Accelerated Learning: How to get good at anything in 20 hours

The process of trying to live a good life, a better life often requires you learning a new set of skills
I would love to do this but I don't have time to learn or I don’t know how

The world is moving faster and we all want to get stuff done
A lot of people want to make big changes – but they think
“There’s stuff that I need to know/ stuff that I need to learn”.
Learning new skills is a fundamental part of what it is to be human
For a lot of people it's terrifying - particularly if it is something you know nothing about (even if is going would
be super-fun or super valuable to do it)

Facts:
It doesn't take very long even to learn if you know absolutely nothing
Even if you only have a limited amount of time every day to sit down and learn, you can become very good at
something in a very short period of time
The 10,000 hours Rule
What has commonly become known as a 10,000 hours – Applies to ultra-competitive field/professional level
e.g. golfers, musicians - it is what it take to get to that level - if you want to step on the golf course and
compete with Tiger Woods
It takes a lot less time to get what we want - to develop a skill set enough so that you can actually start to
leverage on it to build your career or change your career or just enjoy to do something different. This is the
noticeable proficiency level. Research shows you need about 20 hours!
For example, there are a lot of things that that you can learn that can help you do better in your business,
interact better, may be even better public speaking etc.
Here is a five Step idea on how to learn anything
These steps apply to every skill, from motor skills like learning how to fly an airplane or skateboarding or
something that could be a cognitive skill such as language or programming.

Step 1:
Deciding exactly what it is you want

 Why are you interested about this thing in the first place??
 Setting a target performance level
 The more clearly you can define the performance level, the easier it is for you to look out and find
ways to get there in the most direct possible way.
Example
To be a computer programmer, just saying I want to be a programmer - doesn't give you any information
Versus the idea of a program that I would like to create from nothing, the program looks like ABCD - when I
make this program, I'll have developed the skills that are necessary in order to get that particular result
So instead of learning everything in the world about programming, decided this is the sub-segment of the skill
I'm interested in learning first. So that's what I'm going to focus on
Has to be very goal-oriented and also very specific
Have an idea of

 what it is going to look like when you're done

 what are you going to be able to see or experience that will let you know I reach the level I want
For example:
If you want to learn a language, say:
 Speak French enough to go to a restaurant that has a French-speaking waiter
 and I want to order and conduct the entire meal in this language and have a good time doing it
 that's - something that that's specific enough to practice
Make it too specific at the beginning because once you get to that level, you can always take things up a
notch.

 Once you reach that threshold practice something else

 Once you get the baseline proficiency in something it creates a whole new level of motivation
to want to learn more
It is important to understand that the first couple hours of practicing something new are frustrating for
everyone – it is terrible at the beginning
However, if you can push through those early few hours the practice itself becomes fun and it becomes much
easier to convey you to higher levels.
Step 2 and 3:
Deconstructing the skill
Lots of the things that we think of as skills, aren't exactly skills - they're general topics that contain lots of
smaller sub skills.

 For example playing golf or speaking French or learning how to program. It is really hard to practice
being a good golfer, it's way easier to practice hitting off the tee with a driver

Break the global skill into much smaller parts

 if you're clear about what you want, it becomes very easy to find what are the sub skills that are
actually going to help you get to the target as quickly as possible
 So that if there are a hundred sub-skills, and you are done with skill number 1, it makes it much easier
to figure out what skill you should master next
Note: You will often find it is maybe only two or three sub-skills that you use most of the time
Find sources of information that will help you do this deconstruction, do a little bit of research
Example

 Pick up five books on whatever it is that you're trying to learn,

  Don't read them cover to cover, skim all of them and what you'll see is the two or three sub skills that
you're going to use most of the time are the ones that come up over and over,
 Just practice those first and
 avoid a lot of the distractions or things that aren't going to help you save time and energy
Learning in our culture is treated as a very academic exercise - the objective is to suck in a ton of information
about a thing whether or not you're going to use it
Education in our culture has been seen in the academic sense and less in the sense of practicing something
with the eye of using it to do something particular
Start practicing what it is you're actually trying to do. That is when you rate the actual performance
improvement

Notes:

 The practice techniques can be very different but the core method of how to learn fast is the same –
e.g. For cognitive skills, memorization techniques like spaced repetition, reinforcement like flashcard
model or flashcards with feedback helping you remember things work really.
 Mastering the skill works really well if practiced within a couple of hours of going to sleep. Either
taking a nap or going to bed for the consolidation – this allows your brain translates the practice and
experience you have had and encodes neural connections to help you do it better

Step 4:
Removing barriers to practice
Eliminate things that are preventing you from actually sitting down and doing the work

 Eliminate environmental distractions like turning off the TV or blocking the internet or closing the door
- the things that you can do in the early hours of practice to make sure you don't get frustrated and
stop focusing on whatever it is that you're doing
 and anything else you can do to make sure it takes as little energy as possible to start practicing
 e.g. instead of keeping your guitar in the case in the back of the closet on the other side of your
house, get the guitar out of the case, get a stand put it right next to your chair/couch - a visual cue
Make it easier to do the thing that you want to be doing instead of getting distracted by some shiny object
Spend a little bit of willpower, time and energy altering the structure of the environment around you to make it
as easy as possible to do the thing that you want

Step 5:
The 20 hours rule

 so far is getting set up to sit down and do the work of actually practicing the pre commitment
 next, commit to practicing at least 20 hours (behavioral psychology)
 First, it is a really important check on your reasons for learning this thing in the first place
 and so if I'm not willing to commit to 20 hours, I can't be all that serious,
 is it worthwhile for me to rearrange my schedule and stop doing other things
 Do I expect to get enough benefit from it to make the effort worth it, if it's not don't do it
  Second, it ensures that you practice long enough to see the good results

 if you're willing to set aside at least 20 hours, the pre commitment ensures that you practice long enough
to push through the early frustration and actually start seeing results
 a lot of us overestimate just how long it takes to become good at something. You can become really good
at something in as little as 20 hours
20 hours translates roughly to about 40 minutes a day for a month. So two 20-minute practice sessions every
day for about a month

Summery:
Step 1
Decide what you want - what's your target performance level?
Step 2
Deconstruct the skill - separated into smaller sub skills, practice the most important ones first
Step 3
Research the skill just enough to do the deconstruction and choose the most important sub skills but not so
much that it becomes a barrier to practice in itself
Step 4
Eliminate barriers to practice - make it easy to do what you want to do
Step 5
Pre-commit to practicing whatever it is that you want to be able to do for at least 20 hours

The barrier to sitting down and learning something new is not intellectual. We are all smart enough to sit
down and figure it out and practice. We need to think in a smart way to decide we're interested in doing
something figure out how to do it and actually sit down, commit time and do it.