5 Keys to Get the Most out of the Feynman Technique
Scott H. Young Blog
by Scott Young
2d ago
The most popular piece of studying advice I’ve ever come up with was the Feynman Technique. While the technique itself is only loosely based on Richard Feynman’s practices, the idea of self-explanations took off and became a studying meme that has since gone far beyond my own audience. The basic idea for the technique is simple: Pick an idea you don’t understand very well. On a blank sheet of paper, write an explanation for the idea as if you are teaching it to someone else. Whenever you get stuck, go back to the textbook to fill in the gaps in your understanding. This technique was a stap ..read more
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My New Book: Get Better at Anything (Special Offer for Preorders)
Scott H. Young Blog
by Scott Young
1w ago
My new book, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery, is now available for preorder. This book means a lot to me. It’s easily the longest and hardest I’ve ever worked on any project in my life. From start to finish, the project took over four years, involving hundreds of books, several hundred scientific papers and countless conversations with leading experts to assemble. The book digs deep into the fascinating science of learning. I cover the fundamental principles researchers have uncovered that explain how learning works, condensed into twelve memorable maxims you can use to guide yo ..read more
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The Infinite Library Problem
Scott H. Young Blog
by Scott Young
2w ago
Studying for school can be hard, but the process is pretty straightforward: Read all the material and attend all the lectures. Practice in ways that mirror what will be on the final exam. Use feedback to figure out what you need to fix. Outside of school, though, this strategy breaks down. It’s impossible even to be aware of all the books that might be useful for any given subject, never mind actually reading them all.  In an infinite library, choosing what material to learn dwarfs even the largest difference in studying efficiency. How to Choose What to Learn Next Learning in an infin ..read more
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The Paradox of Productivity
Scott H. Young Blog
by Scott Young
3w ago
What if being productive doesn’t mean feeling productive? A paradox of productivity is that the things that feel productive—working incessantly, checking off lots of tasks, feeling strained and drained—are often not what produces important accomplishments; in fact, these things can get in the way.  Recently, two of my friends have written books which argue versions of this thesis. The first is Ali Abdaal’s Feel Good Productivity. Ali’s central idea is that we’re at our most productive when we’re happy. In the moment, grinding ourselves into exhaustion may seem like a necessary trade-off ..read more
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My Simple Habit for Smarter Book Reading
Scott H. Young Blog
by Scott Young
1M ago
A single habit has improved the quality of my book reading more than anything else: reading rebuttals. To explain, let me first give some context. I’ve long enjoyed reading big-idea books in science, business or self-improvement. These books range from mega-bestsellers (The Tipping Point; Guns, Germs and Steel) to the relatively obscure (The Enigma of Reason; How Asia Works).  In most cases, I don’t have deep expertise in the topic I’m reading about. The research literature the authors cite is unfamiliar to me. I don’t know whether the proposed idea is a near-consensus opinion or some qui ..read more
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The 6 Causes of Burnout (and How to Avoid It)
Scott H. Young Blog
by Scott Young
1M ago
Burnout is miserable. You feel exhausted, but you still need to keep showing up to the job, day after day. Whatever fire you had for your work has now fizzled out—making you wonder whether you should quit and start over. Why does burnout happen, and how can we avoid it? Christina Maslach is one of the world’s leading experts on burnout. In the 1980s, Maslach and her colleagues developed one of the first psychological assessments for burnout. In the subsequent four decades, she has built a career investigating the causes of burnout. Burnout is More than Just Being Tired Maslach’s research finds ..read more
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Does Everyone Learn at the Same Rate? An Intriguing Experiment
Scott H. Young Blog
by Scott Young
1M ago
Recently, I wrote a defense of psychologist John Carroll’s claim that what separated stronger and weaker students wasn’t a fundamental difference in learning potential, but a difference in learning rate. Some people learn faster and others more slowly, but provided the right environment, essentially anyone can learn anything. In arguing that, I primarily wanted to dispute the common belief that talent sets hard limits on the skill and knowledge you can eventually develop. Not everyone could become a doctor, physicist or artist, the reasoning goes, because some people will hit a limit on how mu ..read more
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The Science of Learning Physics
Scott H. Young Blog
by Scott Young
2M ago
Physics is a notoriously difficult subject. The math is complicated, the principles are subtle and even when students pass the final exam, they still frequently fail simple conceptual questions designed to test whether they really understood anything. Given this difficulty, it makes sense that we should strive for more effective ways to teach and learn physics. Jennifer Docktor and José Mestre provide an elegant summary of the relevant research on evidence-based instructional practices in their book, The Science of Learning Physics. Why is Physics So Hard to Learn? While learning the math unde ..read more
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The 10,000-Hour Rule is a Myth
Scott H. Young Blog
by Scott Young
2M ago
Few ideas about learning are as well-known as the 10,000-hour rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 bestseller, Outliers, where he argued that it takes roughly that long to master a skill. The basis for Gladwell’s rule was Anders Ericsson’s 1993 paper arguing that large quantities of deliberate practice could explain world-class skill levels. Before that, psychologist John Hayes’s research on elite composers, artists and poets found roughly ten years were necessary to produce master-level works. As with many popularizations of academic research, the public understanding of the rule ..read more
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Life of Focus Is Now Open for a New Session
Scott H. Young Blog
by Scott Young
2M ago
Life of Focus, the three-month training program I co-instruct with Cal Newport (author of Deep Work), is now open for a new session. We will be holding registration until Friday, January 19th, 2024 (midnight, Pacific time).  This course aims to help you achieve greater levels of depth in your work and life. How would it feel to have more time and energy for the things that really matter to you? We split the course into three, one-month challenges. Each challenge is a guided effort to help you establish and test new routines, alongside specific lessons to deal with iss ..read more
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