Thoughts: Forget the 10,000-hour rule; It only takes 20 hours to learn something new.

TL;DR – It doesn’t take 10,000 hours to be reasonably good at something new. According to Josh Kaufman, all you need is 20 hours and four simple steps: (i) Deconstruct the skill, (ii) learn enough to self-correct, (iii) remove practice barriers, and (iv) commit to it diligently for at least 20 hours.

In the middle of my final year of university, I realized that I didn’t want to pursue a career in science and research anymore. With that thought, I found myself at an unexpected crossroad. What career do I want to embark on after graduation? Are my existing set of skills relevant? Do I need to pick up any new skills to stand a chance? Do I have enough time to get ready before I get a job?

Needless to say, I was stumped for quite a while. As I went through my options, it quickly became obvious that there were a lot of things to learn. Furthermore, there was “the 10,000-hour rule” which didn’t make me feel any better.

The 10,000-hour rule

This concept was first cited in the research of K. Anders Ericsson, and then later popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 bestselling book, “Outliers”. In essence, it is the notion that we need at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve mastery at any specific task.

To clock in 10,000 hours, you’ll need to practice 2 hours a day for about 13.7 years. Even if you double the time you practice per day, it’ll still take you 6-7 years! No way that was possible for me, especially with six more months to graduation.

The first 20 hours are the most important

In his 2013 Ted Talk at CSU, Josh Kaufman explains that the original study observed that “it takes 10,000 hours to get to the top of an ultra-competitive field in a very narrow subject“. Fortunately, this isn’t the case if we want to learn something new and just be “reasonably good” at something. According to Kaufman, all we need is 20 hours.

To appreciate how this amazing feat can be achieved, Kaufman introduces “4 simple steps to rapid skill acquisition”, which are:

1. Deconstruct the skill
2. Learn enough to self-correct
3. Remove practice barriers
4. Commit to at least 20 hours of practice

Step 1: Deconstruct the skill

“Most of the things that we think of as “skills” are actually big bundles of skills…”

You’ve probably have heard of this before – to overcome huge challenges, first break it down into smaller pieces. I loved how Kaufman redefined any skill as more of a collection of smaller skills (Is that why it’s called a “skillset”???). This helps us identify and focus on the parts that will make the most impact in our learning first. This is what allows us to improve our performance in a shorter amount of time.

Step 2: Learn enough to self-correct

“Learning becomes a way of getting better at noticing when you’re making a mistake, and then doing something a little different”

Kaufman cleverly makes a distinction between practising and procrastinating. I realized that I am guilty of this; I tend to have an urge to finish learning all the content first before actually putting it to work. Ideally, you’ll want to understand the concept, then validate it with practice.

“What you want to do,” explained Kaufman, “is learn just enough that you can actually practice and self-correct”. The key is to raise our self-awareness to discern between what’s right and wrong as we practice. This is also how we validate our understanding as we become better at noticing our mistakes

Step 3: Remove practice barriers

Consistent practise requires focus and discipline, and distractions in our immediate environment can derail us from that. James Clear, author of the New York Times bestseller, “Atomic Habits“, dedicated a section in his book about optimizing the design of your immediate environment for success. Clearly (pun intended), the lesser the number of distractions there are to keep us from practising, the more likely we are to actually sit down and practice.

Step 4: Commit to at least 20 hours of practice

It is perfectly normal to feel frustrated when we’re learning something new, especially if it’s a challenging skill. Kaufman calls this the “frustration barrier” – the feeling of incompetency experienced at the beginning of the learning curve. This barrier can then discourage us from putting in the work to practice. In order to overcome this barrier, Kaufman suggests that we “pre-commit” the 20 hours ahead of schedule. This aims to compel us to “stick with the practice long enough to actually reap the rewards”.

I see two important benefits to this. First, it reduces the number of decisions that we make every day. This alleviates the condition known as “decision fatigue”, thereby making us more likely to follow through with the action. James Clear also talks about this in detail on his blog, in which he describes the following:

Decision fatigue happens every day in your life as well. If you have a particularly decision-heavy day at work, then you come home feeling drained. You might want to go to the gym and workout, but your brain would rather default to the easy decision: sit on the couch. That’s decision fatigue.

Secondly, pre-committing time to practice forces us to make an appointment with ourselves to get the most important work done. Gary Keller, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller, “The One Thing“, calls this “time blocking”. When done right, it “prioritizes progress towards an individual task”, enabling us to fulfil our 20-hour commitment.

Closing thoughts

“The major barrier to skill acquisition isn’t intellectual… It’s emotional.”

Kaufman wraps up his talk with this powerful quote, and I couldn’t agree with it more. Learning a new skill can be a daunting process, and it’s no easy feat. However, this intimidation often comes with an expectation that we have to take it to the highest degree. When we realized that we actually only need to be reasonably good at it, it takes some of that pressure off.

With just 4 simple steps, we reduced the amount of time needed to learn something new down to 20 hours. Compared to 10,000 hours, this sounds much more doable, doesn’t it? To put things in perspective, this is an hour’s worth of practice every day for almost a month; you even get to take a break on some days in between! All that matters now is to decide what do we want to learn next – all we need is 20 hours.

Josh Kaufman’s sharing in this Ted Talk is one of the most inspirational ones that I’ve seen this year. If you have 20 minutes to spare, I highly encourage you to check it out down below!

Share your thoughts with me!

I hope you’re as enlightened by this article as much as I was after watching the video! If you felt that you resonated a lot with what was shared above, I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below, or share this post with your friends with the tag @kopi.thoughts!