20小时学习法则: The first 20 hours

How many times have you talked to yourself: "I want to learn this..." "I'll get around to it..." "I'll learn it someday..." BUT some day turns into never and your desires still remain dreams. You end up doing nothing. If you are like “been there, done that", then this book is for you.

The full name of this book is "the first 20 hours: mastering the toughest part of learning anything". It's a book about rapid skill acquisition. How many hours do we need to achieve expert-level performance? Based on a research conducted by Dr. Ander Ericsson of Florida State University, the answer is 10,000 hours. It's ten thousand hours of deliberate practice to achieve. Ten thousand hours means seven hours each day for almost four years. I think that is why we set up a 4-year program to achieve a bachelor degree.  But most of us don't want to be Tiger Woods when it comes to playing golf. We just want to be good at something and have fun. 

Mr. Kaufman mentioned a phase that we all get through --- frustration barrier,  a period of time in which you’re horribly unskilled, and you’re painfully aware of that fact. This book will teach us how to get over our frustration barrier in the first 20 hours, very impressive!!

All the difficult comes from the simple.  First, you have to decide what exactly you want to learn. What is it going to look like when you've done? Set out your target performance level. Second, go out to find 3-5 books, DVDs or courses, trainers, people or resources that can help you, then do some research, and research just enough to identify what do you need practice. Third, break the skill down into small subskills and practice individual subskills. For example, from Mr. Kaufman's point of view, your target performance level should be specific. For example, when you are learning French, think about yourself talking with a waitor or waitress in a French restaurant in Paris. Can you take your order from the waitor/waitress? If the waitress is beautiful, can you hit on her in French? Are you able to talk to your French friend who is having dinner with you about the news that happened recently? The more specific your goals are, the more clear you know what to practice, the better result you will get.

Fourth, completely focus on the subskills for a non-broken 30 to 45 min, for me 45 min to an hour. This is how you'll be good at in a short period of time. Do some preparation before your practice. Get rid of anything that would be possible to distract you. Last but not least, evaluate your performance until you practice 20 hours. The author also gives some examples on how he learn to play ukelele, practice yoga, play GO (围棋), program web, and windsurf. If you need more examples on how the author applied the principles mentioned in this book to his real life, here we go.

Mr. Kaufman is an amazing guy who can always figure out shortcuts for difficulties. He also wrote another book named "my personal MBA", which I will recommend later.