Scott Young is the author of Wall Street Journal and National best selling book: "Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career".
Scott has been a prolific writer on his blog since 2006 where he writes about learning, productivity, career, habits and living well. He is know for documenting learning challenges such as the learning a 4-year MIT computer science degree in one year, learning four langauges in one year and learning to draw portraits in 30 days.
His work has been featured in TEDx, The New York Times, Lifehacker, Popular Mechanics and Business Insider.
Takeouts: - Holistic learning - Associations (the more associations there are between ideas, the more accessible these are) - Constructs
Q: A holistic learner wouldn’t take such an organized approach to storing information (which might explain why so many smart people have horrible organization skills). Instead holistic learners connect everything. A derivative isn’t just a formula, it’s a feeling, an image and you can relate it to flying a supersonic jet. (c) Q: A construct defines a set of tightly interlinked understandings. For example, if you’ve tried your hand at learning to create programs with C++, you probably have a C++ construct. This construct defines all your knowledge about C++ and is the sum total of all the interconnected ideas about C++. Think of a construct as being like a city in your mind. Within a city you have thousands of buildings you can travel between. Some are big and important and are linked by roads to hundreds of other buildings in your city. Others are less important and only have a few dirt paths leading to them. In the landscape of your knowledge, your mind is full of these cities (с) Q: Understanding is the result of a highly developed construct. (c)
First of all, I just want to say that I respect Scott Young. He's a smart guy - or at least that was what I was made to believe when reading about his personal achievements.
Learn More, Study Less caught my eye because, well, let's face it: it's nice to do well academically and not put in so much effort, right? Young has some pretty, glossy methods that he has outlined in the book.
But that's all those methods are: glossy and pretty on paper. But are they really applicable?
I did have some qualms about the information he presented. Some of the tactics he presented were totally elusive to me. I could not, for the life of me, understand how to apply some of the methods. For example, there's a section in the book called "explore, debug, apply phase," which were completely common sense. The only reason why I had trouble comprehending was because the whole section was so verbosely worded.
That's the thing with this book: it was hard to read.
Okay, okay, I understand that classics and some fiction novels are hard to read because they were written in the 19th century or beforehand, and vernacular changes drastically throughout the years. But books like these: study-help books written in modern times, should be clear and easy-to-read. Learn More, Study Less was dry in its writing style. I felt like the author used a thesaurus for every other word, trying to pick out the "smarter" sounding word in order to augment his intellectual appearance.
As a result, the explanation for learning strategies came off as verbose, and superfluous. Yet another book that is made confusing due to academic pompousness.
Most of the book is just a repetition of itself, in my opinion. Basically, I can sum up the main tactics that Scott Young outlines in less confusing words.
If you want to learn more and study less you should:
1) Visualize 2) Use Mnemoics 3) Use flow-based note taking (NOTE: this is a system where one uses diagrams and makes connections between seemingly contrasting topics.) 4) Make connections between topics 5) Make connections with life.
If you are looking for help with learning, I suggest you pick out other books instead of this one. This book will only give you tactics. It will not give you strategies to become an overall, well-rounded, student.
Let me clarify something: What irked me was not because I spent $39 CAD on the book, but because I felt like the book wasn't worth the value it was sold for. Because of its sparse content and short length, I feel like it should be worth significantly less.
I first came across the productivity blog of Scott H Young while browsing through the answers to this Quora question: What learning strategies do people who are "quick learners" follow? Young was notably mentioned several times by top commentators due to his achievement of completing an entire 4-year MIT curriculum for computer science in 1 year without taking any classes.
According to one commentator, "[m]any of the techniques he employs and recommends, such as the Feynman Technique, the "5-year old method" (pretend you are teaching your subject to a class of 5-year olds) and "visceralization" and use of metaphors, map to well-known cognitive science principles of learning. For instance, the first two map onto a robust finding that self-explanation helps promote deep, robust learning that will transfer well to novel problems.
In his book Learn More, Study Less, Young considers holistic learning as the antithesis of rote memorisation. He defines rote memorisation as "repeating information enough times with the hopes that it will stick" and contrasted it with holistic learning, which he considers to be "creating webs of information" such that the "interrelating of ideas allows you to easily navigate through complete understandings".
However, many reviewers of the book were less than impressed with its contents, with one even claiming that everything in it can be reduced to five pointers, namely: visualize, use mnemonics, use flow-based note-taking (e.g. use of diagrams and images to link concepts), and make connections internally between topics and externally with what we already know.
In actuality, "rote memorisation" and "holistic learning" are both valid ways of learning based on how neurons function in our brains: learning occurs primarily through either repetition or through making connections between new knowledge and prior knowledge. Here is a good summary of the process by another Quora commentator: "Our brains store information by context and association based on existing mental models... If we want to learn new information successfully we need to either find an existing mental model that will associate with the new information or we need to build a new mental model in which the new information will fit." The most common approach to building new mental models is through the well-known method of mind-mapping.
My view
Having read his ebook myself, I believe that the reason behind the divergent reviews stems from the fact that new learners would find his book extremely useful whereas seasoned learners would see it as a rehash of many principles and concepts they are already familiar with.
For instance, while I have used a similar variant of the Feynman Technique before, which is based on learning by pretending that you are teaching a concept to a 5-year-old, I like the way he presented the method in a simple and concise form in the following video:
If I were to summarise the basic building blocks of learning as espoused by Young, it would be:
[1] Simplify: Break down complex or difficult-to-understand concepts into smaller chunks that you can deal with.
One way of doing that is through the Feynman Technique, where you attempt to explain a concept to an imaginary 5-year-old. Another way to approach a subject is to break it down into a Concept Checklist by starting with the table of contents and creating second-order lists under each heading with sub-concepts.
[2] Making connections: To utilise the more efficient way of learning, making good connections is key.
- Metaphors - "Visceralisation" (Young's coined term for the process of creating a mental image through sounds, sensations and emotions) - Diagramming (Flow-based diagram - to chart sequential events or objects; Concept-based diagram - link ideas together, much like how regular mind-mapping is done; Image diagram - essentially a form of visualisation by drawing out an image representing the concept) - Deep-linking (doing further research to link ideas to their context - a good tool for doing this is Wikipedia) - While learning something, constantly pose questions in your head about the subject (What does this idea remind me of? How can this idea be applied in real-life situations? If I could tell a funny story about this idea, it would involve...)
[3] Practice: Try out each method for at least 21 days so as to form habits and incorporate them into your personal arsenal of learning techniques.
Conclusion
On the whole, I would recommend reading his book and videos if you don't already have a studying strategy or if you are interested in finding out some of the basic building blocks that many productive learners utilise. In fact, even if you have already installed some pretty good productivity software in yourself, it wouldn't hurt to read some of his top blog posts.
I went to a top university, but I still wanted to be more efficient with learning. That's why I picked up this book. I have to admit, however, that his methods, or so-called tactics, do not apply to me, or to my field of study. He is a visual learner, and he uses metaphors in learning math, which is something I'll never get to understand and utilize.
The whole is trying to sell holistic learning. Learn more with holistic learning, while study less with holistic learning.
The book combines with the author's own learning experience and almost all major theories and techniques in the field of productivity and personal development. So you can have a quite clear view of them all. But I personally feel there should be more details. Reading the book is kind of like reading a long abstract. Perhaps it supposed to give you a clue and you can go deep into it if you are really interested in the idea. However, I feel the book did not give me enough info for me to make the decisions on each methods. I did not think it is a bad book. Because I knew the author is honest, and he was really drawn to this area. I cannot come up with a better way to write this book. (You can go to his personal website to know more about who he is and what he does. http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/).
So, I guess I will use this book as a guide and go on reading other books in this area, while keeping an eye on his blog to see how he practices those methods in his life.
Kindly note, this ain't meant to be an objective review. Frankly speaking, this books touched something inside my mind . and I began to notice something different about myself and people who are even smarter than me in one way or another. okay let's start. since I was young I have been occupied by the idea of self -learning and I searched for a suitable alternative to fill up this awful gap. I was literally done struggling with the drawbacks of the poor education we have in Egypt. -yea we are still suffering- so I used to go the public library, the bookstores and borrow books from my friends. years later, the whole scene has been dramatically changed, I developed a unique understanding in my collage. thanks to the further reading I did and the books I've read in the library. the vast majority of my Doctors came to realize that, I was doing something different and I was 2 miles ahead of my colleagues. Finally, after reading this book I discovered what was different about me, I'm using a different technique which is the Holistic learning technique. I was creating webs of information in my mind without even observing that!. this book is truly amazing.
I have to say, most of those tactics are classic and old-fashioned. I went to top universities and I found my research/projects difficult. Well, I like his theory but I don't appreciate his tactics in second part of this book. I spent like 3hrs of skimming this book, and I recommend this book to a beginner, but definitely not to anyone who already explored study skills.
متهيألي أي طالب في جامعة او ثانوي او حتي واحد بيحب يتعلم مع نفسه لازم يقرأ الكتاب دا , حكاية سكوت انه كان بني آدم قدر يدرس منهج ال computer science في (MIT) في سنة واحده بدل 4 سنين , بيتكلم في الكتاب عن ازاي تتعلم الكتاب دا لو كان جه في ايدي زمان كانت حاجات كتير اتغيرت =D حتي انتا لو مش حاطط الكتاب دا في قايمة كتب 2016 , يستحق بلا شك انه يدخل القايمة دي وعلي اولها كمان
It did open my mind like no other book did , in terms of acquiring new skills , learning new things and grow open new horizons, so I give it 5 Stars , If i could i would give 10 5 stars for an amazing, 10 stars for a life changing book :)
This book introduce many ways to learn more.It's an awesome book. The deepest thought that still surround in my head is as follow: a.Have a break once a week. b.Save your energy. c.Focus on what you are doing. d.Learn new technology by project.
This book will be helpful to people who are interested in learning and learning fast. The methodologies and stratagies are given in a strait way and are very compact and easy to fallow.
I have revised my rating from earlier three stars to the full five stars the author really deserves in my opinion. As many of the readers pointing out the flaws in the book, I too had a tough time digesting the book because of all the jargons and complicated writing style. However, after giving another go at the book because I genuinely believed in his ideas, I started to really appreciate the effort that the author has put in the book. He has genuinely made an effort to identify the actual learning process and the learning strategies and techniques which we can apply at each step of the learning process. I suggest any of the new readers wanting to read this book or anyone who wants to read the book another time, to write your own notes while reading the book. This will make you understand and appreciate the book more.
The main sections in your notes would be something along the below lines -
- What is Holistic Learning? - What are the stages of Holistic Learning? - What are the holistic learning strategies and techniques that can be applied at each stage of holistic learning - Types of Information We learn - Holistic learning techniques to learn each type of information - How to learn and remember arbitrary information (facts, vocabulary, definition, etc) - Become a Productive Student / Learner
First half of the book: numerous theoretical concepts.
Latter half of the book: practical skills and Scott Young's personal ways to study
I read this book right before high school in 1 day. But notice that it's a book with very little content, and I often stopped to think what he means by saying all that. Like he mentioned in the book you can skip chapters. It took me a few months to realize that lot of things are very hard to accomplish even if they seem minor. I suppose if he starts early, let's say kindergarten, he has all those years to accommodate himself to the learning environment--schools--and develop all those self-education skills.
How can I put this into words? Scott put all of his philosophy/strategies from mountainous learning experience. For people who has not learn as much as he did it would be like reading a boring higher level mathematics textbook. Yeah, sure it makes sense. Dull. But if you have tried learning many things, like basketball, hip-hop dance, literature, you are going to relate a lot to this book.
It's December, and that's about the time of year where I get a boost of motivation to tackle some learning projects. As my first step each year, I read something on learning how to learn.
In Learn More, Study Less, Scott does a fantastic job of breaking down the process of learning and the different types of information, introducing his holistic learning strategy, and offering tactics for approaching each aspect.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking to learn anything new.
About the Author Along with his own website, ScottHYoung.com, Scott has been a columnist at Lifehack.org and PickTheBrain.com. Scott has been featured on the Sirius Radio show, Be Happy Dammit! and Flak magazine. He lives in Manitoba, Canada.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
This is an okay book. The writing is not very structured. It helps me think how I got good grades in some of my math classes (math & econ double major) when I did like crap in my midterms, which usually took ~30-35% of my grades.
Some good approaches and extra readings introduced. Overall, definitely not bad.
Scathing online reviews for how awful this Mandarin translation was put me off before I'd even started. I could tell the translator had added content in parts too which I really disliked. Still giving two stars because I liked some of the concepts introduced here and I will read the original English version in the future.
This book’s highlight is not in how to increase productivity. It is about systematic knowledge acquisition. The author breaks down each stage and helps me understand my weak spot. I wish this book provided more applications. Nonetheless, a good read about how to absorb large amount of information effectively.
This book is useful for me. Project based learning method I could use it on my self learning instantly. And linking and metaphor to new knowledge are also quite useful when learning and remember new things. And build a model by construct will be a little difficult for me to do it because never try it before.
It is a poorly written book making it uninteresting to read in the first place. It is not worth spending money. The author seems to be craving attention more than anything else.
Needs to read again. This book is more like a dictionary. You go to it again and again to address your questions. It’s hard to improve from the first read. Also some parts of the book were pretty boring but other parts were inspiring for sure.
Just like with ultralearning and make it stick, It's one of the better books to read to improve your learning, it's also convinced more and more to stick with my zettlekasten system interestingly enough, and the techniques explained here are good for cultivating curiosity towards subjects you don't like, and to better learn the subjects that you do like, it's highly recommended!