Cover Photo: Author showcasing multiple skills. Location: Medellin, Colombia
10 lessons from learning 80 skills in 3 years
Myoriginal inspiration for learning three new skills every month came from Josh Kaufman, who did a TEDx talk on the topic of learning skills in 20 hours. I was greatly inspired by his ability to play the Ukulele with only 20 hours of practice, and so, I figured, if he can learn that effectively in 20 hours, so can I!
I opted for practicing 30 minutes daily for a month, which amounts to 15 hours of practice. And when I started, I was able to free up 1.5 hours every morning, so I decided to aim for three skills, practicing for 45 hours in total per month.
This habit ended up being the most life-changing one I’ve ever built. I have more energy, learn faster and better, I became more social and more interesting, and I’m more confident than ever.
However, as you can imagine, I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. I wasn’t always the most efficient in my learning. I didn’t mind at the time, since I figured I could always extend to the next month. Well, I’ve very rarely done that, so I had to learn how to learn better.
In this article, I’m sharing my top 10 lessons to learn more effectively given a time constraint.
Preparations
1. Choose a skill where you already have some prerequisite sub-skills
When you only have 20 hours to learn something, you don’t want to start from zero. Doing so would make it hard to stay motivated since the progress would be too slow.
Instead, I strongly suggest you start with a skill where you already have a base. Here are a few examples:
If you play a strings instrument already, you could pick up another strings instrument.
If you know how to draw on paper, you could learn to draw on the computer. Or you could learn to draw using a new style.
You could learn another language from the same root as another language you know.
If you already know a programming language or framework, you could learn another one.
If you know SEO on WordPress, you could learn SEO on another platform.
I guarantee you can find skills where you already have a head start. If you pick one like that, you’ll see progress faster and find it much easier to stay motivated.
2. Team up with a buddy to learn with
There are many reasons to want to learn with someone else. Again, this helps stay motivated. It also helps to divide the research and share ideas. As you know, two heads are always better than one. But most importantly, you can get honest feedback from someone who’s actively doing the same thing.
Before you start a challenge of learning a skill for 20 hours (or any time limit), reach out to people around you who might be interested in learning the same skill or a related skill. Start with friends and family, then work colleagues, and finally by looking up people online.
Whoever you chose to learn alongside you, make it clear to them that you want honest feedback, whether it’s positive or negative. You can’t learn from people who sugarcoat your performance. You want someone who won’t be afraid to tell you if you underperformed.
3. Ask for help
Before you start learning, try to find yourself a mentor. By mentor, I mean someone who’s ahead of you in the skill you want to learn and will be able to answer your questions and guide you as necessary.
You don’t need your mentor to be there the whole way. Most people are too busy anyway. You want a mentor who’s going to have a couple of hours to spare for you during your learning journey. The ideal mentor would be able to give you feedback along the way, and especially in the first few days of practice.
Mentors are harder to find than a buddy to learn with. If you can’t find one for the skill you originally chose, you could instead choose a skill based on who can mentor you. For example, if your friend is a professional guitar player and has a few hours to spare to teach you, you might choose this skill over another one, even if you don’t know anything about music.
4. Spend at least 5 hours building your learning plan
In Scott H. Young’s book Ultralearning, Young recommends you spend at least 10 percent of your time on meta-learning. To keep this simple, meta-learning is about figuring out the what, why, how, when, and where of the skill you’re about to learn. I’ve streamlined this whole process in my SkillUp eJournal [Free].
This is a crucial step people don’t take seriously enough. To learn anything quickly, you can’t just dabble. You have to know why you want to learn that skill in the first place, what are the sub-skills you need to learn, how you can learn them, and when and where you’re going to practice them.
This process should take a good amount of your time. Don’t rush this. But also don’t spend all your time on this. You should refine your plan at least once weekly anyway.
Process
5. Spend at least 70 percent of your remaining time on practice
Most people do it in the reverse order. They study for 70 percent of their time and practice only 30 percent. This is wrong. That’s not how your brain learns. I won’t delve much into the science of learning in this article, but know that the neural connections are getting formed (and strengthened) when you practice, not when you study.
For learning to truly happen, you need to involve as many of your senses as possible. When you study, you mostly involve your vision, missing out of hearing, touch, etc. Involve more and you’ll learn more, it’s that simple.
Study is important to know what to practice and how to do it, but unless you actually do it, you’re simply acquiring knowledge, not skills. Knowledge, when not applied, doesn’t make you more skilled.
6. Spread out your learning
This is key. Practicing for 20 hours straight is far inferior to practicing for 40 sessions of 30 minutes. The name used for the approach of spreading out your learning is called Spaced Practice.
Spaced practice is mostly useful for helping you retain what you learn for longer. That’s why I like to break my practice sessions into chunks of 30 minutes. While this works for most skills, I found that, for me, chunks of 15 minutes work best for learning to play an instrument.
So, as you keep practicing, pay attention to how effective your sessions are. If you find yourself not progressing much past 30 minutes, then stop there. If it’s 15 minutes, that’s fine too. For Salsa Dancing, my sessions were 60-minutes long, and that was perfect for me. Always adjust as needed.
7. Ditch ego and perfection
This is another massively important point. Most adults are not comfortable with being back in the beginner stages. This prevents them from improving on other skills but those they already possess.
There’s no room for ego and perfection in learning. This applies to any skill you want to learn. Embrace failure. Experiment with everything. Reflect on the outcomes (more on that later). “Better done than perfect.” That’s the only right attitude.
During your 20 hours of practice, you’ll mostly have failures, and that’s fine. Celebrate the small wins. Realize that you’re gaining more experience, therefore, you are progressing 100 percent of the time.
8. Time your rest
Rest plays a major role in forming neural connections. If you’ve done any form of workout, you already know that about your body. To regrow your muscles, sleep is a key component. The brain is an organ that behaves like a muscle. To “regrow”, it needs resting time.
Resting comes in multiple forms. Essentially, anytime you’re not actively thinking is resting time. This includes sleeping, napping, showering, jogging, running, walking, etc.
The best time to rest is right after you’ve actively worked on something you want to assimilate. Right after you finish a learning session, go for a jog, take a shower, or power nap. This will greatly enhance your learning. You can do the same with your night’s sleep, though you have to be careful that your learning session won’t keep you more energized and awake.
Reflection
9. Track your progress
I’m always amazed at how many people don’t track any progress they’ve done on things they want to learn. Whenever you have any goals in life, unless you track the results, you’re never going to reach them.
If you want to lose weight, you weigh yourself regularly, right? It’s the same for skill learning. Find a metric that makes sense for what you’re trying to learn, and then rate yourself daily on it. Note what went right, what went wrong, and how you can do better.
Do that daily, weekly, and monthly. Involve your buddy and mentor in the process as much as you can. Again, you can use my SkillUp eJournal to track your progress.
10. Showcase your results
To help you stay accountable, it’s always a good idea to make your results available for others to see. This is also a great way to get feedback on your progress.
I like to post about my results online, using Medium, Pinterest, and Youtube. The more I make things public, the more I feel like “owe” my audience a follow-up. I often get comments about what I did right and what I did wrong. Of course, to succeed here, you need to ditch your ego and perfection, as previously mentioned.
But you don’t need to make all (or any) of your progress public. You can share it with your buddy and mentor only. You can also expand by showing to friends and family or coworkers.
Summary
To learn any skill effectively, you need to prepare correctly, practice smartly, and reflect regularly. These 10 lessons will help you be on the right track:
Choose a skill where you already have some prerequisite sub-skills
Team up with a buddy to learn with
Ask for help
Spend at least 5 hours building your learning plan
Spend at least 70 percent of your remaining time on practice
Spread out your learning
Ditch ego and perfection
Time your rest
Track your progress
Showcase your results
Getting a good level of proficiency in any skill by practicing for only 20 hours is possible if you do it smartly. Learn the lessons above and you will greatly accelerate your learning.
You can do this!
— Danny