Josh Kaufman - The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast!

The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER, PARLEMENT OF FOULES , 1374

Theres so much I want to do and so little time. The story of modern life.

Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn how to do. Whats on your list? Whats holding you back from getting started?

Two things, most likely: time and skill.

Heres an uncomfortable truth: the most rewarding experiences in life almost always require some level of skill. Skills take time and effort to mastertime we dont have, and effort were reluctant to contribute.

Ill get around to it someday, when I find the time.

Its easier to sit in front of the television or surf the web, frankly so thats what most of us do, and our desires remain dreams.

Heres another uncomfortable truth: many things arent fun until youre good at them. Every skill has what I call a frustration barriera period of time in which youre horribly unskilled, and youre painfully aware of that fact. Why start something when you know youre going to be bad at it?

Wouldnt it be great to be able to master new skills with less angst? To break through the frustration barrier quickly, so you can get to the rewarding part? To spend less time slogging through confusion and doubt, and more time having fun?

Is it possible to acquire new skills less painfully, in a way that requires far less time and effort?

I speak from experience: yes, its possible.

This book is about my personal quest to test the art and science of rapid skill acquisitionhow to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. The purpose of this book is to help you acquire new skills in record time.

In my experience, it takes around twenty hours of practice to break through the frustration barrier: to go from knowing absolutely nothing about what youre trying to do to performing noticeably well.

This book is a systematic approach to acquiring new skills as quickly as possible. The method is universal. It doesnt matter whether you want to learn a language, write a novel, paint a portrait, start a business, or fly an airplane. If you invest as little as twenty hours in learning the basics of the skill, youll be surprised at how good you become.

Whatever skill you wish to acquire, this book will help you acquire it in less time and with less wasted energy. With a bit of focused, strategic effort, youll find yourself performing well quickly, without the fist-pounding frustration.

In this book, well start with the principles of rapid skill acquisition: how to go about acquiring new skills as quickly as possible. These ideas and practices arent complicated, so they wont take long to learn.

Then, Ill explain how to use these principles in the real world by showing you how I acquired the following six new skills in twenty hours or less each, with no more than ninety minutes of practice per day.

• Developing a personal yoga practice
• Writing a web-based computer program
• Relearning to touch-type
• Exploring the oldest and most complex board game in history
• Playing a musical instrument
• Windsurfing

I hope that this book encourages you to dust off your old want to do list, reexamine it, and commit to learning something new.

Josh Kaufman

Fort Collins, Colorado,

USA

For updates about the material in this book, visit http://first20hours.com/updates.

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.

E. B.WHITE, ESSAYIST AND AUTHOR OF CHARLOTTES WEB AND THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

Hi. My name is Josh Kaufman, and Im a learning addict.

My home and office shelves are piled high with books, tools, and unused equipment of all sorts, most of which are slowly accumulating dust.

I have a to learn list hundreds of items long. My Amazon.com shopping cart currently has 241 items in itall books I want to read. I cant walk into a bookstore without leaving with three or four new books, to be added to the 852 volumes I already own.

Every day, I come up an idea for another project or experiment, which I add to my ever-growing someday/maybe list. Looking at everything I want to learn how to do feels overwhelming, so I dont look at the list very often.

I want to learn how to improve my publishing business. I want to learn how to shoot and edit videos. I want to produce an audio program. I want to learn how to give better seminars and teach better courses.

I have ideas for a new product, but I dont know how to build it. I have ideas for new computer programs, but I dont know how to create them. I have more potential writing project ideas in my head than the time and energy to write them.

I want to learn how to draw. I want to learn how to white-water kayak. I want to learn fly fishing. I want to learn rock climbing. I want to be able to play the guitar, the ukulele, the piano, and the electric violin.