How the 9 Principles of Ultralearning Can Improve Your Writing Skills

Learn to write in a new way

I recently discovered the book „Ultralearning. Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career“ by Scott H. Young, released in 2019, and it made me think about learning methods and the self-learning principle in a new way. In this book Young describes Ultralearning, referring to 9 principles, as a new way to develop and learn a specific skill in an optimized and faster learning process.

Writing can also be used in this context because writing is a skill which can be optimized easily with the strategy of Ultralearning. So, if you currently are writing on a book, on your blog or on study texts or similar, then the 9 principles of Ultralearning are extremely relevant and interesting for you.

Lifelong Learning Is the Foundation in Our Knowledge Society

Because lifelong learning has become more important than ever in our knowledge society. The world of work is constantly changing. In the rapidly changing digital information age, key qualifications are shifting faster and faster to new professions. Tried and tested methods lose their relevance. The fight for the fastest expansion of competencies began a long time ago.

Employees must now act independently and take care of acquiring knowledge and information as well as expanding their skills. In order to remain relevant and meaningful, they have to consciously and decisively adapt to the new job requirements. Changeability, flexibility and adaptability are the new factors in order to be able to act on the front line in the long term.

Digitalization has given knowledge a new half-life and thus made knowledge durable. The constant flood of data and knowledge makes it possible to be up to date anywhere and at any time. Pure factual knowledge is no longer a key qualification. Learning and developing oneself qualitatively is and will remain a lifelong phenomenon.

Ultralearning Is the New Key Method for Quickly Optimizing Skills

Primarily, Scott H. Young discovered, researched, and developed the Ultralearning method by running several Ultralearning projects through self-experiments and challenges. He learned and completed e.g. Computer Science courses at the MIT, including all exams, within one year, which is normally for 4 years.

In another project, he learned the languages ​​Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Korean each within 3 months by living in the respective country, attending language courses there and speaking in these languages ​​for the entire year without even are allowed to resort to familiar English words.

Young explains that while theory is useful and essential for learning facts and knowledge. To develop a skill, however, you need a lot of practice, and this practice is the focus in Ultralearning. He distinguishes between the two forms of learning: passive learning, which exclusively creates knowledge, and active learning, which consequently develops the skill.

The best way to learn languages ​​is to communicate primarily with native speaking people. Programming is learned through incessant programming. Photographing or painting by photographing or painting. Sure, that’s logical and understandable. But in order to be successful within a shorter period of time, you need an intensive learning phase in order to develop the new skill. This intensive, practical learning phase is Ultralearning.

Ultralearning is „the process of intense self-directed learning“, „with a willingness to prioritize effectiveness.“

Ultralearning does not necessarily have to be hardcore and full time. Young recommends either part-time, during gaps in school or work schedules or just to “integrate into the time and energy you already devote to learning.”

During his Ultralearning experimentation phase, Young developed 9 principles which, building on one another, allow the respective skill to be learned, improved and deepened in the best way as quickly as possible.

These are the 9 principles:

• 1. Metalearning: „First draw a map“ • 2. Focus: „Sharpen your knife“ • 3. Directness: „Go straight ahead“ • 4. Drill: „Attack your weakest point“ • 5. Retrieval: „Test to learn“ • 6. Feedback: “Don‘t dodge the punches“ • 7. Retention: „Don’t fill a leaky bucket“ • 8. Intuition: „Dig deep before building up“ • 9. Experimentation: „Explore outside your comfort zone“

How You Can Improve Your Writing Skills Through Ultralearning

The foreword to the book was written by James Clear, the author of “Atomic Habits”. He talks about how Ultralearning helped him write his bestseller and goes into a little bit about how he improved his writing skills during that time.

„The more one learns, the greater the craving to learn more.“

James Clear says in the foreword to the book: “Writing is an Ultralearning project”. Indeed, because even supposedly experienced writers always find weak points where they can always improve.

In the following, you can see how the 9 principles of Ultralearning can improve your writing skill.

1. Metalearning

The first principle “Metalearning” can also be defined as “model analysis” and “imitation”. It takes a lot of experience and time to become a skilled, competent, and successful writer. That is why the importance of “role model analysis” and “imitation” is repeatedly pointed out, to learn from the most popular and most successful writers in the chosen genre by methodologically analyzing their texts, spelling and headings and transferring them to your own texts. This saves time and years of experience.

This is exactly the first step in Metalearning: read a lot. Every time you read your favourite blogger, you note down special and concise formulations or headline constructions. You also learn whether academic writing or essayistic writing suits the chosen readership. In articles, mostly essayistic and personal writing is preferred. So it often makes sense to break away from academic writing and learn essayistic writing. Good research and genre analysis is particularly important to delineate the area in which you want to move while writing.

With Metalearning you develop your writing skill through strategic analysis and targeted imitation.

2. Focus

Focus is a major issue in Ultralearning. If you only devote yourself half-heartedly to writing, you can only be half-heartedly successful with it. So it is necessary to take a lot of time to write. Most writers start with a few chapters or texts a month, and only write a few days a week. You will quickly notice that more time is required for reading and writing in order to be successful. So it makes sense, depending on the workload, to set certain days for writing per week.

Many writers often point out that success usually only takes place with constant writing routine, and that submitting comes second. So it is necessary to develop a daily writing routine. Because many report that if they don’t write for a few days, it is extremely difficult for them to get back to routine. In order to counteract the subsequent procrastination, it is essential to keep writing as daily as possible, if only for half an hour, so as not to lose focus on writing.

In this way, the “focus” helps to develop a daily writing routine that lets you stay on the ball without feeling careless.

3. Directness

Now that you have prepared the framework conditions such as genre, research and model analysis as well as time management and the weekly writing routine, it is time to think about writing itself.

“Directness” means “learning by doing”, learning by simply doing it, by simply writing what’s in your mind. To help to improve your writing, it’s necessary to build a writing routine with deadlines. It helps to set weekly deadlines, maybe one or two at the beginning of the writing adventure. This can be on Mondays and Wednesdays, for example, as most articles or chapters are usually written within 2 days, so in the first half of the week, you can achieve a lot. The faster and more experienced you get when writing, the more often you will be able to finish writing texts weekly in the future.

Once a writing routine has been developed, you will soon be able to write faster and maybe create and manage more weekly. It’s best that your deadlines are set in such a way that they conform to your working hours, so you should stay within this time window if possible. This can vary greatly depending on the research effort. This flexibility is not bad for most, because private events such as holidays, appointments, events etc. can be spontaneously planned around the week, but they can also be postponed flexibly.

Directness is therefore the “learning by writing”-phase in Ultralearning.

4. Drill

Drill means in this context “practicing the learned writing methods” in the chosen writing routine. It can help to pay particular attention to 4 points: The headline, the intro text, the individual sub-points and the selection of images.

For example, headline analyzers can help improve the suitability of headings. They analyze the headline entered and evaluate its suitability for virality, which should result in at least 60 points in the score. By variation you can practice here to find better suitable headings.

In addition, you use the learned methods and noted formulations of the best genre writers in each of your articles or chapters and thus constantly receive an improved overall structure for texts and content. With each new article or chapter, you can get a sense of how the content flows in the text without missing the topic.

The variation of the image selection is also a point that can be constantly tried out and improved. For example, you can tell whether only a cover picture or several pictures fit the sub-items when you focus on the length and topic of the article. The shorter the text, the fewer pictures are necessary so that the reader is not overwhelmed by the abundance of text. Depending on the topic and concept, there are several ways to use meaningful images.

So, drill means practice, practice, practice.

5. Retrieval

Retrieval is the test phase during Ultralearning. But how do you test your writing skills? This is where editing or an editor comes into play. They regularly receive the intermediate status of the manuscript or receive a finished text, which is now checked for reading suitability and grammar, spelling and fluency. If there are only marginal discrepancies, you can be sure that the writing skill has improved. However, if serious errors are to be noted, this is the time to evaluate the writing progress and make adjustments if necessary. The progress can then be recorded anew with each further editing.

Another possibility, without an editor, is to observe how quickly and fluently you can write without making serious mistakes. To consider whether your own writing skills have improved and whether you are satisfied with the process or have to make changes to the process. To ask whether adjustments have to be made to the daily routine or whether the selected writing routine can now be used. Maybe two chapters a week now instead of one.

Retrieval means here: to stop for a moment and test (through editing) whether the current writing performance fits or can still be optimized.

6. Feedback

Young recommends getting regular feedback on project progress in order to check the skill for errors or gaps. This feedback is very easy to get on blogs, but especially on social media platforms. There is a large community that value the performance and content of stories and therefore like to interact with the writers. Every author automatically receives enough feedback through views and reading time, likes or claps and comments. This allows you to see and understand which topic is particularly popular with users and which seems less interesting.

However, this feedback is not easy to accept. With this feedback you can consider whether, for example, the selected headline should possibly be improved, or whether the length of the text is inappropriate or the content is insufficiently informative. Many readers also like to give tips on what they like about the text and sometimes also what could give the text more expression. This feedback is definitely to be valued and in no way to be seen as a discrediting or devaluation. It should neither discourage nor insult, but only serve the purpose of optimization.

Feedback is therefore important in order to check your progress in Ultralearning and to adjust it if necessary.

7. Retention

Young describes retention as to “understand what you forget and why”. The storage process in the brain is very complex. Nevertheless, it makes sense in the long term to be able to keep the most important articles and writing elements in mind.

Mnemonic techniques help here, whereby structure techniques, subtleties and formulations for the texts can be remembered more quickly and thus can be used faster and more flexibly for the texts.

Young explains: “Relearning is much faster than learning them initially, because relearning is closer to repair work, while original learning is a completely new construction.”

For this reason, remembering techniques such as Keyword or Linkword techniques are particularly advisable to acquire more to counteract quick forgetting. As soon as information and formulations get deeply into the memory through regular practice, they are stuck in the storage location in the long term and can always be better accessed.

Retention is an important form of storage of the newly learned behavior patterns, important formulation approaches, relevant writing techniques and all other new influences of writing.

8. Intuition

Now it’s time to play with your new skill and explore it, to find your intuitive writing flow and to explore the feelings and emotions in writing. So, how can you discover your intuitive power of writing?

Maybe you have now a clue what writing is all about. But what if you are still in the beginning? What if you think you can write but somehow not? Often times it is good to just write in the way how you feel it. During this phase it becomes apparent to what extent the learned writing patterns are integrated into natural, instinctive writing. The more the idea behind the text is visualized or made familiar through examples or analogies, the easier the flow of thought and writing.

Intuition is therefore a part of the new writing skill, to write faster, more logical, more emotional. The flow of thoughts and writing flows naturally at this stage.

9. Experimentation

The last principle is one of the funniest and exciting part of your writing progress. But also the hardest. Because now it is time to “step out of the comfort zone”. Your writing skill only becomes established when you try out new writing forms and genres. Always writing or manifesting in the same text genre is ultimately only restrictive. In order to improve your writing skills significantly, new versions of texts are necessary. Some that one would not usually try or would never dare to write.

There are three versions of experimentation: to experiment with methods and resources, to experiment with techniques and materials and to experiment with the writing style and genre. So, choose and experiment with what is still missing.

By trying out new genres and writing topics, you understand how you CANNOT write, which topics are NOT suitable for you or which writing content CANNOT be achieved personally.

On the one hand, the writing portfolio is expanded to include exciting, unexpected genres through experimentation. On the other hand, it confirms the certainty which writing options won’t suit and won’t be successful.

Because professionals know exactly what they can do and what they definitely cannot.

Conclusion

“Every project could be widened to explore a life-long learning project.“

Young says that Ultralearning is not easy because it takes a lot of strength and perseverance in a short amount of time, although it can be frustrating and exhausting. Nevertheless, this project is worthwhile in order to train, deepen, improve and, above all, individually develop one’s competence as quickly as possible. This can go so far that you find yourself in writing subjects that you had little idea of ​​before.

Ultralearning not only helps to develop and significantly improve personal writing skills, but can also be tailored to any project. The 9 principles are universally applicable and enable you to quickly develop any skill you can imagine. Be it to remain competitive on the job market, to develop skills that you need in your private sphere or to fulfill the desire to learn something that you have always wanted to learn.

You just have to want it. As soon as you are aware of WHAT you want to learn and WHY, nothing stands in the way of successful learning. The 9 principles of Ultralearning will help you on your way.

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