The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything...Fast

“If you rely on finding time to do something, it will never be done. If you want to find time, you must make time.”

“The best thing that can happen to a human being is to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears.”

“The trouble comes when we confuse learning with skill acquisition. If you want to acquire a new skill, you must practice it in context. Learning enhances practice, but it doesn’t replace it. If performance matters, learning alone is never enough.”

“7. Make dedicated time for practice. The time you spend acquiring a new skill must come from somewhere. Unfortunately, we tend to want to acquire new skills and keep doing many of the other activities we enjoy, like watching TV, playing video games, et cetera. I’ll get around to it, when I find the time, we say to ourselves. Here’s the truth: “finding” time is a myth. No one ever “finds” time for anything, in the sense of miraculously discovering some bank of extra time, like finding a twenty-dollar bill you accidentally left in your coat pocket. If you rely on finding time to do something, it will never be done. If you want to find time, you must make time.”

“Many things aren't fun until you're good at them . Every skill has what I call a frustration barrier, a period of time in which you're horribly unskilled and you're painfully aware of that fact.”

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU”

“As much as I enjoyed yoga courses, it was hard to make time for them. Generally speaking, my work arrangements were flexible, so it was mostly a psychological problem: it was hard to convince myself it was acceptable to go twist my body into knots for two hours when there was work to be done.”

“Popper said many wise things, but I think the following remark is among the wisest: “The best thing that can happen to a human being is to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears.”

“Skill is the result of deliberate, consistent practice, and in early-stage practice, quantity and speed trump absolute quality. The faster and more often you practice, the more rapidly you'll acquire the skill.”

“Choose a lovable project. 2. Focus your energy on one skill at a time. 3. Define your target performance level. 4. Deconstruct the skill into subskills. 5. Obtain critical tools. 6. Eliminate barriers to practice. 7. Make dedicated time for practice. 8. Create fast feedback loops. 9. Practice by the clock in short bursts. 10. Emphasize quantity and speed.”

“Not being willing to jump in over your head is the single biggest emotional barrier to rapid skill acquisition. Feeling stupid isn’t fun, but reminding yourself that you will understand with practice will help you move from confusion to clarity as quickly as possible.”

“Remember, I’m starting as a complete beginner, and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“If you want to be able to bake the perfect croissant, pick up a few good books related to baking and pastries. Instead of reinventing the process, you’ll find existing techniques that have been perfected over many years by the masters of the field. If you see the same technique or process described in multiple resources, chances are good it’s important to know.”

“The most well-known general method of rapid skill acquisition is immersion: completely changing your environment in a way that results in constant deliberate practice.”

“Pick one, and only one, new skill you wish to acquire. Put all of your spare focus and energy into acquiring that skill, and place other skills on temporary hold.”

“Practice by the clock in short bursts.”

“the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work and learning from their mistakes, the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

“Think of these principles as ways to identify a skill worthy of temporary obsession, focus on it, and remove distractions or barriers that distract you from effective practice.”

“Computers have dominated chess for years now, but even the best computers have a difficult time challenging an experienced human Go player.”

“You have 24 hours to invest each day: 1,440 minutes, no more or less. You will never have more time. If you sleep approximately 8 hours a day, you have 16 hours at your disposal. Some of those hours will be used to take care of yourself and your loved ones. Others will be used for work. Whatever you have left over is the time you have for skill acquisition. If you want to improve your skills as quickly as possible, the larger the dedicated blocks of time you can set aside, the better.”

“The trick is to start practicing as quickly as possible. Not thinking about practicing or worrying about practicing, but actually practicing.”

“Focus your energy on one skill at a time.”

“This mental simulation also gives me a shopping list: I’d need to invest in a flotation vest, helmet, and other safety gear. Now, instead of (1) raft river (2) have fun (3) don’t die, I have a concrete list of subskills to practice and actions to take to ensure I actually have fun, keep my gear, and survive the trip. Inversion works.”

“When the Student Is Ready, the Teacher Appears”

“Make dedicated time for practice.”

“If you only have an hour or two each day to devote to practice and learning, and you spread that time and energy across twenty different skills, no individual skill is going to receive enough time and energy to generate noticeable improvement.”

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

“Immersion works because it ensures that you complete the crucial first hours of practice without fail: you can’t escape your environment, so the practice happens automatically.”

“6. Eliminate distractions in your environment. 7. Use spaced repetition and reinforcement for memorization. 8. Create scaffolds and checklists.”

“The best way to invest willpower in support of skill acquisition is to use it to remove these soft barriers to practice. By rearranging your environment to make it as easy as possible to start practicing, you’ll acquire the skill in far less time.”