Web3 Ultralearning

What is "ultralearning" and how can you use it to improve how you learn web3 skills?

Learning how to learn is one of the best investments you can make in yourself. Web3 devs have to stay ahead of the curve and be able to rapidly learn new technologies, often at the same time. [Ultralearning (scotthyoung.com/blog/ultralearning) by Scott Young provides a valuable mental model for learning complex skills, fast.

In web3, we are often faced with rapidly learning new technologies to add to our stack, along with understanding how to apply what we've learned to rapidly evolving blockchain technology.

As the development of the web3 space itself is evolving so fast, it pays us (literally!) to spend some time mastering the meta-skill of learning how to learn. I have applied the ultralearning process to several of my own learning projects, and although I am no master, I learned some valuable things along the way to help you on your learning journey. The principles shown in "Ultralearning" can be readily adapted to learning anything new; however, I want to talk about them in conjunction with a web3 learning project.

So, what are the principles of ultralearning you can use in your learning and projects?

1. Meta-learning

Meta-learning describes the pre-work you do before starting a project.

I tend to shoot from the hip and just get started on things and plan as I go, so mastering this step really helped me shore up my own weaknesses in learning new things. Before starting an ultralearning project, one should consider spending 10% of the total time they plan on spending on the overall project on this stage. Estimate how long you foresee you will need for the project (say 100 hours to develop all the skills for an NFT marketplace), and then allot 10 hours (give or take) for researching about your learning plan.

Some ideas to implement meta-learning:

• Doing research into what the usual ways of learning the skill you are planning on learning
• Interview a successful learner in your field and see what advice or learning resources they recommend (Done pretty easily in web3 with twitter and DAOs like Developer_DAO)
• Create a learning map of Concepts, Facts, and Procedures you will need to master (I like mind-maps for this part: Mind-map basics

Metalearning has great benefits, as working on this part of the process can be easily applied to other learning projects. Investing time here pays valuable dividends to you as a learner over time.

2. Focus

George Lucas once said, "Your focus determines your reality," and so it goes with our learning projects.

Practicing mastering your ability to focus in sustained stretches is absolutely key to a successful learning project. It can be difficult to sustain focus in our age with the sheer amount of distractions available. Start to think about what level of sustained focus will bring you results, and begin to look out for "flow" states.

Flow, first articulated by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the book of the same name, is defined as a "highly focused mental state conductive to productivity."

These states are achieved during periods ofsustained focus. To develop your ability to focus:

• Use the pomodoro technique of working for 25 minutes, and taking a break for 5. I use Forest App and find it useful and fun to practice this skill
• Practice meditate, even for 10 minutes a day.
• Experiment with different learning conditions and record your results. Where are you best able to focus? With or without music? Morning or night? Before or after eating? etc.

3. Directness

When learning web3, it is so easy to get caught down rabbitholes and spread a lot of time learning about different pieces of the stack.

You want to take the shortest path to your goal and get direct about the exact goal you are shooting for. I find the SMART goal framework helps here for getting highly specific on your goal (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timebound). Bounding your goals with time and a measurable results gives you powerful data for ensuring your are on track for success.

The essence of being direct is to be practical.

Are you using the skill in a way you will eventually use it? I've spent a ton of time exploring concepts in web3 that ultimately didn't net me productive benefits. You can use the feedback you get on yourself to determine what activities to keep, or get rid of.

An important part of being direct is to practice creating content or deliverables with your efforts.

Finishing a total web3 project gives you valuable data for what went right or wrong for next time. Transferring knowledge from a class/book/or video into real life is an important way to keep you out of tutorial hell. It also sets you up to practice consistently produce content, an important aspect of our next principle.

4. Drill

Spend time focusing on the weakest areas of your performance, identified during the Direct stage.

You can only move as fast as your slowest point. Identify the rate-limiting step in your overall learning. Does it feel like your learning is slowing down due to a consistent issue with one aspect of learning?

You may need to break your issue down into smaller steps and drill on the fundamentals.

I had this problem learning CSS. Not being a visual thinker, it took me many, many drills to continually review the concepts and even learn stuff as simple as the box model! However, my overall learning radically sped up once I took the time to drill again and again on basics of styling.

5. Retrieval

Finding a way to retain what we learn is the golden grail of self-paced learners.

Are you able to solve problems and recall what you've learned, without going back over tutorials continuously? This has been something that caught me in tutorial hell. I find that the Drill principle combines with Retrieval effectively.

Finding those pain points that slow you down, and working to develop a system to learn and retain them, will often powerfully propel your learning projects.

Find a way to test yourself. Make some content by learning in public. And then take notes on what went right, and what went wrong.

Developing a system for testing yourself helps you remember concepts better.

Some tactics to help practice retrieval:

1. Flash Cards - tried and true, look up spaced repetition
2. Free Recall - write down what you just learned after a learning session
3. The Question-Book Method - When you take notes, take them down as questions to force you to recall what you just learning.
4. Self-Generated Challenges - Gamify your learning, learn in public and level up by making projects
5. Closed-book learning - try building a project from scratch and cut yourself off from looking stuff up (except on stack overflow obviously!)

6. Feedback

How can you be sure you are getting honest feedback on your performance?

The best way to get feedback when learning web3 is learning in public. If you aren't comfortable getting the criticism personally, you can always make an anon account specifically for learning projects. Feedback is a gift and once you get your ego out of the way, you can rapidly improve your performance.

There are concrete strategies you can apply to work strategically towards getting quality feedback.

1. Analyze the stats of the work you produce publicly to figure out key metrics you can target to improve.
2. Get out of your comfort zone and make something on the peripheral of your core competencies.
3. Get metafeedback - develop a way to test different learning techniques, like an A/B test for how you learn.

7. Retention

It pays to develop a plan to remember what you've learned over the long term.

Spaced repetition helps for long term retention. A key here with learning web3 is to take stuff you learn in tutorials and actually build something with it. Even relatively simple projects, build the most basic implementation you can of a web3 product.

Tools like Moralis and Thirdweb are great for rapidly creating practice builds of your ideas.

Build a static web page with a metamask login and practice making it responsive. Create an NFT marketplace page using Thirdweb. There are practical ways to create versions of your ideas, and then share them on Twitter for rapid feedback.

8. Intuition

The challenge here is balancing whether you are actually understand the things you are learning, or practicing rote memorization.

Sometimes it can be hard to tell. Can you teach the things you know to other people? How do you really develop intuitive understanding of complicated ideas?

The answer is consistency over time, and helping teach what you know in a simple way.

Teaching others not only creates content and generates valuable feedback, it helps solidify the concepts in your mind. Creating always helps put your own stamp on an idea, and helps you make it your own. Putting in a small amount of work everyday towards developing products based on what you learn generates opportunities as well as anchoring concepts in your subconscious.

9. Experimentation

Web3 itself is a giant experiment, and experimentation with your own ideas fits very naturally here.

Going beyond the basics helps tremendously for getting out of tutorial hell. Branching out and adding new approaches to your goal can create some creative synergy. However, you don't want to get too off track and not moving directly towards your goal.

Instead, look for different avenues of approach and alternative ways to accomplish your goal.

Your personal creativity is your biggest asset here. Make a list of 10 product ideas, no matter how simple, you can make to implement what you are learning. Apply the same skills to areas of web3 you haven't explored before.

Conclusion

Ultralearning is a powerful mental model you can use to improve how you learn.

Making your learning process more efficient leads to radical gains in leveling up your web3 skillset over time. Making targeted ultralearning projects that utilize the 9 principles above are a source of valuable data. Success or fail, what matters is to ship and produce something based on what you've learning.

Implementing these principles on your projects over time can speed up the feedback loop between idea and execution.

These principles can most powerfully utilized when learning web3 to ship actual projects. Learn in public, gather feedback, and make the simplest version of your ideas as part of your learning process. You will become more flexible, intuitive, and most important, skilled in rapidly prototyping Minimal Viable Products of your ideas.

Thank you for reading, and I hope the article provides your some value to speed up and make your learning process more effective!