I've had a rocky run of non-fiction books recently, since the excellent "Four Thousand Weeks" which I read towards the end of last year. As part of my research into the Rust programming language I was watching the excellent No Boilerplate - How to Learn Rust and a book was mentioned that piqued my interest. Two books in fact. Scott H. Young - Ultralearning, an interesting approach to deep and immersive learning processes, and The Rust Programming Language.

Ultralearning thus far (and I'm admittedly only 60 pages in or so) has been a very good read. Several elements of Scott H. Young's ideas gel well with my outlook. There is something satisfyingly rebellious about taking institutional learning and approaching it from an all-out immersive, practical and self-driven angle. From those who plunge themselves into learning a new language by refusing to speak English at all for three months, to Eric Barone, who learned the many-faceted skills needed to create games, and after years of work produced the phenomenally successful Stardew Valley, solo.

This book was partly the inspiration behind picking up 'The Rust Programming Language'. After only the first few pages I've already picked up some basics that I would have probably missed and given a good basis of understanding, while at the same time launching myself headfirst into creating some projects.

More than this, Ultralearning has planted a dangerous seed of stopping 'dabbling' in many different things and making a concerted, focused effort to overachieve at them.

Interesting.