After reading the first 20 hours
“Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.” – Anthony J. D’Angelo
Why I bought this book:
We have all wanted to learn a new skill, whether it is learning a new language, perform a new yoga pose, or trying to make a new dish for dinner. Learning a new skill takes time, which for a lot of us we do not have a lot to spare. But what if we did not need as much time as you thought? Must people believe you need hours a day to practice a skill when you just need 1 hour maybe 2 if you have the time to spare of course. Also, you do not need to log over 10,000 hours to say you know a skill, we are not trying to compete in the NBA or any competitive sport we just want to get better at something we enjoy that is it. Which means we need less time logged than competitive professionals, we just want to increase our success rate for combos in Guilty Gear Strive or improve our aim in Apex legends. After reading The First 20 Hours I have decided to use its skill acquisition process to learn and improve my skills.
The New Information I Needed to Hear:
Time is the most important thing we have and managing it, so we do not waste any of it, sadly we do not get a lot of time to learn all the skills we want to learn. We have work, cleaning, eating if we care time to go to the gym. Sometimes we are lucky to just have sit down time let alone time to learn a new skill. So, when you have the time to learn something you may be tempted to learn as many skills as possible in one sitting. It makes since, right? You want to learn a bunch of skills, so you need to practice them as much as possible, so when you finish one practice session of a skill you start the next one and the one after so on and so on. We all wanted to try and learn several skills one after another in a day to maximize your time, sadly that is not a proper way to gain a new skill. If we want to gain new skills, we must do it one at a time meaning we can not move on to another skill till we learn the current one to a desired performance level. It sucks but it must be done this way to make sure our learning holds a lot easier, I noticed that when I try to learn multiple things that have relation to one another I have a harder time remembering what I learned from each subject. To prevent this going forward I will only learn one skill at a time till my time limit is up or I hit the desired results.
The Lists Needed to Acquire a Skill:
In this book the author crested two list, one was called “the ten principles of rapid skill acquisition,” and the other was “the ten principles of effective learning.” I will not list the entirety of both list for two reasons, the first begin I will be using the list in future posts so I can use that time to explain what each one is and does then. The second reason begin that I will not use each principle on the list to achieve my goal, the author even states this in the book, depending on the skill some of the principles will not be needed. So, I will give a light summary of what to expect when using these lists two list. The skill acquisition list is mainly used for deciding on what skill you want to learn and then go about setting the right environment for you to learn, this is just a check list to make you have everything you need, and the time needed to practice your craft. The effective learning list will be used to learn everything you can about your skill, the author says himself to get lost in the information, learn as much as you can to get as much info as possible. Part of the list is literally get lost in information, this is list is about setting up expectations for where you want to, will be, and should be at once you are done with your full practice session. These lists will be the foundation for learning new skills and allow me to make progress in what I am trying to improve in.
Time to Get to Work:
With all this info at my hands I now need to use it and put into practice. From reading this book I have learned some hard truths as well as a new way to practice my skills as well as learn about them. I am very happy that I decide to read the first 20 hours, if I did not, I still be sitting here in a hopeless cycle trying to learn three different skills at once. I am hoping that this new style of learning will allow me to make progress in my skill acquisition mission.
