Best of 2024: Scott Young | How to Get Better at Anything

4 snips

Dec 23, 2024

Scott Young, author of "Get Better at Anything" and "Ultra Learning," dives into innovative strategies for mastering skills. He discusses the C-Do Feedback Framework, emphasizing that mindful practice beats mere repetition. Scott critiques traditional learning methods and advocates for mastery-driven education. He shares personal anecdotes about learning languages and music across different ages, highlighting cognitive challenges. Insights on deliberate practice reveal the importance of feedback and self-awareness in the path to skill improvement.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Knowledge-Based Thinking

Knowledge shapes thinking more than generic procedures.
Content knowledge is crucial for proper thinking, even with strong skills.

ANECDOTE

Baseball and Reading

A baseball study showed that knowledge, not just reading ability, improved comprehension.
Background knowledge helps connect information and draw correct conclusions.

INSIGHT

Observational Learning

Humans excel at observational learning; it's key to cultural development.
Learning from others simplifies complex skill acquisition.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

A Life Of Purpose

Douglas P. Blankenship

The Language Instinct

How the Mind Creates Language

Steven Pinker

In this book, Steven Pinker argues that language is an innate human ability, produced by evolution to solve the problem of communication among social hunter-gatherers. He explains how language works, how children learn it, how it changes, and how the brain computes it. Pinker refutes common ideas such as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis and the notion that language is a human invention. He supports his argument with examples from linguistics, psychology, and popular culture, emphasizing that language is a specialized 'mental module' rather than a mark of advanced intelligence. The book also includes updates on advances in the science of language since its initial publication.

Get Better at Anything

12 Maxims for Mastery

Scott Young

In 'Get Better at Anything', Scott Young argues that mastering new skills is dependent on three key factors: seeing how experts do it, practicing the skill yourself, and seeking continuous feedback. He breaks down the learning process into these fundamental steps and offers 12 maxims to improve the way we learn. The book is designed to help anyone accelerate their learning journey, whether they are students, employees, or individuals pursuing personal interests. Young uses research and real-life examples to illustrate how these principles can lead to rapid progress and mastery in various fields.

Human Problem Solving

Herbert Simon

Allen Newell

This book, first published in 1972, applies ideas from artificial intelligence to cognitive psychology. Newell and Simon develop a formal theory of information processing systems and report studies on symbolic reasoning tasks. They analyze the data using the information processing paradigm and present a comprehensive theory of human problem-solving. The work supports the physical symbol system hypothesis and was a culmination of their research program that led to the Turing Award in 1975[1][4][5].