Who is Scott Young?
Scott Young is an entrepreneur and writer who is an expert on Ultralearning, a method for acquiring difficult skills rapidly and effectively. While we talk a great deal about his recently published book Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career, Scott has also been writing about a wide variety of topics on his website: https://www.scotthyoung.com
Why am I interviewing Scott?
My history with self-improvement strategies has been decidedly mixed. It’s not because self-improvement strategies don’t work per se. If you wanted to develop good habits or improve your skills or lose weight or whatever, there are many tried and true strategies for doing so.
But what I often found is that my expectations for these self-improvement programs were too great. Instead of simply expecting that I would get better at programming or get six-pack abs, I thought that once I achieved those goals, I would automatically be fulfilled on a deeper, more meaningful level.
What I wanted to ask Scott is this: can ultralearning be a path to a fundamentally more meaningful life? Or should those who pursue ultralearning temper their expectations?
What will you learn from this episode?
Here’s what you can expect to learn from Scott if you listen to the whole episode:
- The definition of ultralearning and how he became an expert
- Who he thinks ultralearning is for
- The role ultralearning can play in generating a meaningful life
- How he has dealt with his personal anxieties and the ups and downs of his professional life
- How he became interested in ancient wisdom, in particular, Eastern philosophy
- The role ancient wisdom should (and should not) play in personal-development
- His religious background and his reasons for being an atheist
- His advice for me on dealing with my overabundance of free time and the feeling that I’m wasting it
Why is the production quality so bad?
This is my first attempt at editing a podcast so it was bound to be bad. Hopefully I’ll improve over time!