A review by bookfairy99
The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything...Fast by Josh Kaufman

1.0

Like many people, I have a ton of skills I would like to learn. In fact, the list is overwhelming. I know I’ll never have the time to tackle even a fraction of them. So I’ve been focusing on the things that interest me the most: blogging, painting, drawing, scrapbooking, card making, journaling, writing, baking. But even that pared down list seems overwhelming. I don’t have 10,000 hours to dedicate to each one of those pursuits. But then again, I also don’t want to become a world-class expert in any of them. I just want to be good — okay, maybe really, really good. So imagine my excitement when I came across this book. I can get really good in just 20 hours? REALLY? Wow. Awesome! Unfortunately, if it seemed that the premise of this book was too good to be true… well, it was. The first couple of chapters are wonderful. The author describes his theories, and they make sense. But after that brief introduction, he goes in depth into his own interests: yoga, programming, windsurfing, etc. I assumed he’d be talking about how he learned these skills, but instead, it’s almost as though he’s trying to teach us those skills. The content is extremely dry, and not helpful at all if you’ve got other skills you have to learn and have no interest at all in, say, learning to play Go. I was very disappointed. Such a great premise - so poorly executed.