Directness

2020 has been a rollercoaster year for everyone. Imagine if you could start 2021 on a different, more positive note. Like dividing the year into 4 quarters, and then becoming fluent in Chinese, Portuguese, Korean and Spanish. Fluent, in just 3 months each! Is that even possible?

Scott Young, the author of a book called Ultralearning, did exactly this. He went one entire year without speaking any English – his native tongue.

This is not just about languages. Scott takes this to the next level in so many ways. Despite always being a very average student in school, he completes an entire MIT engineering 4-year course in just 1 year, and that too without classroom coaching, but studying online. If all his techniques had to be distilled into one word, it would be ‘directness’. Directness is the practice of learning by directly doing the thing you want to learn.

How many times do we take up a new project, and let it linger in our minds, rather than in action? As he puts it, “Passive learning creates knowledge. Active practice creates skill.” There are plenty of other examples in his book – which all go to show that we each have no limitations whatsoever – except those enforced on ourselves by our own minds.

So, what are you going to learn in 2021?