So yes, it can get you far, but there is a cost to be considered if you don't keep it under control.
It is however very possible (and likely) that the author had already trained and somewhat saturated those parts, perhaps even without thinking about it because it was their natural state. In those cases you can become a sponge when a new modality opens up to you.
Rich kids who get personal tutors tend to not dominate their fields. There's an advantage, but it has to be coupled with alone-time practicing. People who alone-time practice out of genuine curiosity tend to underestimate the magnitude of practice they get because it can feel effortless.
I love the no speed limit mindset and was endlessly annoyed at uni for not being structured like that, but at the same time it does take a toll
Genuinely doubt it. But I guess it's possible. The pay is shit enough that the guys who would smash it are doing something else.
The material is largely classified, so there is no way to "pretrain" it.
The first 6 months to a year of the program is not self-paced, it's semi-traditional classroom learning except its 8 hours of lecture a day, 5 days a week. Homework and studying are done after lecture and the number of required study hours are mandatory depending on the sailor's GPA. It is very common for students to spend 60-80 hours a week in the classroom. You could think of this as an enforced minimum speed limit. The first year is spent teaching students how to learn at all-gas-no-breaks speed.
After that, the next year to 18 months of a nuke's education are spent in a qualification program that is entirely self-paced. You study the material independently, and when you feel you have a solid grasp on it you request an evaluation (think technical interview) about the subject. How fast or slow one moves through these interviews is entirely up to the individual sailor. But too slow and the sailor will be dropped from the program, thus why it's important to train them how to learn quickly.
Anecdotally, after the nuke program, university (NYU Tandon in my case) is trivial. The workload is nothing compared to the expectations of the nuke pipeline.
More saliently, the nuclear pipeline is not made up of "the best". It is ubiquitously composed of academic rejects. College dropouts, "smart but lazy"s, clever misfits, and a few enterprising criminals. The kind of unfulfilled talent that comes a dime a dozen.
The Navy learned that with enough discipline and a tolerance for high washout rates, you can get "greatness" for pennies on the dollar by making it yourself from the raw cuttings left behind by America's higher education system.
You need to operate within your capacity. For me this seems frustratingly low (50 pretty focused hours a week). Don’t know if others have a higher capacity or they’re just postponing burnout, but I have tried to go beyond 50 hours and it always ends in enforced holiday.
I have been wondering whether there is any psychological research on this. I imagine that it would be hard to do since focus and productivity are difficult things to measure in a way that would be externally valid.