The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything ... Fast Paperback – 28 Aug. 2014

Insanely well written book with a clear method that is ACTIONABLE, all of the information you need to get started is laid out clearly within the first few chapters with no fluff to pad out the book. One of the best books I have read in a while and I have already started applying the methods to learning my own skills. The book is so well written the next book I purchase will be the others other work.

Being a fan of Josh Kaufman's last book "The Personal MBA" I was excited to hear he was working on another, especially in another area that I am very interested in - skill acquisition.Josh Kaufman has a remarkable ability to break down a complex subject into easily digestible and very useful pieces. This time he was going to apply that ability to acquiring new skills. Being something of a learning addict myself, I could not wait to get my hands on his new book.Having now read it, within 20 hours I might add, I thought I'd share what I thought about his new book.Honestly, it's good. It's well written, concise, sometimes I even laughed out loud. It was truly an insightful read about how he broke down skill acquisition and how he applied it to various skills he acquired while working on this book. I can see how his new - I suppose you can call it a "skill acquisition method" - can help me to overcome emotional barriers and devoting 20 hours of deliberate practice to whatever skill I want to learn. I already have compiled a list of 12 items I want to explore over the next year.So why four stars? Well, the thing is, the actual theory and model was explained in the space of 2 chapters. The first chapter spelled out the context, and the rest of the book were essentially case studies - or rather a documentary of his experiments and what he managed to achieve in 20 hours by applying his model in acquiring various skills.Don't get me wrong, the case studies were insightful, and provided clues about what to expect when you try to apply the theory. My favourite chapters were learning to touch-type the Colemack keyboard layout - which explained brain plasticity, and the chapter about learning to windsurf which I found especially amusing.But at the same time, I felt like a sense of - why am I reading this?I found myself skim reading the rest of the book, digging out any useful insights that popped up. But otherwise I was somewhat uninterested about reading his personal exploits - most of which seemed to provide superficial details about how he applied his method. I'd rather he had chosen to break down each step of his new model and devoted more time in explaining each step in more depth, or even provide case studies focusing around each principal itself, rather than half a dozen case studies that glossed over the entire methodology without going into each step in much depth.It would also appear that after 20 hours, you'll also only really have a superficial level of competency in whatever skill you choose to learn. After all, depending on the skill 20 hours is not a lot of time. Those first 20 hours are critical, and the book provides excellent ideas on how to maximize those first 20 hours. But don't expect too much - especially if the skill you are trying to learn is complex or difficult.Having now read the title again properly "The First 20 Hours: How to learn anything ...Fast" I now realize that that's exactly what the premise of the book was about - the first 20 hours - I suppose its my own fault for making the assumption this book was about becoming amazingly competent within 20 hours. It's not at all, it's a more of a book about getting started and getting as much out of the first 20 hours as you can.If you're a learning addict like myself, this book will be invaluable. It will change your approach to acquiring new skills forever. The first 3 chapters will truly be enlightening .. just don't expect the rest of the book to be as engaging.Overall its a fascinating book, and I am glad I read it. And it's hard to fault his work. I just wish there was more content that followed in the style of the first 3 chapters, and I know that that's asking for a bit much. But still.A big thank you to Josh Kaufman for writing this book. I'm not ungrateful, this book is a welcome addition to the few books that exist on the subject of accelerated skill acquisition and I appreciate his efforts on this somewhat tricky subject.

I saw Josh Kaufmans ted talk on this topic which made me seek out the book . The book goes into a bit more detail and gives live examples of him putting the principles into practice . I've decided to use the principles he lays out to achieve a fairly decent amount of knowledge of a programming language and thus far its proving interesting . It makes you think practiacally about whats involved in learning and that you dont need to be the very best at something , its good enough to acquire a decent level of ability with a skill .

After reading the first three chapters of this book, I was certain this was going to be a five-star book. Mr Kaufman manages to explain the basic tenets of rapid skill acquisition clearly, convincingly, and yet concisely, and his plan for the rest of the book sounds solid: standing by the principle that practice trumps theoretical learning, the remaining chapters will be case-studies of rapid skill acquisition. Great idea!Sadly, the case studies don't deliver on the built-up expectations: there's too much "what", and too little "how".Take eg the chapter about computer programming: Mr Kaufman explains (and he doesn't do a bad job) such details as what loops and conditionals are, and what SQL queries look like, and how you wrap those with an object-relational mapper, and how he used sites like Stack Overflow and Hacker News (great choices, incidentally) to find lots of information in a very short time. That's all well if this was a book about programming. But it's not: what I would have hoped to read about at this point, is how, approaching the subject of programming as a novice, he managed to seek out two such high-quality resources - if you're completely new to something, how do you recognize quality? That is a relevant problem for "the first 20 hours" of anything, and something I could take into other areas than programming.Similarly, in the same chapter we learn all kinds of details about Heroku and Sinatra and DataMapper and what not, when actually I don't care so much what software stack Mr Kaufman chose, but rather how I should go about choosing so quickly, in a domain that is all new to me? Mr Kaufman rightfully warns that one can easily get stuck reading Stack Overflow all day without making choices, but he doesn't explain how to avoid that trap - how much preparatory research is enough, and how much is too little? Did he set himself a time limit? What rules of thumb make him decide that it's ok to copy "git" commands without looking them up, while a "bundler" warning prompts him to read about that library (and spend a section on it)?In the end, I come away well-impressed that anyone could learn so much about yoga and programming and the ukulele etc etc in so few hours, but I'm still not clear how I could become as fast.

Bought the kindle version because the paperback is printed so small that I could not read it even with spectacles, and the paper quality is awful.The book is a very good read. I have taken the principles and instigated them in my work place.I now encourage engineers to get stuck in, make sure your safe then go for it, stop spending ages. what can go wrong is not will go wrong. Would encourage reading as it is not yet another self help book. The free Web stuff pages do not work for me, but that may be me using the wrong browser.

This is the way we must use our time to impasse Ori skills in a over information and skills world. At my point of view I don't know how I lived until now without reading this.

Ottimo libro

Best book!!.How to Learning something on a practical way to start creating skills.

The idea is good and very simple that it can be summarised succinctly within 2 pages. The bulk of the book (like 80%) is dissecting how to learn yoga, ukulele, programming etc which I skipped.

It's difficult to imagine a better book on skill building than The First 20 Hours. If you've ever found yourself thinking "I wish I knew how to ____" or "I wish I didn't quit ____ lessons as a kid," then this is the best book you can read. There are many other books on learning that I love, such as "The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin, but this is by far the best step by step guide you can apply to learning any skill.The first 40 pages are dedicated to the principles of effective learning and skill acquisition. You could technically stop here if you wanted to and go on learning a skill, but there is a lot you'd miss, as it's very helpful to see the principles of skill acquisition in context.Each of the skills show the principles in context as well as overcoming some of the common barriers to learning. Some are more interesting than others depending on your interest in the skill. While each skill has interesting elements to it, learning touch type is the one that wrinkled my brain. It's fascinating to see his journey in rewiring his brain to type on a different keyboard. I had no idea that different types of keyboards even existed before reading this book. I'm not sure if I'll make the switch to the Colemak keyboard, but I'll now be focusing on skill building before sleeping.If you want to learn any skill quickly, this book will give you the 10 principles of skill acquisition and learning while destroying the typical excuses that people give for not learning something