Scott Young: A Year Without English and Ultralearning Languages

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Hey guys, welcome to episode 164 of the Actual Fluency Podcast. Today I'm bringing you an interview with Scott Young. He just released his book Ultralearning, Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition and Accelerate Your Career, which you can find in bookstores all around, including Amazon. And in the episode we talk about his concepts of ultralearning, his language learning project, A Year Without English, where he traveled to four different countries in one year and spoke little to no English with his friend Vat. And they produced some pretty great videos about it. So if you haven't checked those out, definitely do go check that out. Uh, but he's probably mostly known for his MIT challenge, which he did a few years ago where he completed the exams of a four-year degree in just 12 months, and, uh, wrote a lot about the experience, which kind of led the foundation for the book that just came out, Ultralearning. So, definitely check that out.

In other news, uh, just, I was just at the LangFest. It's, uh, oh, I guess it's almost been a month since, uh, that happened. But it was a great time. I just want to give a shout out to everyone who was there. It was really, it was a very positive experience. It's a great vibe, and there was just, it was just positivity all around. We were very lucky with the weather. I had some great food, caught up with some, some friends, and all in all just had a great time. I can't recommend language learning events highly enough.

You know, I, I, um, I've been talking about it on the podcast for a while, and one of the people that took me up on my advice was uh, my friend Jonathan, who uh, runs Jonathan Huggins International. And he, he does language challenges among other things. And he, he was saying how, how cool it was to actually be there. And the last day I was saying, when the last day was ending, I was saying to him, you know, I'm feeling a little bit of post polyglot event blues already. And he was like, what do you mean? I, I'm feeling great. Uh, what, what, what are you talking about? And I kind of had to break the news to him that, you know, once the event is over, you, you kind of hit a an immediate slump just because it was so awesome to hang out with so many great people and have such a good time. And, uh, he wasn't prepared for it, but, uh, the next day I, I did get a message from him saying that it, it's real, it's real, it's hitting me now. And, uh, once you get to a few events, you definitely learn to anticipate it. It doesn't really go away, unfortunately, but, uh, I guess we can just go to more events.

And speaking of more events, if you haven't checked out the Polyglot Cruise, be sure to check it out. polyglotcruise.com. I have a few extra spots, uh, because LangFest graciously invited me to present the event on stage, which I wasn't really prepared for. You know, I'm good friends with the organizers. Big, big shout out to the organizers, uh, Tetsu, Joey, and Nikola for, uh, for giving me that space and, and, you know, showcasing other language events throughout the year. And, and because I wasn't really prepared for that, uh, I had to tell them, you know, well, the registration was closed, and we didn't really have any more spots, if you've been following the, the cruise process, you know that we closed the registration in the middle of August, which was two weeks before the event. But since Tetsu was, uh, so nice and the organizers were so nice to give me that space, I, I talked to the cruise line and reserved a few extra cabins out of my, uh, my own pocket. So, hopefully we get, get those cabins filled. Uh, it's just a few spots, so if you are interested in coming, go to polyglotcruise.com. Uh, the registration is sort of unofficially closed, but, uh, obviously, as long as we have spots, we're gonna accept registrations.

Seven-day cruise in case you haven't heard about it. It's, uh, on a luxury cruise ship in the Mediterranean. We're gonna go from Barcelona back to Barcelona again in a week. So, so we're gonna sail around the Mediterranean Sea. It's like an all-inclusive experience, and we're gonna have some great presentations, some great opportunities to meet some of the, uh, some great polyglots in the community, and also hang out with 40 other passionate language learners. And because it's such a limited group, I really think that we're gonna have a great, uh, event, uh, which will be very different to the other events. Obviously, I'm takin, I've taken great inspiration from events like the LangFest and the Polyglot Gathering, but just because we're gonna be on the same kind of, in the same kind of hotel, so to speak, and we're gonna be a smaller group, I really feel like we can make a lot of progress. And one of the biggest advantages is obviously getting access to people who have completely made their careers online in languages. You know, bloggers and podcasters, and if you're interested in something like online teaching or tutoring or building your own business in any kind of language learning way, then you've got some of the great people in, in our little niche on board the ship to, uh, to chat about, and they can give you a lot of help and advice.

So, um, yeah, check out polyglotcruise.com, and in the meantime, enjoy this interview with Scott Young, and, uh, I'll see you in the next one. All right, Scott, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you. Do you want to start by giving the listeners just a brief back story to who you are and where you're from and what you've been doing so far?

But yeah, so I am a blogger. I'm a writer. I've been writing at my website, scottyoung.com for over 13 years now. And, uh, one of the things that, you know, if you have maybe possibly heard of me before, the way you would have heard of me before is I do these, uh, sort of aggressive, self-directed learning projects. Um, some of the things include the MIT challenge, which was a project I did in 2011 to 2012, where I wanted to learn MIT's four-year computer science curriculum by passing the final exams and doing the programming projects. But instead of going to MIT, I used the free resources they put online, and I did it instead of over four years, I did it over 12 months. That was my first big project.

I did a language learning project. So, in addition to having spent some time learning French when I was, uh, in university, I did an exchange, uh, a couple years after that, I did a project with a friend of mine, and we went to four different countries, uh, Spain, Brazil, China, and Korea to learn Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Mandarin Chinese and, uh, Korean. And the way that we did it, the sort of, kind of conceit of the project was that we decided we were gonna use what we call the no English rule. So that when we landed, we wouldn't speak to each other in English, or to anyone that we'd meet aside from like, you know, rare exceptions. And so, the overall process of the project was just using this immersion to really learn the languages well. And it, it worked pretty well. We were really comfortable living in each of these countries. And although Asian countries and Asian languages tend to be more difficult than European ones for learning, uh, even in China we were able to make friends and socialize and, um, you know, that was even a country where I, I passed a language exam, the HSK4. Uh, so, anyone who's studying Chinese would know that it is, who, who's not studying Chinese has no idea what that is, but the Chinese government likens it to a B2. It's probably not a B2, but, uh, that's sort of their rough equivalency metric there for that one.

And so that was a big project I did, and I've also done projects for portrait drawing and quantum mechanics, and, uh, and all of this has recently culminated in a book that I just published in August called Ultralearning. And the book not only documents some of my projects and my philosophy towards things, but really talks about this idea of pursuing kind of ambitious, aggressive, self-directed learning projects, and some of the really incredible outcomes people have got. So, I, I prefer other people's stories to my own. I think that there's a lot of people in the book who have done just incredible things, people like Tristan de Montbello, who went from near zero public speaking experience to being a world championship finalist, uh, in just seven months, and people like Nigel Richards, who won the French World Scrabble Championship without speaking French. So, there's a lot of these examples in the book, and I, I try to use these extreme examples of people doing really incredible things to try to see if we can't distill the principles of effective learning, so that you can approach learning things better in your own life. And it turns out there's a lot of really interesting cognitive science on the aspect of learning things that most people are not aware of, and yet makes a huge difference to your overall effectiveness, and nowhere is that clearer than language learning. So, I'm, I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today.

So, Korea was a little bit harder, and I think it was just, I think doing the two Asian ones back-to-back was maybe a mistake, just because Chinese, I really worked hard on it. And then you're like, oh, and here's another one that's just as difficult from scratch, and you're like, ah, okay, all right. So, I guess I've got to do this now. But, um, but yeah, the Spanish was really, um, really probably the, the clearest example of this method working, because it wasn't just that we were able to, you know, like, we had friends, we were socializing regularly. I was even dating a girl in Spain at the time, but also we were, um, having fun. Like it wasn't, it wasn't so painful. It wasn't just like, oh, this was three months of pain to get to a level of fluency. Like it was probably more like two or three weeks of really focused and stress, and then even when you're not speaking fluently, you're still getting by in regular life, you're still having fun. And so, I, I felt like that was one of the best experiences. And so I think that's one of the weird things to kind of put forth, because often when people think about learning a language, there's this trade-off that, you know, well, I'll be able to learn the language, but I'm sacrificing so much, whereas for me, it was just the opposite. That that experience in Spain was so much more rewarding than if we hadn't have been doing that. That if we hadn't been doing Spanish. So, even if, you know, I go back and there was some, you know, machine that like wiped my memories of Spanish after that trip in Spain, I still would have done it that way just because of the experience that I love.

And so, uh, that was sort of what triggered this project for, for language learning, is, you know, I know Benny, Benny's method isn't specifically this no English rule. This is a little bit of my kind of, uh, you know, framing of the problem. But definitely the speaking very early on, speaking a lot and having like, you know, interactions with people in that language predominantly fairly early on, is, is kind of a core tenant of Benny's method. And, and I think that his whole idea of doing these projects in a short time frame and thus, you know, really working hard at them, not really just, oh, okay, well, I'm gonna be here for a year, so let's just, you know, take it easy. But really investing in that was also something I definitely emulated from him.

And so, because Spain was such a kind of big success, we were really converted. We're like, oh my God, this works, and and we're gonna use this. And we were a little bit cocky too, I think, because we got to Spain, and we had booked our, uh, we had booked a, uh, uh, an Airbnb for the entire, most of the time, I think we were in Spain, we had booked it because we wanted to be prepared and we're like, okay, we're gonna have to get ready and this kind of thing. And so, when we went to Brazil, we were kind of basking from the like, ah, we got this, you know, we were a little bit that. So we booked a place in Brazil. We were staying in Florianopolis, and we get to the apartment, and it's just terrible. Like, they had been doing a bunch of renos, and it just reeked of like fresh paint and stuff. And I was like, oh, no, we cannot stay here. And it was also expensive. And, and when we were in Spain, we were kind of like, we were felt like we were overpaying for our place, and we were thinking like, you know, what would have been nice if we had like gotten some Spanish roommates. We thought that would have been good. So, so when we went to Brazil, and we got this terrible place, we're like, oh, screw this. Let's just find a different one. And so we managed to get out of our Airbnb. We like negotiated with the owner and canceled it and and whatnot. Um, but we didn't realize that now being homeless, that we don't actually have a place to stay, because we've canceled it. And we are in Florianopolis in Brazil in the summertime, which is like peak tourism season. So, of course, no place has place to stay. So, one of the first phrases we have to learn in Portuguese was, um, uh, is procurando um apartment for dois meses. Like, I'm looking for an apartment for two months, was one of the like, one of the phrases we had to learn in Portuguese, because we were going around to Pusada to Pusada asking this for people, of like, can we stay here for two months? Uh, here. And they're all like, no. Like, this has been booked for months. Like, you can't stay here. And it was a little ridiculous. We ended up talking to this realtor, who, uh, got us this apartment that she was trying to sell, but she couldn't sell it right away. And so she's like, oh, here's two westerners who will pay top dollar to stay here. So, she basically, uh, probably gouged us on staying in this apartment. But it was like there was a period of about two weeks there in the beginning where we were like, homeless, and we're like, dealing with stuff. I remember we were staying in this crappy little Pusada where the the shower head had like a heater inside the shower head, but it was like had some loose circuitry. So, occasionally, when you're taking a shower, you just get like zapped. You're doing this.

And so, so this was sort of the setup environment, and it was a little bit like, okay, you know, actually, we probably should have done a little bit more preparation and research before we just wandered in here, especially with the additional task of trying to learn a new language on top of it. So, Brazil was a little bit shakier there. But, the basic idea was, you know, we go there, we're speaking to each other in the language we're trying to learn. Portuguese, there was a little bit of a transition from Spanish to Portuguese, not only because of all this crap that was happening right in the beginning, but also, uh, because we decided we were going to do zero preparation for Portuguese. So, I'm doing like Pimsleur like the first like, I think probably like the first week, I was listening to Pimsleur to just get enough to like, okay, now I have a few phrases I can say to people. But then the most of it was just talking to people. And honestly, the talking to people when you really need to use the language helps because the people who we are trying to rent apartments from don't speak English. And the person that we eventually got the apartment from doesn't speak English. So, there was a real necessity. Like, I'm learning words because otherwise, I don't have a place to live. And we're gonna be sleeping on the beach. So,

So, one of the phrases that we would learn in each country, very early on, was saying, I have a project to learn whatever the language is, by not speaking English, or or not speaking English. And as soon as you explain that to people, they get what you're trying to do, and they understand, oh, this person is doing this on purpose. They're trying to learn this language. And I would say overwhelmingly, people are supportive. As soon as you explain that's what you're doing to them.

You know, it's more when, I think that sometimes you get this backlash of, oh, you know, you should just speak in English, when the person themselves has spent a lot of time learning English, so their English is pretty good, and they think that you're kind of trying to speak their language in a shitty way because, you know, it's sort of like, oh, well, this person thinks I cannot speak English, so they're using their like, you know, two phrases. But if you tell that person, look, I know you speak English better than I do, but I'm trying to learn your language, suddenly the mood changes. And so there were a lot of people who had a kind of like, oh, like, what are you doing? And then you say that to them, and they're like, oh yeah, that's a really good idea. And so, as soon as we would say that to people, it, it, it clicked for a lot of people. The only people I found who resisted it were, um, well, occasionally there would be people who were really trying to practice English. So, they were kind of like, yeah, I don't care about that. I'm trying to practice my English. So, whatever, you ignore them. And then otherwise, it would be other expats who don't speak the language very well. So, in Spain, we were super strict about not ever speaking to those people in English. I think by the time we hit China, we were comfortable enough with our method that when we would encounter those expats, it'd be like, okay, well, they don't speak this language at all, so I'm not gonna be a complete asshole to them and and not speak in English. But, um, but that was kind of, that was something we earned, that we had, okay, well, we've actually done the no English rule for like eight months now. So, if we're meeting someone and they can't speak Chinese, we can, we can talk to them for like, you know, two or three sentences. But I think you do need to be careful in the beginning because it's very easy to just make those people your friends, and then you never learn the language.

Uh, this idea that going to the country to learn the language, I think also sometimes is a little bit overrated. You know, it's very, it can be very, very beneficial and, and like you've demonstrated, you can get amazing results. But there's also a difference between moving there sort of without a time limit and being there for a fixed period of two to three months. I tried that when I moved to Hungary just to live there. I didn't have a an end date on, on that. So, for me, suddenly I was also not only did I have to worry about learning the language, I also had to worry about taxes and, and all the normal stuff, making friends and, and just making a life basically in this new country. So, sometimes people, I, I think they, they might be romanticizing the idea a little bit, but there's no doubt that if you're in, you know, you have to be very, um, proactive about it, I feel like, to

Uh, going no English, or using some sort of constrained version of the no English rule is very underrated. So, if you, and I'm saying no English, obviously if you're trying to learn English, then that would be, would be the all English rule. But we called it the no English rule because that in my opinion is the number one mistake that people make is that they want to learn another language and they find every excuse to not do it. And I find that if you set the rule, okay, I'm not allowed to speak English. The thing is, is that you habituate to that. So, that just becomes the new normal. And then you end up racking up huge amounts of practice with a lot less of the, you know, cajoling and pushing yourself. And, and I know this firsthand. I did France where I was definitely speaking mostly English, and I did Spanish, um, without it, and it's night and day. It's night and day how much easier the latter was than the former. So, I think if you're struggling with learning a language and you can't travel, then the thing to do would be to say, okay, you know, my roommate also wants to learn Spanish. Let's do no English. Or, you know, my partner speaks this language and I don't, so let's spend, you know, an hour every day where it's no English. Or so it doesn't have to be as extreme as all the time. But as long as there is a clear rule about it and you actually consistently apply it, I think the easiest rule is just all the time. But obviously some people have exceptions. You have to work in English. You have to, you know, your partner doesn't want to learn the language, and you do, so you have to like make compromises. But at the same time, I think if you set clear rules and you stick to them very early on, you will increase your practice time immensely compared to if it's, well, you know, I can, I'll try to speak as much as possible, because try to speak as much as possible invariably becomes what, like 15% of the time, 10%? It's, it's way, way less.

And so, I think the best way of approaching it is, because honestly, going up to strangers who aren't really there to teach you a language and talking with them is like, that's the maximum difficulty. That's the hardest thing to do. The easiest thing to do is to get a tutor from like iTalki or or somewhere where you're paying them. So, you're paying them for their time. So, already, you don't have to feel guilty about like, because the only reason they're there is to help you learn the language. So, if you're gonna have a disfluent conversation, it's better to have it there. Or with a friend or partner who's also trying to do the same thing. So, they don't care that you're going slowly because they're also going slowly. So, we use those two things very early on, that was like the the the majority of conversations in the first little bit.

And so, what I like to do is I have like a little protocol that I have when I'm talking with a new tutor in a new language. Basically, usually, um, especially if I haven't learned anything, I usually have the first conversation in English, just because you need to set the ground rules. That if this person doesn't know what you're trying to accomplish, um, it's, it's often they're going to do their own method that they want to apply with you, which may be not what you want. So, I think in Spanish, we were good enough when we started to to have that preliminary conversation in Spanish. Um, but I think in Chinese, for instance, I had to be like with the tutor, okay, you know, 20 minutes, this is what I want to do. Just so that they, they know what I'm trying to do and they're not trying to nudge me in their own direction. Like, I've had tutors who they get a textbook and they just want you to like read and do textbook exercises with them. And it's like, no, I'm paying you for your time. Like, I can do textbook exercises on my own. I don't want to do this. So, I think sometimes teachers have this idea of, I'm the language teacher, I know best. And I've always been really arrogant and been like, no, no, no, I'm paying you. We're gonna do it my way, and if you don't want to do it my way, I'll get someone else.

And so, what I usually do is I say to them what I want to do, is I want to have a conversation. It's gonna be really, really slow. I'm going to, you know, look stuff up in Google Translate, try to say it to you. When you say things, I'm going to ask you to write it down, so I can copy it into Google Translate. Translate it. We can go back and forth. And this will going to be the starting point for a conversation. And it's very slow, very halting. And so, some teachers find it uncomfortable, and they resist it, right? Uh, like I, I remember I had a Chinese tutor who said to me, we were doing this conversation, like, this is what I'm paying her for. And she said to me at some point, she's like, okay, that's enough conversation practice. Now back to the textbook. And I was like, no, no, no, I'm, I'm paying you. You know, you, you want to do this, um, I don't need you to pay, like, I can do textbook exercises on my own. I don't need to pay you for your time for this. And so, I feel like some tutors get it, and they will help you out right away. Some won't. And I think same with language exchange partners too. Some partners are like, okay, I get what you're trying to do. I'm going to help you out, and some won't. And so, I think you just kind of roll with the punches. People who aren't a good fit for you, all right, fine, that's okay, you know, you don't want to do it that way. I'll, I'll find someone else. And so, I think setting up that relationship, setting up those boundaries, these are the things that are super important, and most people don't do them. They don't actually, they don't actually, before they start learning a language, set the ground rules for how they're going to actually approach it. They just say to themselves, well, I'll just try as much as possible, and they don't even realize that they're starting to inculcate new habits that put them at a much slower trajectory than if they said, okay, we're doing no English. We're doing, you know, these, this person in this situation, we're doing it this way. With my tutor, we're doing it this way, and you set those ground rules in the beginning so that, you know, they already know what you're trying to do. And then, it, it turns out that sooner, soon enough, you actually start having interesting conversations, um, a lot earlier than you would expect if you're just doing the normal studying approach.

So, language learning, I think, is such a good example, because the, the sort of ideal way to learn a language is to have lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of practice. And the way that we teach classes is the teacher sits up at the front, the students sit quietly in the back, and the teacher just lectures at them. And this is just not the way to actually learn a language. And so, there's some teachers, I think, do play around with that format a little bit and they do things to encourage, so I don't want to say all language teachers are bad. I just think that if you start with your starting point, the idea that you have one teacher, 30 students, you sit in a classroom, there has to be test assignments, grades. Like, once you start with these assumptions, which teachers usually don't have any control over, well already you're in a position where you're maybe not using the most optimal approach.

And so, I think this is true of languages. It's true of many skills. It's true of probably art, of, uh, public speaking, of programming, of many, many skills where the format that we've been taught is the right way to learn something, constrains you in a way to actually prevent you from doing what really matters. So, I think if you can actually dig into what is the process that actually has to undergo in your brain in order to really learn this skill, you can often find ways that are going to be more effective for you. And, and language learning is just, I think, you know, the idea of, okay, I'm gonna sit with this partner and we're not gonna have a teacher, but we're gonna spend an hour a day just conversing in this language if haltingly, in this language, and then maybe once a week we talk with a tutor. Like, this is very different from a classroom format for learning, but I would argue is probably more effective in terms of, are you actually getting closer to a point where you can have meaningful interactions with people? And I think that's definitely true, and that that's actually the recommendation I give a lot of times when I, when I meet new people who are outside the language niche. They, they, they, and I say, oh, I do this language learning podcast. And they, they sometimes say, oh, I really wish I could learn language. And I say, well, why don't you? And they're like, oh yeah, but, you know, the classes are expensive, I don't really want to go back to school, and there's all these like excuses. Of course, you mentioned about traveling. Oh, I can't go to Spain right now. It's like, well, you can, you can do it from home. But I think the biggest kind of what I usually just say is like, just get a tutor one, one hour a week. It cost like $6 on iTalki. You know, you don't need like a certified, uh, language professor. You know, you just need someone who has that language as their native language.

And so, like, I'll give you an example because, you know, it's funny, right now, I would say I probably speak six languages conversationally, and I have like a little bit of a little bit right now of Macedonian and Japanese, but definitely not conversational. So, just sort of like a pre-conversational level. And so, having, you know, if I think about when I was first going to France, and I thought it would be so cool to speak one other language, and I'm thinking about where I am right now, there's a, there's a disconnect. Like, the the the place I'm in right now is speaking languages is just so far apart from there that I just, it's unrecognizable. And so, I think the difference is that when I was approaching French, I didn't have that confidence. I didn't have that experience of being successful with it. And because I didn't have that, it, it had this kind of mysterious quality to it, that like learning a language was something magical that like, well, would I be able to do it? And now, having done it, it's like, well, no, of course you can do it. You just have to do X, Y, and Z, and then and then you learn a language. There's nothing magical about it. But it didn't feel that way when I was starting.

And so, I think for a lot of people who say, oh, I'd like to learn this language, but then they don't, it's because they don't have that personal reference example of having had success with it. And I think part of that, as well, is related to, do you have other examples of people who have done that? Because again, prior to meeting Benny Lewis, I don't think I'd met any polyglots before. Like, the most languages I'd ever met, like if someone spoke three languages, that was like, this person is, you know, Jason Bourne. Like, that was my feeling when I would meet this person. It's like, oh my God, this person is so crazy impressive. Like, I'd never met someone who speaks, you know, four languages, or six languages, or 10 languages. Like, I'd never met that before. And, you know, part of me maybe even doubted it was possible for someone to do that. And so, it's, I think that, you know, part of my, my mission with sort of tryna this book is to pick out these people you've never heard of before and show you what they're doing, not to necessarily say that you need to be, you know, some hyper polyglot or that you need to do something in two months, or you need to do something really extreme. But just show you, these people exist, and that if you can see an example in someone else, that's not the same as doing it personally, because you still have to make that leap of doing it yourself. But it, it gets you closer to that. If you don't know anyone who's ever done something before, it's a lot harder to believe that you can do it than if you've at least seen a couple people do it before. And for language learning, for me, I've now met so many people who have done, you know, I, like, again, depending on the definition of fluency, but the sort of fluent in three months type project where they've gone to somewhere for a couple months, and they've come back being able to converse in that language, I've now seen that enough times that I'm, I'm not, I'm convinced that the difference of whether or not you're able to do that, mostly comes down to method, and not really your innate intelligence or language learning ability.

But at the same time, I think for a lot of people, when they're making the decision to learn a language, it's based on some kind of informal mental calculus of how much work is it gonna be for how much benefit? And so, if you're only experience learning a language was that you spent five years doing, you know, grade school Spanish, and you can barely habla in Espanol, then yeah, you do feel like that, right? You feel like, nah, it's not worth it, you know? It's not worth it.

And so, I, I guess that's the thing that I feel like I want to bring to people is again, not to, there's there's like this select group of people that get really upset when you say, oh, you you learn a language quickly, because they've been working on it so hard. But I'm like, most people, what they need to be taught isn't that you can become perfect in a short period of time, but just that that experience that you may have had learning a language is not necessarily indicative of how much effort it would be to get to a level where you can have meaningful communication with people. I think meaningful communication is what people want. They want to be able to go to Mexico and interact with Mexican people, not using English, and have something productive result from it. And for a lot of people, they've spent five years in school studying, and they've never had that once. If you've never had that experience once, then yeah, it seems like a complete waste of time to learn a language, whereas if you've not only had that, but you've had experiences that you couldn't have even imagined beforehand, you know, like, that you've gone to like, I remember it was, uh, I think it was, uh, yeah, it was probably about a month or so into Korea, which admittedly was even the country that we did the worst in, Um, and we were, we went out with this group of students and they were like, we went out for dinner with them and they're like, you know, they're drinking with us and they're like explaining all the like complicated rules for like drinking in Korea and this kind of thing. And like the food and stuff, but like, you know, there's this whole hierarchy of like who's older than whom and like how you have to pour the drinks and all this kind of stuff. They're teaching us drinking games. And I was like, this is not an experience that I would have been able to have without having gone down this path. And so, I think, you know, it's it's things like that that that to me, you know, I've had this visceral prior experience of learning these languages that to me is just so obviously worth it that if you've only had this experience of, oh my God, I got to do some more conjugation exercises in my Spanish textbook, then yeah, no wonder you kind of rated, ah, language learning, who cares about that. So, I think for me, I want to show people these examples because, you know, I think if you have your own enthusiasm that you really, really like something and you, you know that it can be done, I think that that feeling is, is somewhat contagious as well.

So, I, I think what what your your book is doing and it's funny, there's always a link between these podcast episodes and sometimes faith has it there right after each other. But the last episode, I, I did was with the founder of Linguist, which is a flashcard app. And one of his ambitions was to further human learning, because he's saying, and obviously this is a theory, it looks like it could be true, but we'll see, he's saying that because of automation and AI and machinery and all this, it's continually improving, humans need to learn to learn faster, to retrain. So, it's like, it's a perfect timing for the book as well and, and to to give some more exposure to that topic.

But I think the underlining for me is just like, we are so much more capable than we think. Like, we're held down by beliefs and the, and society, because I don't know how it is in, in Canada specifically, but I know in in Denmark and, and I think also here in the UK a lot, if you say, if you have some crazy idea like, oh, I want to pass the, you know, MIT in in a year. So, people are gonna be like, no, don't bother. Why would you? You can't do that. That's impossible, you know, instead of, that sounds interesting. I, I wonder if that's possible. So,

But rather, what is the, what is the thing that people are unwilling to do, that if I did it, I could get good at it really fast. And so, that's a sort of, that's sort of like the kind of thing that's I'm asking myself in the back of my head whenever I'm do things like, what is the thing that people are unwilling to do? What are the things that like, this is very uncommon because people don't usually do that. And that, that could also plausibly have some advantage, you know, not just working really hard, but like, example, like the the no English rule is is just something that, you know, I've suggested it to a lot of people, and it's weird because it feels like in my bones like, this is the way to learn a language. But lots of people, oh yeah, I really want to learn French, and then you say, oh yeah, well, why don't you try doing this. And then they're like, yeah, I'm not gonna do that. And so, so for me, that is like, that is sort of some of the magic as well, that if you can not only be convinced that there is a better way of doing things, and that the reason that it's not super common is because a lot of people, you know, they're not willing to do that.

I think that that is also somewhat of a difference as well. Like, you know, I think that the MIT challenge that I did, I don't think that it was impressive because, you know, I did something really special. I think it was just that most people they're not gonna go that far for just self-education. I think that they're probably going to be like, well, you know, maybe I'll take a class and maybe I'll watch the lecture videos, but I won't try to do any of the assignments or exams. You know, like, people aren't gonna go that far. And so, I'm not saying that everyone necessarily needs to go that far, but I think seeing that going that far is possible, it, it opens a lot of opportunities.

And so, you know, even the person like I mentioned in the book, Tristan de Montebello with the public speaking, I mean, his whole thing was like, what if I really tried to get good at public speaking? And I think that answer to that question is often more interesting than, you know, oh, you know, that's it, that's do more than you're thinking you're capable of right now.

And, and I think, you know, we're talking about a lot of these sort of dramatic stories, and I find there's often a tension between people who, you know, you see something really dramatic and, and, and there's the sense that, okay, that's really exciting, but then there's often the disconnect of like, well, how do I apply this to my own life? And so, I think for me, I think that my goal for for writing this was to give enough examples that the gears could start turning, because I don't really want you to go out and do my project or Benny's project or Tristan's project. That's not, that's not what I'm advising. I'm not telling you, oh, you should do the MIT challenge or you should do your own Year Without English or you should do, whatever. Rather, I'd like to say is just, you know, think about what things you would like to do. What would you like to really learn? What would you like to get good at? And, and, and to, to really think about, you know, one of the pieces of advice I have is to just really ask yourself, if you were committed to, okay, if I really wanted to do this well, like if I, if I really wanted to be as good as I could possibly be at it, what would I do? Like, if I didn't have to be worried about, you know, being afraid, or hitting frustrated, or this being too difficult, or this being impossible, what would be the ideal approach to this? And I think sometimes when you ask yourself that question, you, you get more interesting projects than if you say, well, you know, what do I have the effort for, right? And I think that that that kind of flip of the switch is very interesting because often you will go into interesting places that you wouldn't have expected if you just sort of limit yourself to like, well, what do other people seem to be doing?

And I think that's the kind of thing that people don't do when they just dabble. You know? And there's nothing wrong with dabbling. There's nothing wrong with just trying something out. But I think people who have never done a project before, never really set out, okay, for the next 60 days, I'm gonna be doing X, Y, and Z. And, and these are gonna be the conditions, and, and you're kind of psyching yourself up because you know it's gonna be a little bit of a challenge. It's gonna be a little bit of an adventure. And I think that that mindset, if you've never done that before, if the only time you've ever learned something seriously in that kind of format has been going to a class. I'm just gonna take this class. If you've only done it that way, it's, it's kind of hard to communicate, because it's just a different mode of doing things. It's a different style for, uh, approaching the things that you want to get good at.

And so, I think that there's a lot of benefits to just thinking critically about that. Just thinking about what is the project that I'm doing. So, like the MIT challenge that I did, the, you know, we, we haven't really talked about it too much, but the big thing that I think set that apart, yes, doing it publicly, I think made me accountable in ways that I wouldn't have been if I'd just done it on my own. But I think the thing that really made it work for me was this whole conception of the project, that it's like, okay, I'm gonna do exactly this. I'm gonna do it this way. I'm gonna do it over this time frame. And, you know, I think I lucked out a little bit that I was able to actually accomplish it in the deadline that I had. I think sometimes it's hard to estimate how difficult learning projects are gonna be, because you don't know them yet. So, I have talked to people that have set really ambitious targets and then failed like completely, because they were wildly incorrect in their expectations.

But at the same time, just having a project, just having it be like, you know, I'm gonna do this exact thing, rather than, oh, you know, let's just try to learn some programming, right? Like, to just learn some programming, I think that's the thing that bizzles out. Whereas if you were to say to yourself, and it could be something totally different. It could be like, you know, I'm gonna make the game Space Invaders in Python, and I'm gonna spend a month doing it. Like, it could be that, right? Or it could be, you know, I'm gonna, uh, compete in this area competition for this public speaking prize. Like, these are all things that you can do that will help make it an actual project. And I think that that often takes the sort of momentary, ah, learning these new words, that's a little frustrating. Or, ah, I'm screwing this up, this is a bit difficult. It, it allows you to see the big picture and I think really putting that effort.

And then there's like very specific things like, okay, I'm going to have this interaction with my landlord. Or I'm going to have this interaction at a restaurant, or at a taxi cab, or at a museum. And so, those are more specific. So, they're not like that was the goal you were trying to reach, but you just add up more of these. It's a little bit like playing a video game when you get achievements. Yeah. I don't know if anyone knows this, but you like, oh, you collected a hundred of the purple egg thingies, and then you get that little badge that shows up on the screen. It's a little bit like that in learning a language. Like, oh, you successfully handled this taxi cab interaction. You know, like, and then the little thing pops up. And I think you need to think about it like that, that that learning a language isn't, it's not this monolithic thing that you're doing. You're actually learning many, many, many small things. And so, if you break them down that way, then yeah, maybe you don't know how to learn French, or, or Chinese, or Japanese. But maybe you can learn how do I get through this, you know, brief interaction with someone? How do I get directions? How do I order something at a restaurant? How do I, you know, these are, these are little mini challenges that you can take on, and you can be successful at them. And, and learning a language is just having accumulated a lot of those successes in your memory.

But, uh, in terms of scientific, uh, research, in terms of related to language learning, I think one of the most important things that we haven't discussed as much is, uh, the idea of transfer. And so, there's tons of research showing that, um, people are bad at transferring skills from one context to another. So, if you learn something in one way and then you try to transfer it to another situation, this tends to be harder than people think. And so, one of the things that I, I really advise people to do is, if you are going to learn a language, you need to have conversations if your goal is to speak, which is usually what it is 99% of the time. I mean, if your goal is to read dead languages and your texts and then, yeah, you need to read those languages. But, the, the core of it is, you know, we were talking about flashcards. I like flashcards too. I used them a ton when learning Chinese, but if you only do flashcards, you're not going to be able to speak the language. So, this sounds kind of obvious, but I think there's a lot of people who they're looking for the way out. They're looking for the way that they can get good at speaking without actually speaking, and it doesn't exist.

Absolutely, absolutely. Fantastic. Well, Scott, thank you so much for coming on, on the show, and, and to everyone listening, I highly recommend the book Ultralearning, Accelerate Your Career, Master Hard Skills, and Outsmart the Competition, which are obviously all good skills for, for life in general. And I think learning, as well as language learning, actually mimics all the, the other soft skills that you need in life very well. So, it's all connected in my opinion, the better you are at language learning, the better you can be at anything you want to, really. So, so thank you so much for coming onto the show and, and, and sharing this with us and giving you tips and advice on, on language learning specifically.