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A review by embevens
The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything...Fast by Josh Kaufman
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.