The First 20 hours how to Learn Anything

Learning new skills is not hard

If you want to be good at something, 20 hours of focus, concentration and intelligent effort are the minima requirement.

Step 1: Divide skills into subtasks/sub-skills.

Step 2: Practice those sub-skills very intelligently and self-correcting yourself every time you re-practice.

Step 3: Kick away emotional and physical barriers.

Step 4: Exclude the most important sub-skill and practice for at least 20 hours.

Thomas Edison said, “There ain’t no rules around here. We’re trying to
accomplish something.”

Basic lessons for Rapid learning of a skill

1. Find to learn something very intensely interested in yourself, this can help you learn faster.
2. Focus only on a single skill at a time. One major mistake all learners do is that they divide their concentrations into 10 different skills at once.
3. Stop being frustrated and enjoy the skill, please!
4. Measure its target performance level and judge what is good performance-level for you about
   that skill i.e. if you want to be 100% expert at the skill or performing well is enough for you.
5. Each day has 24 hours, 1,440 minutes in it. Use larger blocks of it and work more and more on skill acquisition.
6. Always make a plan of 20 hours of skill learning, exercise your skill until 20 hours goal is completed.
7. Always judge how well and fast are you performing. Feedbacks will energize the process to acquire skill.
8. Did you know our brain doesn’t know how much longer it will take to do anything? Hence
   sometimes you overestimate your practice and get lazy at it. Stop being slothful and work by the
   clock, set timer and only practice till it goes off.
9. Stop focusing on perfect performance, just make mistakes, and practice as much you can.
10. Before starting a skill always have detailed research about it. Read in libraries about it, buy few books for more enlightening.
11. There will be numerous unknown confusing words everywhere, don’t panic just relax everything takes time as T.K.V. Desichakar once said, “The recognition of confusion is itself a form of clarity.”
12. Take help from people who are experienced.
13. Kill, kick, & burn away distractions. It is one thing that de-motivates you. Most probably there are two types of distractions; television, phone, internet or anything electrical and secondly family members, pet or colleagues.
14. Every skill requires some type of memorization. But whenever you’ll learn something you’ll forget, avoid forgetting by using a method of spaced repetition and reinforcement for
    memorization.

    Def. of spaced repetition: Repeat it with intervals e.g.

    1. First interval= 1day
    2. Second interval= 7 days
    3. Third interval = 16 days…..

    Def. of reinforcement: It adds a stimulus to the environment e.g. people repeat responses that give
    them a positive reward.

15. Always make a checklist of all sub-skills of skill, it makes it easier to see wherever you’re going while practicing a skill so far.
16. Try experimenting with new ideas, make a notebook about it.

Tips in Book: The First 20 Hours How to Learn Anything Fast

• Tip 1: Two popular websites of programmers is “Stack Overflow” & “Hackers News.”
• Tip 2: Normal typing speed of the keyboard is 60 WPM (Words Per Minute).
• Tip 3: If you repeat the skill at the end of the day before sleeping, you can learn while sleep.
• Tip 4: One doesn’t need to be master of each skill, learning it averagely also a good way to go.
• Tip 5: Shakespeare said; “Why don’t we practice? Simple we are busy and scared”.
• Tip 6: Acquire one skill at a time.
• Tip 7: Major barrier to learning a new skill is an emotional barrier; it is extremely discomforting to start practicing a new skill.
• Tip 8: Start today, not tomorrow, neither day after tomorrow.