How to Learn Any Skill Quickly

Notes from “The First 20 Hours” by Josh Kaufman

Tips for rapidly acquiring skills, gleaned from The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast by Josh Kaufman.

Underlying Theory: While attaining world-class mastery of a skill can take years of practice, twenty hours of dedicated practice is often enough to attain sufficiency for our own purposes. Using strategies designed for rapid skill acquisition, we can gain sufficiency with a fraction of the time and effort.

According to Kaufman, rapid skill acquisition has four major steps:

1. Deconstructing a skill into the smallest possible sub-skills;
2. Learning enough about each sub-skill to be able to practice intelligently and self-correct during practice;
3. Removing physical, mental, and emotional barriers that get in the way of practice;
4. Practicing the most important sub-skills for at least twenty hours.

Here is a summary of Kaufman’s tips for putting these steps into practice. (Note: I’ve condensed Kaufman’s two lists of ten tips into one list of ten.)

1. Choose a lovable project. Choose something that you’re excited to learn. The more excited you are about the skill, the more committed you will be, and the faster you will learn.
2. Focus your energy on one skill at a time. Learning a new skill requires dedication and focused attention. You’ll learn new skills faster if you approach them one at a time, in series rather than in parallel.
3. Define your target performance level. Write a single sentence description of exactly what you want to achieve. It’s easier to get to your goal when you know exactly what that goal is. Talking to people who have already acquired the skill (or who are currently in the process of acquiring it) can help you set expectations.
4. Deconstruct the skill into sub-skills. Break the skill down into its smallest possible parts, each of which can be practiced in series. To do so, imagine the opposite of what you want: what’s the worst that can happen? Then make a list of the sub-skills required to avoid this disaster, a pretty good initial inventory of the minimum sub-skills you will need to learn.
5. Obtain critical tools. What tools, components, and environments do you need in order to practice efficiently? Acquire them. Research the skill by browsing the web and your local library/bookstore to quickly collect a wide body of knowledge and get a better sense of what learning this new skill will involve. Identify recurring patterns of ideas and techniques, the mental models that are commonly used to describe the skill. Don’t worry if you’re initially confused by what you find. As you learn more, the pieces will start to come together. If you’re not confused, you’re not challenging yourself enough, and not learning as fast as you can be.
6. Eliminate barriers to practice. Rearrange your life as necessary to make it as easy as possible to practice effectively. Make sure you have access to the right tools at the right time, and protect against distractions, both electronic (turn them off), and biological (ask family members and colleagues to respect your practice time).
7. Make dedicated time for practice. Decide beforehand what alternative uses of time you will forgo in order to make time for practice. (Identify low-value uses of time, and eliminate them.) Pre-commit to 20 hours of practice, and don’t stop until you reach your desired skill level, or 20 hours. (If you’re not willing to do that, pick another skill for which you are.)
8. Create fast feedback loops. Find ways to get feedback immediately, or with very short delay. Depending on the skill, that may be a coach, a video camera to watch yourself, or some other form of training aid. For skills that require memorization, use spaced repetition and reinforcement; an app like Anki can help you with this. Checklists and routines can also help you remember things that need to be done each time you practice, allowing you to approach the skill in the same way every time.
9. Practice by the clock in short bursts. In the beginning, it’s easy to overestimate how much time you’ve spent practicing, so set a practice schedule beforehand and use a countdown timer to hold yourself to it. In addition, don’t push yourself too far too fast. Limit your practice to 90 minutes (or less) of focused attention before taking a break to recharge your mental and physical resources.
10. Emphasize quantity and speed. Instead of trying to be perfect immediately, focus on practicing as much and as quickly as you can in the beginning, while maintaining form good enough to satisfy your target performance level. Use to scientific method—observe, predict, test, revise—to rapidly iterate your practice and take your skill acquisition to the next level.

Now the question is: what skill do you want to learn, quickly?