It takes way less than 10,000 hours to learn a new skill. My insights.

Not long ago I watched “The first 20 hours — how to learn anything | Josh Kaufman” on YouTube. I must say that the idea of having a method of being able to learn a new skill in so little time is very appealing. As Josh Kaufman said “Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill to mastery. In this nonstop world, who has that kind of time?”
As a curious and self-motivated learner I couldn’t resist and I started asking myself what I could learn. It didn’t take long to decide that I needed to try something different from what I’m used to so I decided to learn a programing language.
The winner was Python.
For a non-specialist, learning a new programing language is very challenging with endless possibilities, but after creating a POA (plan of action) I decided to focus my efforts on a specific issue inside the programing world:
How to solve a Sudoko puzzle using Python. This was my goal and the problem that I wanted to solve.
I must confess that even though the solution of a Sudoko is rather complicated for a beginner to solve, I’m advancing in leaps and bounds. After 20 hours I grasped the basic tools to understand the functionality of Python and be able to write and debug basic code. Then after around 60 hours I was able to organize the information harvested from a real Sudoku puzzle (data that was retrieved from an external source) with a readily workable code that I wrote (the base for solving the Sudoko puzzle).
As it stands I haven’t completed the task in full. Perhaps I haven’t narrowed down my problem far enough, but this whole experience has shown me how much we are capable of, without even knowing it. Josh Kaufman’s theory seems very compelling but we have to know how to carefully compartmentalize the stages in learning a new skill in order to be able to fulfil the task and be content with the small incremental improvements along the way. Nevertheless, we also need to be thoughtful to narrow the task in a way that makes it possible to solve.
Another insight that I had is that instead of spending our time escaping via our phones and social media, we would be better spending our time learning a new skill. I am not suggesting forgetting about leisure, but this is one way that we can continuously improve ourselves and our professional skills and stop wasting so much time.