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The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything | Josh Kaufman | TEDxCSU — Transcript

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0:00Transcriber: Gustavo Rocha Reviewer: Marssi Draw
0:09Hi everyone.
0:11Two year ago, my life changed forever.
0:16My wife Kelsey and I
0:19welcomed our daughter Lela into the world.
0:23Now, becoming a parent is an amazing experience.
0:27Your whole world changes over night.
0:30And all of your priorities change immediately.
0:33So fast that it makes it really difficult to process sometimes.
0:39Now, you also have to learn a tremendous amount about being a parent
0:43like, for example, how to dress your child.
0:46(Laughter)
0:47This was new to me.
0:50This is an actual outfit, I thought this was a good idea.
0:53And even Lela knows that it's not a good idea. (Laughter)
0:59So there is so much to learn and so much craziness all at once.
1:04And to add to the craziness, Kelsey and I both work from home,
1:08we're entrepreneurs, we run our own businesses.
1:11So, Kelsey develops courses online for yoga teachers.
1:16I'm an author.
1:18And so, I'm working from home, Kelsey's working from home.
1:20We have an infant and we're trying to make sure
1:23that everything gets done that needs done.
1:26And life is really, really busy.
1:32And a couple of weeks into this amazing experience,
1:36when the sleep deprivation really kicked in,
1:40like around week eight,
1:42I had this thought, and it was the same thought
1:45that parents across the ages, internationally,
1:49everybody has had this thought, which is:
1:52I am never going to have free time ever again.
1:58(Laughter)
1:59Somebody said it's true.
2:02It's not exactly true,
2:05but it feels really, really true in that moment.
2:09And this was really disconcerning to me,
2:12because one of the things that I enjoy
2:15more than anything else is learning new things.
2:19Getting curious about something and diving in
2:22and fiddling around and learning through trial and error.
2:25And eventually becoming pretty good at something.
2:28And without this free time,
2:32I didn't know how I was ever going to do that ever again.
2:36And so, I'm a big geek,
2:38I want to keep learning things, I want to keep growing.
2:42And so what I've decided to do was,
2:45go to the library, and go to the bookstore,
2:47and look at what research says about
2:49how we learn and how we learn quickly.
2:53And I read a bunch of books, I read a bunch of websites.
2:56And tried to answer this question,
2:59how long does it take to acquire a new skill?
3:03You know what I found?
3:0510,000 hours!
3:09Anybody ever heard this?
3:11It takes 10,000 hours. If you want to learn something new,
3:14if you want to be good at it,
3:15it's going to take 10,000 hours to get there.
3:17And I read this in book after book, in website after website.
3:21And my mental experience of reading all of this stuff was like:
3:28No!!
3:30I don't have time! I don't have 10,000 hours.
3:34I am never going to be able to learn anything new.
3:39Ever again. (Laughter)
3:42But that's not true.
3:43So, 10,000 hours, just to give you a rough order of magnitude,
3:4610,000 hours is a full-time job for five years.
3:52That's a long time.
3:54And we've all had the experience of learning something new,
3:56and it didn't take us anywhere close to that amount of time, right?
4:00So, what's up? There's something kinda funky going on here.
4:03What the research says and what we expect, and have experiences,
4:07they don't match up.
4:09And what I found, here's the wrinkle:
4:12The 10,000 hour rule came out of studies of expert-level performance.
4:19There's a professor at Florida State University,
4:22his name is K. Anders Ericsson.
4:24He is the originator of the 10,00 hour rule.
4:26And where that came from is, he studied professional athletes,
4:31world class musicians, chess grand masters.
4:35All of this ultra competitive folks in ultra-high performing fields.
4:40And he tried to figure out how long does it take
4:43to get to the top of those kinds of fields.
4:46And what he found is, the more deliberate practice,
4:49the more time that those individuals spend
4:52practicing the elements of whatever it is that they do,
4:55the more time you spend, the better you get.
4:57And the folks at the tippy top of their fields
5:00put in around 10,000 hours of practice.
5:05Now, we were talking about the game of telephone a little bit earlier.
5:09Here's what happened:
5:11an author by the name of Malcolm Gladwell
5:13wrote a book in 2007 called "Outliers: The Story of Success",
5:17and the central piece of that book was the 10,000 hour rule.
5:21Practice a lot, practice well, and you will do extremely well,
5:25you will reach the top of your field.
5:27So, the message,
5:29what Dr. Ericsson was actually saying is,
5:32it takes 10,000 hours to get at the top of an ultra competitive field
5:37in a very narrow subject, that's what that means.
5:41But here's what happened: ever since Outliers came out,
5:45immediately came out, reached the top of best seller lists,
5:47stayed there for three solid months.
5:50All of a sudden the 10,000 hour rule was everywhere.
5:54And a society-wide game of telephone started to be played.
6:00So this message, it takes 10,000 hours to reach the top of an ultra competitive field,
6:04became, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something,
6:09which became,
6:11it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something,
6:15which became,
6:17it takes 10,000 hours to learn something.
6:21But that last statement, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something,
6:25is not true. It's not true.
6:28So, what the research actually says --
6:33I spent a lot of time here at the CSU library
6:36in the cognitive psychology stacks 'cause I'm a geek.
6:39And when you actually look at the studies of skill acquisition,
6:44you see over and over a graph like this.
6:48Now, researchers, whether they're studying a motor skill,
6:51something you do physically or a mental skill,
6:54they like to study things that they can time.
6:57'Cause you can quantify that, right?
6:59So, they'll give research participants a little task,
7:02something that requires physical arrangement,
7:04or something that requires learning a little mental trick,
7:08and they'll time how long a participant takes to complete the skill.
7:13And here's what this graph says, when you start --
7:16so when researchers gave participants a task, it took them a really long time,
7:20'cause it was new and they were horrible.
7:23With a little bit of practice, they get better and better and better.
7:26And that early part of practice is really, really efficient.
7:30People get good at things with just a little bit of practice.
7:36Now, what's interesting to note is that,
7:39for skills that we want to learn for ourselves,
7:42we don't care so much about time, right?
7:45We just care about how good we are, whatever good happens to mean.
7:49So if we relabel performance time to how good you are,
7:54the graph flips, and you get his famous and widely known,
7:59this is the learning curve.
8:01And the story of the learning curve is when you start,
8:03you're grossly incompetent and you know it, right?
8:06(Laughter)
8:08With a little bit of practice, you get really good, really quick.
8:12So that early level of improvement is really fast.
8:15And then at a certain point you reach a plateau,
8:18and the subsequent games become much harder to get,
8:21they take more time to get.
8:24Now, my question is, I want that, right?
8:28How long does it take from starting something
8:31and being grossly incompetent and knowing it
8:35to being reasonably good?
8:37In hopefully, as short a period of time as possible.
8:42So, how long does that take?
8:44Here's what my research says: 20 hours.
8:49That's it. You can go from knowing nothing
8:53about any skill that you can think of.
8:55Want to learn a language? Want to learn how to draw?
8:59Want to learn how to juggle flaming chainsaws?
9:02(Laughter)
9:03If you put 20 hours of focused deliberate practice into that thing,
9:08you will be astounded.
9:10Astounded at how good you are.
9:1420 hours is doable,
9:15that's about 45 minutes a day for about a month.
9:19Even skipping a couple days, here and there.
9:2220 hours isn't that hard to accumulate.
9:25Now, there's a method to doing this.
9:28Because it's not like you can just start fiddling around for about 20 hours
9:31and expect these massive improvements.
9:33There's a way to practice intelligently.
9:35There's a way to practice efficiently,
9:38that will make sure that you invest those 20 hours
9:41in the most effective way that you possibly can.
9:43And here's the method, it applies to anything:
9:47The first is to deconstruct the skill.
9:51Decide exactly what you want to be able to do when you're done,
9:56and then look into the skill and break it down into smaller pieces.
10:02Most of the things that we think of as skills
10:06are actually big bundles of skills that require all sorts of different things.
10:10The more you can break apart the skill,
10:14the more you're able to decide,
10:16what are the parts of this skill that would actually help me
10:18get to what I want?
10:21And then you can practice those first.
10:23And if you practice the most important things first,
10:25you'll be able to improve your performance
10:28in the least amount of time possible.
10:31The second is, learn enough to self correct.
10:34So, get three to five resources about what it is you're trying to learn.
10:38Could be book, could be DVDs, could be courses, could be anything.
10:43But don't use those as a way to procrastinate on practice.
10:48I know I do this, right?
10:50Get like 20 books about the topic, like,
10:52"I'm going to start learning how to program a computer
10:55when I complete these 20 books".
10:57No. That's procrastination.
11:00What you want to do is learn just enough
11:04that you can actually practice
11:05and self correct or self edit as you practice.
11:10So the learning becomes a way of getting better
11:13at noticing when you're making a mistake
11:16and then doing something a little different.
11:19The third is to remove barriers to practice.
11:24Distractions, television, internet.
11:26All of these things that get in the way
11:29of you actually sitting down and doing the work.
11:33And the more you're able to use just a little bit of willpower
11:36to remove the distractions that are keeping you from practicing,
11:39the more likely you are to actually sit down and practice, right?
11:46And the fourth is to practice for at least 20 hours.
11:51Now, most skills have what I call a frustration barrier.
11:54You know, the grossly-incompetent- and-knowing-it part?
11:58That's really, really frustrating. We don't like to feel stupid.
12:02And feeling stupid is a barrier to us actually sitting down and doing the work.
12:07So, by pre-committing to practicing whatever it is that you want to do
12:11for at least 20 hours,
12:14you will be able to overcome that initial frustration barrier
12:18and stick with the practice long enough to actually reap the rewards.
12:23That's it! It's not rocket science.
12:25Four very simple steps that you can use to learn anything.
12:31Now, this is easy to talk about in theory,
12:35but it's more fun to talk about in practice.
12:37So one of the things that I've wanted to learn how to do for a long time
12:41is play the ukulele.
12:44Has anybody seen Jake Shimabukuro's TEDTalk
12:47where he plays the ukulele and makes it sound like --
12:50he's like a ukulele god.
12:52It's amazing.
12:54I saw it, I was like, "That is so cool!"
12:57It's such a neat instrument. I would really like to learn how to play.
13:01And so I decided that to test this theory
13:03I wanted to put 20 hours into practicing ukulele
13:07and see where it got.
13:09And so the first thing about playing the ukulele is,
13:13in order to practice, you have to have one, right?
13:17So, I got an ukulele and -- My lovely assistant?
13:21(Laughter)
13:24Thank you sir. I think I need the chord here.
13:31It's not just an ukulele, it's an electric ukulele. (Laughter)
13:35Yeah.
13:40So, the first couple hours are just like the first couple hours of anything.
13:45You have to get the tools that you are using to practice.
13:48You have to make sure they're available.
13:50My ukulele didn't come with strings attached.
13:52I had to figure out how to put those on.
13:54Like, that's kind of important, right?
13:56And learning how to tune, learning how to make sure
13:58that all of the things that need to be done
14:00in order to start practicing get done, right?
14:04Now, one of the things when I was ready to actually start practicing
14:11was I looked in online databases and songbooks for how to play songs.
14:16And they say, okay, ukuleles, you can play more than one string at a time,
14:19so you can play chords, that's cool,
14:20you are accompanying yourself, yay you. (Laughter)
14:24And when I started looking at songs,
14:28I had an ukulele chord book that had like hundreds of chords.
14:32Looking at this and "Wow, that's intimidating".
14:35But when you look at the actual songs,
14:37you see the same chords over and over, right?
14:42As it turns out, playing the ukulele is kind of like doing anything,
14:46There's a very small set of things that are really important
14:49and techniques that you'll use all the time.
14:52And in most songs you'll use four, maybe five chords,
14:58and that's it, that's the song.
15:00You don't have to know hundreds, as long as you know the four or the five.
15:04So, while I was doing my research,
15:06I found a wonderful little medley of pop songs
15:11by a band called Axis of Awesome. (Whistles)
15:16-- Somebody knows it. --
15:19And what Axis of Awesome says is that you can learn,
15:23or you can play pretty much any pop song of the past five decades,
15:27if you know four chords,
15:28and those chords are G, D, Em and C.
15:33Four chords pump out every pop song ever, right?
15:37So I thought, this is cool!
15:39I would like to play every pop song ever. (Laughter)
15:42So, that was the first song I decided to learn,
15:45and I would like to actually share it with you. Ready?
15:49(Applause) Alright.
15:51(Music)
16:03(Singing) Just a small town girl,
16:06living in a lonely world,
16:08she took the midnight train going anywhere.
16:14I heard that you settled down, (Laughter)
16:18that you found a girl,
16:21that you're married now.
16:25Every night in my dreams (Laughter)
16:27I see you, I feel you,
16:30that is how I know you go on. (Laughter)
16:36I won't hesitate no more, no more. It cannot wait, I'm yours.
16:42'Cause you were amazing, we did amazing things.
16:47If I could, then I would, I'd go wherever you will --
16:52Can you feel the love tonight. (Laughter)
16:58I can't live with or without you.
17:03When I find myself --
17:05When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me,
17:07Sometimes I feel like I don't have partner. No woman, no cry.
17:11Yeah mama, this surely is a dream.
17:13I come from a land down under. (Laughter)
17:15Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong.
17:18Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, (Laughter)
17:22but here's my number, so call me
17:26Hey sexy lady, op, op, op, op, oppan gangnam style. (Laughter)
17:30It's time to say goodbye.
17:35Closing time, every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.
17:45(Singing and music ends) (Applause)
17:56Thank you, thank you.
18:03I love that song. (Laughter)
18:07And I have a secret to share with you.
18:10So, by playing that song for you,
18:14I just hit my twentieth hour of practicing the ukulele.
18:19(Applause) Thank you.
18:24And so it's amazing, pretty much anything that you can think of,
18:28what do you want to do.
18:30The major barrier to learn something new is not intellectual,
18:35it's not the process of you learning a bunch of little tips or tricks or things.
18:41The major barrier's emotional. We're scared.
18:44Feeling stupid doesn't feel good,
18:47in the beginning of learning anything new
18:49you feel really stupid.
18:51So the major barrier's not intellectual, it's emotional.
18:55But put 20 hours into anything.
18:58It doesn't matter. What do you want to learn?
19:01Do you want to learn a language? Want to learn how to cook?
19:04Want to learn how to draw?
19:07What turns you on? What lights you up?
19:10Go out and do that thing. It only takes 20 hours.
19:14Have fun.
19:16(Applause)

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