The First 20 Hours

1. 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.

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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.

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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.”

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I can’t emphasize this enough. Focusing on one prime skill at a time is absolutely necessary for rapid skill acquisition.

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Deconstructing the skill before you begin also allows you to identify the parts of the skill that aren’t important for beginning practitioners. By eliminating the noncritical subskills or techniques early in the process, you’ll be able to invest more of your time and energy mastering the critical subskills first.

Ref. 3C84-E

clock. Buy a decent countdown timer3 and set it for twenty minutes. There’s only one rule: once you start the timer, you must practice until it goes off. No exceptions. This simple technique will make it easier to complete longer periods of sustained practice, even when you get tired or frustrated. The more periods of sustained practice you complete, the faster your skill acquisition. Set aside time for three to five practice sessions a day, and you’ll see major progress in a very short period.

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10. Emphasize quantity and speed. When you begin to acquire a new skill, it’s tempting to focus on practicing perfectly—a recipe for frustration. Your performance, of course, won’t be anywhere close to perfection. Instead of trying to be perfect, focus on practicing as much as you can as quickly as you can, while maintaining “good enough” form.

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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.

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In the literature, this is referred to as the “power law of practice,” and it appears over and over again. The effect has been widely known among skill acquisition researchers since at least 1926,4 and it’s been replicated many times since in studies of both physical and mental skills.5 One study even went so far as to say “any theory of skill acquisition that does not accommodate the power law function for learning can be rejected immediately.”6 Academic

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When you start, you’re horrible, but you improve very quickly as you learn the most important parts of the skill.

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After reaching a certain level of skill very quickly, your rate of improvement declines, and subsequent improvement becomes much slower.

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Contrary to popular usage, “steep learning curves” are good, not bad. The graph makes it clear why: Steep learning curves indicate a very fast rate of skill acquisition. The steeper the curve, the better you get per unit of time.

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your skills will naturally and noticeably improve in a very short period of time. The trick is to start practicing as quickly as possible. Not thinking about practicing or worrying about practicing, but actually practicing.

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The more mental models and mental hooks you can identify in your early research, the easier it will be to use them while you’re practicing.

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Be Excellent at Anything

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