Hack The System Podcast: Episode 2 with Scott H Young

Welcome to the second episode of the Hack The System show!

You should subscribe to this show on iTunes.

The Hack The System Podcast is your access to interviews with the worlds’ foremost experts on blogging, lifestyle design, traveling, and life/system hacking. In short–you’re going to learn how to kick ass.

In this episode, I sit down with Scott H Young of ScottHYoung.com. Scott is awesome–at 23, he’s built a business that pays for a swanky Vancouver apartment and all his bills, freeing up his time to do what he really loves to do: learn.

Scott has written a ton of ebooks and posts about learning. Over the last few months he has been implementing the MIT Challenge. He is using the MIT coursework, available online for free, to learn the entire MIT Computer Science Curriculum, in just one year. The amazing part is that, due to his system of studying, he never seems to be working—he takes frequent breaks, and always finishes his work by 6pm.

Listen to the podcast here:
[powerpress]

Watch it here:

This podcast can be seen on iTunes. Click here to follow it via iTunes (and automatically sync it to your iPod)
[tweetlock]
0:13 – Scott H. Young
0:47 – How to get more from life
1:04 – The main distinguishing characteristic of my blog is that I talk a lot about learning
2:10 – Don’t memorize something that needs to be understood
3:31 – Learning holistically
4:42 – It’s not just about being proactive & a good student – it’s about understanding things on a deeper level so that you actually enjoy the learning
5:27 – Learning better is more difficult but not more time consuming
7:03 – The more you can separate your work and your life the less stress you’ll have
9:17 – People feel that the spontaneity of their system is what makes it relaxing, but that couldn’t be further from the truth
[/tweetlock]
11:43 – Scott’s Three Phases of Learning
12:47 – The “Feynman” Technique
14:58 – The big problem with learning is that we don’t really have a good sense about what we don’t understand yet about an idea
19:51 – First get coverage of all the ideas so that you can see the big picture
22:50 – If you’re learning something technical, do 50% practice problems
23:32 – The point of practice questions is to search for possible errors
23:40 – Cal Newport’s “Quiz and Recall” Approach
25:20 – We don’t want negative feedback

26:16 – The key to going to a dedicated approach is to flip that mentality on its head; you must constantly remind yourself of the things you don’t yet understand
28:00 – Don’t resist deliberate practice
30:13 – Having intrinsic motivation
33:17 – Weekly Daily Goals
35:55 – The Pomodoro Technique
38:39 – Brainstorm / Destruct for Creative Work
43:01 – I need to give these people some benefits and skills, not just ideas
48:42 – Figuring out the worldview of your customers; how they interpret their own problems