Josh Kaufman: The First 20 Hours Summary
What You'll Learn
The lowdown: Learn how to efficiently upskill yourself with this First 20 Hours summary.
A common personality trait for anyone running a side-hustle is passion for knowledge.
In fact, i’d say that if you’re visiting a site like this and reading book summaries, you’re extremely dedicated to learning new skills.
In order to succeed in, well…. anything, we need to constantly up-skill and improve.
The only thing is that the whole 10,000 hour thing means that there’s a lot to learn in not a lot of time.
But what if there was an easier way?
The First 20 Hours looks at rapid skill acquisition, where you can learn the basics in only 20 hours of well-planned practice.
- Audible Audiobook
- Josh Kaufman (Author) – Josh Kaufman (Narrator)
- English (Publication Language)
- 06/13/2013 (Publication Date) – Worldly Wisdom Ventures LLC (Publisher)
The three main lessons from the book are:
- Focus on one skill at a time
- Create time to practice
- Practice in short spurts, not long slogs
Lesson One: Focus on one skill at a time
The most important thing you have to do to efficiently learn a new skill is to only focus on one new skill at a time.
It may be hard, especially if you’re learning new skills for your business.
There is so much to learn… where do you start?!
While it will be tempting to try and learn multiple skills at a time, it is vital that you only focus on one – there will be plenty of time to tackle other skills in the future.
Start by writing down all of the skills you want or need to learn and choose one that motivates you.
By focusing on more than one skill at a time, you’ll need to split your practice time, slowing your progress. This slow progress can demotivate you and create a sense of overwhelm.
Lesson Two: Create time to practice
Buying a guitar and sitting it in the corner hoping you’ll pick it up doesn’t work in the long run.
In order to stay committed to your practice, you need to block off time to work on acquiring your new skill.
That means auditing the time you already use and finding where you can schedule your practice in.
It also helps to try and schedule some of these times with someone you can get feedback from.
This constant feedback will make sure you’re spending your limited practice time on what needs to be improved and ensuring your time is spent efficiently.
This feedback can be from a coach, a partner, or, depending on the skill, even software.
The author of the book was learning how to play the game ‘GO’, and downloaded an app called SmartGO which gave him feedback after every move.
Lesson Three: Practice in short spurts, not long slogs
Please don’t think you need to schedule large amounts of time to practice your new skill.
It is important to make sure that you start with smaller bursts of practice and slowly increase.
The initial practice sessions will be arduous, mainly because you still suck at the skill. In turn, you’ll overestimate how long you practice the first couple of sessions.
The trick is to set a timer for 20 minutes and get as much done in that time as possible. From there, set a few more 20-minute sessions and you’ll see how quickly you progress.
Setting short sessions to begin will make sure that you stay motivated and that you don’t burn out.
My Personal Takeaway
I am a shocker for trying to learn five new things at one. Maybe it’s shiny object syndrome or something….
Focusing on these skills for 20 hours seems incredibly achievable though, and something which I’ll look to do.
Put it into action
Audit your time for two days and see where your hours go.
So many people say they “don’t have time”, but spend 3 hours a night watching TV.
You should consider buying this book if…
Side-hustlers and DIY-ers who need to constantly up-skill in order to manage their business.
Or, read our other business book summaries.
You should also check out..
a Swedish university student, marketing professional, and life-long learner. Here at BookSummaryClub I summarize my favorite non-fiction books into easily digested posts. Hope you like what you’re reading!
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