The Four Steps of Rapid Skill Acquisition

Sally Kohn: Skills are everything, especially for young people. She says the first thing to do is decide what you want to be able to do. Then break it down into much smaller parts and practice them more often; that's step two. Finally, get good at using some of those sub skills way more often than others in a given situation.

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Josh Kaufman went from having zero ukulele skills to being an intermediate ukulele player in just 20 hours. How did he do it? In this episode, Josh breaks down how to learn any new skill in just 20 hours, debunks certain myths about learning a new skill, and reveals his four steps for rapid skill acquisition.

Josh Kaufman is a best-selling author, researcher, and speaker. Josh's TEDx talk, The First 20 Hours, is one of the top 25 most-viewed TED talks published to date, with over 22 million views on YouTube. His research has been featured by The New York Times, The BBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Fortune, Forbes, Time, BusinessWeek, Wired, Fast Company, Financial Times, HarvardBusiness.org, The World Economic Forum, Inside Higher Ed, Lifehacker, MarketWatch, The Independent, Bloomberg TV, PBS Next Avenue, CCTV, and CNN's Sanjay Gupta MD.

In this episode, Hala and Josh discuss:

- How Josh’s TEDx talk exploded in popularity

- The 10,000 hours myth

- What the first 20 hours of learning a new skill consist of

- Emotional barriers to learning a new skill

- Learning curves

- The Power Law of Practice

- The skills Josh has learned in under 20 hours

- The 4 steps of rapid skill acquisition

- The critical few

- Josh’s third book, How To Fight A Hydra

- And other topics…

Josh Kaufman is a best-selling author, researcher, and speaker. Josh's research focuses on business, entrepreneurship, skill acquisition, productivity, creativity, applied psychology, and practical wisdom. His unique, multidisciplinary approach to business mastery and rapid skill acquisition has helped millions of readers around the world learn essential concepts and skills on their own terms. Josh has been featured as the #1 bestselling author in Business & Money, as ranked by Amazon.com, and his books have sold over a million copies worldwide.

Josh's TEDx talk on The First 20 Hours is one of the top 25 most-viewed TED talks published to date, with over 22 million views on YouTube.

Josh has been a featured speaker at The Aspen Ideas Festival, Stanford University, World Domination Summit, Pioneer Nation, Microconf, BaconBiz, Google, and IBM, and his website, JoshKaufman.net, was named one of the "Top 100 Websites for Entrepreneurs" by Forbes in 2013.

Resources Mentioned:

Part 1 of Josh's Interview: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/josh-kaufman-launching-a-business-or-side-hustle-e106/id1368888880?i=1000512998935

Josh’s TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY

Josh’s Books: https://joshkaufman.net/books/

Josh’s Website: https://joshkaufman.net/

Josh’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/joshkaufman

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