Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career
If you learned one skill that would be a game changer in your career, what would it be? Or to say differently, what’s one skill that will actually make you succeed in your career?
That’s a powerful question, and one that I’ve asked myself many times. I decided to go on a reading and learning sabbatical because I was feeling a bit inadequate. As someone who reads this blog regularly, you know that I’m an avid reader. And I try to read broadly.
Despite that, I wondered if I was missing the mark on reading. You have very successful billionaires like Mark Cuban, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk, who read with the intent to learn. It made sense to me that the books I decided to read during my reading and learning sabbatical would be ones that gave me strategies to use in my business. Strategies I could use to take my business to the next level.
One of the factors that help these men to actually succeed in their career is because they know how to learn.
Others have done exactly what I’m trying to do, so why not me? If this one act helped these men to succeed, don't you think if you you adopted that mindset, it would help to make you succeed in your career?
To ensure that I got the most from the time I invested reading books with the intent to learn. I decided to continue learning as much as I could on learning and memory. I even created the program, Learning How to Learn Again, to help professionals master the skill of how to learn. If you learn this one skill, you will have everything you need to effectively learn other skills. And that means you could readily learn skills to succeed in your career.
You can learn this one skill in 2 months if you set your mind to it and if you choose the right books to read. And it will actually make you succeed in your career because you’ll become learning agile. This is worth thinking about because a recent report by McKinsey Global, The Future of Women at Work: Transitions in the Age of Automation,
“estimates that between 40 million and 160 million women globally may need to transition between occupations by 2030, often into higher-skilled roles.”
With every new technological breakthrough there are winners and there are losers. If you are learning agile, you can ensure that you are a winner with the introduction of new technology.
Additionally, every two years or so, the World Economic Forum conducts research to uncover the 10 key skills you’ll need to learn to succeed and thrive in the near future. That’s great intelligence to have, and you’ll gather insights from their research report on the skills update. Learning the skills will make you more valuable and marketable.
But I imagine that it’s stressful and overwhelming just for you to think about up-skilling every two years. How can you, or anyone for that matter, manage to keep up when there is so much going on in your life and work?
During the time I allocated for reading the right books to learn the key skills to thrive in the future, something suddenly struck me. I always knew it intuitively. In fact, I’ve written about it before. But for some reason, it hit me in a different way this time. While on my reading and learning sabbatical – trying to learn a lot in a contracted time frame – it became clear that if I mastered the art of learning, I could learn any skill in a timely manner. 
Neuroscience and cognitive science are areas I’m interested in, solely to become better at learning and memory. Since skills will always be changing it made sense to read several books on the topic of how to learn. I’ve mentioned a few times that I read somewhere that if you want to master a topic of interest you need to read five goods on the subject.
In terms or reading, learning and memory, I’ve read over 10 books. A couple of the books I read twice. One of the books I read twice because it was very academic and difficult to understand the way it was written. The second, I read through once, then read again because it was such an important book. But this is about me, what’s in it for you? Answer the following questions to determine if learning how to learn would be important in your career?
- Wouldn’t you like to know how to get the most out of reading books?
- What would happen in your career if you learned effective reading and learning strategies?
- How about if you were able to focus on the essential information in any nonfiction book, how quickly would you be able to read the book?
- In what ways would your life change if you learned how to digest a book in 30 to 60 minutes?
My guess is that you’d be able to read a lot of books, learning in-demand skills, and acquiring the knowledge to grow in your career, and to even get the promotion you deserve. Here are the key books I read…
Some of the Books I’ve Read on Reading, Learning, and Memory
- Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens by Barbara Oakley
- How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens by Benedict Carey
- Teach Yourself How to Learn: Strategies You Can Use to Ace Any Course at Any Level by Saundra Yancy McGuire
- Teach Students How to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate Into Any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation by Saundra Yancy McGuire
- The Lifetime Learner’s Guide to Reading and Learning by Gary Hoover
- The Thinker’s Guide For Students On How to Study & Learn a Discipline by Linda Elder and Richard Paul
- Never Stop Learning: Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself, and Thrive by Bradley R. Staats
- Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown
- Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career by Scott H. Young
- Effortless Learning: Learn The Secrets That Teachers Never Told You: Master Any Subject, Memorize More, And Focus Fast by Tony Roe
Have you read?
Effortless Learning by Tony Roe, Book Review
Although some of the books on the list above are much better than others, I can honestly say that I learned something important from each one. When you read so many books on one topic in a contracted time span, something happens to you. You’re learning about the key ideas that form the foundation for the subject. But you’re also comparing and contrasting what you’re learning as well as making interconnections.
However, nothing in your life will change if you don’t apply what you’re learning in practical ways. One of the things that struck me though, is that even though the books were on similar topics, some of the information and yet others were so different. That’s why it’s so important to read broadly to gain different perspectives.
How Learning How to Learn Again Will Make You Succeed in Your Career
I’d like to say again that I created Learning How to Learn Again program, to help you master the skill of how to learn. You’ll read four books in two months and there is an assessment to test your knowledge of what you learn from each of the four books. However, what I’ve also done is to create a playbook, where I included effective reading, learning and memory strategies. I curated the best information from the books I read on the topic. The benefit to you is that you won’t have to read all those books.
Do you think learning how to learn will make you succeed in your career? If this sounds like something that will interest you, read more about Learning How to Learn Again program.
