Ultralearning

by Scott Young

  It was van Gogh’s mysterious and untimely death that cut short the artistic career that was so late to begin. At thirty-seven, he died of a bullet wound to the stomach. Although his death was suspected to be a suicide, his biographers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith consider accident or foul play more likely; he may possibly even have been shot by one of the village youths who played pranks on him and called him the fou roux, or “crazed redhead.”

  In spite of all this, van Gogh has become one of the most famous painters of all time. The Starry Night, Irises, and Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers have become icons. On four separate occasions, a van Gogh piece has become the most expensive painting ever sold, including his Portrait of Dr. Gachet, which was sold for more than $82 million.3 Van Gogh’s signature swirls of color, thick impasto application, and strong outlines have made many people consider his paintings some of the greatest of all time.

  How can we explain these discrepancies? How does someone who starts late, with no obvious talent and many handicaps, nonetheless become one of the world’s greatest artists, with one of the most recognizable and distinctive styles? To understand van Gogh, I want to turn to the ninth and final principle of ultralearning: experimentation.

  How van Gogh Learned to Paint

  Put yourself in van Gogh’s shoes for a moment. You’ve failed miserably as an art dealer, despite your family connections. You’ve failed as a preacher. Now you’re embarking on a new profession—painting—even though you have difficulties in drawing things accurately. What would you do? Van Gogh’s response to this challenge was a pattern that would repeat throughout his life. First, he would identify a learning resource, method, or style and pursue it with incredible vigor, creating dozens, if not hundreds, of works in that direction. After this burst of intensity, aware of his still-existing deficiencies, he would apply himself to a new resource, method, or style and start again. Although there’s no evidence van Gogh thought of the connection, I see a parallel between this pattern and the one used by successful scientists: hypothesis, experiment, results, repeat. Perhaps inadvertently, van Gogh’s aggressive, experimental strides into painting allowed him to mature into not merely a proficient painter but an unforgettably unique one.

  Van Gogh’s experimentation began when he was first trying to become an artist. The normal route to an artistic career in those days was to attend an art school or apprentice in a studio. Van Gogh, due to the fact that others did not see him as possessing much talent and his odd temperament, did not have much luck with those traditional avenues. Therefore he turned to self-education, pursuing home-study courses that promised to teach him the basics of drawing. In particular, he made heavy use of Charles Bargue’s Exercices au fusain (Charcoal Exercises) and Cours de dessin (Drawing Course), as well as Armand Cassagne’s Guide de l’alphabet du dessin (Guide to the ABCs of Drawing). They were thick books with graduated exercises on which aspiring artists could work step by step to improve their drawing skill. According to his biographers, van Gogh “devoured these big books . . . page by page, over and over.” Van Gogh himself reported to his brother, Theo, “I have now finished all sixty sheets,” adding “I worked almost a whole fortnight, from early morning until night.”4 Copying was another strategy van Gogh employed early on that he would continue late into his artistic career. Jean-François Millet’s The Sower was one of his favorite pictures to copy, which he did again and again. He also applied himself to sketching from life early, in particular models for portraits, which he struggled with due to his difficulties with drafting accurately.

  Van Gogh studied from other artists, friends, and mentors. Anthon van Rappard convinced him to try out reed pen and ink and adopt the mature artist’s style of short and fast strokes. Another artist, Anton Mauve, persuaded him to try a variety of different media: charcoal and chalk, watercolor, and Conté crayon. Often those attempts were not successful. During their stay together at the house where van Gogh would later cut off his ear, Paul Gauguin pushed the Dutchman to paint from memory, mute his colors, and adopt new materials for different effects. Those tactics didn’t work for van Gogh, whose weaknesses in drafting were exacerbated by not having the scene directly in front of him, and the different materials went against the style that would later make him famous. Experiments, however, needn’t always be successful to have value, and van Gogh had many opportunities for trying new techniques.

  Van Gogh experimented not just with materials and methods but also with the philosophies that underpinned his art. Although he is most famous for strong, vibrant colors, that wasn’t his initial intention. Originally, he leaned toward the profundity of muted, grayer tones, as witnessed in an early work The Potato Eaters. “Scarcely any color is not gray,” he argued. “In nature one really sees nothing else but those tones or shades.”5 He was fully convinced of that and based his work on it accordingly. However, he would later switch to the exact opposite: bright, complementary colors, often imposed on a scene rather than being brought out from nature. His stance on contemporary artistic movements flitted about; at first he preferred traditional painting to the new Impressionist style, and later he shifted to the avant-garde, opting for bold forms rather than verisimilitude.

  There are two important things to note about van Gogh’s experiments in art. The first is the variety of methods, ideas, and resources he applied. Since he struggled with many aspects of painting, I believe that variation was important to his eventually finding a style that would work for him—one that would take advantage of his strengths and diminish the significance of his weaknesses. Although virtuoso talents might be able to latch on to the first style of instruction they are presented with and follow it to completion, others require a great deal of experimentation before the right method sticks. The second important thing to note is his intensity. Like all the ultralearners I’ve discussed so far, van Gogh was tenacious in his efforts to become an artist. Despite receiving much negative feedback and discouragement, he pursued his art relentlessly, sometimes producing as much as a new painting every day. These two factors, variation and aggressive exploration, enabled him to push through his early obstacles and produce some of the most iconic and brilliant works ever painted.

  Experimentation Is the Key to Mastery

  When starting to learn a new skill, often it’s sufficient simply to follow the example of someone who is further along than you. In discussing the principles of ultralearning, metalearning comes first. Understanding how a subject breaks down into different elements and seeing how others have learned it previously, thus providing an advantageous starting point. However, as your skill develops, it’s often no longer enough to simply follow the examples of others; you need to experiment and find your own path.

  Part of the reason for this is that the early part of learning a skill tends to be the best trodden and supported, as everyone begins at the same place. As your skills develop, however, not only are there fewer people who can teach you and fewer students you could have as peers (thus lowering the total market for books, classes, and instructors), but you also start to diverge from those you’re learning from. Whereas two complete novices have quite similar knowledge and skills, two experts might have quite different sets of skills that they’ve already acquired, thus making improving those skills an increasingly personalized and idiosyncratic adventure.

  A second reason for the value of experimentation as you approach mastery is that abilities are more likely to stagnate after you’ve mastered the basics. Learning in the early phases of a skill is an act of accumulation. You acquire new facts, knowledge, and skills to handle problems you didn’t know how to solve before. Getting better, however, increasingly becomes an act of unlearning; not only must you learn to solve problems you couldn’t before, you must unlearn stale and ineffective approaches for solving those problems. The difference between a novice programmer and a master isn’t usually that the novice cannot solve certain problems. Rather, it’s that the master knows the best way to solve a problem, which will
be the most efficient and clean and cause the fewest headaches later on. As mastery becomes a process of unlearning over accumulation, experimentation becomes synonymous with learning as you force yourself to go outside your comfort zone and try new things.

  A final reason for the increasing importance of experimentation as you approach mastery is that many skills reward not only proficiency but originality. A great mathematician is one who can solve problems others cannot, not merely a person who can solve previously solved problems easily. Successful business leaders are those who can spot opportunities others cannot, not merely those who can copy the style and strategy of those before them. In art, it was not only van Gogh’s skill but his originality that made him one of the most celebrated painters to have ever lived. As creativity becomes valuable, experimentation becomes essential.

  Three Types of Experimentation

  In experimentation you can see different levels play out, both in van Gogh’s path as an artist and as a model for your own explorations:

  1. Experimenting with Learning Resources

  The first place to experiment is with the methods, materials, and resources you use to learn. Van Gogh did this extensively at the beginning of his artistic career, trying out different artistic media, materials, and learning techniques: following home-study courses, watching fellow artists, sketching from life and in the studio, and more. This kind of experimentation is useful in helping you discover the guides and resources that work best for you. It’s important, however, that your impulse to experiment be matched with a drive to do the necessary work. Although van Gogh tried many different approaches when he first started teaching himself to draw and paint, he also produced an enormous quantity of work based on each of those methods.

  A good strategy to take is to pick a resource (maybe a book, class, or method of learning) and apply it rigorously for a predetermined period of time. Once you apply yourself aggressively to that new method, you can step back and evaluate how well it is working and whether you feel it makes sense to continue with that approach or try another.

  2. Experimenting with Technique

  In the beginning, experimentation tends to focus on materials. However, in most domains of learning, the options for what to learn next expand faster and faster, so the question becomes not “How can I learn this?” but “What should I learn next?” Languages are a prime example. The same basic set of vocabulary and phrases dominates most beginner resources. As you improve, however, the amount of things you could possibly learn next becomes larger and larger. Should you learn to read literature? Converse fluently on a professional topic? Read comic books? Have business discussions? The specialized vocabulary, phrases, and cultural knowledge in each field multiply, so it becomes necessary to choose what to master.

  Once again, experimentation plays a pivotal role. Pick some subtopic within the skill you’re trying to cultivate, spend some time learning it aggressively, and then evaluate your progress. Should you continue in that direction or pick another? There’s no “right” answer here, but there are answers that will be more useful to the specific skill you’re trying to master.

  3. Experimenting with Style

  After you’ve matured in your learning a bit, the difficulty often switches from which resources to learn from or which techniques you’d like to master to the style you’d like to cultivate. Although there are some skills that have one and only one “correct” way of doing things, this is not true of most. Writing, design, leadership, music, art, and research all involve developing certain styles, which have different trade-offs. Once you master the basics, there is no longer one “right” way to do everything but many different possibilities, all of which have different strengths and weaknesses. This affords another opportunity for experimentation. Van Gogh tried out many different styles for producing art, varying from those of traditional painters such as Millet, to Japanese woodblock prints, and studied the techniques used by his artist friends such as Gauguin and Rappard. There is no one correct answer, although, like van Gogh, you may find that certain styles work better than others with your unique combination of strengths and weaknesses.

  The key to experimenting with different styles is to be aware of all the different styles that exist. Once again van Gogh provides a good model, as he spent an enormous amount of time studying and discussing the works of other artists. That gave him a large library of possible styles and ideas he could adapt to his own work. Similarly, you might want to identify masters in your own line of study and dissect what makes their styles successful to see what you can emulate or integrate into your own approach.

  In each level of experimentation, the choices broaden and the possible options to explore go up exponentially. There’s a tension, therefore, between spending time trying out different resources, techniques, and styles, and concentrating your efforts on a single approach long enough to become proficient at it. This tension often resolves itself as you cycle through exploring a new avenue in learning and then buckling down to learn it deeply before moving on to something else. Whatever else his failings, it was this pattern of trying out an idea and working on it aggressively that van Gogh applied brilliantly.

  The Mindset of Experimentation

  There are parallels between the mindset required to experiment and what the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck refers to as growth mindset.6 In her research, she distinguishes between two different ways of looking at one’s own learning and potential. In a fixed mindset, learners believe that their traits are fixed or innate and thus there’s no point in trying to improve them. In a growth mindset, in contrast, learners see their own capacity for learning as something that can be actively improved. In some ways, these two types of mindsets become self-fulfilling prophecies. Those who think they can improve and grow, do; those who think they are fixed and immutable remain stuck.

  The parallel with the mindset required for experimentation is clear. Experimenting is based on the belief that improvements are possible in how you approach your work. If you think your learning styles are fixed or that you have certain immutable strengths and weaknesses that will keep you from trying out different ways to approach your skills, you won’t be able to experiment at all.

  I see the experimental mindset as an extension of the growth mindset: whereas the growth mindset encourages you to see opportunities and potential for improvement, experimentation enacts a plan to reach those improvements. The experimental mindset doesn’t just assume that growth is possible but creates an active strategy for exploring all the possible ways to reach it. To get into the right mental space for experimenting, you need not only to see your abilities as something you can improve but understand that there is a huge number of potential avenues to do this. Exploration, not dogmatism, is the key to realizing that potential.

  How to Experiment

  Experimenting sounds simple but can be quite tricky to implement in practice. The reason is that a flurry of random activity doesn’t usually translate into mastery. In order to work, experimenting requires understanding what learning problems you’re facing and coming up with possible ways to resolve them. Here are a few tactics that can help you integrate experimentation into your ultralearning projects.

  Tactic 1: Copy, Then Create

  This is the first strategy for experimenting, which we can see in van Gogh’s work. Though van Gogh is best known for his original pieces, he also spent a lot of time copying drawings and paintings he liked by other artists. Copying simplifies the problem of experimentation somewhat because it gives you a starting point for making decisions. If you’re learning to paint, as van Gogh did, the possibilities of what kinds of art you can create and techniques you can apply are so vast that it can be difficult or impossible to decide among them. However, if you start by emulating another artist, you can use that foothold to venture further in your own creative directions.

  This strategy has another advantage beyond simplifying the choices available to you. In attempting to emulate or copy an exa
mple you appreciate, you must deconstruct it to understand why it works. This can often highlight things that the other person does exceptionally well that weren’t obvious from the beginning. It may also dispel illusions you may have had about an aspect of the work you thought was important but upon emulating the other person’s work you realize was not.7

  Tactic 2: Compare Methods Side-by-Side

  The scientific method works by carefully controlling conditions so that the difference between two situations is limited to the variable being studied. You can apply this same process to your experiments in learning by trying two different approaches and varying only a single condition to see what the impact is. By applying two different approaches side by side, you can often quickly get information not only about what works best but about which methods are better suited to your personal style.

  I applied this to learning French vocabulary. I wasn’t sure how effective mnemonics would be so, for a month, I would find a list of fifty new words every day, put together from my regular reading or random encounters with the language, and for half I would simply look them over with their translations I got from the dictionary. With the other half, I made an effort to use a visual mnemonic to link the two meanings. Then I compared how many of the words I remembered from each list on a later test, with words picked randomly from each side. The result is something you would probably expect after reading the chapters on retrieval and retention: I remembered the words I used mnemonics for at almost twice the rate of those I didn’t. That showed that even if creating the mnemonics took a bit more time, they were worth it.