70. Learning how to learn with Scott Young

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Transcript

Eric Morse  
Eric, you're listening to The Entrepreneur Podcast from the Western Morrison Institute for Entrepreneurship powered by Ivey. In this series, Ivey entrepreneur and Ivey faculty member Eric Janssen will anchor the session.

Melissa Firth  
In a world filled with information, there's always something to learn, but how do we learn to learn? That is a topic right in Scott Young's wheelhouse. A blogger, entrepreneur and author of The Wall Street Journal best-seller Ultralearning, Young joined Ivey Professor Eric Janssen to talk about the process of learning new things. Young also addresses his unique career path that he often describes as a "controlled accident." To catch more insights from Young's work, check out his recent book, Get Better At Anything: 12 Maxims For Mastery. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Eric Janssen  
Most of these students, it's our fourth year university students, and they're, you know, they've been in school the last 18 years, and we're waiting till the last second here to teach them how to learn. Why don't why the hell don't we teach this earlier on? Why isn't this something like, why isn't it a core principles thing that they teach in elementary schools? I don't get it.

Scott Young  
I don't know. I don't know. I think, like, the subjects that we actually teach in school are kind of really ad hoc and arbitrary and stuff. I think, you know, I was talking to a researcher out of the Netherlands. We were talking about curricular matters and it, you know, deciding the curriculum, like the public education school curriculum, is just such a contentious political battle with, you know, like, if you're in the language arts department, you're really fighting to not, like, cut that one book or whatever. So I don't know, I think it's a little bit of a political mess. My personal feeling is that a lot of the learning sciences are relatively new, and they're not, I mean, relatively speaking, like, you know, in the last 100 years. So they don't have the same tradition and history that maybe a lot of other subjects have. And I think also there's a bit of a question about like, what you would want to teach in it. Personally, I think the best thing to teach is an understanding of, like, what is the basic way that the brain learns things you know? So, for instance, it doesn't learn the way that that matrix video shows. That doesn't work that way. And I think if you understand that, you can also understand why certain kinds of studying strategies are more effective than others. You know, like a very basic principle, is that you remember things better when you retrieve them than when you're looking at them. And so this classic student studying strategy of reviewing your notes over and over and over again is much less efficient than like reviewing them once shutting the book and trying to remember or doing practice tests. And so there's a lot of these kinds of, you know, basic advice that I think would help students that's not obvious. It's not well disseminated beyond, you know, psychology, or maybe even even educational psychology, even a lot of like, teacher training, doesn't go into a lot of the science of learning. It's a lot more, you know, craft based practice. So I think, you know, I'm hoping that I'm doing my part in hopefully spending useful information for studying skills, but it is definitely a deficit. Is not a subject that's automatically taught.

Eric Janssen  
So we've got, I just assigned, like, minutes before you came on one of their final assignments in the course, which is, it's an adversity challenge to learn a new skill. And so they've got, it's only three weeks, so tight timeline, but they've got three weeks to learn some skill that they are not currently proficient in, sort of entry level, very basic or no background in and show how much progress they can make over the next three weeks. Cool, so if you're are, if you're going to coach them through this part, one of the deliverable is they have to come up with a training plan, what the stakes are, maybe who mentor is, or who a partner is going to be, and then they've got two weeks to actually learn the skill. What advice would you have as they get this project underway? How can they tackle this?

Scott Young  
Well, I mean, the first part of learning anything is to figure out what it is that you actually have to learn. I think that's that's often a big hurdle, because we often express the things that we want to improve in rather vague, general terms. So even learning a language is just like, oh, I want to learn French, but French actually breaks down to a lot of different things, right? There's you. There's, you know, listening comprehension, there's speaking, there's writing, and then even within those there's different contexts. So, you know, I tend to view it like there's overlap, obviously, between those things, but traveling somewhere and ordering food at a restaurant, you need to know certain vocabulary, certain grammar patterns, certain pronunciation, this kind of stuff, which is maybe completely different from reading Moliere. You know, they're not. There's some overlap. Maybe some of the basic words and stuff are the same, but there's a lot of difference too. So I think the first key thing is to get really specific on what you're trying to get good at. And then what does that entail? What? What is the process of getting good at that? And I know that's a little bit vague and hand wavy, but you know, to use my language example, you know, if you're going to learn a language, you're gonna have to learn the words, you're gonna have to have the basic grammar, you know, put the words in the right order, and if there's conjugation stuff, do that, and you're gonna have to pronounce it, if you're hoping to speak and not just read and listen. And so if you've already broken it down to that level, you're gonna be like, Okay, how do I learn the vocabulary words that I need? Okay, well, there's lots of different methods. You could do flashcards, you could do some kind of reading in context. There's there's different methods. Now you've broken it down even further. And so this is usually the first step. I suggest, whenever anyone's learning and unfamiliar skills, to figure out, like, what is the curriculum? What is the content? What does it break down to? What do I need to remember? If there's facts, what are the kind of procedures that I need to practice, and what are the concepts that I need to understand? And so if you can kind of break it down so that it's a bunch of really small tasks, then learning is just doing all those small tasks. It's just actually going through all of it. It's it's more mysterious when we don't do that, and we just view it as this kind of totality. So artistic skill, for instance, is one of those things that people very frequently, are like, Oh, that's just something you have a talent for. But really it's a lot of it is, you know, being able to accurately gage proportions, being able to understand how like light and shadow work perspective. There is actually a curriculum. There is something you can break down if you were to study it. And so I think that's always the first step is breaking down the skill into the components, so that you know each of the little things that you have to learn is small enough that you could say, oh, yeah, well, I could learn that. I could learn that. And then you just add it all together, and that's how you learn things.

Eric Janssen  
What are your thoughts on how technology changes this? I'm thinking, I'm just trying to get myself educated on AI, and I'm following all these new technology developments. You know, conversational AI, where do people even need to learn languages anymore? Like, is it? Is the technology helping us acquire the knowledge better or learn new things, or is it eliminating the need to learn more new things?

Scott Young  
I think technology is always just a tool, right? So you can, you know, you can use a car to get from point A to point B, or you can crash it into a telephone pole. Like, there's, there's lots of different ways you can do things. And so with, you know, with the internet, for instance, is another perfect example you can now, like, like I said, my MIT challenge would not have been possible had I attempted it five years before, because the material just wasn't online then. And so you can go and learn, you know, from the best university in the world, all these classes. You can watch these lectures for free, whereas that would have been, you know, a dream when I was a kid. But at the same time, you can also, just like endlessly Doom scroll, twitter and reddit stuff, so there's both use cases on the internet, and I think it's probably the same is true of large language models. Personally, I'm not so convinced yet that like we're at this sort of education apocalypse. I know I read all these things where people are saying that, but I feel like it's too early to say exactly what's going to happen with this specific technology. But if you look at the history of technological trends, they've always automated some cognitive labor and then left more room for new cognitive labor. So Socrates, he was decrying the invention of, you know, paper books, because people didn't have to memorize. And we laugh at that, but he was actually right, because people, the ancient Greeks back then, had these elaborate mnemonic systems for memorizing speeches and poetry. But it turns out, when you like not you don't have to do that anymore, when you can actually just pick up the book and read it. Yes, you don't have to master these techniques of memory and memorize these things verbatim, but you can also read way more books. And similarly, you know, while having the calculator always at hand makes it so that we're less fluent in doing these calculations. I know people from an older generation, they really have the times tables memorized because they were using it all the time to calculate tips and do basic math. And whereas, you know, we just pull up our phone and do it frequently, but you know that also, that calculation burden also allows you to go deeper into maybe more conceptual stuff. So I always think that it goes both ways. You can definitely use technology as a crutch, but it can also be an accelerant, and so it really depends on exactly what you're going to do with it. I mean, even language learning, when I was doing the trip with Vat, he was the friend that I did it with. I mean, we heavily relied on Google Translate in those early kind of bridge moments where we're not able to speak conversationally and we're not even at the level where you just have to, like, look up single words. Sometimes there'll be whole phrases that we don't know how to say, and being able to, like, just type that into Google Translate and then repeat what you said was a really good way to bootstrap the knowledge that we needed. I don't know whether that would have been as easy if, again, you had gone back 1020, years where that wasn't available, you got to do a paper dictionary that takes you 20 minutes to look things up. So I think there's opportunity, if you're willing to take advantage of it.

Eric Janssen  
So this is a course, it's called Hustle and Grit, and it's we get into a lot of personal development and learning how to learn and having hard conversations. But it's also. Uh, stories of people that are doing fun and interesting things with their lives. And I think you're an example of someone who's doing it's kind of carved out a really interesting entrepreneurial career. Could you maybe just comment on (yeah) How did you, I don't know, from where, when you were 22 years old as a, you know, fourth year university student, how did you stumble into work towards your career as a writer and speaker.

Scott Young  
Oh yeah. Well, I mean, my my job is a very interesting one. I like, I have a very hard time introducing myself at dinner parties. It's like, what do you do? I'm, like, a blogger. And so there's a little bit of tension sometimes about what it is that I'm actually what is is I'm actually doing, what is my career path? And I think for me, my my kind of first interest, my sort of entrance into doing this, was people doing these kind of solo entrepreneur careers online now today, I think that is actually like an aspiration for a lot of people. I mean, it's not always writing. It's often like people want to be Instagram influencers or Tiktok stars or whatever. But at the at 2006 or 2005 when I was doing this, this was, like very much not a thing like this wasn't anything I was doing. And so sort of throughout university, I'd already been kind of building a blog, building a website with, again, as I mentioned, the focus on studying skills and stuff. And it was sort of around that time that I was, like, able to eke by doing that and then doing these sort of learning projects kind of established me enough that, okay, this is a full time job for me. We have about 100,000 people on our newsletter, and many people who are taking our courses and reading my books and stuff. And so I don't know. I think it's something where you just you try to do something small that's like sort of interesting in a direction, and then that leads you to different opportunities and so on. My friend Cal Newport has a book which you should read, even though it doesn't seem like you're the audience for it, called "How to Become a High School Superstar." But he talks about this idea he calls the failed simulation effect, which is basically what makes someone seem impressive, is when you can't simulate how they did it. So if, if you're imagining someone who's like, you know, 23 and you know, they're the CEO of a major company, or they're, you know, written a book series on like, computer art or something like that. If that's something that you it's hard for a person on the outside to be like, how did you do this? How did you get to that point in your in your life? Whereas someone who just, you know, well, I just like, uh, maintain my attendance in like, 15 different clubs. Like, that's hard to do. That requires a lot of energy, but I can simulate it in my head. I'm like, Yeah, you would just do this, right? And so I think the relevance here is just that. His point is that the way that you get to that, like, the way that you have kind of, I think it's relevant to having a more interesting life, is you just kind of start doing little things, and then the opportunities branch off from that. So you can't really control the process. I don't think, I think you just have to, like, put yourself out there, try things that are kind of a little bit on the entrepreneurial, eccentric kind of end, and then you get feedback from those, and then you try different things. And so, you know, I'm here speaking to you today because of, in some ways, like this kind of controlled accident that was my career over the last 15 years.

Eric Janssen  
And how do you if you're friends with Cal, how do you think about your own I don't know habits and goal setting and those sorts of things like. It strikes me that I'm trying to do more of my own writing with a few different day jobs and a bunch of young kids. It's hard to carve out the time. I know you're a new, relatively new dad. How do you like? What are the habits or keys to success? So that you carve out the time that you need to do the stuff that actually matters.

Scott Young  
Well, I don't know, I don't know whether this is universal, but my way of thinking about things has always been in terms of concrete projects. So I know some people have this kind of, I'm going to, you know, set up these, like permanent, long term habits that are just going to be like the under strata for my life. And I think there's some merit to that. I mean, you know, if you're not exercising, you're not waking up on time, you're not handing in your assignments, like there's a certain amount of basic like, having your shit together, kind of habits that you need to have as an adult. But for me, I feel like so much of what I'm doing is aimed around a particular project. And you can even see that with like the things that I was talking about, like, when I was doing that MIT challenge, it was, like, my sole focus. And so, I mean, I didn't have kids back then, but it was like, you know, I'm waking up at seven. I'm grinding through these lectures and working through these problem sets, and, you know, often working till like 6 to 7 PM on that. When I was doing the language learning again, my entire life revolved around that, you know, to the greatest extent possible, we weren't speaking in English. And so I think these are, these are things that kind of like, orient my life. So, you know, for the last two and a half years, I've been working on another book. So that's involved, like, just huge amounts of reading. And so that research is purposeful. It's being driven by that. And. So I think sometimes the right way to have those good habits is to, like, pick the right projects, pick the things that like, you know, this is what I'm going to devote myself to for. You know, it doesn't even have to be a super long period of time, like you can even just have a one month project. I think those are often really good for getting started. I know you're doing the three week one with students now for learning a skill. And I think that's really good, because oftentimes people put pick, like an eight year project without really thinking what they're committing to. And so it's often good to do that. And I think that's just how I've always thought about things, is I always try to break things down into this, like, this is what I'm aiming for. This is like a a six-month project, or a year-long project to do X and and everything else follows from that.

Eric Janssen  
Can you think of Scott the moment where you felt like you made it?

Scott Young  
I don't know. I don't know. I think, I definitely think there was a transition when I was doing that MIT challenge project. Because the funny thing was, is that during the project, like, while I was working super hard on it. It was mostly crickets. Like, there wasn't a lot of, like, there wasn't a lot of interest in what I was doing. And I was very much just like, you know, I was in my like, little Vancouver apartment, just doing this, I was posting these videos that get like, you know, a few 100 views. Just being like, Yeah, I'm doing this. I'm doing this right now. And it was very like, I've really enjoyed the the year. It sounds like it would be awful, but I actually really enjoyed it. It was a fun project I was working on, but I definitely didn't have the idea at the time that this would be like the thing that I get known for so that, you know, 10 years later, I'm giving a talk to business school students about it. It was just something that I thought, well, you know, I I have the flexibility right now to do something like this. I'd like to do it and, when I was finishing that project, I posted a video being like, I'm done now. Like the guy, because I'd been posting these videos sort of semi weekly, with like, you know, okay, I learned this class. And then I would also, like, sprinkle in a few, like, studying tips or things like that. And my, "I'm done now" video became like, it went viral on red it was like, the front page of reddit, and there was just, like, all these comments of, you know, people being like, you know, that's great, or that's BS, or, you know, like, whatever, all sorts of mixtures of opinions. And, I mean, that really was a, I think, a life changing moment for me going through that. It led to a lot of weird things happening. Like, I, you know, I remember getting calls from, like, there was people who were wanting me to join their start-up. There was a guy from Microsoft who was trying to, like, land me an interview. There I was, I was contacted by a Chinese publisher that wanted to publish one of the, like, the ebooks that I'd written in college in China. And, I mean, I still get royalty checks from that today. So there's a lot of, like, weird things that happen after that. But it was I so I think that was probably like, the best thing I can say is, like, a moment where, like, oh, something's different now. But the reality is that it's been kind of continuous, like, there's been lots of little milestones. There was the, you know, first time I published an article, there was the first time that the article got picked up by someone else and actually read, and there were some visitors my website. There was the first time I made $1 there's the first time, you know, I was able to make enough money to live off of, like, there's been all sorts of little milestones. So I think, you know, it's, I think that's like, again, going back to our earlier idea about, like, you doing something a little interesting, and then that creating an opportunity you need to do. You need to do something else. I think sometimes, when you're trying to, like, look back at people who seemingly have really impressive careers, I think that's often what's missing is, is how much they're kind of like, there's a there's a particular goal, there's a particular thing they're working on, and then that leads to the the next thing, I think, especially in entrepreneurial context, where it's really hard to, you know, plan a super well defined career, like if you're trying to become a professor, a doctor, there's a very well established career path. But I think if you're trying to succeed as an entrepreneur, just like trying to do useful, interesting stuff, I think one thing leads to another very frequently, if you are kind of engaged with it, and you're committed to it, and you're actually, actually doing the projects and not just procrastinating on them.

Eric Janssen  
Awesome. I so I read your most recent birthday post. You've been writing a post every year on your birthday or 17.

Scott Young  
It feels weirder now that I'm like, in my mid 30s to be like, it's my birthday. But you know, it was something...

Eric Janssen  
I mean you got me with it. I'm reading it. So I was, I was all in.

Scott Young  
 I thought, now it's kind of like, should I just be doing these every half decade?

Eric Janssen  
But no, keep it going, because I'll be looking for the next one. So you recently wrote a post about lessons to your 18 year old self. So I caught your birthday post. I also caught the lessons your 18 year old self. And I don't know, I don't even write. I don't, don't write nearly as frequently as you, but sometimes I forget what I wrote my own article. So just a couple things that I thought were interesting, but I'd love to ask you if there's anything that you wanted to highlight from that but a couple that I thought were interesting, optimize for experience, not grades in college, avoid premature optimization. Travel as much as you can call your parents more often. Those were four that stood out for me. But I wonder either those or is there anything else in that article that you figure... 

Scott Young  
I think it's something also useful point out, like, this was advice I'd give myself. So I'm also kind of envisioning what kind of person I was when I was 18. I think advice. The real problem with giving any kind of advice, like I'm giving this class advice right now, is it depends on who you're giving the advice to, right? And like, I'm talking to a bunch of smart, ambitious business school students. And so I feel like I can lean in certain directions, whereas if I was talking to a different group of people, maybe it would be a different set of advice. And so I think one of the things that I noticed is, you know, I, like, I got good grades in university, so I wasn't like, at risk of failing or dropping out or anything. But there was often a kind of pressure of, like, oh, I should really, like, you know, make sure, make sure I get good grades. And so I'll give an example of a decision I made which I think was the wrong decision, which was in order so that I could have good grades. And it relates to the language learning thing. When I was going to study in France, I had the option of studying in French or in English. Now I didn't speak French, so it seemed like I should study in English because they're going to take my grades in the French school back to Canada, and if I get bad grades, it's going to just like, crash my GPA and stuff. And in retrospect, that was the wrong decision, because if I had done the French class, I would have learned French better, which would have been more valuable to my long term future than, you know, the slight hit my GPA would have taken. And so I can see students sometimes making that mistake. They take computer usage rather than, like, a class they're actually interested in that's going to teach them something that's actually useful. They, you know, choose to, like, get the softball kind of class, or find a way that they can avoid doing something that's, like, harder and more interesting. So I think that's sort of one of the things I would say. And I think also, you know, there's the like, constant worrying about, you know, exams and studying, and again, this is based on who I was, where I was, not in like, immediate jeopardy of failing out of my classes, that, you know, you might miss out on some things that are ultimately going to define your experience in university. More just that kind of weird microcosm of a bunch of people who are all at your age, who are all kind of doing interesting new things, which isn't going to come again in your life. So I think that was my my feeling about about that, and then I think premature optimization is another thing that I've seen. I don't think it's probably something that's a problem with the students here, but I think especially, you know, I grew up in a small town, and I knew a lot of people who were kind of from poorer backgrounds when I was in school, and I think there is for a lot of people who don't necessarily have big ambitions, or they don't know that they should have big ambitions, there is kind of a, ooh, I'm making good money from doing X, or I have this opportunity to do X without really thinking about, you know, is this a learning opportunity. Is this something that's going to be valuable for me down the road? And so I think that's another thing that, you know, I think you miss out on sometimes, is, you know, the person who like, I know people who like, they were making so much money from bartending that they were, like, neglecting, you know, maybe that they wanted to go into medical school, but they're like, ah, you know what? I'm making so much money from doing this bartending right now. I'm not going to, like, focus on study. I'm not going to focus on that. So I think that can also be a problem. I don't remember the other two. Or what other ones do you want me to comment on travel and call your parents? Right? Yeah. Well, travel obviously, because once you have kids, or once you are busy in your career, you maybe have more money, but you have less time. And I think time is more important than money, when it comes to travel. And calling your parents is, I think, just from having become a father, that once you have kids, you become intensely appreciative of at least, I've become intensely appreciative of my parents, and how much, you know, how much they've been investing in me, and they value that relationship. And you know, sometimes, as you know younger person, you're kind of self absorbed, and you're just like, oh yeah, my parents, they're in the background. And you don't, you don't really think about them. You don't think about how, you know they've also been like, supporting you for decades and trying to make you into a responsible adult and whatnot. And so I think, yeah, I think calling your parents more is usually good advice.

Eric Janssen  
Awesome. I want to give the class a chance to ask some questions, so I'm going to turn the mic over to them. Let's go. 

Student Question  
You have any tips to how to remember people's names better?

Scott Young  
It's funny you mentioned this because I just did a Q and A on my blog, and that was one of the questions that I asked and answered. So the the main reason that people don't remember someone's names is because you don't pay attention to them. Pay attention to them. So someone says, Oh, my name is Tom. And you're like, yes, that is indeed a human name. And then you forget it. And so the right way to remember names is to just actually pay attention to them more. Now, how can you pay attention to more? Well, like, the kind of sort of salesy way of doing it, which some people kind of pick up on and notice, is like, you're you use the person's name, and if you you know, you say like you if you repeat it a couple times, you're going to definitely remember it. Sometimes, that can be a little awkward in some circumstances, so you can use it with caution, but even just thinking about the person's name, you repeat it to yourself a few times, you're going to be more likely to remember it. And there are even mnemonic techniques. So if you're really struggling, you can do things like, you know. If someone says Tom, and then you imagine, like, Thomas a train engine, and you, like, superimpose their face over thomas the train engine, you'll be more likely to remember that that person's name is Tom. But I think the fundamental truth is, is that, like, if you are worried about remembering people's names, it's just that when they say it, you have to, like, avoid that impulse to be like, Oh yeah, a name. And then you you go on to whatever else you wanted to talk about.

Student Question  
Okay, so I'm someone that has a lot of different interests and hobbies, and I'll get really into something, and then by the next year, I forget about it. Do you think this is a bad thing, and how do you choose what skills to stick with and when to learn something new?

Scott Young  
Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of like that too, so no judgment here. I mean, I think that's the major critique of me, is that I, like, kind of, I dabble too much. I'm a bit too much of a dilettante that, you know, I could have just, like, just stuck to the computer science for 10 years, and then maybe I would be, like, working at a tech company or something, and then, but instead, I decided to do language learning and other things. So I think life is more interesting when you learn more stuff. I think it depends on your goals. If you're learning something for a particular purpose, like you're you know, this is a professional skill that's gonna you know, you need to actually master it. You can't just dabble in it. That's gonna change your behavior. But if we're just talking about hobbies or interests, I don't think there's anything wrong with like getting interested in something and then moving to something else. I think one disadvantage is that sometimes we can kind of skim on the surface of things, like we don't really get through the hard stuff to learning it. So, you know, I think, I think someone mentioned dual thing go in there. But I feel like the Duolingo language learning syndrome is something that I see all the time where, oh, I want to learn this language. Okay, I'm going to download Duolingo, and then you play with dual play with Duolingo for, you know, few months or this kind of thing. And it's not enough for you to actually speak it. It's not enough for you to actually go out and have conversations or do anything kind of that might give you a sort of a foothold in using the language. And then eventually you kind of lose interested, and you get bored, and you never really got to that sort of threshold. So this is why I like these projects. I like doing things over a sort of a sustained period of time, because sometimes you do need to do a little bit of hard practice, or you have to get through some kind of uncomfortable phase before you can really enjoy it, and how long that phase is and what you have to do depends on the skill. But I think you know, definitely, if you're going to learn to ski, you want to get past the phase where you're, like, rolling down the hill. You want to get to the phase where, like, okay, I can do it and have a fun day without, like, feeling like I'm going to crash. And so there's a lot of other skills that I think are kind of like that, where you probably want to sustain it for a little bit. And so having a concrete project can help with that. But otherwise, just in terms of being interested in lots of things. I think that's good.

Student Question  
So, my question is, how often do you think someone should learn, like, a new skill or like, do you think there's a point where, like, someone's learning too much?

Scott Young  
Yeah, well, I mean, the breadth, depth trade off, like, that's, that's how it is. I think again, it goes back to like, what's, what is the reason you're learning lots of skills. I think again, if we're talking about, like, your professional life, typically, you're not going to have to do 50 different skills. You're going to do like, one or two things. And the, you know, the economics, like the ability to, like, substitute other people for the things you can't do well, really benefits specialization or or a certain degree of specialization. And so, you know, if you are a lawyer, then becoming a better lawyer is going to be more useful to your career than, like, learning a little medicine on the side, for instance. And so I think again, it goes back to like, why are you learning it? If the goal is to try to master a craft that you're working on or you are, you know, let's say you're living in France, and you're also learning six other languages, well, maybe you need to master French first, because that's going to be more useful for your daily life. But if we're talking about just personal interest or doing those kind of things, I think that's something you can just decide. I think sometimes it's nice to learn something new, and sometimes it's nice to deepen a skill you already have. I feel like definitely, in my sort of the last several years, I've been mostly focusing on trying to deepen skills that I kind of started when I was younger. But I don't think there's any like rule for that. I think that's just based on your preference, especially with like, hobbies and things that are just for your own interest.

Student Question  
Hi, Scott, I think you mentioned a lot of projects where you really enjoy doing them. Have you had any projects where you're like, struggling through and still trying to, you know, learn the skill?

Scott Young  
Yeah, yeah. I think there's definitely been moments of struggle, like when, when I was doing the language learning trip Korea was really hard for for me personally, and that was just because it was number four. And it turned out that three was was good, but four was too many. And so by the time we were, like, I was so burned out that, like, and you're also having to tackle this, like, really hard language that's like, not, you know, it's not, like, something you can just pick up randomly. So I remember that one being kind of a grind, um. Even just my myself, like my most recent project, which has been doing research for this book, ended up being like I had an idea for the book that turned out, I thought I had the research for it, then I didn't have the research for it, and then I ended up having to do, like, way, way, way more research than I thought I was gonna have to do. And it was very stressful, because I was under deadline under my publisher and so, you know, that was not, not exactly how I ideally wanted to do it. But I think, you know, picking projects is this kind of subtle art where you're you want to pick things that are challenging enough And interesting enough that you can be, like, motivated to, like, really work hard at them, but they're not so outside of what you can do, or so outside of what you want to do, that they just end up either being something you completely abandon, or they become something that is just kind of like a millstone around your neck that you have to carry around for several months.

Eric Janssen  
Scott, I just had this weird out of body experience. I read Ultralearning years ago, and then was just in Vancouver this last weekend, and had a nice drive from Vancouver to Whistler on the highway, and you were keeping me company there and back for four hours as I was relisting your book. And I just had this out of body experience that like, you're, you know, you're that guy, here you are now. And we just spent, we just spent five hours together over the weekend this weird, really weird. (You're not sick of me) That's the I'm not. I'm digging it.

Student Question  
Hi, Scott, so I know you've said you've learned, like, a lot of different skills, like whether that be languages or, like, coding. So I was wondering how you, like, maintain your skill level, especially with things like languages you have to practice all the time, (Oh man) make sure you're not, like, regressing.

Scott Young  
Oh man. The language learning, the maintenance is so, so hard, and this is, like, the real problem, because I'm now the guy who did this. So of course, you know, I'm going to be in a situation where people are going to want to, like, test you on it, right? So with the programming I usually, like, if I, you know, required, like, a week or two to, like, get back up to speed using a programming language I was kind of fluent with 10 years ago, it wouldn't be an issue. But, you know, I recently had a situation where I was talking to a guy where it was just like, Okay, we're going to start the conversation off in Portuguese, and you're kind of like, oh, man, I haven't practiced that in two years. So I think, I think that was a learning point for me. Is that languages, or any skill that really depends on fluency, where it's not just Well, I have to know it, but I have to know it now, like this, you can get in a situation where, like your your perceived competence drops dramatically after you've had some time away from the skill. The way that I view it, though, is that even though your competence, sort of like your actual immediate performance drops quite a bit. The relearning is so much faster that I think it tends to not be as big a deal as people think so. You know, I, since I had kids, I made a decision not to do like, active practice with a lot of the language I was learning. Now, I do get some exposure. I'll watch some things, do these things, but before that, for about five years, I'd been scheduling sort of semi regularly sessions via a website, a platform called italki, that you can do tutoring sessions with. So I was scheduling conversation practice in each of these languages. Now that was getting a bit too time consuming. I had kids, I just sort of had to make a decision, okay, I can't keep doing this. I don't have time, so I stopped doing it. But it means that, like, you know, if you haven't actually spoken in, you know, a number of years, a lot of the words are going to be, oh, I don't remember that, but if you told me, I'd remember it, you know, and you're, you're going to be a little bit rustier. And I think for for skill, like a language, there's different ways you can do it. One way is to just continue some kind of maintenance investment over a long period of time. The Spacing Effect, this is an idea in psychology that if you space out exposures to information, you're going to remember it longer. Means that if you come back from some language learning experience and then you make sure you keep weekly practice for a long period of time, then you're going to be much more likely to be sharp and fresh and not have to worry about it. And the other way to do it is just okay, I know I've got this opportunity coming up, so I'm gonna get equipped again, and I'm gonna sort of relearn it a little bit more quickly, like my family and I are gonna be traveling to Portugal in the spring, and so I know that that's coming up, so I'm for sure gonna be like, booking a little bit of time to, like, brush up on my Portuguese. And so there's different ways you can approach it. But I think the main thing to avoid is like, maybe a little bit too much guilt or shame or or feeling like, ah, you know, I've forgotten everything. You usually haven't forgotten everything. Usually it's just temporarily inaccessible. And so don't let the maintenance work or the fear of having to, you know, forget something be the reason to stop you from from learning new things.

Student Question  
Thanks, Scott, so I know you, like you just previously mentioned, but also, like in your particles and articles, is really clear, like, you're not a big fan of Duolingo. I think you mentioned, like, word banks doesn't kind of force you to recall words, or there's no, like, pronunciation kind of methods to help you, especially in the beginning stages of Duolingo. So, yeah, so I was wondering, if you were able to take over the app or develop your own language learning model for an app, what features would you specifically implement to promote immersive learning?

Scott Young  
Oh, man, you know that's that's really hard. I think, first of all, I have to say, like, I know why Duolingo does it the way they do it. It's not just like, well, I know more than they do. Like, they have experts and they have people working there. But I think part of the issue is that, and this is a problem with all kind of apps for learning language, is that rarely is there like one correct way to say something or to communicate something, but in order to give feedback, whether you got it right or wrong, you have to have this kind of exact match. And so I feel like a lot of the ways that Duolingo has solved that problem is by having this kind of drag and drop so that, you know, there's no like, if I had to type it, it would, I would obviously have to recall more, but I might make, like, little, trivial, insignificant mistakes, or I might say something in a way that is perfectly valid, but not the way that they're thinking of. And it would cause all these problems with actually using the app. So I understand why they do it that way. I'm not trying to criticize them for that, but I just think, for people who are actually trying to learn a language that's not usually the like, that's not the approach that I use. Like, my personal recommendation, if you're like, starting from scratch, is to do a month of Pimsleur. Now I don't know what Pimsleur was a little bit more expensive, which is a reason why, like, some people didn't like that suggestion, but Pimsleur is it gets you to, like, Repeat these phrases. It starts off with just very much stock phrases, and then it builds so that you're learning some of the conjugation, some of the patterns. And I think one month of that is enough, so that once you're done the month, you definitely can't speak the language, but you can say some things and you can understand some things. And that actually, it turns out, I think, is really helpful for, you know, having your first conversation with a tutor or something like that. You know, I still remember sentences from the Pimsleur that I did, like, 11 years ago. So it really works, like I will always remember Donde esta el restaurante Bolivar, which is a phrase that you learn in the Spanish pimsler. I mean, I've used Duolingo before. I can't remember anything that I learned from there. So I think there is some similar to that. And, I mean, that's just the starting point. There's a whole process of learning language. We can go into learning languages a bit more in detail, if, if you want to send me an email, but, but that would be, what I would suggest is that, you know, I think it's not so much about creating an app or creating some tool, because I just think a lot of the difficulties is just that when you're interacting with a tool rather than another person, you don't have the flexibility, you don't have the ability to be like, Well, that was a valid way of saying that, or that was, you know, correct. You have to follow this template, and that makes it hard to do a lot of the what you'd really want to get out of that kind of practice.

Student Question  
I was curious, because obviously, all of the learning that you've done takes a significant amount of commitment and perseverance, and obviously, like a lot of people, have never done the kinds of things that you have done. So do you think that that was something that kind of came naturally to you, or was it something that you had to, like, learn over time? Basically, kind of, yeah. What kept you from quitting when most people would?

Scott Young  
So I mean, there's kind of two parts to that. So one thing I would say, and this is what I always say to other people, like, I feel like what I'm trying to give to other people, like, in writing my book and sharing these kind of projects, is what I felt like was given to me. So there's a kind of obscure little world of people who are doing these kind of intensive learning and practice projects, but a lot of their stories are disconnected and spread out. And so as I mentioned, like the impetus for me doing that MIT challenge was hearing about Steve Pavlina's CS degree in three semesters project, Josh Kaufman's "The Personal MBA," Benny Lewis' "Fluent in 3 Months," project. And so I think, you know, the idea of these projects is not that people should be necessarily even doing exactly what I'm doing, but just that knowing that that's out there that helps you kind of design your own thing. The second thing I would say is that, like it does take a lot of perseverance, but I think the way that I've often tackled these projects, they're not just like hobbies, for me, they're not just some kind of trivial like, well, I'm doing this on the side. Like, one question I often get asked, strangely enough, is from people who are like, well, I want to do something like the MIT challenge, but I'm working a full time job. Like, do you think I'd still be able to do it in a year? And I'm kind of like, well, if you can do it in you can do it in a year, you should, you should. You should be the one publishing the videos, because I don't know how I would do it in that amount of time. And so I think if you are, if you're interested in doing it, having it something where, like you kind of, you can make your life revolve around it for a period of time is, is pretty essential. It's very hard to do these kind of things when they are like, number six on the list of priorities. And so I do think that is a privilege. I mean, that's something that I was even aware of when I was doing those that like this was a rare moment in my life where I could devote myself for a year working on like, one of these projects, and I wanted to take advantage of it. So. But I know, you know, even now, just having a business and having kids at home, I must be a lot more constrained in my efforts, or I must tailor those efforts, you know, more specifically to, like writing a book, or some professional ambition where I can justify it in terms of workload. So I think having the motivation, having the reason to do it, I think, is really critical. I don't think it's something that you know you can't just treat it as something that's like number six on the priority list.

Eric Morse  
The Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Quantumshift 2008 alum Connie Clerici and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group. To ensure you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player or visit entrepreneurship.uwo.ca/podcast. Thank you so much for listening until next time you.