Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Josh Kaufman Teaches How to Acquire Any Skill in Just 20 Hours | Productivity | YAPClassic

Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up, Yapam? I've got another Yap Classic for you today, and we're going to listen to part two of my interview with Josh Kaufman, who's a well-known researcher, speaker, and best-selling author of three books. So Josh is really known for his TED talk, the first 20 hours. It was one of the most viral TED Talks of all time. This TED Talk is one of the top 25 most viewed TED Talks with over 22 million views on YouTube. And this interview that I had with Josh on your young and profiting was super interesting. And so many of you guys have reached out to me since this episode was published, I think over a year ago now. And we're going to replay it in honor of the new year because it talks about something so important. And that's gaining new skills. We talk about skill stacking all the time on Yap, but so many people feel like they

Starting point is 00:00:57 don't have enough time to learn a new skill. It's a big excuse that they tell themselves. And so this episode proves them wrong. And I thought, what better timing than in honor of the new year to put this out? because so many of you guys probably have learning a new skill as one of the top resolutions on your list for 2023. So in this episode, Josh breaks down how to learn a new skill in just 20 hours. He's learned the basics of several skills this way,

Starting point is 00:01:20 from computer coding to playing the ukulele. In this episode, we discussed the emotional obstacles we need to overcome, as well as the myths involved with learning new skill. And we'll gain insight on Josh's four steps of rapid skill acquisition. Let's kick off this episode by asking Josh about his wildly popular TED Talk, the first 20 hours. So in this TED Talk, it had almost, I think, 25 million views. It was like one of the most popular TED Talks ever. Let me ask you a personal question.

Starting point is 00:01:53 Like, how did that change your life? Like, that must have been such a big deal. And TED Talks for back in, I think you did it in 2013, that was a huge deal back then, even more than it is now. So how did that change your life? Yeah, no, it's been really interesting. In all of my projects, I try to learn something new. And so, you know, for the personal MBA, it was all about, like, how can I take this massive subject and try to teach someone who may have never done it before, thought about it before? Like, can I condense something big and do something manageable?

Starting point is 00:02:26 And so for the first 20 hours, it's not as big of a subject as, you know, varied as businesses. but it's important and it's valuable. And so that was, the first 20 hours is my project of, like, can I take an important idea and spread it? And can I get an important message out to the maximum number of people that I can reach with it? And, you know, who knows what the result of that is going to be? But I'm pretty sure, like, this is an important part of life.

Starting point is 00:02:56 And so it's going to help people if I can just get the word out. And so the TED talk, I had no idea what to expect. And there were 500 people in the audience at the time that I gave the talk. And I arranged to have the end of a particular skill that I was practicing, like be on stage at that moment so people could see what it looked like. And it was terrifying. And I didn't know how it was going to turn out. Like, that was very much a, you know, doing a trapeze act without a net below you sort of thing.

Starting point is 00:03:34 And I'm both very happy that it turned out the way that it did. And then, yeah, it's Ted at the time was just starting to become, you know, a popular cultural force. And I'm really happy that when something takes off like that, it's like it's because there's something intrinsically valuable to it. So that was my contribution. but then, you know, both Ted being willing to spread the word to a large group of people. And then also to the people who watched it, used it, talked to other people about it, said, hey, you know, I saw this video about this cool thing, you should see it too. Like, I can't take credit for any of that. And I think in general, like of all of the things to contribute to people in the world, like helping them become.

Starting point is 00:04:26 become better at things that are valuable and important to them. Like, I feel, I feel really good about that as, as a contribution to the world of ideas. So speaking of your TED Talk, you talked about it takes 10,000 hours to learn a new skill. And that's what we've all been conditioned to believe, right? So this was like a myth that we all heard. It had some scientific basing behind it, but it was kind of a game of telephone gone wrong. So explain that to us. Talk to us about this 10,000 hours missed to acquire new skill and what you discovered when you looked into it.

Starting point is 00:05:03 Yeah. So this really came from a couple of different intersecting interests of mine. Part of it is just, I like learning things. I like experimenting. I like being able to do things I've never been able to do before. I find that intrinsically rewarding. And so I'm really curious, like when you have never done something before but you want to, what's the best way to go about doing that? How do you go from not knowing anything and not being good at all to being pretty good in a short period of time? And at the time, and even still,

Starting point is 00:05:42 I was going through the transition of being a parent for the first time. And a lot of the time and energy that I was using to learn new things was now being invested in my kids, and my family. And so when you don't have, a lot of upfront time, you know, free energy to invest.

Starting point is 00:06:01 Efficiency becomes a much bigger concern than it ever had been. And so there's that personal interest. But then also, this was the ascendancy of the 10,000 hours rule, which is, has been around in various incarnations for a while. It started with the work of Kay Anders Erickson, who is a professor at the University of Florida. He did a lot of research around skill acquisition. And in a series of studies, the most famous one being of violinists, like, okay, trying to predict who are going to be the top violinists from a particular school.

Starting point is 00:06:42 And they did studies of, you know, how much did those violinists practice under the idea that, well, you know, probably the folks who practiced more are probably better playing the violin. And some of those studies basically said, yeah, I think that's true. And the rough order of magnitude to get to be the best of the best was around 10,000 hours plus or minus. There has been some additional research that indicates the variation of that is extreme. So, you know, think of it as error bars above or below 10,000 hours. it, like the error bars are like three or four thousand dollars, or three or four thousand hours a piece.

Starting point is 00:07:25 Like just the range of mastery is extreme. So there is, it's an interesting question, right? Like if you want to become the best in the world of something or like, you know, in the top point zero zero one percent of a particular skill, what does it take to get there? Interesting question. Like you want to be a professional athlete? How much are you going to need to practice? And going to our conversation earlier about status, that feels like really, really interesting

Starting point is 00:07:54 and cool to think about, right? Like how much of my life would I have to invest in something to be like an Olympic gold medalist or things like that? And so most of the research and most of the conversation around skill was all about that question. Like what does it take to get to mastery? How do you become the best in the world? And I realized at a certain point, like, that's not the question.

Starting point is 00:08:22 That's not the question for most of us. The question is, if we want to learn how to do something that we're not able to do right now, we're not talking about mastery at all. We're talking about competence. We're talking about going from nothing to, like, doing something. We're not competing against the world. We're competing against ourselves and our previous lack of ability. And so I wanted to answer the question of, what does it take to go from nothing to being pretty good?

Starting point is 00:08:55 And that is really, it's a valuable topic to consider and think about and care about. Because particularly for adults, when we begin learning something we've never done before, those early hours of practice are hell. Like it's just, it's frustrating. Like, you think it feels like you should be able to do this thing, and you just can't get yourself to do it for whatever reason. And what I found with adult learners is that people give up way too quickly. So there's an enormous amount of psychological research that says the most efficient hours of practice that we will ever spend are the early hours. Like, we improve, think of it like per hour of effort invested.

Starting point is 00:09:39 the biggest rate of improvement is right at the beginning. It's just the beginning is really difficult, and so most people never make it. And so what I found, both through research and then replicating it in my own experiments, is the first 20-ish hours of practice are very frustrating, very difficult, but very effective. And so the level of skill or the level of competence

Starting point is 00:10:07 that you're able to achieve, after a very small amount of practice in the grand scheme of things is pretty significant. And so if you have a way of making those early hours of practice more effective and more efficient than the otherwise could be or would be without having a plan, you can become way, way better at a huge variety of things. You know, whatever personal or professional things that you care about, a very narrow strategic investment of time and energy can produce some very extreme rewards.

Starting point is 00:10:41 And you just need to go about doing it in a smart way. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day. We're 60 people all over the world.

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Starting point is 00:11:52 Just go to Indeed.com slash profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. Young and profitors. I know there's so many people tuning in right now that end their workday wondering why certain tasks take forever, why they're procrastinating certain things, why they don't feel confident in their work, why they feel drained and frustrated and unfulfilled. But here's the thing you need to know. It's not a character flaw that you're feeling this way. It's actually your natural wiring. And here's the thing. When it comes to burnout,

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Starting point is 00:13:44 So if you guys want to take the Working Genius assessment and get 20% off, you can use code profiting. Go to workinggenius.com. Again, that's working genius.com. Stop guessing. Start working in your genius. Yeah. So you're talking about, you were saying before. that the first 20 hours are very frustrating.

Starting point is 00:14:05 You also said, you know, in your TED Talk, and I'm sure in your book, that just getting started is a barrier because emotionally it's really hard for us to even just get started. So it's really funny that we brought up this camera example because in real life, I have a YouTube camera that I got for Christmas, a very expensive one. And it's been sitting in my box since Christmas. And I haven't even opened it up. Now, I'm very tech savvy. I run automations and I can do everything when it comes to technology.

Starting point is 00:14:35 But for some reason, I have not opened my box. I am scared of learning how to use this new camera. So talk to us about the emotions behind starting something new. Yeah, there's something interesting that happens. And this was particularly highlighted after my kids were born of you never see a toddler, like right when they're at the stage of standing on their own two feet and starting to take a step. A toddler will never take a step, fall, sit down, and say to himself or herself, wow, I'm just really bad at walking. I need to not do this anymore. This is terrible.

Starting point is 00:15:15 And quit, right? So you see them want to do a thing. They tried to do the thing. They fail, but they learn and they adjust and they keep at it. And then eventually they're able to do the thing. And so I think that children have this reputation of just learning so quickly, you know, absorbing the world around them like a sponge. That's not exactly true. Like when you actually look at a child learning, they're just failing over and over and over and over again. The secret is that they don't care as much.

Starting point is 00:15:50 It doesn't keep them from trying again in the same way that it does an adult. And so adults, I've found, we place a lot. a lot of unnecessary pressure or shoulds on ourselves. A good classic example is, which has some research literature backing it, is that most kids love to draw. We'll draw all the time just for fun. And then there's a point in late middle school to early junior high where kids stop drawing. And it's that point where they can see what they want to draw in their minds. And the thing that they put on paper is not representative of that, and that becomes very frustrating. And so there's this self-consciousness that happens when you're learning as an adult.

Starting point is 00:16:39 I should be able to do better than I'm doing. I should be able to figure out this damn camera. I should be able to do this thing that I want to be able to do, and I just can't do it yet. And it's the emotional experience that's the barrier. It's not your intelligence. It's not your capacity for improvement. It's not your capability to learn or improve. It is 100% an emotional barrier. And so I think knowing that in advance of learning is a tremendous gift, right? Like, you don't have to worry so much about the intrinsic ability part. It's just like, no, this is the experience everyone has. It's something, you know, talking earlier about like the sales objections that you know are coming so you could prepare for them in advance,

Starting point is 00:17:25 this is that but improving ourselves. We know the frustration is coming. We know that it's normal. And we know that it doesn't take an enormous amount of persistence to get to the point of seeing very real, very tangible improvement. And so having a strategy to get through those frustrating early hours makes it both much more likely that you're going to pick up the skill to begin with, but it makes it much more likely that you're going to persist long enough to see an actual improvement.

Starting point is 00:17:56 Even just, like you said, knowing that there's an emotional, you know, barrier to starting something new, even when I was watching your TED Talk, I was like, oh my gosh, that's why I haven't opened my YouTube camera. Like, I need to just do it, you know? So even just knowing. So I hope everybody out there listening, if there's something that you're scared to do, I hope you take the actions to do it. And let's talk about what a learning curve looks like, because I think that's important before we go into the steps of actually, you know, acquiring a new skill and going through some of your four steps. So first, describe to us what a learning curve looks like.

Starting point is 00:18:28 Yeah. So this is something that's kind of bandied about a lot. And people will talk about steep learning curves as if that's a bad thing. No, it's actually a really good thing. So think of it like you're graphing your improvement per time spent or per minute or per hour spent in a skills. if let's let's say you know you take a skill that you would only improve like one percent per year the learning curve is just like this slow ramp up and that's really bad that's really frustrating

Starting point is 00:19:02 those are the things that that drive you nuts steep learning curves are you want to see dramatic improvement at the beginning and then you reach some sort of plateau and so the plateau, you can think of it, you know, going back to the business concepts, the plateau is the point of diminishing returns. Like, that's the point where there's still the opportunity for improvement, but it's going to take a lot of time and energy to get to that next level. So, so think this is, this is something where, you know, when you get to the master level, if you are a chess grandmaster or an Olympic sprinter or whatever, you will work for years, you know, in the sprinter example, for like a 0.01 second improvement on your 100 meter time.

Starting point is 00:19:48 Like that's where the mastery, like putting an enormous amount of energy into just like a tiny, tiny marginal improvement. That's where you see that. But at the beginning of the process, the steep learning curve is like, no, you're just spending a few hours and you're going from like terrible to pretty decent to really good to competent in a very, very compressed period of time. So the research literature suggests that this is called the power law of practice has been replicated many, many times by psychological researchers who will give either a cognitive or a physical movement. It's called a motor task. And they'll just graph, you know, give them something that you can like observe and time and, you know, assess, assess competence. And you'll see very quickly, like those first few hours of practice are super effective. You go from being really bad to pretty decent in a short period of time, and then you level off.

Starting point is 00:20:46 And so my question is like, okay, for all of the things that would be useful to learn, either for work, you know, some professional skill, you know, whether it's a physical movement or, you know, a cognitive skill, something you think about, or just all the things that we do for fun. what is the order of magnitude that we can expect the learning curve to take for a wide variety of both cognitive and motor skills? And so what I found through my own research and my own experimentation, because this is not a theoretical exercise for me, like I do this stuff all the time, is what order of magnitude are we talking about here? And I always found that hours zero to four or five

Starting point is 00:21:29 are the frustration barrier. Like that's the worst part of the whole process. you're just frustrated, you can't do it, you know you can't do it. Something starts to change between hours four and six, where you start to see yourself being able to perform in a way that you've never been able to perform before. And that's where things start to get really interesting. And then by, and there's some variation here, but between hours 10 to 20,

Starting point is 00:21:58 for me, two things happen. One is that you know, you're a lot more competent now than you were when you, like the improvement is night and day clear. And that's also where I find the frustration really to a great extent goes away. So continuing to practice after that point

Starting point is 00:22:20 is way easier than it was at the beginning. Like you've reached a basic level of competence. You know what you're doing. You're no longer so confused. You're in a place where you're still making mistakes, but you also know enough about what you're doing that you can notice when you make a mistake and then correct it. And it's that part of the process, like having a certain level of skill, having a lack of frustration, and being able to

Starting point is 00:22:45 self-correct as you practice, that's what gets you from pretty good to really good over a longer period of time. But it's that early critical period that really makes or breaks the skill to begin with. And what are some of the skills that you personally have learned using this method. Yeah. So for the book, I did six, and it was a combination of both cognitive, mental skills and physical motor skills. On the professional side, I came out of college thinking that programming was the most boring thing on the face of the earth and why would people spend their time tracking down weird semicolins in the midst of like crazy code. And it wasn't until I had actual business problems that I could solve by writing a computer program to do

Starting point is 00:23:33 the thing that I wanted to do, that I really became interested in, yeah, I want to figure out how to do this. I have written now four web applications that are being used in a day-to-day business context with profit and loss responsibility. And like, I'm running my business on code that I wrote. And I learned how to write that code in the process. of researching the first 20 hours. So it's something that even, so I think the first 20 hours came out in 2013. And so eight years later, I'm still doing it.

Starting point is 00:24:08 I'm still getting better at it. And I can do things now that I wasn't capable of eight years ago because I started the process in a really fundamentally useful way. There are, I learned how to play the ukulele just for fun, which is still fantastic. I don't practice. anywhere near as much as I would like to.

Starting point is 00:24:30 But all of the things that I learned how to do in the process of researching the first 20 hours, I am better than that level of capability, even with intermittent practice over a very long period of time. So I think that's the thing about this particular project that I really enjoyed. It's universally applicable. It doesn't matter what you want to learn

Starting point is 00:24:54 or what level of skill you're aiming for. It is a useful process that will start you out on the right foot. You can apply it to anything. And then being able to do that, like, this is what life is made of. Like, being able to figure out how to do the things that are important and valuable and interesting to you, it's great. So I'm very happy that the framework has helped a lot of people learn things that are important and useful for them and that they're able to.

Starting point is 00:25:27 to start the process in a way that's likely to get really good results and help them achieve whatever it is that's important. And that's, I just find that awesome. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Hello, Yap Gang. I know my young and profiting listeners want bigger businesses and a better life. And the New Year is the perfect moment to reset and commit to your growth. But let's be real.

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Starting point is 00:29:44 slash profiting. Go to Shopify.com slash profiting. That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, hear your first. This new year with Shopify by your side. And this is just so fascinating. And to your point, like skills are the foundation. of everything. Skills are how you, you know, can demand a high salary. Skills are how you can start a business and create a product or a service and have the expertise to do so. Like skills are everything, especially for young people. Like learning is everything. Getting new skills. I always talk about this. I'm always talking about skill stacking, getting experience, learning new things. So I think this is really relevant to my audience. Can you go into the four steps of rapid skill acquisition?

Starting point is 00:30:31 Yeah. So the best. way of thinking about it, and I'm a big, big fan of checklists or, you know, reminding yourself to do certain things. And I since expanded it. So there was a second edition to the first 20 hours that makes it five steps or adds a step zero, which is probably the more accurate way to put it. The first thing is just to decide what you want to be able to do. And that sounds so common sense. And yet in the year since I've published the first edition of the first 20 hours, that's the step where most people get stuck. And so there's a lot of, you know,

Starting point is 00:31:06 when you're thinking about learning something that you want to be able to do, there's a lot of very general, very abstract thinking that goes on. And I usually frame it in the context of languages. So like, I want to be able to speak Italian. That's a really broad goal. That doesn't really give you very much

Starting point is 00:31:26 to hold on to at the beginning. So the bigger, the more abstract, the less specific and, concrete the thing that you want to be able to do is, the harder it is to get started because the whole thing feels big and overwhelming. And so the first thing to do is just decide specifically, like, what do you want to be able to do? What does that look like? How do you know, can you define for yourself, like, knowing when you've gotten there or when you're getting to that level of skill that you desire? And the more specific and concrete you are in that, the better. From there,

Starting point is 00:32:02 you can take that and break it down into much smaller parts. So this is the step of deconstructing the skill, taking this really big thing and making it a series of small things. The classic example is that many skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills that you're doing together. And so think of like a classic mastery-ish sort of game, like golf, right? golf is not one thing. Golf is a collection of lots of different things that you happen to do in some order

Starting point is 00:32:38 during the context of a game. But driving off the tea and putting on the green, two very, very different movements, skills, abilities, being able to perform in those situations. And so for a lot of the things that we want to do, just thinking through,

Starting point is 00:32:56 like, am I doing one specific thing over and over and over again, or are there sub parts to this that I could just focus on, just maybe a smaller piece of the puzzle for a little bit, get good at that. And then the way that you can use that is some of those subskills are used way more often than others. And so the most efficient, effective thing to do

Starting point is 00:33:19 is you practice the sub-skills that you're going to be using the most first because that's going to give you the best improvement for the global skill. So it just takes a little bit of research, and that's step three. And so you don't want to do too much research. Too much research is a subtle form of procrastination. And this is a struggle for me. I do research. It's easy to get stuck here.

Starting point is 00:33:46 But really, just a handful of hours with a book, with a video, with a coach, with some source of information that can help you identify. Like, what are those important things? and focus on those first, that's how you make you, the early hours of practice as effective and efficient as you possibly can. Yeah, and I think in your TED Talk, you gave an example of how, you know, you learned a ukulele and there was like four or five main chords for like every single song. And like that's the kind of stuff that you need to discover before you dive in.

Starting point is 00:34:19 So you're not learning, you know, every single possible thing. You're focusing on the things that are going to give you the most reward and going to kind of level you up as quickly as possible. So I wanted to call that out. Yeah, yeah. No, and there are related ideas here. So it's like a lot of people talk about the 80-20 principle or the critical few. Like, you know, in anything that there's a small bundle of things that are going to be most important or use the most.

Starting point is 00:34:45 Focus on those first. Language is a brilliant example of this. There's a pattern called Zipf's law, Z-I-P-F, if you want to look it up on Wikipedia. and it basically says that, you know, the vast majority of usage of a language is concentrated in about 100 words. And so if you're learning a new language, like, it would make sense.

Starting point is 00:35:07 Learn those words first. You're going to be using them the most or understanding and being able to pick those up is going to be very useful very quickly. And so all skills exhibit that to a greater or lesser extent. So just a little bit of research can help you get there. In the same way, removing barriers to practice, this is step four, is really important because we live in a very

Starting point is 00:35:31 distracting world with lots of things going on. If you're running a business and you're trying to learn a business skill, how do you fit that in in the context of meetings and email and projects and deadlines and all of these things? You know, if you're learning something for fun, you have family and social commitments and, you know, your work and all of these things that are taking time away. And so the more you can set aside some dedicated time, put away your phone, block the internet if you have to, just make it as easy as possible to practice the thing you've decided that's important and as difficult as possible to do anything aside from practicing what you've decided is important. That's going to help. And then the last part

Starting point is 00:36:19 is where the title, the first 20 hours, comes from. And it's the most important psychological part, which is pre-committing to 20 hours of focused practice. And the pre-commitment is the thing that does the work. So you can say, okay, if I'm going to start this at all, if this is important to me, I'm going to put at least 20 hours of practice into this. If I'm terrible, I'm going to be terrible for 20 hours.

Starting point is 00:36:45 If I hate it, I'm going to hate it for 20 hours. And if I get to the 20-hour mark and I'm not good and I'm not enjoying myself and I would rather do something else, I have full permission to do something else after I get to that point. But I'm not going to quit until I get to that point. And so this is helpful for two reasons, I think. The first is it's a good reality check because if you're not willing to invest at least this amount of time and energy into it, you're probably not going to make a lot of progress. regardless. So it's kind of like a qualification. It's a filter. Like, you know, have a minimum amount of seriousness to this before you get started. But then the other part is this is how you overcome the frustration barrier. It's like, yep, I know it's going to be hard and I'm committing

Starting point is 00:37:37 to the hard part and it's going to be fine. And I am going to defer my judgment on my own skill level until later. So for now, I'm just going to focus on the practice. When I get to the 20 hour mark, that's when I'll decide whether or not I want to continue this. Okay, now let's get into your third book. Just give us a high level overview because we don't have too much time. But what is how to fight a hydra about? How to fight a hydra came out of two things. One is that, I don't know if you've ever had a project where once you get into it, it just feels way more complex and like things are happening. Issues are popping up out of nowhere. You know, you'll fight a fire in one area only to have like three more fires pop up in different. So I was reading The War of

Starting point is 00:38:28 Art by Stephen Pressfield, which is an amazing book. And I really liked. So he was talking about this idea of resistance, right? Like knowing what you need to do and just having a really hard time getting to the point of actually doing it. And so he personified the problem. He calls it resistance with a capital R. And he talks about resistance as if it's a thing. And it's a really interesting way of framing the problem that leads to some really interesting insights. And so I started was playing around with that idea. And the image, I've been a fan of of science fiction and fantasy stories for a very long time. It's like, these problems are hydras.

Starting point is 00:39:15 You know, it's the monster that has, you know, six or seven different heads and when you lap one off, two more grow back. Like, you can do the same thing. You can give an analogy to this very common problem. And then with all of the research around how to deal with these problems of uncertainty, well, you can show someone responding skillfully to a difficult situation. You don't necessarily have to tell them about the psychological studies.

Starting point is 00:39:43 You can convey that information in a different way. So how to fight a hydra was my first fiction book that did not start as a fiction book. It kind of evolved into this story over time. And it's a quick read. You can read it in less than an hour. And so it's this really short, interesting story of a person, who decides to go hunting one of these big scary monsters knows it's going to be hard from the beginning,

Starting point is 00:40:16 doesn't have social support in doing it, doesn't have the skills required to get to the end, has no idea how they're going to accomplish it, they just know that they have to for some reason. And then you get to see the protagonist of the story, use some of these very skillful psychological ways of orienting yourself and dealing with things that happen in the world, all the way to the end, which I won't spoil.

Starting point is 00:40:44 And then the afterward is essentially explaining, like, here are the origins of a lot of the things that the protagonist does. Here's where this comes from. Here's the research that's supporting it. So it was an interesting project that developed in a way that I did not expect, but I enjoyed writing How to Fight a Hydra immensely. And it was a really fun project to do. It sounds super interesting. And, you know, judging by your first two books, I'm sure that one's also very, provides a lot of value for people

Starting point is 00:41:18 who are reading it. So the last question I ask all my guests is, what is your secret to profiting in life? My secret to profiting in life, I think is spending a lot of time very, being very clear about what I want and what I don't want. And that sounds simpler than it is in practice. But I think that we all have a limited amount of time and energy and capacity. And there are certain things that kind of sound good in the moment, but end up being distractions. And there are other things that sound really difficult

Starting point is 00:42:00 or really frustrating that end up being the core of what it is for us to live a fulfilling life, whatever that definition is for you. And so I think spending a little bit more time in that headspace, like, what do I want right now and why do I want those things? What am I doing to get those things? And what am I ignoring because it's just not important enough for me? the more you have a very clear image of that in your mind, and the more that you update that over time,

Starting point is 00:42:35 because we change as people, like our situation changes, our values change, our priorities change. Like, keeping really up on what you're doing and why in this moment right now in your context, the more you do that,

Starting point is 00:42:48 the better decisions you'll make and the more effective you'll be at doing the things that are necessary to move you in the, direction you want to go. I love that advice. I think that's great advice. And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do? Yeah. So the best central place to find me is at Josh Kaufman.net. You can find links to all of my books and my most recent research and writing there. Amazing. Well, thank you so much. It was so valuable. Absolutely. It's so fun to talk. And I am looking forward to seeing the results of your new YouTube camera. I'll follow up in a couple weeks to

Starting point is 00:43:25 see how it goes. Thank you. And you're going to help me because now I'm not as scared. So thank you so much. Thank you.

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Josh Kaufman Teaches How to Acquire Any Skill in Just 20 Hours | Productivity | YAPClassic

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