The First 20 Hours

How to Learn Anything... Fast!

By: Josh Kaufman

Narrated by: Josh Kaufman

Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

"Learn anything... fast!"

Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What's on your list? What's holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills - time you don't have and effort you can't spare?

Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy?

To make matters worse, the early hours of practicing something new are always the most frustrating. That's why it's difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It's so much easier to watch TV or surf the web...

In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition: how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct complex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By completing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you'll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well.

This method isn't theoretical: it's field-tested. Kaufman invites readers to join him as he field tests his approach by learning to program a Web application, play the ukulele, practice yoga, re-learn to touch type, get the hang of windsurfing, and study the world's oldest and most complex board game.

What do you want to learn?

Listen to The First 80 Minutes FREE from The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast!.

©2013 Worldly Wisdom Ventures LLC (P)2013 Worldly Wisdom Ventures LLC

Critic reviews

"As a father of three, practicing neurosurgeon, and global journalist, I don't have a lot of free time on my hands. The First 20 Hours is a practical guide to learning beyond our mid-20s, when our brains are fully developed. Josh's book will inspire you to pick up forgotten hobbies and chase elusive dreams." (Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent)

The book is a "how to instructional"

Completely fluff. It fails at giving ideas and/or strategies of practice. The book is storytelling of how much the author understands a new learned skill. Then pads the storyline with information the reader can care less about.

Don't bother

don't bother. money grab. wants email sent to them to get extra stuff needed for the program but they never respond

Lots of talk way to much filler.

Would you try another book from Josh Kaufman and/or Josh Kaufman?

No

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Did not get that far

Would you be willing to try another one of Josh Kaufman’s performances?

No

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Anger and disappointment

Any additional comments?

So much of the audio book was devoted to stories and that's fine to warm us up to the strategies but at chapter seven I found myself a bit angry at having listened to a very long talk on yoga positions, history,what he got out of it and Antonio Banderas younger look alike all the women had crushes on... and very little on new strategies...

basically save yourself money just devote yourself to 90 minutes of intense study if you can't study 90 minutes build up to it.. remove distractions and make time for study daily at roughly same time... there free ... I was victimized by the old bait and switch.
I paid for learning strategies and received a book on how to fill hours of the listeners time and do it sounding gooooood.. .. (Yes Josh has a good voice)
What a waste.

Shame on you Josh. You got me but I'm returning the audio book for my money back. I want my time back also but that's gone and I feel ripped off.

I enjoyed the first few chapters

I enjoyed the first few chapters of the book. I wish he would have stuck to the actual content of the training aspect instead of venturing off into the history of yoga and details of computer programming and more remain on the structure of practical learning disciplines.

dribble

if you want to know about his relationship with yoga then this is the book for you.

What's up with all the Yoga?

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Less nonsense describing, at length, things that are wholly unrelated to the main topic.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Nothing by this author.

Really great -- if it were a free blog post.

This would have made for an excellent (free) blog post. But it’s not worth your credit.

The first chapter discusses meta learning/skill acquisition generally. While the best chapter, plenty of free discussions are out there as good as what Kaufman offers here.

The marketing for the book might make you think you’ll learn how to become expert extremely quickly. But Kaufman’s real message is a truth that doesn’t sell books: there are no shortcuts; you have to put in the time to get good at anything.

In brief. Yoga chapter. Kaufman takes one private lesson of yoga. That’s it.

Programming chapter. Brutally boring and not helpful if you don’t program.

Touch typing. My favorite of the chapters. Kaufman switches from the standard QWERTY keyboard to a non-standard keyboard. After initial frustration, he achieves QWERTY speed and accuracy on the new layout within 20 hours of deliberate practice.

Go chapter. After getting crushed online by real humans, Kaufman plays against his computer. After 20 hours, he decides that getting good would actually take a real time commitment and gives it up.

Ukulele. He learns three chords and sings a song.

Windsurfing. Due to bad weather, he only gets in 9 hours of practice. Seriously.

My negativity aside, Kaufman seems like a genuinely good guy and I agree with his core message. If you make the time and give it 20 hours, that’s usually enough time to scale the learning curve and achieve an enjoyable level of proficiency.

Listen to the free 80 minute opening...

The publisher links a free the first 80 minutes. Listen to that and see if it's useful or may be see if you can find his TED talks. I skipped many chapters and sections as they became boring and tedious.

I found the author covered more about the things he learned than the process he describes. It's quite dull to hear about someone programming. It was also clear from the topics that he had a reasonable amount of knowledge on each of the topics from very related items and was not really a beginner in these topics. this is especially important since the most useful thing in his proces and hardest is figuring what things to learn in what order.

Terrible book

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

silence. it would have been better to have listened to nothing rather than the 7 hours of babble from josh kaufman.

Not worth it...

Although this book is well written, however the content of this book is based on common sense and personally.. not worth the money and time