20 hours: Enough to learn a new skill, Here’s how.
Malcolm Gladwell gave the world 10,000 hours learning rule of any skill. Getting mastery over a skill by investing 10,000 hours over it sounds really tough! And in this hastening world, people hardly have any time to spare to follow their dreams and interests. Now, when the world is puzzled between sparing time and acquiring skill, what if someone says that;
Learning a new skill is just a matter of 20 hours and not of 10,000 hours!
Exactly! This is what Josh Kaufman stated in his book, “Learn a new skill in 20 Hours”.
Is there a skill which you always wanted to acquire but due to certain unavoidable reasons could not? or is there a skill where you did not give your bounteous efforts and hence resulted in missing it in your life? If yes, then here is everything you need to know:
Introspect Yourself.
Forget about the 10,000-hour rule and get ready to grasp this opportunity of learning it in just 20 hours. The major setbacks and obstacles people face while learning a new skill apart from time and effort constraint consists of looking stupid in trying out new stuff and ultimately become uncomfortable and encounter them captured within a feeling of losing.
But thinking from a broader perspective, makes them sheer winners, because any improvement from their previous self in that skill is a win only.
The other common blunder people often make in the beginning is of comparing their level of mastery of that particular skill with that of others. You must be very clear about the fact that as per this principle, you are learning a new skill and not getting mastery over it.
Any new skill should be connected to either of these two objectives:
- Getting some valuable result.
- Or, for the joy of learning.
It must not be coupled with any social stigma or status.
So now when you have eliminated a decent lot of hindrances people face while learning, you can focus on some assured tricks which could help in achieving your target of learning a skill in 20 hours.
How to begin
The first task of learning begins with the selection of skill. Note down all skills based on priority and cut down the less prior ones.
The second task is: Decomposition the selected skill into subskills or sub tasks.
Now, follow Pareto’s 80/20 principle; which says to lay 80% focus on the important 20% stuff. The next step defines people as Cognitive Misers, who are always in search of skipping efforts. Therefore, pre-commitment is a key to learning in this regard. So, sooner or later, it would be a win-win situation for you.
Pick up whatever you’ve left on the halfway and start learning. :)
When the world is struggling with a trade-off between time constraint and skill acquirement, you’ll be learning a new skill in just 20 hours!
This article is the 1st in the series of articles I’ll be posting to make learning easy, fun, and effective. Do clap if you found this interesting.
