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drapoco's review against another edition
3.0
Everyone has something that they want to master or become better at and Josh Kaufman is here to help with his book First 20 Hours. The book sets up a theoretical basis for learning faster and takes the reader on a journey of learning as Josh Kaufman uses Yoga, Programming, and the Ukulele among other things as proof of concept.
Takeaways:
- Skills and abilities grow with persistence
- Leaning into initial discomfort will enable major progress
- Practicing an hour or so before sleeping will enhance your ability to learn.
My main critique of The First 20 Hours is that it comes across as a collection of tutorials and by extension a bit show-offish because there is a disconnection between the application of the theoretical part and the practical part. The tutorial parts don't carry the theory with them and as I reached the ending chapters I realized that I had forgotten what the theory was. It would be nice if Josh Kaufman had ended each chapter with an explicit walkthrough of the utilization of theory, explaining his choices and evaluating his experiences.
The First 20 Hours has a lot to teach the reader, but to be frank, these things are taught in the first two chapters and by reading the last two sections of each chapter. It's 250 pages where you can get the most benefit from reading 50 of them.
I would recommend this book to someone starting at university, beginning a new job, or facing similar situations where a steep learning curve can be expected.
Takeaways:
- Skills and abilities grow with persistence
- Leaning into initial discomfort will enable major progress
- Practicing an hour or so before sleeping will enhance your ability to learn.
My main critique of The First 20 Hours is that it comes across as a collection of tutorials and by extension a bit show-offish because there is a disconnection between the application of the theoretical part and the practical part. The tutorial parts don't carry the theory with them and as I reached the ending chapters I realized that I had forgotten what the theory was. It would be nice if Josh Kaufman had ended each chapter with an explicit walkthrough of the utilization of theory, explaining his choices and evaluating his experiences.
The First 20 Hours has a lot to teach the reader, but to be frank, these things are taught in the first two chapters and by reading the last two sections of each chapter. It's 250 pages where you can get the most benefit from reading 50 of them.
I would recommend this book to someone starting at university, beginning a new job, or facing similar situations where a steep learning curve can be expected.
lsparrow's review
4.0
Not rocket science or even ideas that seem revolutionary but rather a clear compilation of strategies that I use - in a more clear and systematic manner - also with a range of examples where this system is applied. Also very easy to read -it was not 20 hours to read this book which I always good in a how to book.
dennistraub's review
4.0
Being a learning addict with the occasional OCD kicking in I really enjoyed the book. I picked up a few tips along the way and I'm left with two new things to learn:
1. Touch typing with the Colmak layout (to the probable sorrow of my future pairing partners)
2. Ruby. I wanted to learn either Ruby or Python anyway but couldn't decide yet. I guess I will give Ruby a try. It may not be the coolest language on earth but it does look great (and it sure beats Java and C#!)
1. Touch typing with the Colmak layout (to the probable sorrow of my future pairing partners)
2. Ruby. I wanted to learn either Ruby or Python anyway but couldn't decide yet. I guess I will give Ruby a try. It may not be the coolest language on earth but it does look great (and it sure beats Java and C#!)
apeeks's review
2.0
This short book should be far shorter (if publishers valued the time of readers). You can get all the worthwhile content, and save some hours, by only reading/listening to chapters 2, 3, 6, and the afterword. Honestly, you can skip chapter 6 but I felt like it was the only chapter added to the premise outlined in chapter 2. It also felt like the least bloated of the example chapters. The other chapters are filled with unnecessary pages (like the history of Yoga... not why I'm here Mr. Author). Chapter 6 talks about some tips to improve dexterity based or mechanical skills that I have used in the past.
This book is not unique at being unnecessarily bloated. Most books on business or self improvement could be boiled down to a 2-5 page essay that brings the reader the same content. Is there some value here? Sure, if you stick to chapters 2, 3, and, if ambitious, 6.
This book is not unique at being unnecessarily bloated. Most books on business or self improvement could be boiled down to a 2-5 page essay that brings the reader the same content. Is there some value here? Sure, if you stick to chapters 2, 3, and, if ambitious, 6.
margaretmechinus's review
2.0
I got this book specifically for the chapter on playing the ukulele. I felt like I wasted part of my "20 hours" by reading Kaufman's narrative of his personal experience with learning to play the ukulele. He does suggest buying an electronic tuner which is good tip, and I think he had something interesting to add about strumming techniques, but I couldn't decipher what he was trying to explain.
embevens's review
2.0
Very disappointing. There's an worthwhile idea here: it may take 10,000 hours, as others have suggested, to master something at the world-class level, but what about those areas where you just want to be competent enough to enjoy it and not humiliate yourself?
Unfortunately, this isn't really the book to help you. The first part is the 10 principles Kaufman has put together for Rapid Skill Acquisition, and they are mostly common sense. For example, do things you love, get rid of distractions, and put in sufficient practice time. Who knew? I mean, all the suggestions are fine, but there's nothing you couldn't think up yourself.
But, you suppose, maybe things pick up in the second part (and main portion) of the book, where Kaufman shares how he picked up 6 different skills: yoga, computer programming, touch typing, go, playing ukulele, and windsurfing. Aha, here things will become more clear, as we see these principles in action!
Alas, you would be mistaken. Each of these chapters has little relation to Kaufman's 10 principles (with random asides, 1-2 per chapter, where Kaufman says, "See, I just did Lesson X!"), and they are written completely backwards. In a book that is about how to quickly develop competency, the logical way to organize these little case studies is to walk through your 10 steps, and show how you they applied for each scenario. Then, theoretically, readers could apply those same 10 steps to whatever skills they want to acquire.
In these 6 case studies, however, we actually get bizarrely detailed diaries of Kaufman's time spent learning this various skills. Instead of showing how his 10 principles work, we get the first-hand, play-by-play account of Every. Single. Thing. Josh. Kaufman. Did. To. Learn. Something. For example, the chapter on coding spends more time actually teaching the reader to code a very specific program that was very specific to Kaufman's needs at the time than on universal concepts of learning. When he learns to play Go, we follow along as he decides on which game board he will buy--and where he will buy it from. And it's the same every time. These chapters are specific where they ought to be general, and glaze over what should be the most important points.
And most frustrating of all, Kaufman's emphasis on 20 hours turns out to just be a number he pulled out of his head (or possibly reverse engineered after seeing how long it took him on average for his six case studies). There's absolutely no reason given for why 20 hours is the right amount of time, as opposed to 5, 10, 15, 25, or 30. It's just a nice, round number that sounds great in the title but has no real relation to the amount of time it takes to develop competency in any particular skill. His yoga case study takes about 5 hours, he only spends 9 on windsurfing, while he goes past 20 hours on others. Just a big disappointment.
Unfortunately, this isn't really the book to help you. The first part is the 10 principles Kaufman has put together for Rapid Skill Acquisition, and they are mostly common sense. For example, do things you love, get rid of distractions, and put in sufficient practice time. Who knew? I mean, all the suggestions are fine, but there's nothing you couldn't think up yourself.
But, you suppose, maybe things pick up in the second part (and main portion) of the book, where Kaufman shares how he picked up 6 different skills: yoga, computer programming, touch typing, go, playing ukulele, and windsurfing. Aha, here things will become more clear, as we see these principles in action!
Alas, you would be mistaken. Each of these chapters has little relation to Kaufman's 10 principles (with random asides, 1-2 per chapter, where Kaufman says, "See, I just did Lesson X!"), and they are written completely backwards. In a book that is about how to quickly develop competency, the logical way to organize these little case studies is to walk through your 10 steps, and show how you they applied for each scenario. Then, theoretically, readers could apply those same 10 steps to whatever skills they want to acquire.
In these 6 case studies, however, we actually get bizarrely detailed diaries of Kaufman's time spent learning this various skills. Instead of showing how his 10 principles work, we get the first-hand, play-by-play account of Every. Single. Thing. Josh. Kaufman. Did. To. Learn. Something. For example, the chapter on coding spends more time actually teaching the reader to code a very specific program that was very specific to Kaufman's needs at the time than on universal concepts of learning. When he learns to play Go, we follow along as he decides on which game board he will buy--and where he will buy it from. And it's the same every time. These chapters are specific where they ought to be general, and glaze over what should be the most important points.
And most frustrating of all, Kaufman's emphasis on 20 hours turns out to just be a number he pulled out of his head (or possibly reverse engineered after seeing how long it took him on average for his six case studies). There's absolutely no reason given for why 20 hours is the right amount of time, as opposed to 5, 10, 15, 25, or 30. It's just a nice, round number that sounds great in the title but has no real relation to the amount of time it takes to develop competency in any particular skill. His yoga case study takes about 5 hours, he only spends 9 on windsurfing, while he goes past 20 hours on others. Just a big disappointment.
eikenlady's review
2.0
I picked up this book because I've been trying to learn a lot of new skills lately. Cooking, Italian, and even yoga so I thought this might be the perfect book to help me learn skills quickly.
It was ... to a point.
The first section of the book goes into the science of skill acquisition, what it requires, and the steps to achieve it. One of the biggest things I pulled from this was that while it is said 10,000 hours equals a mastery level, you don't need to hit a mastery level in order to feel like you've achieved something with that skill. Josh focuses a lot on what success means to you and even gives some definitions for the six skills he tries to acquire in this book.
Unfortunately, for me, this was the only useful part of the book. While I was interested in the yoga section because I too am trying to learn about yoga, the rest of it seemed useless for me to read. Instead of going into the methods that Josh used to learn things in a general sense, he dials down and gets really specific. At that point, it almost reads like a journal where he's document every single step in his process to reach either his goal or 20-hours, whichever comes first. (Hint: It's usually the former.) This might be great for people that want to learn how to code in Ruby, play Go, teach themselves how to touch type, or even windsurf but I myself am not interested in any of those things. So reading those sections were kind of difficult for me because it immediately lost my interest.
The premise of this book is good and if nothing else, reading the first section about skill acquisition is worth picking it up, but I'll admit it's only about 1/6th of the book.
2 stars.
It was ... to a point.
The first section of the book goes into the science of skill acquisition, what it requires, and the steps to achieve it. One of the biggest things I pulled from this was that while it is said 10,000 hours equals a mastery level, you don't need to hit a mastery level in order to feel like you've achieved something with that skill. Josh focuses a lot on what success means to you and even gives some definitions for the six skills he tries to acquire in this book.
Unfortunately, for me, this was the only useful part of the book. While I was interested in the yoga section because I too am trying to learn about yoga, the rest of it seemed useless for me to read. Instead of going into the methods that Josh used to learn things in a general sense, he dials down and gets really specific. At that point, it almost reads like a journal where he's document every single step in his process to reach either his goal or 20-hours, whichever comes first. (Hint: It's usually the former.) This might be great for people that want to learn how to code in Ruby, play Go, teach themselves how to touch type, or even windsurf but I myself am not interested in any of those things. So reading those sections were kind of difficult for me because it immediately lost my interest.
The premise of this book is good and if nothing else, reading the first section about skill acquisition is worth picking it up, but I'll admit it's only about 1/6th of the book.
2 stars.
aargee's review against another edition
3.0
First few pages are good, that talks about the rule of 20 hours & how to accomplish. If you already read books of David Allen, Chris Bailey etc, then we only have to know that the first 20 hours practice, related to motor skills, is all one requires to become good enough although Josh Kaufman shares his experience of launching a website using Ruby Sinatra & Go (non motor skills). Remaining 65-80% of the book is about sharing his experience of learning Colemak keyboard, Wind surfing, Ruby Sinatra, Yoga, Go, Ukulele. But yes, there's certainly something to learn from these experiences on how to approach when learning anything new
al13ex's review
3.0
I've been waiting for a long time to read this book and it turned out to be as inspiring as I was hoping it would be. Learning something new can take about 20 hours, as long as you do some research before starting and you don't have the expectation of mastering that skill when the 20 hours are gone. The idea is to try and learn something you're interested in and you can do this in a methodical and organized way, so in the end you don't just waste your time.
I liked the first few chapters where the author presents the principles of rapid skill acquisition. I thought they make sense and it's a good place to start thinking about the learning process. However, in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method, the main block of the book consists of skills the author learned in this way: yoga, programming, touch typing, Go, playing the ukulele and windsurfing. Seeing the method in action is a very good exercise, especially if the reader can relate to the subject. What I didn't like was the amount of technical detail and explanation that was put into each skill. These details were not relevant for this discussion, because anyone who wants to pick up the skill will use books and sources strictly concerned with that particular skill. It felt like reading the journal of each experience, where the learner was using writing as a way to memorize and check their own progress. Of course, readers can skip the parts they are not interested in, but I was never very comfortable with doing that...
Nonetheless, investing 20 hours to try a new thing is a good idea and it might give someone the right motivation to keep practicing, with an end in mind. One of the things that I found to be most helpful was about deliberate practice. The author was trying to learn touch typing with a different keyboard layout. At first, his practice was methodical and intentional, to learn the place of each key and to get used to typing faster. Because he had to use the same layout for his regular work, he tried to rely on the fact that he's using it either way for work and he should be learning at the same time. What he discovered was that using the keyboard layout on a daily basis, without deliberate practice to improve, got him nowhere near to reaching his goal. This also reminded me about a TED Talk by Eduardo Briceño about the learning zone versus performance zone. Just doing something without actually working on getting better at it will not yield any results.
I liked the first few chapters where the author presents the principles of rapid skill acquisition. I thought they make sense and it's a good place to start thinking about the learning process. However, in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method, the main block of the book consists of skills the author learned in this way: yoga, programming, touch typing, Go, playing the ukulele and windsurfing. Seeing the method in action is a very good exercise, especially if the reader can relate to the subject. What I didn't like was the amount of technical detail and explanation that was put into each skill. These details were not relevant for this discussion, because anyone who wants to pick up the skill will use books and sources strictly concerned with that particular skill. It felt like reading the journal of each experience, where the learner was using writing as a way to memorize and check their own progress. Of course, readers can skip the parts they are not interested in, but I was never very comfortable with doing that...
Nonetheless, investing 20 hours to try a new thing is a good idea and it might give someone the right motivation to keep practicing, with an end in mind. One of the things that I found to be most helpful was about deliberate practice. The author was trying to learn touch typing with a different keyboard layout. At first, his practice was methodical and intentional, to learn the place of each key and to get used to typing faster. Because he had to use the same layout for his regular work, he tried to rely on the fact that he's using it either way for work and he should be learning at the same time. What he discovered was that using the keyboard layout on a daily basis, without deliberate practice to improve, got him nowhere near to reaching his goal. This also reminded me about a TED Talk by Eduardo Briceño about the learning zone versus performance zone. Just doing something without actually working on getting better at it will not yield any results.