesson, and then there's some homework. Within those constraints, it's actually kinda difficult to have an effective language learning procedure because what you probably need to do is do what you're doing. You get a lot of one on one feedback. You actually have a communication goal, like you're trying to order food at a restaurant, or you're actually trying to talk to this person about something.
Speaker 2:So you're not so caught up in, like, no, you conjugated that incorrectly, or that's masculine and it's not feminine. But it's like, no, no, no, I'm actually trying to get this pizza right now. And, like, if I get the pizza, then transaction's successful, and we'll worry about masculine and feminine later and this kind of thing. And so this is the way that I I'm really trying to promote this ultra learning is to get people to think outside of this box. And so you're outside of this box right now with your live streaming and programming, but I think a lot of us, we think inside this box, and if you weren't successful inside that box, you just convince yourself that there was no way for you to do it.
Speaker 2:And I think that's kinda sad.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And, mean, using languages as an example. Yeah. I mean so I I was in French immersion growing up. And there's Mhmm.
Speaker 1:There's definitely a benefit to it because I'm just immersed in it all the time. Right? But and to a certain extent they do this and there's a benefit to it. But you know, like you said, when I was in France, that's when it really became alive. Right?
Speaker 1:It's like Mhmm. I've got to communicate to these people in a way that they can understand me. And then I'm like, Okay, well, how do I do this? How do And I think there always needs to be this interplay between if you are going to have theory, like you have to learn the grammar or whatever, you almost always immediately need a way to apply it in a real situation. Otherwise, at least for me, the motivation is gone.
Speaker 1:Because, you know, if I'm not, like, out ordering pizza and I I wouldn't order pizza in France. I you know, if I'm ordering, like, a a big wine in France or something like that
Speaker 2:Right. Right.
Speaker 1:I wanna be able to do it without embarrassing myself. That's the motivation. Mhmm. And that would make me motivated to get back into the classroom and go, Okay, well now I'm going to figure out, you know, grammar because I'm tired of misconjugating these things in real life. But outside of context, like outside of real application, Yeah.
Speaker 1:Why it just doesn't make sense, you know?
Speaker 2:Well, that's that's that's such a huge part of the the principles that that, you know, I kind of uncovered or or we were talking about in my book is that, you know, when people think tutoring, it's a lot more like, okay. So I'm dealing with this situation right now. How do I get around that? Right? Like, I used to have language tutoring sessions when I remember when I was doing projects to learn languages.
Speaker 2:And it would be like, okay. I go to the store and I'm trying to I'm trying to ask for this and like, how do I get them to like do do that? Like, how do what do I say? And then they're like, okay. You're you're gonna say this or like, well, I I don't understand how to say this or like, you know, someone said this to me.
Speaker 2:I don't understand it. And like, you're dealing with real problems and they're connected to a real situation. That I mean that's just one of the principles. So I I as I discussed in the book there's about like nine other ones that are or eight other ones that I go through. But directness is definitely a really big one because it's kind of the opposite of often how we think about learning.
Speaker 2:And it's often this real barrier because actually going up and speaking to people is kinda scary or actually writing like, you know, I wanna make a little computer game is like, oh my god, where do I start? Or like, oh my god, how do I deal with this? And so dealing with that kind of, you know, those little like initial hurdles can often be a big part of it. It's like how do you get in a situation where you can just naturally start through organic feedback improving? How do you bootstrap that?
Speaker 2:It's like starting a company. How do you bootstrap it when you don't have any customers and you don't have any money to pay for your costs and etcetera etcetera. Right?
Speaker 1:And actually, you'd bring we've got some great questions here in the chat that we'll get to in a sec. Sure. Yeah. You bring up a good point. I I I wish the the message from the beginning for everybody was
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Learning is all about figuring out. Like, in some ways just saying like you can do it. And that was because one of my things I said to James was like, okay, sure, atomic habits. I could start practicing basketball every day, but I'm never gonna be Michael Jordan. Right?
Speaker 1:The typical kind of, like, dick question.
Speaker 2:It's not a dick question, though. It's a very honest question, and I wish more people would ask it.
Speaker 1:But the answer is, sure, I might not get as good as Michael Jordan and genetically Mhmm. I'm never going to be Michael Jordan. I can get way better at playing basketball than I am now. Mhmm. And so, you know, with programming specifically, I don't think I'm ever going to be a, you know, a NASA level programmer or, you know, SpaceX level programmer or even the lead programmer on a simple web app, but I will get better than I was.
Speaker 1:I am already better than I was. And it's been so freeing to think if I had never started, like, if I hadn't done those 100 plus livestreams, I would still be back where I was when I was 12. Mhmm. And so at 38 or 39, I was able to start saying, you know, I'm going to get this. And related to that, I think is this question here by recon reconcile.
Speaker 1:Because I think one thing you're good at is taking big complex things and breaking them down and figuring out like, you've taught yourself a language. What else did you do? You did, like, something with MIT or what was it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. So I've done a couple projects. So, again, like, late in the podcast here. You're listening so far.
Speaker 2:This is who the hell I am. No. So my my blog I've been writing my blog for, like, thirteen years. And the big thing, I guess, I'm somewhat known for is doing these projects, and this was a big motivator for, you know, titling the book Ultra Learning is because that's sort of what I've been calling it. But the the projects that I'm known for so one of them was the MIT challenge where I wanted to learn MIT's computer science curriculum.
Speaker 2:So we can talk about the difference in computer science and just raw programming a little later. But this one, the idea was MIT posts a lot of their material online for free. So about eight years ago, I was like, why has no one tried to, like, get a degree from MIT without getting a degree from MIT? Like, why has no one tried to just, like, take advantage of this? And so that was a project where over twelve months, I wanted to get the things that they teach in the degree by passing the final exams and doing the programming projects for the 33 classes that would be part of an MIT degree.
Speaker 2:So I did that project, and then I did a different project with a friend two years after where which we called the year without English where we went and traveled to Spain, Brazil, China, and Korea to learn Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Korean. And the way we did it was once we landed, we didn't speak English. We only spoke the language we're trying to learn. And it worked pretty well. We were able to have, like, conversations and make friends and, you know, do all that kind of thing in each of those countries.
Speaker 1:By the way, how much do you think in terms of motivation because in those examples
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There's something I don't know if this is the right word, performative about that? Like you you you are you're performing to a certain extent for an audience Yeah. In that case. And I only mention that because that's very motivating to me and it's not describe it's not often talked about.
Speaker 1:Like Yeah. Part of the reason I think this works is be like, because I like to perform and so when I'm performing there's something already motivating about it. Mhmm. So like the idea of like just putting shutting myself in a closet and reading a programming book is super boring to me. But the idea of performing is really exciting.
Speaker 1:How much do you think that plays into your motivation to
Speaker 2:It definitely plays into the motivation. I think you do have to have that internal wellspring of motivation because if the only reason I was doing it is because people are giving me thumbs up and likes on my videos all the time. Like, when I was doing the MIT challenge, people got really excited about it when it was finished. In, like, the first two weeks when I announced I was gonna do it, it was, like, mostly negative feedback. It's mostly, like, you're not there's no effing way that you're gonna do this, like, kinda, like, screw you.
Speaker 2:Like, there's a lot of comments like that. So that can be a little motivating just because you're, like, well, I have to, like, show them wrong or something. But definitely, it's it's more like that. And then there's, like, you know, it's a year long thing. So, like, people just, like, alright.
Speaker 2:Whatever. And then there's, like, long periods of silence where you don't get any comments. So you get, like, one comment. Like, I wasn't livestreaming it. I was doing it just sort of on my own.
Speaker 2:So it was, like, once a week you get a comment. So you have to be internally motivated, but just the idea that you are doing this live, I think it makes you rise to a better version of yourself than if you were like, well, if I, you know, if I just like sit around and drink all and don't actually do anything, like no one's gonna care. Like if you take that attitude, it is harder. And so definitely the project that I did with the language learning, like, you know, I I remember meeting people. This was in Spain in particular when we were, like, the most strict about the rule.
Speaker 2:And I have this friend and he he speaks Spanish, but his wife didn't. And so I was speaking to her in Spanish and then he would translate in English.
Speaker 1:It was
Speaker 2:a little bit like, That's kind of a dick thing to do. But it was just like we were committed. We were committed to doing this right now, and that was how we would communicate. She was kinda joking about it laughing, like, how funny was that bit like, I've never actually heard you speak in English. You're only speaking in Spanish.
Speaker 2:And, I mean, if I weren't, like, making such a big deal about this being the guiding principle of the project, maybe I've been like, okay. Now it's alright to speak in English because this person doesn't actually speak Spanish. Or maybe you would've toned it down a little bit. But in the same end, I remember being in France when I was trying to learn French, I was just like, well, I'm just gonna learn as much French as I can. And I spoke French like 20% of the time because everyone it's always easier to speak in English.
Speaker 2:Right? And so sometimes doing the crazy things, sometimes doing the performative, you know, it's in public eye, you're going a little too extreme, that can almost be the the good thing to do because it keeps you accountable and it keeps you motivated.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Gotta figure that what what that is because Mhmm. We've even noticed that with podcasting, for example, I would do my podcast with my co founder whether anyone was watching or listening or not because just us talking every week but talking in in almost a way that we're also performing. Like the microphones add this weird I think it's what you said. It's you have to be a better version of yourself.
Speaker 1:And so when you're learning something, you really do have to kind of be a better version of yourself. Like you can't just be the guy that eats Doritos and plays PlayStation all day. Right? You have to be like, no. I'm the kind of guy that gets off the couch and goes to the cafe and tries to speak to someone in a different language.
Speaker 1:Right? Like, it's a better version of yourself. It's not the normal version. It's like you're operating at a higher level.
Speaker 2:Well, I think also one of the big things, and this is sort of part of the idea baked in ultralearning, is that a lot of learning kind of at its core involves a process of frustration and fear. So frustration, obviously, we were just talking about setting up a new programming language is like that is like that is like the that's the crack cocaine of frustration. Like, that is just like nonstop and and unending frustration and making you feel dumb. And but, like, speaking a new language to new people is like that, but in fear form, it's like, oh, I'm gonna go out there and talk to someone and embarrass myself, and I'm I'm, like, I'm gonna feel bad about it. And often so this is sort of a psychological principle of exposure therapy that, like, the way you overcome these things is to expose yourself to it so you reduce the emotional reactivity you have toward it.
Speaker 2:So for me, I find that doing these kind of intense projects, you kind of build this obsession and motivation to get started. And then once you get started, because all the frustrations are like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And at a certain point, you're just kinda like, oh, whatever. You know? Things not working out.
Speaker 2:This is just another day, another dollar. Like Or when you're speaking another language, you're like, oh, you think I'm an idiot? Yeah. This is just this is just par for the course. This is just everyday for me.
Speaker 2:And the thing is is that when you are comfortable being an idiot, when you're comfortable being frustrated nonstop and then that just becomes normal, you actually learn really quickly. So when you look back there for three months, you're like, oh, holy crap. How'd you learn this this fast? It's like, by being an idiot for three months. That's how I learned it this fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think that is so key is that the willingness to and this is something we're trying to talk to our kids about. Like, I'll say, to my son, Hey, I signed you up for a programming class. And he'll say, but I don't know any programming. I can't go to that.
Speaker 1:I said, but that's the point. You you don't know something before, but there's ego. Right? They or I signed my son up for a mount a downhill mountain biking camp. His number one worry is I'm not good at I'm not going to be as good as the other kids.
Speaker 1:Right? There's so much, like, ego, and I found you really almost have to kill the ego and say, I'm willing to look like a dummy. I'm not going to care and like not caring what people think. Because if you're going to, for example, try to speak French to someone in a French cafe, you will look like an awkward idiot. Like, you're gonna be trying to think of things and you won't be able to think of them.
Speaker 2:You know, it's funny you say this because we're talking about I think it require sort of ironically, it requires a certain amount of confidence to let go of your ego in this way because I've definitely been in situations language learning is the best example for me because everyone has their pet theory of how you have to learn the language. And I've had tutoring sessions where I'm like, my level of ability is like garbage. And I'm kinda like, no. I wanna like do this entire session in this language and you're just gonna sit there while I go in Google Translate and, like, translate every single one of my sentences into this thing, and you're just gonna listen to me. And then when you say it, you're gonna type it as well so that I can copy it into Google Translate.
Speaker 2:And they're like, no. No. No. That's not how you do things. And it takes a certain amount to be like, well, no.
Speaker 2:If you don't wanna do it this way, I'll find someone else because this is how I'm gonna do it. And I think a lot of people, they get bullied into doing something that doesn't feel right for them. They're kinda like, oh, no. No. No.
Speaker 2:This isn't the this isn't how I'm gonna do this. I'm not learning this. I'm not getting better at this. Or I need this and I'm not getting this because everyone's like, no. No.
Speaker 2:No. You need to do this. So the person who just hands you the programming book and like, no. No. No.
Speaker 2:Study this first before you come here. Like, don't waste my time if you're not gonna do this. And I think it takes a certain amount of, like, me, I've had enough positive experiences that I'm willing to be like a complete idiot and be like, you know what? No. No.
Speaker 2:No. But I'm actually like, I can do this some of the time. But I think about all those times when I didn't have those positive experiences where someone saying that would have totally shut me down. I would have been like, oh, I guess, you know, I guess I can't do it that way or I guess I'm not good at this. And so it's funny how much that kind of that confidence spiral is so important for being able to, you know, get past it and do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. Let's get to this question by Rexel. He says, I have a question that's a bit more specific than the overall concept of learning. How do you transition from creating simple console apps to creating full scale apps with GUIs, etcetera?
Speaker 1:That's where things start to get slightly overwhelming for me personally. Mhmm. And this seems this seems common. Right? Like it's like, okay.
Speaker 1:I could get started small, Scott Young, but at at some point, how do I transition into something harder?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I don't think so there's a couple ways you could do it. One would just be if you have some idea of the app you wanna create. So we're like, I'm gonna make a web app that, you know, is like Twitter but for dogs. Or I don't know what it's gonna be like before making fun of, like, start up ideas.
Speaker 2:But some some things like, you already have the idea. Then you can just get started with that. You know? Most most people who are doing programming, I would say that the standard way of approaching it these days is some kind of agile development as opposed to the waterfall design. So the idea is that even if you're starting with something full scale, it always starts with, like, some kind of toy version that just gets bigger.
Speaker 2:Like, that's usually the way people suggest it. So if you're afraid of doing GUIs, then, like, why don't you make, like, the simplest possible GUI app just so you can figure out how the heck the GUI works. Right? So if you're gonna try to be, like, okay. Well, I know it needs to have these three things.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, let's figure out how to do thing number one first in like the smallest possible way, then thing number two, and then thing number three. And then you combine those three things together. And so really, I think there is sometimes a barrier people have with, like, when do I do real programming? Like, I'm not doing real programming yet.
Speaker 2:But real programming is just an accumulation of all the non real programming things that you're learning. And so if there's some little piece that you don't understand, then you just break it apart and make a little toy of that. Break it apart and make a little toy of that. And then put your toys together and, like, make something a little bit more complicated. And that's how you build that confidence doing it that really, like, anything that you wanna be able to do, there's probably like, again, specific libraries and plug ins and, you know, it's good to use this approach and that approach.
Speaker 2:I think, again, the best way to start is just start with like, what is the dumbest simplest thing that I can do that is the thing that I'm scared of? And then once you've, like, okay, I kind of get kinda get how this works. And sometimes, like, GUIs are also a thing that, like, they involve a different kind of programming because often you're dealing with, like, essentially, it's essentially concurrent programming that you have, like, you have to have, like, little buttons and then you have to make a listener for the button so that when someone clicks on it, then that'll trigger something. And Mhmm. This is actually not trivial programming.
Speaker 2:Like, anyone who's done any, like, you know, built concurrent apps on their own know that it's like a minefield to debug and work on and stuff because
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:You know, there's all these race conditions and things like this. So if you're working on concurrent programming, if you're working on that, yeah, it is gonna be a little difficult. But if you just made a simple thing that, like, okay, every time I click the button, it puts a message to the console. Okay. That's the starting point.
Speaker 2:Right? And then, okay, now let's make a drop down menu or let's make a like, how do we make some radio buttons? And you you go through the, like, little documentation or let's try out each of these buttons and, like, okay, I'm gonna now make a game that, like, you know, plays Minesweeper or something, and that's gonna be my next little project. And it's gonna take me, like, a week or two, but I'll I'll get it done. And then you move on to doing it in the other way.
Speaker 2:So it's all about, like, how do you take something big like that and break it down into little tiny things that don't feel as scary and you're making progress in.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, one thing you've said that really is hitting me is is how these mental models we have of what something we the way we think something should look, how that restricts us. So people have this idea in their head of what a programmer looks like or what programming looks like. And so they they're already setting themselves up for, well, it's going to be, like, super, you know, technical and and hard to understand, and you have to be really smart and it's gonna be complex. Like, everything's gonna be complex.
Speaker 1:And or, like, this is the way it should be. Like, I should here's an example. Again, my 13 year old son, he's trying to learn game maker, which is a way of programming video games, and he's doing it on his own. And he's doing everything by hand. He's, like, you know, he's doing a tutorial.
Speaker 1:And the tutorials, of course, are showing you, like, well, here's how you figure out gravity, and here's how you do it. Eventually he just gets bogged down in the details and stops. Then I enrolled him in a course, a little three day course. And the first day, the teacher said, well, there are libraries that you can get that do all that stuff for you, that abstract all that stuff for you. And I think at first, Marty was like, well, isn't that cheating?
Speaker 1:And the teacher goes, well, for a lot of projects, that's all you need. And if your goal is to make a game, why not just start with that? And then if you need to and so he figured out he could download these libraries. And then he found out, oh, I don't like the way the gravity works in the library, but that's what I can modify. Instead of trying to tackle this whole thing and try instead of trying to, you know, make this thing a a big thing where you gotta figure out every single thing that's ever been figured out in computer science and programming, just download the library.
Speaker 2:Learning to cheat, I think, is I love that thing because I think that that's, like, the heart of learning a lot of skills is that, you cheat, and you don't realize until you get further that most people are cheaters. If we're, like, using this definition of cheaters that, like, we were just talking before this went on that, like, I, you know, I I do do programming and I've learned it, but I'm mostly a writer. And so for me, it makes sense to, like and I hire people to do things. So one of the things I hire people to do is programming for my website, especially a lot of, like, you know, I'm not a beautiful website designer, so I was a guy who does that really well. And the thing I know from working with him is that he very rarely does any programming.
Speaker 2:Like, he almost always is like, is there a plug in that does this already? So he's cheating every day, and he he's a full time paid programmer. So, I mean, you're gonna be in the same situation. And it's not even just about programming. Like, we're talking about language learning as well.
Speaker 2:And language learning is a perfect example that, like, I had situations where, you know, someone wants to know if, like, the right way to say something. And you're like, I don't know. You could just, like, just point at the thing that you want and be like, like this, like and and that is gonna accomplish your communication goal in that situation. Maybe it's not the most elegant way to do it. Maybe there's like a better, more fancy phrase you can say to do that, but that's the way you could start right now.
Speaker 2:And from that little communication kernel, you could like, okay. Maybe instead of just going, maybe I can say like that or like, you know, want or like this kind of thing and build it out of that. And so I think very often, we think of learning as like well, learning is about putting stuff in your head. And I think learning is about bridging the gap between the things you wanna do and the things and, like, what you have to do to do it. Right?
Speaker 2:So it's kind of a bridge between where you are right now and this thing that you wanna be able to do. And so if you think of it as a bridge, there's lots of different bridges you could build. Like, sometimes it's a short bridge that involves some shortcut or sometimes it's a, you know, very sophisticated, sturdy bridge that will handle a lot of traffic. And and so very often when you're starting, you want that short little bridge so you can get in that environment where you're actually doing things and making things and making the game, and then you're making your own gravity and whatnot.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I just typed down the the, time code for that because when you said, learning is a bridge between can you say that again? Learning is a bridge?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure I even said it the first time. Learning is a bridge between, like, where you are right now and what you wanna do. So sometimes that's gonna be, again, like, a kind of a rickety sort of shortcut bridge where you, like, use something someone else made and it's like you're kind of piecing some things together and you can get the job done. And sometimes it's gonna be really sophisticated. You've built it from scratch.
Speaker 2:It's exactly what you want, exactly what you need. But if you view it in this bridge metaphor, there's not like, well, one of them was cheating and one of them was the real bridge or the real thing you wanted to make. It just depends on what you wanna be able to accomplish.
Speaker 1:That's right. And I think this is something Adam Patterson said in the chat is that, you know, people start using something like Squarespace or Wix or Shopify, and those are good to a point. Right? The my the and I've for example, I've been using WordPress forever, and I almost always just use an existing theme that I at first, I didn't customize it all. Then I start customizing it more.
Speaker 1:And finally, this past year, after many false starts Mhmm. I finally built a website, mostly from scratch, although still using a framework called Tailwind. But mostly from scratch, I finally was able to get there. But we're talking about years and years and years of using built in solutions and really almost feeling my dissatisfaction with them. Like, oh, I don't like the way this looks or, oh, I I I could if I could make this load faster, it would be better.
Speaker 1:And just building up my motivation until finally I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna figure this out. Right? And, the but if I'd gone right to that, I think it would have been too big of a jump. Because at at first, I just wanted a website. Right?
Speaker 1:And then I just want you know, like, you you kinda climb the ladder a little bit.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, again, I don't wanna discourage anyone. Like, if if your passion is to do this, like, you know, I wanna build this from scratch and that's what I really wanna do, then, like, do that. Right? Mhmm. I think the point here is just that a lot of people have all these rules and conventions in their head that, like, well, you gotta do it you gotta do it the legit way.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, you know, people aren't gonna respect you or you're not gonna get an a plus on your exam or, you know, everyone's gonna, like, look down on you because you're not a real programmer. You're not really doing this. You're just faking it. And I think if you kind of open yourself up to, like, okay, what are some other ways you could do it? You can get around some of these frustrations.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. This is a good question because this is something I've wrestled with for a long time. How can online instructors create courses that encourage active learning and directness? I think he was saying, you know, like a direct application.
Speaker 2:Directness. Because
Speaker 1:most online courses are just instructors, you know, showing us things. Here's here's the video. Here's the textbook or whatever.
Speaker 2:So again, I'm gonna go back to this conversation I had with this woman, this instructor at at a business school and she was like, well, I'm trying to get the kids to do these things and they don't wanna do it. And so for me, I didn't write my book to change the education system. I didn't write it so that teachers could be like, well, now I know how to teach kids. It's a good thing that Scott told me how to teach I didn't know anything from all those years I spent studying it. That's not what I'm What I'm saying is that this is a book for students because it's a book for learners.
Speaker 2:It's a book for people who want to teach themselves things. Because I think the best way that you can take advantage of online courses is to be a good student. So the truth is is that online courses are really useful tools. So if you're trying to learn something well, they're often built with a lot of ideas in mind. The problem is often how you approach it.
Speaker 2:So I'll give a good example. So I I talked a little bit about my MIT challenge project and and trying to do MIT's computer science curriculum. Now I'm not saying you have to do that. Obviously, if wanna learn programming, you don't have to do that. That's a particular goal if you're interested.
Speaker 2:But one of the comments I get from people who sometimes say, you know what? I'd like to do something similar. Is they're like, well, this class doesn't have any lecture videos. So what do I do? And the problem is not that lecture videos are bad.
Speaker 2:I like lecture videos. I like having someone tell me what to do. The problem is thinking that the lecture video is how you learn the material. It's not. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:The most important thing so I'm not saying you you this isn't also an insurmountable obstacle, but if you're learning, let's say if you're listening learning a course where you actually have to do some math, like, let's say you're learning differential equations, the most important resource you can have is practice questions with solutions Because you learn it by doing it, not by having someone explain it. The explaining it helps. So you often need an explanation to start doing the practice questions, but don't think of the learning as primarily being the watching. The learning is primarily the doing, and the watching helps the doing. And so that is the right way to think about these online courses is that they can show you things.
Speaker 2:They can even give you homework assignments. They can, you know, give you suggestions for projects and and get you started. So I definitely encourage people to check out online courses if they like them. But the right way to think of it is that thing you should be thinking is, okay, I'm taking this online course so that I can do x or so that I can start practicing y. And if you just do it completely divorced from any kind of application, you're often gonna have these issues of transfer and they're gonna come up.
Speaker 2:And you know what? The funny thing is this isn't just for learning practical skills. So I I was working with a guy who wanted to learn military history. So talk about something that's never gonna be like, I'm gonna apply my military history today, build this trebuchet. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and the thing was is we were talking about this, and you read history books and you're gonna forget most of that. Or you read a book and you're not gonna really understand the deep picture just by reading this book. So what he decided he was gonna do for his project was he was going to write these little book reviews and essays where he was gonna synthesize, you know, this is what the book cover, these were the main ideas, this is the stuff I wanna remember. And so the product of him making these little essays or even thinking about making the essays as he's reading the book changes how he uses his attention, changes what he recalls, changes what he remembers so that he learns it more effectively.
Speaker 2:So for me, I've really learned cognitive science while researching researching for this book because I had to read all these papers to like, okay. Well, what's going on here? And I don't understand this effect, and let me call this researcher up and stuff. And so if you think about learning as doing primarily and only watching and reading as support activities, I think you're gonna have the right ratio and the right approach to things.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And you brought up something that an effective technique, I think, when you're learning something is around the dinner table or when you're hanging out with friends to reiterate what you're learning.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Like, that's one of the best gifts you can give your kids or your friends that are learning something. Hey, what are you learning in that course? Tell me. Hey, what's what's that book about? And when that, like that's when people have to, they have to go, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like they have to reiterate it in their own words. And it's also exciting to share what you're learning. Right. And I think that's, that's something that, for me anyway, has been helpful is to just have even people in my life that are willing to go, okay, I'll listen to hear what you're learning.
Speaker 1:Right. And to be open to that, to other people like, okay, so, you know, you're taking that course. Tell me like what you're learning. And even if I don't completely understand it, I know that it's valuable for them to reiterate what, you know, what they've processed that day.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. So I'll you something that I just this is a, like, a a study that I really love that's kind of related to this, and it's, related to what the author calls the problem of explanatory depth. It's a super technical name. But, basically, what it means is that if I ask you what's the capital of France Yeah. You either know it or you don't, but interestingly enough, you know that you know it or that you don't know it.
Speaker 2:So either Paris comes up in your head or, like, you know, it doesn't and you you're like, I I guess I don't know. So if I ask you, like, what's the capital of Mongolia? Like, either Ulaanbaatar is gonna come up or it's not. Right? So if it doesn't, you didn't hear Ulaanbaatar, you're like, no.
Speaker 2:I actually don't know what the capital Mongolia is. Okay. So for subjects, we have really good sort of what you could call, like, metacognition. We have a really good, like, self understanding of what we know. Explanations, however, are different, and that's because explanations can happen at varying depths or for varying purposes.
Speaker 2:So I'll give you another one. Do you know how a bicycle works? So again, you're gonna feel a little bit bad because I'm putting you on the spot here. Mhmm. But one of the things they asked in the study is get people to draw a bicycle.
Speaker 2:Now I'm not saying like an artistic, you know, photorealistic rendering. I'm just saying, could you could you say where the chains are attached and where the wheels and handlebars and stuff go? This seems pretty easy. I mean, we've all ridden on bicycles. And I mean, like, I I don't the pictures, if you look at this so if you look at it, it's called psychology, like, with, like, cycle, like
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Illusion of explanatory depth. You can find the paper, and you can look at these pictures, and it is hilarious. They had people who are, like, avid cyclists, and they're drawing the chain connecting to both the wheels, which if you think about it for a little bit, that bicycle can't work. Like, it it won't work if the gears are, like, riding both of the bicycle at the same time. They don't realize, no.
Speaker 2:No. No. The gears are only attached to the lat the the back bicycle wheel. They're not attached to the front one or or, like, the handlebars are not this is like a rigid bicycle. You can't turn the handles and various things like this.
Speaker 2:And so the reason that the author kind of explored this and found this out is that when you ask someone how well do you understand x, that's actually really difficult to self assess. So when we were talking about like, do you know what a function is? You were kinda like, oh, I'm not actually sure what a function is. But it's also not like the the what's the capital of Mongolia question that it's kind of like, I actually don't know how much I know about functions or exactly what they mean or what they It kinda depends on what question you're asking about them. And so the reason that what you're talking about this kind of like teaching it to someone else is that you reveal these weaknesses in your own understanding.
Speaker 2:So one of the things this is a school problem, but it applies to learning all sorts of things, is that I remember being in school and kids would say things like, well, you know what? I knew all the the I knew I studied so hard. I know all this stuff. But then they were asking all these weird questions and I couldn't answer it. And the problem is that when they were studying, they they didn't have any of this feedback on, like, how well do you actually understand the material?
Speaker 2:So they think, I've been studying for hours. I know all of it. And then they take the test, they're like, oh, actually, I don't know anything. Mhmm. And so if you go and you try to say, okay.
Speaker 2:You're gonna to your kids and you're gonna say, I'm gonna tell you what a function is. Yeah. Right? And, like, you know, maybe you're saying, okay, it's a little bit like a pencil sharpener. Put raw pencils in and you get sharpened pencils out and it's got some gears on the inside.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, like, you you do this and you realize quickly how much you understand about functions and you and you don't. Mhmm. So like, when you when it says, okay. Well, what is, you know, what does it mean to pass a variable by reference? Well, what does that mean?
Speaker 2:Right? Like, actually, I don't know what that means. And then you can now you don't know what you mean by that. You can go ask someone, well, what does it mean when you put this little asterisk next to the variable name? What what is that doing right there?
Speaker 2:Right? What is that different from the other way of doing it? Or what does it mean when, know, like, why why isn't this function? Why is self the first parameter of this one? Like, what what does that mean?
Speaker 2:What is that doing? And so this is a really important learning technique of of explaining to other people or to yourself even just to reveal these gaps in your understanding.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I've like I said, it's been really helpful to me. I think I wonder if the the another I I just wanna go back to this teaching thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because you you said a lot of it has to depend on the learner. Mhmm. But that really sucks if you've got a bunch of students. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So is there anything we can do? And maybe it is using that, like Yeah. Having people explain it in their own words is is one technique. Are there other techniques teachers can Well, step one is to buy
Speaker 2:all your students my book. No. I'm just joking. No. But I would say for like, because I've taught courses and I teach things as well.
Speaker 2:And the first thing you have to realize is that, like, again, like, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make a drink. So you you have to do what you can to prepare the students. But at the end of the day, if a student is only there to get the grade and they don't care about really learning it, you can't make them care. You can make it more interesting. You can make it more fun.
Speaker 2:But if it's like, nah, I I I just wanna get a c plus and get on with my life, you know, maybe that student's just gonna get a plus and get on with their life. So what I would say is often, I think, when you talk to students is explain to them how they're actually gonna learn it. Explain to them what they can get from what you're gonna give them and what they need to get to where they actually need to go. And so I think, for instance, in a language learning class, I if I were teaching a language learning class, the thing I would open up with is, like, okay, you know, half of you are not really that serious about learning this language. That's cool.
Speaker 2:If you just wanna hear, you're just here to, like, you know, get a feel for it. You you and you decide if you wanna commit later, that's fine. But for those of you who are really committed, get a partner right now, and you two are gonna be language partners. And after the class is done, you're gonna spend half an hour every after every class trying to chat each other in the language. And you're gonna write down words that you don't know how to say, and you're gonna write down things.
Speaker 2:And I'm even gonna be around in the class, and I can help you, but we'll work on that. Right? Mhmm. And I think that's the kind of thing that, like, that's actually gonna be what the student's gonna need to do to have those conversations. But if I just say, oh, and remember kids, you gotta remember to practice all the time.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, they're not gonna do that. Right? And so I think you can also change how you structure your class so that it has fewer of these problems. So we're talking about directness.
Speaker 2:And directness, I'm I'm talking about in a fairly simplified way, but it's actually kind of complicated. So I've been learning salsa dancing with my wife, so I'll use salsa dancing as an example right
Speaker 1:now.
Speaker 2:I'm not a great dancer, so I'm not gonna give you any wonderful dancing tips. I'm only learning for a few months. Yeah. But one of the things I noticed from the class is the way that the teacher likes to teach is they like to use established choreography. So it'll be like, okay.
Speaker 2:Today, we're gonna learn this. You're gonna spin them here, and then you're gonna step under, and then you're gonna spin. And it's kinda complicated because you gotta do it all, you gotta do it in the rhythm and this kind of thing. Mhmm. But one of the things is that you go to social dancing, which is like just a like just a party after where people are dancing and no one's telling you the choreography.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And you suck, and you're terrible. You're like, why? I I wasn't learning it very well. And the reason why is because you were learning some things.
Speaker 2:So there were some parts of the skill that you were mastering in the choreography. One of the important things you weren't mastering is how do you communicate to your partner that I want you to do this. Because they already know that you want them to do this, so I don't really, as a lead, have to, like, move my hand at exactly the right moment or exactly the right way to tell you, okay. No. I want you to turn this way or I want you to do this because you already knew you were gonna do that.
Speaker 2:I could just put my hand down, you're gonna do the same thing because you know what's coming. Yeah. And so for for this situation, it's also something that, like, if I were, again, teaching this salsa class and my goal was to, you know, help people do social dancing, I would be like, okay. Now we're gonna have one where, you know, maybe I'm not gonna tell you what you're gonna do or the leads are gonna know something, but the the followers are not gonna know what they're doing. And so you have to actually practice that.
Speaker 2:So for a lot of teachers, often what I look at is if you're teaching a skill, try to figure out not just what are the kind of big big components of the skill that you're teaching in the class, but what are all the little sort of connective tissue that this person would need to do it in real life, and give them the resources to do that. So if you're teaching programming, show them how to install the freaking developer environment. Right? Because otherwise, they're gonna be frustrated and be like, oh, screw this when they get home.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And, you know, one thing that you said there that I think is so important is figure out where they want to go. Like, why are they doing this? So if, you know, for example, I bought a course on how to use my camera, but all I really wanted to know was like just a few settings for video so that I could like set it up and do some talking head video. And so I've used maybe 5% of the course and seriously, I've spent maybe five, ten minutes in the course.
Speaker 1:Perfect. I got what I wanted. Right. And I think as a teacher, he could be disappointed. He could be like, well, this guy only finished like 1% of my course.
Speaker 1:Brutal. But for me, I got exactly where I wanted to go. And so, you know, if you sign up for salsa lessons, well, what do you want to accomplish? Well, we just want to look semi good at the wedding that's coming up in three months. Knowing why they're there.
Speaker 1:What's the job to be done here. I think if, if what you're trying to do, if, if learning is the bridge between where you are and where people want to go as teachers, we can say, okay, well, if that's where you want to go, well, I can just teach you, you know, enough for you to look good. Right? And if that's where you want to stop, perfect. But if you set up all the scaffolding for painting an entire building when all they want you to do is paint the fence, You're you're you're you're setting like, why would you do that?
Speaker 2:Oh, you know what? I'll tell you a good example because this is something that, like, is really common if you're learning Chinese. So if you're learning Mandarin Chinese, don't know why they do this because it just drives me crazy. But a lot of classes, not all of them, so I'm not criticizing every class, but there's a lot of classes that they will let you, like they'll make you do, like, two years worth of, like, intense handwriting drills, like, to do the calligraphy to draw all the characters. This is super dumb.
Speaker 2:This is super dumb for a couple reasons. One, learning to recognize the characters is a much much easier task than learning to write all of them. Mhmm. Like, I would say that my like, I can read Chinese fairly fluently now. If you ask me to, like, write down simple sentences with a pencil and paper, it would be garbage.
Speaker 2:So it's actually a lot easier to learn to recognize. So it's it's absolutely not necessary to learn to handwrite if you just wanna read things. Because you can also just enter it with letters in your keyboard. And second, a lot of people don't even care about reading and writing at all. They only care about having conversations with people.
Speaker 2:So learning the characters, again, beyond just a little bit like, okay, this is the character they're using when they're saying this. Maybe, you know, maybe that'll help you remember it. If you're going beyond that, if you're going into just like, okay, we're gonna memorize how to, like, perfectly do your handwriting strokes, you're not doing what the student actually wants. And so I think this is one of the problems of the one size fits all big classroom environment is that the teacher decides what they think is important from their perspective and not from the student's perspective. And so computer science faculty, I often find get in this trap is that a lot of computer science programs teach computer science from the perspective of, well, we're computer science professors.
Speaker 2:So we don't do actually that much programming. We're mostly proving theorems in math of, like, you know, let's prove, like, that this problem belongs to this arbitrary complexity class or that this program will perfectly solve all situations in all times. Yeah. And this is not actually what you're actually doing when you're when you're programming most of the time. And so I've I've definitely encountered the attitude that a lot of computer science professors think, oh, well, programming is something that you'll yeah.
Speaker 2:You'll just pick that up. But I'm gonna teach you what really matters, which is computational theory or what or, you know, advanced algorithms. And, I mean, that's great if you wanna learn computational theory and advanced algorithms. But if you just really wanted to build a website, you're kinda like, oh my god. I have to know all this to build the website?
Speaker 2:You don't realize, no. You don't even know any of that to build the website.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. I think it, like, this is Mhmm. I this is really kinda pumping me up because I think first of all, I think on one hand my preconceived notion of like you and people like you is just this like I always felt like well that's not for me Mhmm. Because I'm not like trying to, like I don't know.
Speaker 1:I I wouldn't even, like like, what you've what you've done in this conversation is you've made it practical for me. Like, it feels grounded that this isn't about, like, you know, trying to, I don't know, learn a whole MIT program in two weeks. This is like, there's some practical application to this. Like, if you just understand some of the pillars that you've identified And they're very simple. Like, it's like learning is a bridge between where you are and where you want to go.
Speaker 1:So if that's true, why are you doing all that other stuff that's not effective? And then it opens up the door. You're you're almost giving people permission to say, okay. Well, if you wanna build a website, maybe the best way to learn is to start building the website. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Real real wild stuff.
Speaker 1:Real wild stuff. Mel, maybe just to close, I think some folks, part of the struggle with this is that it really does put the onus on the learner. Mhmm. And, you know, it took me thirty eight years to figure out, oh wait, like for me I can pull in these kind of resources, how how do people figure out what is right for them? How do they figure out what resources to pull in?
Speaker 1:How do they figure out where to go? Is there any sort of framework for figuring that out?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we were talking about the principles of Ultralein. The first one that I start with is what I call meta learning. So meta is usually when something is about itself. So meta learning is like a fancy way of saying learning about learning.
Speaker 2:And this is really important because if you are going to be the driver in your own kind of self education vehicle and you're the one taking yourself to the destination, you have to kind of get a sense of the map. So I I sort of view this as like, if you're gonna go on a trip, you need to get the map. You need to pack your suitcase. And so one of the things you can do is so if we're talking about programming, I mean, how do you learn programming? You type that into Google, you'll get a million answers.
Speaker 2:And often what you do is you just, you know, open a Word document and just, okay, this person's suggesting this book or this person's suggesting this tool. You put a put on it and you're like, alright, maybe I'll try this one or try that one. It's a little bit like planning a trip. If like I were to say you, okay, you know, you wanna go to Italy on trip, where should you go? Well, you just type in a Google, where should I go in Italy?
Speaker 2:And then you're gonna just start reading stuff and reading more things and reading more things. And you're gonna be kinda like, well, this guy was saying Milan, but actually, I don't think I wanna go to Milan. I wanna go to here. Because you've learned about enough of the places you're kinda like, this is probably a good starting point. The second thing I would say is that you have a lot of backups.
Speaker 2:So when you start learning and you're like, oh, wait. I got this book, but this is like really not what I wanted to do and I'm finding it like not helpful for me or frustrating. Okay. You get a different book or you get a different process or different tutorial. And so really what I hope to do with this book was to just expand people's minds to like, oh, there's actually tons and tons and tons and tons of ways to approach things.
Speaker 2:And that's not gonna tell you what the right way is for you, but it's gonna help you get unstuck if you feel like the only ways you've encountered how to do something aren't working for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, you know, it's it's funny we were you you made a comment comment about learning and and about how, you know, that is one of the things. I do try to share stories that I think people will find exciting and interesting, and sometimes those are big dramatic stories, but then that feels completely unrelatable. Like, okay, that's other people do that. I'm not interested in doing that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But the truth is learning is like a fundamental process of life. Every single moment you're learning how to do new things, you just don't think about it as learning. You think about it as well. I have to figure out how to do my taxes or I have to figure out, you know, how to get in contact with this person who's gonna help me figure out my taxes. They're like, how am I gonna figure out this and that?
Speaker 2:And so if you start to take that learning lens to these problems, you realize that you're learning constantly, and you actually know a lot about learning, and that this book that I've been trying to write has just been sort of how do you apply the things that you already know how to learn well and and that you've done successfully in the past. How do you apply those principles to the things that you've struggled with? So
Speaker 1:Yes. Yeah. Sweet, man. Well, I I'm excited to dig into it. So people can get it on August 6?
Speaker 2:Yes. August 6, the book is gonna be out. I know there's a few people that are listening a bit early. So if you, do decide to purchase, just, go to my website. I have some things that I'm giving away for the preorder.
Speaker 2:And definitely, yeah, if you check out the book, it's gonna be available Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all the major ones. Audible, if you prefer listening to a book as I often do, you can listen to me to recite the book to you.
Speaker 1:Oh, nice. You've done you've done the the the narration too. Yeah. Yeah. Scott h Young is your website.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Right now you can yeah. You can preorder the book right now. Mhmm. What happens when I click on this?
Speaker 1:I go to oh, I go to like Amazon and everything else. Okay. Great. Yeah. So scotthyoung.com.
Speaker 1:Scott, thanks so much for sharing this past Yeah.
Speaker 2:How are you conversation. Yeah. And I'm really looking forward to seeing where you get with programming because I think it's always really inspiring to see someone take tackle something that they've always wanted to learn and struggled with in the past and really go after it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, the the headline you have here is being able to master hard skills quickly is essential to your work and life. This book will show you how. And I think so much of my frustration, like I opened with, has just been, I have anxiety about whether I am learning the right way. And so if this is kind of book, if this is designed to give clarity around that, then, yeah, that that sounds right up my alley.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I'm looking forward to digging into this. So, Scott, thanks so much for talking about all this today. Where can people find out more about the book, Ultralearning?
Speaker 2:So definitely come to my website, scotthyoung.com. There's links to the book and also all the articles I've written as well. So you can definitely check that out. We've got links to all the retails that you might wanna get. And if you just Google ultra learning, it should be probably up there.
Speaker 2:Definitely the top three. It should be my book.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's kind of what is it a green? It's an aqua? It's a
Speaker 2:So it's interesting enough. This this is the book. This is what it looks like. This is the American cover. So if you get it in North America, it will look like this.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:For some reason, The UK version is like a yellow cover. So if you see the yellow cover and you're like, what's this? Is this a fake version of the book? No. No.
Speaker 2:No. It's actually the book. It's just I don't know. I don't know. They like to do different covers there.
Speaker 2:So it's it's a different cover book. So if you're in The UK or you're in Europe, that would probably be the one that you would be ordering.
Speaker 1:Cool. Thanks again, man. Alright. Thanks. This podcast is brought to you by transistor.fm.
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