Good Life Project - Accelerated Learning: Get Good at Anything in 20 Hours

Episode Date: May 11, 2017

What if you could get really good at almost anything in only 20 hours?Sounds like an impossible promise, but it's not. Accelerated learning hacker and author of The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything... Fast!, Josh Kaufman, says anyone can do it.In today's special expanded Riff, Josh busts myths about what it takes to learn new things quickly. He then reveals a 5-step protocol to get good at anything in only 20 hours. Along the way you'll accelerate your learning by deconstructing complex skills, learning what to practice and when (and what to ignore), and figure out how to remove barriers to deliberate practice.In a world where perpetual learning is the norm, the ability to rapidly learn new things is mission-critical. This will help get you started!Rockstar sponsors:Get paid online, on-time with Freshbooks! Today's show is supported by FreshBooks, cloud accounting software that makes it insanely easy for freelancers and professionals to get paid online, track expenses and do more of what you love. Get your 1-month free trial, no credit card required, at FreshBooks.com/goodlife (enter The Good Life Project in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So what if you could get really, really good at almost anything in 20 hours, from playing an instrument to learning a language to whatever it may be? Well, that's the hypothesis of Josh Kaufman. And Josh, in fact, dove deep into the research and blew up a whole bunch of ideas around learning. And that ended up becoming a process that he actually shares in a book called The First 20 Hours. And I wanted to sit down and learn that process from Josh. So this is a bit of a different riff. It's actually a conversational riff, but it's focused on one

very specific topic, as our riffs generally are, which is accelerated learning. And it's diving into the question, can you really become really good at almost anything in 20 hours? And Josh says, yes, you can, if you understand the process and you understand precisely what to focus on and what to completely ignore. And by the way, the things to completely ignore are very often the very things that we are taught to focus on. So really excited to share this conversation with you about accelerated learning and how to really become good at stuff in a mere 20 hours. Oh, one more quick note. Also, you'll notice that the audio, the sound of the audio is a bit different in the actual conversation. This was actually recorded with Josh on location

in Colorado. So there's a little bit more space in the audio. So that's just want to let you know why the sound is a bit different than our normal in studio. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Good Life Project is supported by FreshBooks Cloud accounting software that helps you tackle your paperwork faster so you can spend more time building your business and less time chasing all the other stuff. For your 30-day trial, go to freshbooks.com slash good life and be sure to enter Good Life Project in the how did you hear about us section. On to our show. So my guest today is Josh Kaufman, and this is a special episode.

One of the things that we've discovered through a lot of our viewers is that the process of trying to live a good life, a better life, often requires you learning a new set of skills. We've had a ton of questions over the last year from people who say, I would love to do this, but I don't have time in my life to do it. I don't want to wait forever to make it happen So we're bringing you Josh who's also the author of a book called the first 20 hours Who's an expert in I guess what I would call accelerated learning so great to be hanging out with you today Thanks. Thanks for having me great to hang out Couldn't sort of like have asked for a better person to drop in at a better time because it really is it's an interesting thing It seems like you know know the world is moving faster um we all want to get stuff done a lot of

people want to make big changes and feel like they're living better lives but they look out there and they're like there's stuff that i need to know stuff i need to learn stuff i need to master to do it and i just don't have time in the day to do it right i'm curious i mean i want to get like right in with you sort of like the idea behind your book. Sure. But one quick question first, which is what was the motivation for you to actually go down this rabbit hole? Yeah. So, so two primary motivations. The first is, you know, in terms of the research and the writing that I do, I like to look at, at topics that are like fundamental human experiences, like things that everybody needs to know or

everybody deals with in some way, shape or form. And those things can be big and complex and scary and frustrating in a lot of ways. But if you just dive in and break it down, what you often find is it's not really as hard as it feels. And so part of the motivation was learning is something, learning new skills is a fundamental part of what it is to be human. And so let's figure out how to do that. Let's figure out how to do it better. And for most people, the thought of learning new stuff, I'm giddy. I love it.

But for a lot of people, it's terrifying. Particularly if it's something you know would be super fun or super valuable, but you know nothing about it. And you just look at it and it's like, oh my gosh, this is really big. The motivation for me personally was I run my own business. My wife, Kelsey, runs her own business. And two and a half years ago, our daughter, Lila, came into the world. And all of a sudden we had zero, zero free time. And, um, and so, you know, I, just like you, I'm, I really geek out about this stuff. I have a list of things that I want to learn a mile long. And so, you know, not having any time, it's like, okay, I may only be able to set aside, you know, half an hour,

45 minutes a day. So that's all I have. Then, you know, let's figure out how to learn as quickly as possible in that short period. And at the same time, you don't want to wait forever. A lot of people are like, okay, I could figure out, I could scrap somehow to find that half an hour a day. But does doing it so little mean that it's going to take me like 10 years to actually be decent enough at it so it'll actually be fun? Right. And what I found through my research is that's totally not the case. It doesn't take very long. Even if you know absolutely nothing or you only have a certain amount of time every day to sit

down and learn it, you can become very, very good at something in a very short period of time. I think that's fun. But this flies in the face to a certain extent also in what has commonly become known as the 10,000 hour rule. Sure. A little bit. A little bit. It's actually a lot more complimentary than it would seem at the service. So the whole idea of the 10,000 hour rule came from research by K. Andrews Erickson,

Florida State University. And the idea behind that was, if you look at the people in ultra competitive, easily ranked fields professional golfers musicians all of these folks where you can you can get an estimate of who really is the best in the world in an object on an objective level right um the question that that uh dr erickson was researching is what does it take to to get to that level right on some very narrow thing. So yeah, if you want to step on a golf course and compete with Tiger Woods, that's about the amount of time it's going to take you to get there. But the vast majority of us, that's not the goal. That's not what we're trying to do.

We just may have something in our minds that we want to accomplish or an area of life we want to explore. And it takes a lot less time to get what we want out of something. And I guess for a lot of people, motivation is probably one of two things. You want to get good enough so you enjoy doing it. Yeah. Or maybe professionally, you want to develop a skill set enough so that you can actually start to leverage it.

Absolutely. Build your career or change your career for a lot of people. So there are a bunch of things that you can learn that can help you do better in your business. There are a bunch of things that you can do to do for fun. It doesn't take that long. Yeah. So let's dive right into it because you kind of have a methodology that you've developed. So take us through, I guess it's five sort of like core ideas.

Yeah. Okay. So the first step in this process, and this is something that applies to every skill. It could be a motor skill, like learning how to fly an airplane or skateboard or something like that. It could be a cognitive skill, like language or programming or something. So the first step is deciding exactly what it is you want. Why are you jazzed about this thing in the first place? If you're able to really clearly define what it is you're trying to get, it's called setting a

target performance level. The more clearly that level of performance, the more clearly you can define that, the easier it is for you to look out into the world and find ways to get there in the most direct way possible, right? So like, what's's an example there? So for example, for me, I learned a lot of things in the process of putting together this book. And one of the things that I wanted to be able to do was program. And so instead of just saying,

I want to be a programmer, right? It doesn't give you any information whatsoever. It's so amorphous. Yeah, here is this idea of a program that I would like to sit down and create from nothing, and it looks like A, B, C, D, E, F, G. When I make this thing, I'll have developed the skills that are necessary in order to get the particular result, right? Got it.

So instead of learning everything in the world about programming, I decided this is the sub-segment of that skill I'm interested in learning first, so that's what I'm going to focus on first. So it has to be very goal-oriented and also very specific. Yes. So what is it going to look like when you're done? What are you going to be able to see or experience that will let you know you reached the level? Okay, so if you want to learn a language,

is I want to speak French enough or is it... Not enough. So what would that look like in yours or like framework? So, uh, let's say for example, I want to go to a restaurant that has a French speaking waiter and I want to order and conduct the entire meal in this language, uh, and, and have a good time doing it. That's something that's specific enough to practice. Got it, okay. So you make it, almost make it too specific at the beginning because once you get to that level,

you can always ratchet up the stakes, right? You've reached that threshold, practice something else. I mean, what I found is once you have, once you get just like the most baseline proficiency in something, it sucks less. Yes. And now you actually, like that baseline level, it creates a whole new level of motivation

to want to learn more because now you've kind of gotten through like the scales in music or something like that. And it's important to understand that the first couple hours of practicing something new are frustrating for everyone. Everybody's terrible at the beginning. And so, you know, if you can push through

those early few hours, the practice itself becomes fun and it becomes way easier to continue to improve. Okay, so that's number one. Number two. Okay, so after you decide what you want, you do what's called deconstructing the skill. And the idea behind that is a lot of the things that we think of as skills, like, for example, playing golf or speaking French or learning how to program, those aren't exactly skills. They're really kind of general topics that contain lots of smaller subskills. Right. So it's really hard to practice being a good golfer. It's way easier to practice hitting off of the tee with a driver, right? So

you take the global skill and you break it up into much smaller parts. And if you're clear about what you want, it becomes very easy to find what are those sub skills? What are the smaller parts that are actually going to help you get to that target performance level as quickly as possible? So like if there are a hundred sub skills, if you've done number one, it makes it much easier to figure out, okay, what are the 15 of those sub skills that are going to give me 80% of the results towards getting where I want to go. And what you often find is, is it's only maybe two or three subs that you use most of the time. Yeah. So it's, so it's just, you know, breaking it down into small enough chunks. If you do just a

little bit of research, which is actually step three, right? You go out into the world, you find sources of information that help you do this deconstruction. If you look at, you know, say, for example, pick up five books on whatever it is that you're trying to learn how to do. Don't read them cover to cover, skim all of them one right after the other. And what you'll see is the two or three subskills that you're going to use most of the time are the ones that come up over and over again, right? So you just practice those first. And if you spend your time practicing those things and avoid a lot of the distractions or things that aren't going to help you, you save a lot of time and energy as you're practicing.

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So I have a big question, so I'll ask you now. If out of a whole basket of potential sub-skills that add up to this thing that you want to accomplish, only a small handful are very often really, really critical. Why are we taught to do them all at once? Yeah, I don't have a good answer for that, actually. I think the biggest thing is we treat, in our culture now, learning as a very academic exercise. Like, the objective is to suck in a ton of information about this thing, whether or not you're going to use it. And I think education in our culture now has been seen in the academic sense and less in the sense of practicing something with the eye of using it to do some particular cool thing.

So it's less applied. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the whole idea of researching the topic and something that I had to train myself out of is I love doing research, right? So the first thing, like programming was a good example of this for me. It's like, oh, I learned how to program. I get 10 books and I have these courses. I'm going to go through all of this stuff and then I'm going to sit down and write a program. It's like, no.

You use the research, do just enough research to help you do the deconstruction and find the most important subscales first, and then get out of research mode and into practice mode as quickly as you can. Because that's where the real stuff's going to happen. Yeah. And when you start practicing what it is you're actually trying to do, that's when you see the performance improvement. Now, you also made a differentiation when we started the conversation between cognitive skills, like learning a language, and do you use motor skills? Motor skills, like swinging a bat or playing golf. Do all of these steps, I mean, we still have two more to work through, but with the three that we covered so far, are they all sort of equally relevant to both types of learning?

Yeah, so for both types of learning, you have to go through the same general process. Some of the actual practice techniques can be different. So, for example, one of the things that you can do when you're practicing a motor skill, which works really well, is practice it within a couple hours of going to sleep, either taking a nap or going to bed for the night. There's a lot of research around the idea of what's called consolidation. So your brain translates the practice and experience you had and encodes neural connections to help you do it better. That practice or that process is way more efficient if you practice within about four hours of going to sleep. So in the process of writing the first 20 hours, I retaught myself

how to touch type on a different keyboard, which is like having the experience of rewiring my brain to do something differently. And then fun things like playing the ukulele which all motor skills and it's surreal surreal experience i would practice it right before i would go to bed and you know the first couple hours of practice was just terrible right so i would practice i'd go to bed i'd pick it up first thing in the morning just to see it was like astounding how much better i was after a couple hours sleep. That's amazing. Because sleep helps consolidate that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's really cool.

So yeah, some of the actual practice techniques are different, but the general process is the same. Right. So that's pretty remarkable. You literally wake up in the morning, and you're better than you were when you went to sleep just because you slept in the middle of it. Absolutely. So yeah, so for— Like noticeably better, like noticeably better, like, you know, one of the, in the process of learning typing, like, you know, once I switched keyboard formats, I went from, from, um, typing about as fast as I could think to literally like five words per minute, like terrible. Right. And, And so, you know, practicing right before bed

and getting up in the morning and trying to use my computer, like the first couple of days I was doing it was like, oh my gosh, I can actually like type now. I can do something. That's crazy. Yeah. So, you know, that type of thing works for a motor skill. For cognitive skills, memorization techniques

like spaced repetition reinforcement, like flash card model or flash cards with feedback helping you remember things works really well. So yeah, the actual practice techniques can be very different, but the core method of learning is very much the same. And again, for both of them, before you go to bed, helps with the consolidation. What about simulated practice? Simulated practice can be effective as long as it is as close to real-world performances as you can make it. Right. So, you know, a lot of the, you know, trying to memorize something and then having that translate directly into practice doesn't really work. Yeah, I guess I'm thinking more in terms of, like, motor skills.

Okay. When I was a gymnast when I was a kid, we would, before any event, I would basically, before I would step up to a piece of Everest, I would kind of close my eyes and I would actually envision my body moving through the entire thing. Yes, okay. And there was all this research that said that

it triggers all the same motor neurons that would be triggered, or the same response in your brain as if you were actually doing it. But I'm curious in terms of accelerated learning, whether that would actually triggered or like the same response in your brain as if you were actually doing it. But I'm curious in terms of sort of like accelerated learning, whether that would actually make you progress faster and towards a high level of proficiency in this. There is quite a bit of research that says that imaginary types of practice does work and it works well with a catch, which is you have to do it in addition to the real physical practice, right? So,

so if you're starting to consolidate those motor movements and addition to the real physical practice, right? So, so if you're starting to consolidate those motor movements and you're doing that in practice, and then you're reinforcing that with imagined practice. Awesome. But you know, what I, what I found is a lot of people get caught up in the, uh, the, the, the process of just doing the physical practice first. So we got to three of the five steps now. So let's kind of like close the, uh, the loop here. So step number four. Okay. Step number four is removing barriers to practice. So things that are preventing you from actually sitting down and doing the work. Okay. Sometimes those things are environmental distractions, like, you know, turning off the TV

or blocking the internet or closing the door, you know, all the things that you can do to make sure in those early hours of practice, which are frustrating, you don't get so frustrated that it's easy to stop focusing on whatever it is that you're doing and start paying attention to something else. You know, likewise, anything that you can do to make sure it takes as little energy as possible to start practicing is super helpful at that point. So, you know, instead of keeping your guitar in the case in the back of the closet on the other side of your house, right? Take the guitar out of the case, get a stand, put it right next to your, uh, next to your couch. And that just, you know, anything that you can do to make it easier on yourself to get those early hours of practice, the better. Yeah. I mean, my guitar is actually hanging out on a rack because of that it's like almost because i just forget it's even there

totally you know it's like the visual cue actually makes a really big difference for me okay so number four is um now i'm curious also i mean it sounds like there's a bit of crossover between that sort of like bj fogg's work on really habits yeah yeah absolutely it's you know a lot of the same you know this is where the behavioral psychology elements of this come in. It's how can you make it easier to do the thing that you've decided you want to do, you spend a little bit of willpower, a little bit of time and energy altering the structure of the environment around you. Right. And just make it easy as possible to do the thing that you want to do. Yeah, totally makes sense. Yeah.

All right, last item, number five. Last one. Pre-commit to practicing at least 20 hours. And this is the big one. So all the things that we've talked about so far is getting set up to sit down and do the work of actually practicing. The pre-commitment and the idea of practicing at least 20 hours,

there's a lot of behavioral psychology behind that. The two big things is, first, it's a really important check on your reasons for learning this thing in the first place. So it's kind of like, if I'm not willing to commit to 20 hours, I can't be all that serious about it. It's like, is this, is this worth, is it worthwhile for me to rearrange my schedule and stop doing other things?

And, you know, is this something that I'm expecting to get enough benefit from to make the effort worth it? Yeah. If it's not, don't do it. Right. Life is short. You know, it's like, go do something else that you will get more benefit out of or you are more excited about. So if you're willing to set aside

at least 20 hours, what the pre-commitment does is make sure that you practice long enough to push through that early frustration and actually start seeing results. And I think a lot of us really seriously overestimate just how long it takes to become good at something. So you can become really, really good at something, surprisingly good at something in as little as 20 hours. So if you practice that long, you're going to be way better at the end of that than you were at the beginning. Yeah. I guess a lot of people also figure, well, you know, 20 hours, you know, I've done that with a million different things and I really wasn't very good. But probably when they actually look back and say, well, no, like I missed three days here.

And like that one day where I said I was practicing for an hour, I was really only practicing for 10 minutes. So when you really add up all the time, I'm guessing there's a little bit of self-delusion that happens. There's actually quite a bit of research behind this. Our minds are not built to accurately estimate time. And in the early parts of learning something new, it's like, you know, it's terrible. It's like, oh man, I've been at this hours. And you look at the clock and you've been at it 10 minutes. And so a lot of the, you know, both pre-committing to a certain amount of practicing.

So 20 hours roughly is about 40 minutes a day for a month, give or take. So you're kind of thinking in your mind 40 minutes a day for a month. So a couple of, and I usually break my practice sessions into about 20 minutes a piece, right? So two 20-minute practice sessions every day for about a month can get you there. And, and so, you know, if, if you're able and willing to do that, um, pre-committing the time, make sure that you practice long enough to, to see that really good result. But, uh, it's also, you know, psychologically not, it doesn't feel like that big of a hurdle to say, okay, this is important to me. I can set aside at least that amount of time. Right. So it's just enough that you're going to see dramatic results,

but not so much that it prevents you from making the pre-commitment in the first place. Right. I love that. So let's recap the five steps. Okay. So the five steps in order. Step one, decide what you want. What's your target performance level? Step two is deconstruct the skill. Separate it into smaller subskills, practice the most important ones first. Number three is research the skill just enough to do the deconstruction and choose the most important subskills, but not so much that it becomes a barrier to practice in itself. Number four is eliminate barriers to practice. Make it easy to do what you want to do. And number five is pre-commit to practicing whatever it is that you want to be able to do

for at least 20 hours. Love it. All right. So my mind is spinning because I'm thinking to myself, okay, what am I going to do? I was going to ask, what's in the back of your mind? Have you always wanted to learn how to do? It's interesting. I mean, languages, because I don't speak any other language. I took Latin for six years, which means I speak nothing but English. It's interesting. I want to blurt out a whole bunch of different things, but number five is making me say, I need to really think about this. Because I don't want to say, okay, okay, people,

I'm going to commit to this publicly. And then an hour after we filmed this, I'm like, I'm not really willing to put in my 20 hours for that. So it's interesting. I'm really thinking that through. Awesome conversation. And I love the breakdown that you have. And this is all part of, this is all, I mean, obviously,

detailed and a whole bunch more extensively in the first 20 hours. But thanks for stopping by and sharing this with me. Because like I said, one of the consistent questions that we keep getting from people is, I know that for me to get to a place where I feel like I'm living well in the world, I'm doing these things, career, personal, whatever it is, there's a body of knowledge that I need to know

and get decent at. But I don't know how to do it, and I think it's going to take forever. So I think this is a really great formula to help people get there. Thanks. And I think the really good news take forever. So I think this is a really great formula to help people get there. Thanks. And, you know, I think the really good news is that the outcome of this research is the barrier to sitting down and learning something new is not intellectual.

We're all smart enough to sit down and figure it out and practice in a smart way. The barrier's emotional. And so, you know, a lot of these things are just working with ourselves in a smart way to decide we're interested in doing something, figure out how to do it, and actually sit down and practice so we can do a bunch of cool stuff. Love it. That's fun. Awesome.

All right. Fantastic. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. My guest today has been Josh Kaufman, the author of The First 20 Hours. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.