The author of Ultralearning, Scott Young, started by doing what he called the MIT Challenge. He aimed to finish the four year MIT software engineering curriculum in 12 months on his own, using resources such as MIT's OpenCourseWare. He succeeded in his goal and wrote the book after talking to a number of other people who had also challenged themselves to take on a huge learning project in a short amount of time.
It's an inspiring read and one of my favorite nonfiction books. If you're interested in learning a lot quickly I can't recommend it highly enough.
I started rereading it because I want to take on my own learning project this year. My career goal is to be a principal or staff level engineer at a tech company solving difficult problems and helping other people succeed through mentoring and teaching. (I know a good boss can also have an outsized positive effect on people's careers but management isn't for me.) Right now I'm a midlevel developer, so my ultralearning project for this year is to develop the skills and knowledge to move into more senior roles.
I'm calling it Project Apollo because I've played way, way too much Horizon Zero Dawn.
The first subject matter I'm going to study is Data Structures and Algorithms. The latest version of MIT's Introduction to Algorithms course on OpenCourseWare is from Fall 2011, but I do have the textbook and a few other resources on algorithms.
I'm not sure what pace will be optimal but I should be able to calibrate a couple of weeks in. Next week I'll go over the materials assembled for the first phase and what progress has been made. Have a great week!