Learn Better Summary

Brief Summary: Learn Better is a template for lifelong learners. Through his six steps, Ulrich Boser believes that any student can learn and even enjoy any subject quickly. The key is to look again at the things you think you’re just “not good at” and have a different approach to learning.

Favorite Quote from Ulrich Boser

As a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and past adviser to many institutions including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ulrich Boser has been a change-maker for years.

Most notably, he established The Learning Agency which helps people and organizations harness the power of learning.

Boser believes learning is a skill and you can get better at it. That’s why he wrote Learn Better, which Amazon called it “the best science book of the year.”

At its foundation, the book walks you through a six-step approach to learning any discipline:

Value
Target
Develop
Extend
Relate
Rethink

Do you want to become an expert in any subject? Let’s find out how!

Key Concept 1. Look for meaning in your study and your learning will get better

At the ”value” stage, the student must address why he or she wants to learn this subject or skill in the first place.

Why is it important?
What value will it have to his or her future?

Boser cites the example of Chris Hulleman, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia. Hulleman set his students a task related to the dry subject of statistics, challenging them to write an essay on how mastery of statistics could enhance their lives and improve their future.After implementing the essay exercise, Hulleman’s students scored higher statistics grades.By contrast, the “Target” phase addresses the nuts and bolts of the task.Someone new to a language — German, for example — should not expect to read Goethe right out the gate.He or she must break down the learning task into manageable steps — verb tenses, pronouns, gendered articles. All these discreet lessons, taken together, represent mastery of the German language.Boser notes, however, the importance of getting a firm foundation (alphabet, numerals, pluralizations in the German example) before getting too granular.

Key Concept 2. Focus on building proficiency with an emphasis on the importance of feedback

Boser relates an example from his own life where he had reached a plateau as an amateur basketball player, unable to increase his skill level. A basketball coach that he discovered from a Craigslist ad was able to provide corrections and enhancements.Self-monitoring is another development technique. Toronto-based surgeon Mark Bernstein cut his team’s rate of surgical errors in half when he implemented a system of documenting every mistake made in the operating room.The “Extend” phase also invites immersion into the chosen field and an emphasis on visualization.The famous American painter Jackson Pollock exemplified the process of immersion by apprenticing himself under Mexican master David Alfaro Siqueiross.

Siqueiross encouraged Pollock to deepen his technique with the study of fractal patterns, like those in heads of broccoli or spiral galaxies. Pollock’s later work contained fractal complexity first noticed by physicists instead of art critics.Stand-up comedian Bob Ross had trouble memorizing the E.M. Forster titles “A Room With A View” and “Howard’s End.” To ground the fact in his memory, Ross visualized himself in a room with a window out of which he could see an enormous pair of buttocks, presumably belonging to a man named Howard.

Key Concept 3. Push past proficiency to mastery

Part of mastery is understanding the connections between concepts.Boser cites the example of a 1908 study wherein schoolchildren were asked to throw darts at a target submerged in a tank of water. Only one group of children received an explanation of the refracting effect of water. Predictably, the children armed with this knowledge were able to hit the target more consistently.The final step, “Rethink,” takes on the specter of overconfidence, which ruins progress if a student considers himself a master too early.

Boser emphasizes the importance of “self-quizzing” as an effective check on progress.In a 2006 study at Washington University, one group of students were asked to read a text four times. The other group was asked to read it once and then try to recall what they read. The next day, the group that had read the text once and self-quizzed recalled more details from the text than the repeat readers.

Learn Better Review

”Learn Better” acts as a road map for lifelong learners. Through a six-step process, you’re encouraged to look again at the things you think you’re just “not good at.”Motivate yourself by asking, “how could my life be better if I learned this?” and then break the subject down into manageable parts.Developing your skills and then extending past plateaus, you can then relate what you’ve learned across disciplines and check yourself along the road to mastery.This approach to learning any subject is not only actionable — it makes learning fun.