The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast!

by Josh Kaufman

the most rewarding experiences in life almost always require some level of skill.

Ericsson calls “deliberate practice”: intentionally and systematically practicing in order to improve a skill. Deliberate practice is the core of skill acquisition.

Rapid skill acquisition is a process—a way of breaking down the skill you’re trying to acquire into the smallest possible parts, identifying which of those parts are most important, then deliberately practicing those elements first.

Rapid skill acquisition has four major steps: Deciding exactly what you want to be able to do. Deconstructing a skill into the smallest possible subskills; Learning enough about each subskill to be able to practice intelligently and self-correct during practice; Removing physical, mental, and emotional barriers that get in the way of practice; Practicing the most important subskills for at least twenty hours.

If you want to get good at anything where real-life performance matters, you have to actually practice that skill in context. Study, by itself, is never enough.

Here are the ten major principles of rapid skill acquisition: 1. Choose a lovable project. 2. Focus your energy on one skill at a time. 3. Define your target performance level. 4. Deconstruct the skill into subskills. 5. Obtain critical tools. 6. Eliminate barriers to practice. 7. Make dedicated time for practice. 8. Create fast feedback loops. 9. Practice by the clock in short bursts. 10. Emphasize quantity and speed.

I recommend making time for at least ninety minutes of practice each day by cutting low-value activities as much as possible.

I also recommend precommitting to completing at least twenty hours of practice. Once you start, you must keep practicing until you hit the twenty-hour mark.

The trick is to start practicing as quickly as possible. Not thinking about practicing or worrying about practicing, but actually practicing.

completely changing your environment in a way that results in constant deliberate practice. If

you can’t escape your environment, so the practice happens automatically.

Take the immersion opportunities as they come, but don’t count on them.

Spaced repetition and reinforcement is a memorization technique that helps you systematically review important concepts and information on a regular basis.

Interference is the opposite of consolidation: it’s a disruption of the consolidation process. If you practice or use a second, similar skill shortly after practicing a new skill, that practice can interfere with your brain’s ability to consolidate the new information.

The critical period for interference also seems to be roughly four hours.