Greetings, SuperFriends!

Today we are joined by Scott H. Young. Scott is a writer who undertakes interesting self-education projects, such as attempting to learn MIT’s four-year computer science curriculum in twelve months and learning four languages in one year. His recent book, Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition and Accelerate Your Career is published by Harper Business August 6th, 2019, the exact same date that this episode came out.

I wanted to have Scott on the show because for many years I've been following his work – I think that the way he approaches learning challenges is super interesting. We obviously share the same interests and passions – in fact, we are both publishing a book around the same time.

I actually pushed my book's launch back for a month because Scott told me that he is publishing now, and we thought it's a better idea for both of us to have a fair margin of time between the two launches. Scott is one of the few people I respect so much that I'm willing to delay my book's launch for.

I wanted to bring Scott on the show to learn how we are similar in our beliefs, how we are different, and find out what we can learn from each other when it comes to – well, you guessed it – learning.

This is a super fascinating episode, which I'm sure you will thoroughly enjoy!

– Jonathan Levi

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In this episode, we discuss:

• Who is Scott Young, and what does he do? [5:00]
• How did learning become so important to Scott? [6:35]
• What were Scott's first steps in learning how to learn? [9:10]
• How does Scott go about tackling a learning challenge? [11:20]
• The principles and ideas behind learning how to learn [14:20]
• How much of our learning capabilities come from birth? [17:45]
• The power self-expectations and emotions have in learning [20:30]
• Two mindset shifts Scott suggests for anyone trying to change their relationship with learning [25:30]
• Signaling who you want to become through your actions [29:30]
• What are the languages that Scott is currently maintaining? [34:30]
• Scott's Mandarin maintenance routine [35:00]
• What are the learning challenges Scott is going to tackle now that the book is finished? [39:40]
• Is there really a limit on how good a learner you can become? [45:00]
• Some homework for you by Scott Young [49:45]
• What is the number one thing Scott did to feel SuperHuman today? [51:00]
• Where can you find more about Scott Young? [51:20]
• Scott Young's final takeaway message [52:10]

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Scott's MIT Challenge
• The Year Without English
• Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition and Accelerate Your Career by Scott Young
• Fluent in 3 Months by Benny Lewis
• MIT Open CourseWare
• The memory pygmalion effect
• Our spotlight on Richard Feynman
• Our previous episode with Benjamin Hardy
• Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear
• italki
• “Monolingual Fieldwork” Demonstration – Daniel Everett
• Scott's website

Favorite Quotes from Scott Young: