Scott Young > Quotes

“It’s more effortful to actively practice than to passively watch a video, so it’s easy to lean toward consumption rather than action.”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

“Even the things we do for fun, we enjoy to a large extent because we feel we’re capable of getting better at them.”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

“Every essay written, song composed, or building designed is a novel problem, and thus can’t merely be copied from solutions of the past. But even if many problems are new, the knowledge that is best served to solve them usually isn’t.”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

“In many fields a year of focused work plus caring a lot would be enough.”
― Scott Young, Ultralearning: The Essential Guide To Mastering Hard Skills And Future-Proofing Your Career

“Unlike hunger or thirst, curiosity is stoked, not sated, when we learn more.”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

“Skill requires practice, not just observation.”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

“When we lack access to people we can learn from, we struggle to make progress.”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

“Start speaking the very first day. Don’t be afraid to talk to strangers. Use a phrasebook to get started; save formal study for later. Use visual mnemonics to memorize vocabulary.”
― Scott Young, Ultralearning: The Essential Guide To Mastering Hard Skills And Future-Proofing Your Career

“How could students solve a problem, but not learn the method they used for solving it?”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

“We learn best through other people.”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

“Just as high-quality, immediate feedback underlies the progressively deepening skill of elite athletes and musicians, its absence can also explain deteriorating performance.”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

“There are three factors that determine how much we learn: See. Most of what we know comes from other people. The ease of learning from others determines, to a large extent, how quickly we can improve. Do. Mastery requires practice. But not just any practice will do. Our brains are fantastic effort-saving machines, which can be both a tremendous advantage and a curse. Feedback. Progress requires iterative adjustment. Not just the red stroke of a teacher’s pen, but contact with the reality we’re trying to influence.”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

“Improvement is inconsistent, if it comes at all.”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

“The knowledge of building something as simple as a pencil isn’t held by any individual, but groups who work together toward a common purpose.”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

“when we have no one we can learn from and must find our way in an unfamiliar problem space, it helps to first explore the space rather than solve problems.”
― Scott Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery