Accelerated Learning: How To Get Good at Anything in 20 Hours

hi everybody i'm jonathan fields and this is good life project so Mike I said is Josh Kalman and this is a special episode one of the things that we've discovered through a lot of our viewers is that the process of trying to live a good life a better life often requires you learning a new set of skills we've had a ton of questions over the last year from people who say I would love to do this but I don't have time in my life to do it I don't want to wait forever to make it

happen so we're bringing you Josh she was also the author of a book called the first 20 hours who's an expert in I guess what I would call accelerated learning so great to be hanging out with you today thanks for having great to hang out couldn't sort of like have asked for a better person to drop in at a better time because it really is it's an interesting thing it seems like work you know the world is moving faster we all want to get stuff done a lot of people want to make big changes and

feel like they're living better lives but they look out there and they're like there's stuff that I need to know stuff that I need to learn so they need to master to do it and I just on that time they did it right way right so I'm curious I mean I want to get like right in with you sort of like the idea behind your book sure but one quick question pressure was just what was the motivation for you to actually go down this rabbit hole yeah so so two primary motivations the the first is

you know in terms of the research and the writing that I do I like to look at at topics that are like fundamental human experiences like things that everybody needs to know where everybody deals with and in some way shape or form and those things can be you know big and complex and scary and frustrating in a lot of ways but if you if you just dive in and break it down what you often find is it's not really as hard as it feels and so part of the motivation was you know learning is something

in learning new skills is a fundamental part of what it is to be human and so let's figure out how to do that let's figure out how to do it better most people like for most people to thought of I mean for me the thought of learning new stuff I'm giddy I love yeah for a lot of people it's skits terrifying right right particularly if it's something you know is going would be super fun or super valuable but but you know nothing about it you just look at it's like oh my gosh this is this

is really big the motivation for me personally was I run my own business my wife Kelsey runs her own business and two and a half years ago our daughter Lila came into the world and all of a sudden we had zero right here oh free time and and so you know I just like you I really geek out about this stuff I have a list of things that I want to learn a mile long and so you know not having any time like okay I may only be able to set aside half an hour 45

minutes a day then so that's all I have then you know let's figure out how to learn as quickly as possible in that short at the same time you don't want to wait forever exactly it is I mean that's a lot of people like okay I could figure out like I could scrap some how to find like that half an hour a day but this doing it so little mean that's gonna take me like ten years yes to actually be decent enough at so that should be fun right and and what I found through my

research is that's totally not the case it doesn't take very long even if you know absolutely nothing where you only have a certain amount of time every every day to sit down and learn it you can become very very good at something in a very short period of time and I think that's fun so and but this flies in the face to a certain extent also in what lake has commonly become known as a 10,000 hours or a little bit a little bit it's actually a lot more complimentary than it would seem in the service

so the whole idea of the 10,000 hour rule came from research by K Anders Ericsson Florida State University and the idea behind that was you know if you look at the people in ultra-competitive easily ranked field professional golfers musicians all of these folks where you can you can get an estimate of who really is the best in the world in an object on an objective level right the question that that dr. Erickson was researching is what does it take to get to that level well it's entirely narrow though yeah so yeah if you want to

step on the golf course and compete with Tiger Woods that's about the amount of time it's going to take you to get there but the vast majority of us that's not the goal that's not what we're trying to do we just may have something in our minds that we want Kampf want to accomplish or an area of life we want to explore and it takes a lot less time to get what we want alright and I guess for a lot of people in motivation is probably one or two things we just you want to get

good Ness you enjoy doing it yeah and or maybe like professionally you want to develop a skill set enough so that you can actually start to leverage it absolutely build your career change your career for a lot of teeth now like so there are a bunch of things that that you can learn that can help you do better in your business there are bunch of things that you can do to to do for fun doesn't take that long yeah so let's dive right into it because you kind of have a methodology yes that you developed

so take us through that I guess it's five sort of like core ideas yeah okay so so the first step in this process and this is something that applies to every skill could be a motor skill like you know learning how to fly an airplane or skateboard or something like that could be a cognitive skill like like language or programming or something so the first step is is deciding exactly what it is you want right why are you jazzed about this thing in the first place if you're able to really clearly define what it is

you're trying to get its called setting a target performance level the more clearly that level of performance the more clearly you can define that the easier it is for you to look out into the world and find ways to get there in the most direct possible I so like what's an example there so for example for me I learned a lot of things in the in the process of putting together this book and one of the things that I wanted to be able to do was program and so instead of just saying I want to

be a programmer right doesn't give you any information so ever morphus it's yeah it's here is this idea of a program that I would like to sit down and create from nothing and it looks like ABCD efg when I make this thing I'll have developed the skills that are necessary in order to get the particular result right yeah so instead of learning everything in the world about programming I decided this is the sub segment of that skill I'm interested in learning first so that's what I'm going to focus on so it has to be like

very goal-oriented and also very specific yes so what is it going to look like when you're done what are you going to be able to see or experience that'll let you know I reach the level okay so like if you want to learn a language is I want to I want to speak French enough or is it not enough so like yeah what would that look like in yours are like for anymore so let's say for example I want to go to a restaurant that has a french-speaking waiter and I want to order and conduct

the entire meal in this language and have a good time doing it that's something that that's specific enough to practice God okay so you make it almost make it too specific at the beginning because once you get to that level you can always ratchet up the stakes right you reach that threshold practice something else I mean what I found is once you have once you get just like the most baseline proficiency in something it sucks less yes and now you actually get like that baseline level it creates a whole new level of motivation to wanna

learn more because now you've kind of gotten through like the scales and music or something like that and it's it's important to understand that the first couple hours of practicing something new are frustrating yeah for everyone everybody's terrible at the beginning and so you know if you can push through those those early few hours the practice itself becomes fun and it becomes way easier to convey you to improve so okay so that's number one that's number two okay so after you decide what you want you do what's called deconstructing the skill and and the idea

behind that is a lot of the things that we think of as skills like for example playing golf or speaking French or learning how to program those aren't exactly skills they're really kind of general topics that contain lots of smaller sub skills right so it's really hard to practice being a good golfer it's way easier to practice hitting off of the tee with a driver right so you take the the global skill and you break it up into much smaller parts and if you're clear about what you want it becomes very easy to find what

are those sub skills what are the smaller parts that are actually going to help you get to that target as quickly as possible so that if there are a hundred sub-skills if you've done number one it makes it much easier to figure out okay what are the 15 of those sub skills that are going to give me 80 percent of the results to only pick any where I want to go and what you often find is is it's only maybe two or three subs no kids that you use most of the time huh yeah so

so it's just you know breaking it down into small enough chunks if you do just a little bit of research which is actually step three right you you go out into the world you find sources of information that help you do this deconstruction if you look at you know say for example pick up five books on whatever it is that you're trying to learn how to do you don't read them cover to cover skim all of them one right after the other but and what you'll see is the two or three sub skills that you're

going to use most of the time are the ones that come up over event right so you just practice those first and if you spend your time practicing those things and avoid a lot of the distractions or things that aren't going to help you you save a lot of time and energy okay as you're practicing size of a question still asking that if out of a whole basket of potential sub skills that add up to this thing that you want to accomplish only a small handful are very often really really critical why are we taught

to do them all at once yeah I I don't have a good answer for that actually I think the the biggest thing is we treat in our culture now learning as a very academic exercise like the the objective is to suck in a ton of information about as thing whether or not you're going to use it and I think you know education in our culture now has been seen in the academic sense and less in the sense of practicing something with the eye of using it to do some particular coding says less applied yeah yeah

so you know the whole idea of researching the the topic and something that I had to train myself out of is I love doing research right so the first thing like the programming was a good example of this for me it's like I'm gonna learn how to program 10 books I have these courses a minute to go through all of this stuff and then I'm going to sit down and write a program mmm it's like no you just you you use the research do just enough research stuff you do the deconstruction and find the most

important sub skills first and then get out of research mode and into practice mode as regular easy cuz that's where the real stuff yeah yeah and when you start practicing what it is you're actually trying to do that's when you rate the performance improvement now you also made a differentiation when we started the conversation between cognitive skills like learning lines and we do you know their skills in motor skills do you like swinging a bat or you know playing golf do all of these steps I mean we still to mark to work through but but

you know with the three that we covered so far are they all sort of equally relevant to both types of yeah so for both types of learning you have to go through the same general process some of the actual practice techniques can be different so for example one of the things that you can do when you're practicing a motor skill which works really well is practice it within a couple hours of going to sleep either taking a nap or going to bed for that for the night there's a lot of research around the idea of

what's called consolidation so your brain translates the practice and experience you had and encodes neural connections to help you do it better right that practice or that process is way more efficient if you practice within about four hours of going to sleep hmm so I in the process of writing the first 20 hours irie taught myself how to touch type on a different keyboard which is like you know having the experiment the experience of rewiring my brain to do something differently right and then then you know fun things like playing the ukulele which all motor

skills and if surreal surreal experience I would practice it right before I would go to bed and you know the first couple hours of practice was terrible right so I would practice I'd go to bed I pick it up first thing in the morning just to see it was like a astounding how much better I was after a couple hours sleep that's amazing you know sleep helps consolidate that compass yeah that's really um so yeah some of the actual practice techniques are different but the same the the general processes is the same right it's that's

pretty remarkable you literally wake up in the morning and you're better than you were when you went to sleep just because you slept in the middle of it absolutely so yeah so for like notably better like noticeably better like you know one of the in the process of learning typing like you know once I switch to keyboard formats I went from from typing about as fast as I could think to literally like five words per minute like Tara read and and so you know practicing right before bed and getting up in the morning and trying

to use my computer like within the first couple days I was doing it was like oh my gosh I can actually like type now I can do something that's crazy yeah so so you know that type of thing works for a motor skill for for cognitive skills memorization techniques like spaced repetition reinforcement like flashcard model or flashcards with with feedback helping you remember things works really well so yeah the actual practice techniques can be very different but the core method of what I use is very much this and again for both of them before you

go to bed yes help for the consolidate absolutely very what about simulate a practice simulated practice can be effective as as long as it is as close to real world performances as you can make it right so you know a lot of the you know trying to memorize something in and then but having that translate directly into practice doesn't really work yeah I guess something in more in terms of motor skills okay yeah when I was a gymnast when I was a kid with we would get before any event you know I would basically before

I would step up to a piece of apparatus I would kind of close my eyes and I would actually envision my body like moving through the entire thing okay then results research that said that you know it triggers all the same motor neurons that would be trigger or like the same response in your brain yes as if you were actually doing but I'm curious in terms of sort of like you know accelerated learning whether that would actually make you progress faster and towards a high level of proficiency in this you know there is quite a

bit of research that says that imaginary types of practice does work and it works well with a catch which is you have to do it in addition to the real physical practice right right so so if you're starting to consolidate those motor movements and you're doing that in practice and then you're reinforcing that with imagined practice awesome yeah but you know what I found is a lot of people get caught up in the the the the process of just doing the physical practice right first so we got the three of the five steps now so

let's kind of like close the loop here so step number four okay step number four is removing barriers to practice so things that are preventing you from actually sitting down and doing the work okay sometimes those things are environmental distractions like you know turning off the TV or blocking the internet or closing the door you know all the things that you can do to make sure in those early hours of practice which are frustrating you don't get so frustrated that it's easy to stop focusing on whatever it is that you're doing and start paying attention

because anything else you know likewise anything that you can do to make sure it takes as little energy as possible to start practicing is super helpful at that point so you know instead of keeping your guitar in the case in the back of the closet on the other side of your house right make the guitar out of the case get a stand put it right next to your next chair couch and that just you know anything that you can do to make it easier on yourself to get those early hours or practice the better yeah

I mean my guitar is actually a hanging out on a rack because of that almost because I just forget it's even there like you know like the visual cue actually makes a really big difference for me okay so number four is um now I'm curious also I mean it sounds like there's a bit of crossover between that sort of like BJ Foggs work on really heavens yeah yeah absolutely it's you know a lot of the same you know this is where the behavioral psychology elements of this come in it's how can you make it easier

to do the thing that you want to be doing instead of getting distracted by some shiny object and going and doing some right so instead of relying on on exerting a lot of willpower to force yourself to do this thing that you've decided you want to do you spend a little bit of willpower a little bit of time and energy altering the structure of the environment around you but just make it easier easy as possible to do the thing that you want that till it makes sense yeah all right last item number last one pre

commit to practicing at least 20 hours and this is the big one so so all the things that we've talked talked about so far is getting set up to sit down and do the work of actually practicing the pre commitment and the idea of practicing at least 20 hours there's a lot of behavioral psychology behind that the two big things is first it's a really important check on your reasons for learning this thing in the first place and so it's kind of like an EMA if I'm not willing to commit to 20 hours I can't

be all that serious yeah it's like is this is this worth is it worthwhile for me to rearrange my schedule and stop doing other things and you know is this something that I'm expecting to get enough benefit from to make the effort worth it yeah if it's not don't do it right life is short you know it's like go do something else that you will get more benefit out of or you are more excited about so if you're willing to set aside at least 20 hours what the pre commitment does is make sure that you

practice long enough to push through that early frustration and actually start seeing results and and I think a lot of us really seriously overestimate just how long it takes to become good at something so you can you can become really really good at something surprisingly good at something in as little as 20 hours so if you practice that long you're going to be way better at the end of that than you are to begin in I guess a lot of people also figure well you know 20 hours you know I've done that with a million

different things and I really was very good but probably when they actually look back to well know like I missed three days here and like that one day whereas you know said it was practicing when hours really on practicing were ten minutes so when you really add up all the time I'm guessing there's a little bit of self delusion that happens if there's not there's actually quite a bit of research behind this our minds are not built to accurately estimate time and in the early parts of learning now some of the new it's like you

know it's terrible it's like oh man I've been at this hours and you look at the clock and you've been at it ten minutes Hey and so a lot of the you know both pre committing to a certain amount of practicing so twenty eight twenty hours roughly is about forty minutes a day for a month okay per tick so you kind of think of your mind forty minutes a day for yeah so a couple of and I usually break my practice sessions into about twenty minutes apiece right so two 20-minute practice sessions every day for

about a month okay can get you there and and so you know if if you're able and willing to do that pre committing the time make sure that you practice long enough to to see that really good result but it's also you know psychologically not it doesn't feel like that big of a hurdle to say okay this is important to me all right I can set aside at least that amount of time right so it's just enough that you're going to see dramatic results but not so much that it prevents you from making the pre

commitment at makers I love it so let's recap the five steps okay so so the five steps in order step 1 decide what you want what's your target performance level step 2 is deconstruct the scale separated into smaller sub skills practice the most important ones first number three is research the skill just enough to do the deconstruction and choose the most important sub skills but not so much that it becomes a barrier to practice in itself number four is eliminate barriers to practice may make it easy to do what you want to do and number

five is pre commit to practicing whatever it is that you want to be able to do for at least 20 hours mmm love it alright so my mind is spinning because there I'm thinking myself okay what am I getting I'm gonna gonna ask what what's what's in the back of your mind would if have you always wanted to to learn how to do um essentially I mean languages cuz I don't speak in another language you're flattered for six years which means I speak nothing but English as yeah it's interesting like I want to blow out

a whole bunch of different things but number five is making me say I need to really think about this yeah because I don't want to like say okay okay people I'm gonna commit to this publicly yeah and then like you know an hour after we film this I'm like I'm not really like willing to put in my 20 hours for that so it's interesting I'm really thinking that through awesome conversation and I love to like the breakdown that you have this is all part of this is all I mean obviously detailed and you know a

whole bunch more extensively in the first 20 hours but thanks for stopping by and sharing this with it because like I said one of the consistent questions that we keep getting from people is you know I I know that for me to get to a place where I feel like you know like I'm living well in the world I'm doing these things a career personal whatever it is there's a body of knowledge that I need to know and get decent net but I'm just I don't know how to do it and I think it's going

to take forever so I think this is a really great formula to help people get there thanks and you know it's I think the really good news is that the outcome of this research is the the barrier to sitting down and learning something new is not intellectual we're all smart enough to sit down and figure it out and practice in the best way the barriers emotional and so you know a lot of these things are just working with ourselves in a smart way to decide we're interested in doing something figure out how to do it

and actually sit down and the actus so we can do a bunch of cool stuff love it that's fun all right fantastic surround my pleasure my guest has been Josh Calvin the author of the first 20 hours on jonathan field signing off for good life project you