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Welcome to my third article in this series!
As a Psychologist, I've been always interested in how people study, and how they can learn faster and better.
So in this series, I aim to explain in detail all the principles of ultralearning proposed by Scott Young in his book "Ultralearning"!
I shared with you how anyone can learn any topic with the power of ultralearning (learn intensively about any topic).
So far, our list of principles is as follows:
Today we will learn about N3: Directness and the power of learning in context.
The Problem of Transfer and Why You Feel You Know Nothing
Transfer means learning something in one context, such as in the classroom, and applying it in another one, like life.
But let me ask you:
How many times have you felt like you can't apply what you learned in school or college in real-life scenarios?
Everyone was there.
It almost feels like you waste your time going to college, right?
But why this happens?
There are several possibilities, but one is that our learning is limited, making it harder to apply knowledge in real life.
But when we learn more skills in an area, we become more flexible, making it easier to find solutions in the narrow contexts in which we learned.
In other words, by being direct and learning in context we can avoid the transfer problem.
2 Ways Directness Solves the Transfer Problem
For Scott, directness is:
"… the idea of learning being tied closely to the situation or context you want to use it in" — Scott Young in Ultralearning
And directness solves the problem of transfer in 2 ways:
- You can learn with a direct connection to the area you want to apply your knowledge.
- You can learn in a new context, making it easy to apply skills in new situations.
So we can summarize these points and the importance of directness in one sentence:
Always learn in a real context scenario.
2 Tactics to Learn Directly
Now that we know how to solve the transfer problem, we need to implement some strategies to start learning better.
So to start learning directly (in a context) you can apply 3 tactics:
Tactic 1: Project-Based Learning
Projects are one of the best ways to learn about anything.
The idea is simple:
Organize your learning about PRODUCING something.
Here are some examples:
- If you want to learn about history (or anything), try to write a bachelor's thesis or a document or presentation.
- If you want to learn programming, code small projects like a game, a simple website, etc.
Always try to PRODUCE something.
Tactic 2: Immersive Learning
With immersion, I mean to surround yourself with the target environment where you want to apply the skill you are learning.
One clear example is learning a new language.
The best way to learn faster and better is to get surrounded by native or fluent people in the language you're interested in.
For example, when I was learning German, I downloaded an App to chat with native people.
This improved my German a lot, and I went from 0 to B1 level in just 2 months.
These 2 tactics will help you to be direct and learn in context the skill you want to master by avoiding the transfer problem.
Conclusion
To summarize, we learned that:
- Transfer means to apply what you learn in a context (like in a classroom) in another one (real life).
- Directness solves this by learning in context and applying your skills in real-life scenarios.
- 2 tactics to learn directly are projects and immersive learning.
That's it!
Now you know how to get rid of the transfer problem.
🤓R I#39m writing an article summarizing each of the 9 principles, so follow me, subscribe, and stay tuned.
- Principle N1: Meta-Learning
- Principle N2: Focus
- Principle N3: Directness
See you in the next article!
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Thanks for reading!