It doesn’t take 10,000 hours to learn a new skill. It takes 20. And here’s how…

If you have 20 minutes, watch the video, it’s worth it. If you want a summary, read below the video.

The speaker, Josh Kaufman, author of The Personal MBA, explains that according to his research, the infamous “10,000 hours to learn anything” is in fact, untrue.

It takes 10,000 hours to become an “expert in an ultra competitive field” but to go from “knowing nothing to being pretty good”, actually takes 20 hours. The equivalent of 45 minutes a day for a month.

How? He breaks it down into four parts, explained below. But it should come as no surprise that if you want to learn even more, he has a book coming out on the subject. Don’t let that put you off though, he’s widely acclaimed and well respected by the likes of Seth Godin, Scott Belsky and more.

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The path to learning:

1. Deconstruct the skill. Decide what you actually want to be able to do.
2. Learn enough to self correct. Learn just enough that you can actually tell when you’re making a mistake.
3. Remove Practice Barriers: i.e. remove distractions, yes, like you, Internet.
4. Practice at least 20 hours. Finally, yep, practice for 20 hours.