Ultralearning Principle N6: Feedback

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Welcome to my sixth article in this series!

As a Psychologist, I've been always interested in how people study and learn.

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:

• Principle N1: Meta-Learning
• Principle N2: Focus
• Principle N3: Directness
• Principle N4: Drill
• Principle N5: Retrieval

Today we will learn about N6: Feedback and how to know what you're doing better and worse.

Feedback is Crucial When Learning

Feedback can be either good or bad.

Take a YouTube Channel as an example.

Imagine you just started making videos and received several comments on your last video.

Some of them may be destructive like "Stop making videos. Your audio sucks".

Others may be good: "Love your content! If possible, you can improve your audio :)"

This shows that feedback can work well if it provides useful information that can help you in improving yourself and future learning.

Now imagine if you don't receive any feedback.

You will be blind to what is working or not.

That's why it is crucial for your learning!

Types of Feedback and Which One to Choose

In his book, Scott argues that there are 3 main types of feedback:

1. Outcome feedback: someone tells you something about how well you're doing but offers no ideas into what you're doing better or worse.
2. Informational feedback: tells you what you're doing wrong, but doesn't tell you how to fix it.
3. Corrective feedback: tells you what you're doing wrong and how to fix it.

The type of feedback you will choose depends on your needs/objectives and the resources available.

For example, corrective feedback requires an expert like a teacher or mentor, as you need a "correct" answer.

If you don't have an expert with you, you should go for informational feedback.

But perhaps you just want quick feedback about how you're doing.

In those cases, outcome feedback will be useful.

However, if possible, it will be always better to receive corrective feedback to understand what you're doing wrong and how to fix it.

Case Study: Feedback from Native German People

During the pandemic, I took the objective to learn German from 0 to B1 in 3 months.

I already wrote an article about it if interested:

To master this language, I used an application called HelloTalk to talk to native German people.

Their feedback improved my German a lot.

They corrected me when I wrote something wrong or told me how to say something more naturally.

For this, I received both corrective and intentional feedback, depending on the person to whom I was talking.

Some people (now friends) did their best to correct my mistakes and told me how to improve my German.

Thanks to them, I improved my speaking and writing skills fast.

Conclusion

That's it for the principle N6.

Feedback is uncomfortable.

However, it represents a crucial step in mastering a topic.

But although the principles we already discussed are great, retaining what you're learning is a problem.

So in the next principle, we will learn how you can retain your learning with the retention principle.

🤓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
• Principle N4: Drill
• Principle N5: Retrieval

See you in the next article!

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Thanks for reading!