T.M. Kayode

I recently listened to a Tedx talk by Josh Kaufman titled –“ The First 20 Hours – How to Learn Anything”. I think the talk was posted in 2013; I had it in my video archive but didn’t get to watch it until a while back and I must say that I did learn a lot.

Let me give you a brief summary of the talk.

So, have you heard about the 10,000-hour rule? Yes? No?

The 10,000-hour rule was posited by Professor Kay Hendrik Ericsson as measure of the time it would take to reach the top of an ultra-competitive field or gain expert level understanding of any field. In perspective, 10,000-hours is the equivalent of a working a full-time job for 5 years. This theory simply means the more time you spend in a particular field the more likely you would reach the top of that field. The theory has been around for a couple of years and somehow it morphed from being the time it would take to reach the top of an ultra-competitive field to the time it would take to become an expert at something to the time it would take to become good at something to the time it would take to learn anything.

Now, Pause! Take a moment to think about it – 10,000 hours!!!

So this Tedx speaker comes up and says that with respect to learning anything – that is – to move from being grossly incompetent at doing something to being reasonable good at it at the shortest period of time, all you need is – drum rolls please – 20 hours! He then capped off the speech by playing the Ukulele – He played it reasonably well and that was his 20^th hour of playing.

Anyway, his statement piqued my interest. I love to learn. Give me an opportunity to learn something I want to learn and I’ll jump at it. So, if it is truly possible to move from ground zero to being reasonably good at something – sign me up for that class!

He also gave 4 guidelines to help maximize those 20 hours; the guidelines are (1) decide what you want to learn and break it down into smaller pieces, (2) Learn enough to self-correct – this means Learn just enough that you can use to practice, make mistakes and correct yourself, (3) Remove distractions, (4) Practice for at least 20 hours.

Also, Josh talked about the overcoming the frustration barrier, it may be a bit frustrating when you start but you have to continue at it. As you continue you will notice the main points in getting through your task and then focus on that.

Enough Said!!!

I have decided to put the 20-hour Rule to test.

There is nothing like trying out new concepts, right?

So, share with me ideas on things you think I should learn in the comments below (I am fresh out of interesting ideas). I will choose one of them and let you know how I accomplished the task (if I did), using the steps I highlighted above. I will also do a detailed blog post on that as well.

See you in the next post.

Cheers!