PHOTO: Scott H. Young, author of Ultralearning, explores the frontiers of personal mastery and cognitive development through bold experimentation and disciplined curiosity.
Learning Mastery Through Self-Directed Projects And Deep Curiosity
Scott H. Young discusses the principles behind Ultralearning, the role of feedback, immersive language learning, and how structured projects and teaching reinforce skill development and personal transformation.
Scott H. Young writes not only to inform but to transform. With a steady voice and a spirit of inquiry, he invites readers to reconsider what it means to truly learn. His work—rooted in experimentation, discipline, and a keen sense of curiosity—challenges conventional education and proposes something both bolder and more personal: a return to ownership over our intellectual lives.
In Ultralearning, Young maps out a practical philosophy for those who seek to master difficult subjects quickly and deeply. Yet what resonates most is not speed but intent—his insistence that learning can be deliberate, self-directed, and even joyful. Whether immersed in a foreign country speaking only the native tongue or replicating an MIT computer science curriculum in a single year, he reminds us that the boundaries of our capability often lie just beyond our assumptions.
What sets Young apart is not just his ideas, but his lived commitment to them. His projects are not stunts—they are deeply human endeavours, rich with struggle, rigour, and insight. He explores feedback, memory, productivity, and motivation not as abstractions but as tools to engage more fully with the world.
In a culture often distracted and fragmented, Scott H. Young offers a quiet provocation: that sustained attention and meaningful challenge are still the best paths to personal growth. His work urges us not to wait to be taught, but to begin—curious, focused, and fiercely self-directed.
In “Ultralearning,” you advocate for self-directed intense learning. How do you determine which skills are worth pursuing through such an approach?
In general, I believe we are either motivated by a goal, in which learning a skill or subject is a means to achieving it, or we’re motivated intrinsically by the desire to learn. Both can be motivations for a project. I think motivation needs to be high to consider the more intensive forms of learning I’m documenting—it takes a lot of energy and enthusiasm to learn intensively.
Could you elaborate on the role of feedback in your learning process, as discussed in “Get Better at Anything”?
Feedback is an essential part of learning anything. At a high level, my view of learning is that it starts with seeing how a skill is performed—this involves learning from others so you don’t need to figure things out from scratch—performing the skill yourself, and then finally getting feedback on how you performed it that you can use to adjust your results. Research indicates that when feedback is sparse or ambiguous, learning can become impossible in many domains.
Your “Year Without English” project was ambitious. What were the most significant challenges you faced during that year?
Probably the biggest challenges were in the transition to a new country. That was when our language abilities were often quite low, but we simultaneously had to do most of the setup activities needed to live in a location. I think, however, even if our adherence to the no-English rule wasn’t perfect, the idea of the rule made it much easier to integrate ourselves in an environment that sustained conversations in the new language. Thus, I think anyone who wants to learn another language and has the opportunity to immerse themselves would benefit from a similar approach.
How do you integrate the principles from “Ultralearning” into your daily routines to maintain continuous growth?
I mostly view my life as a series of relatively discrete projects, so that’s where the principles integrate. While there’s certainly learning and habits that go on in the background, the process I describe in Ultralearning only really makes sense in terms of projects.
In your experience, how does the concept of ‘learning by teaching’ enhance the retention and understanding of new skills?
There’s an interesting literature on how self-explanations can assist in learning even more than provided explanations. My explanation for why this happens would be a combination of retrieval/generation effects on memory (when you explain you must generate answers from your head, this results in strengthening memory more than simply reading the same answer, provided the knowledge is there) as well as the increased attention paid to one’s results when you’re generating an explanation versus simply comprehending it. You don’t always understand what are the gaps in your understanding until you try to explain something and come up short.
That said, I do think there’s a time and a place for learning by teaching, so it’s a supplement to reading and studying rather than a wholesale replacement.
What motivated you to transition from a focus on productivity to a deeper exploration of learning and mastery?
They’re intertwined. Really, most of the productivity enhancements a person can expect in their life comes from learning and mastery. Everything else is just “working harder.” If you’re not actually improving your human capital, in terms of knowledge and skills, then you can’t really be more productive, just more diligent.
Reflecting on your learning experiments, which one has had the most profound impact on your personal and professional life?
All of them have, in some way. I think the MIT Challenge was most profound, in part because it gave me license to spend the next decade and a half pursuing similar intensive learning projects. I think if I hadn’t done that project (or it hadn’t been successful or interesting to other people) I might have opted for a more traditional career path that was less centered around learning. So I’m grateful for that.
What advice would you offer to aspiring authors looking to write impactful books on learning and personal development?
I think going out and doing stuff is always good advice to give a writer. Especially in the self-help sphere, there can be an unwanted tendency to fall back on abstract generalisations and theorising, when what people really like to read are the experiences of other people (or, in the case of research, careful analyses that elucidate new facts).
