The First 20 Hours
Have you ever watched one of those shows where the main protagonist just seems to be super skilled in absolutely everything they attempt to do? Kind of like the matrix or the mentalist, where the main character seem to be endowed with powers far beyond what us mere mortals could ever hope to achieve in serval lifetimes if given the chance.
Learn To Be Good Enough:
We all know that it’s actually impossible to be masterful at absolutely everything in life. As Malcom Gladwell pointed out in his book the called “Outliers”, we need to expect to dedicate about 10,000 hours to anything we want to become masterful at, or world class in. However, we do not all want to necessarily become masters of every skill we learn. Sometimes becoming good enough in a skill is all we need. Luckily learning a skill and becoming good enough at that skill to produce good results requires drastically less time than if we wanted to become masterful at that skill. This is because when we start to learn a new skill we know very little about the skill itself and therefore the initial phase of learning a new skill can feel like rapid growth because… well it is. You are going from 0 knowledge of the subject to understanding the basics of the subject at hand. This is known as the learning curve, which shows rapid growth initially of your knowledge before it plateaus not too long after learning the basics.
The Dunning Kruger Effect:
On the other hand, when we learn a new skill we often fall pray to what’s called the dunning Kruger affect, and it’s important to be aware of it so we do not get discouraged later on in the process of learning a skill. The dunning Kruger affect basically states that when you start to learn a new skill, you are grossly incompetent at that skill, and therefore your knowledge base of that skill is also very small. We therefore overestimate how good we are and are over confident in our abilities when we start to learn the very basics and believe we now know it all. When we start to learn a bit more and become more competent, we realise how big the gap between us and those that have mastered the skill we are leaning is. Thus our confidence reduces even though we are more knowledgeable than when we began learning the skill; and once you have invested over 10,000 hours and have become a master at the craft you gain true confidence in your abilities of the skill you have worked so hard to master.
The First 20 Hours
Josh Kaufman had a Ted Talk and wrote a book called the 1st 20hrs in which he determined that in order to learn any new skill and become somewhat mildly competent in this skill, enough to be seen by others as decent, you only need to invest 20hrs to rapidly learn a new skill. This however can only be accomplished when you are intentional about learning a new skill and make sure you have a system in place to learn the new skill. You need to break down the skill you want to learn into its most basic components and determine what is necessary for you to learn in the beginning to become competent. We can often bog ourselves down by getting invested in way too much theory which is absolutely unnecessary for us at the initial learning phase; and often we just do it to feel smart and feed our egos, or we do it as a means of procrastinating on actually getting started and doing the thing we know we actually need to do in order to learn the skill.
There are a few things you need to keep in mind in order to learn a new skill rapidly such as:
Break down the skill into its most basic components. See what is the main sub skills you need to focus on learning first in order to become competent in the skill you want to learn.
Eliminate barriers to practice. Make sure that you have the correct mindset when going into this and that you believe that you actually have what it takes to learn the skill, that you will be disciplined and show up to learn the basics and not become deterred by setbacks during this initial learning phase.
Create an environment that will aid you in learning this skill. One that is devoid of distractions and one that encourages you and motivates you.
Learn for practical real world application of the skill you are trying to learn. For example, if you want to learn graphic design, maybe you want to learn to create a logo for your friends coffee shop by the end of your 20hrs, or if you want to learn to play the guitar, maybe set out to learn how to play one or a few songs by the end of the 20hrs.
Obtain all the critical tools you need in order to be able to learn the skill. Again going back to graphic design, you’ll need a laptop and some software like the adobe suite or the affinity suite.
Actually set out the time to learn the skill. Be consistent in this for the time it takes for you to learn the basics, in this case 20hrs.
Make sure you are only focusing on learning one skill at a time. This is so you have focused attention on one skill, it may be tempting to try and learn 3 different things at once, but it will likely distract you more than help you.
Learn to self edit and create fast feedback loops. When learning a new skill it is important to make sure that you can pick up when you are doing something wrong and correct your own mistakes to learn and grow quicker and stop yourself from forming bad practice habits.
Other uses for rapid skill acquisition:
You could also use these tools of rapid skill acquisition to deepen your knowledge base in your current line of work and become more skilled and therefore more valuable in the economy. You can do this by learning different sub skills in your current line of work that would set you apart from others in your industry, for example, if you are in graphic design and you specialise in branding, it may be beneficial for you to learn more about marketing and the customer phycology. You can then overlap those skills and create more detailed branding guidelines, tips and strategies for your clients than before and charge even higher prices.
What are the personal benefits of rapid skill acquisition:
So When I saw the TED TALK from Josh Kaufman the other day again, I realised that we all have the ability to learn any skill, as long as we approach it right and with the right mindset. I wanted to test this for myself because I wanted to affirm to myself that if need be, I can change my entire career and life direction in a relatively short time, by learning new skills and pivoting to an entirely new field of work if for some reason the line of work I am doing now vanished overnight. I also felt that if I could do this and commit to learning a new skill over the course of 20hrs, that would drastically increase my confidence in my ability to learn and grow.
How I Implemented Rapid Skill Acquisition
So I decided to test out rapid skill acquisition for myself and tried to learn how to play the Ukulele. One of the reasons I choose to learn the Ukulele as a test of rapid skill acquisition was simply because I had access to one, so the decision was fairly simple.
So I then started the process of breaking down learning how to play the Ukulele into its most basic components. There are so many chords you can learn and so many songs you can learn to play on the Ukulele it can become overwhelming very fast, but as Josh Kaufmen pointed out, most songs use 4 basic chords. So that’s exactly what I did as well.
I chose the end point or my practical real world example for my Ukulele will be, to be able to learn to play 1 song. I went and searched through the list of songs and saw what songs I could play with the basic 4 chords, and then decided on one that I absolutely love, called “Leaves from the vine”, it’s from the animated series called Avatar the last Airbender, and it had a whopping 3 chords I needed to learn. I still learnt 4 chords, even if I only needed to use 3 cause that felt like I’d be cheating.
Then once I was able to play the chords with the song I realised I needed to know what was the timing of the chords I needed to play and what was the tempo or strumming pattern of the way I play, so I learnt the basics of strumming patterns and so on.
I tried to abide by all the rules we mentioned previously when attempting rapid skill acquisition such as:
Breaking down the skill into its sub skills and basic components.
Keeping my cool and trying to remain confident my ability to learn.
Create an environment that is conducive to the learning process.
Learning for practical use, by choosing a song and practicing it .
I had the tools needed for me to practice.
Commitment to practising at least 20hrs and trying to have a disciplined schedule for went to practice.
Self edit my mistakes or ask someone who knows for help if you have access to someone like that.
How Was The Experience Of Rapid Skill Acquisition?
So How was this experience for me? In actually doing this test and learning to play the Ukulele, I actually really enjoyed the process of learning, and gaining a new skill. It gave me such a boost in confidence, that even though I’m not a great Ukulele player yet, I have added a new skill to my tool belt.
I honestly believe that learning a new skill that you will actually use in real life, is such a valuable thing to pursue as it has so many side benefits apart from the more obvious one of actually learning the skill you are practicing.
I hope that this blog post gives you some ideas and hopefully inspires you to do the same and learn a new skill for yourself.
Till next time, bye friends….
