The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything … Fast

“Learn anything . . . fast!” Whatever you want to do with your life, you must master new skills. But where can you find the time? You are already busy—much too busy to spend the ten thousand hours authors like Malcolm Gladwell claim you’ll need to master a new skill. Moreover, the early hours of practicing something new are always the most frustrating: If you can’t make it through the first twenty hours, you’ll never get to ten thousand. Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach for acquiring new skills quickly with a small amount of practice each day. He shows how to deconstruct complex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers, creating a realistic framework for drastically cutting the time it takes to acquire any skill. Kaufman invites readers to join him as he field tests his approach by learning to program a Web application, play the ukulele, practice yoga, get the hang of windsurfing, create illustrations, and study the world’s oldest and most complex board game.