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Josh Kaufman

The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast! Paperback – Illustrated, May 27, 2014

by Josh Kaufman (Author)

569 ratings

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What if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less?
Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to master a new skill, and the earliest hours are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s so difficult to learn a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos.

Josh Kaufman offers a better way. His systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition 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 can pick up the basics in record time… and

have more fun along the way.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Portfolio
Publication date

May 27, 2014
Dimensions

5.45 x 0.74 x 8.35 inches
ISBN-10

1591846943
ISBN-13

978-1591846949
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A blockbuster in the making, The First 20 Hours breaks down the learning process into simple and effective steps with real-life examples that inspire. After reading this book, you’ll be ready to take on any number of skills and make progress on that big project you’ve been putting off for years.”
—CHRIS GUILLEBEAU, author of The $100 Startup

“If you’re like me, you’ll get so inspired that you’ll stop reading to apply this approach to your own procrastinated project. After reading the first five chapters, I tried Josh’s technique to learn a new programming language, and I’m blown away with how fast I became fluent.”
—DEREK SIVERS, founder, CD Baby, sivers.org

“Great opportunities are worthless without skills. No more excuses! Kaufman proves that we all have the capacity to become experts.”
—SCOTT BELSKY, founder, Behance, and author of Making Ideas Happen

“With the amount of information and change in the world today, the person who can adapt and learn the most quickly will be the most successful. Kaufman breaks down the science of learning in useful, entertaining, and fascinating ways. If you care about keeping your job, your business, or your edge, this book is for you.”
—PAMELA SLIM, author of Escape from Cubicle Nation

“In this inspiring little book, Josh argues that you can get good enough at anything to enjoy yourself in just 20 hours. In other words, all that’s standing between you and playing the ukulele is your TV time for the next two weeks. If Josh, a busy father and entrepreneur, can make the time, then the rest of us can too.”
—LAURA VANDERKAM, author of 168 Hours and What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast

“Lots of books promise to change your life. This one actually will.”
—SETH GODIN, author of The Icarus Deception

About the Author

JOSH KAUFMAN helps people make more money, get more done, and have more fun. His first book, The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, is an international bestseller. He lives in Colorado.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Portfolio; Illustrated edition (May 27, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1591846943
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1591846949
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.45 x 0.74 x 8.35 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #200,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #225 in Memory Improvement Self-Help
- #371 in Educational Psychology (Books)
- #658 in Popular Applied Psychology

Customer Reviews:
569 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		57%
4 star		18%
3 star		12%
2 star		8%
1 star		5%

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Top reviews from the United States

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julio flores

Watch his YouTube video instead - Is FREE, short and to the point.

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2015

Verified Purchase

Very simple. DO NOT buy this book. Instead watch his FREE video on YouTube. Gives you the same ideas of this book and you only spend about 15 min watching that video. In this book, he goes about describing how he learn 5 or 6 different things he was interested in. In the YouTube video, he tells you the tools you need to learn anything in 20hrs or less and again in about 15min of watching.

221 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jorge

Fundamentals

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2016

Verified Purchase

I'll make it quick. Read Chapters 1-3 and you are basically done. Teaches you what you need.
Chapter 6 skip through it and read Interference and Consolidation.
Chapter 7 read the Inversion example and portion on behaviour fixing.
The rest of the book are just examples. If you want to read the examples they will serve as examples of deconstructing but you can just go to the end of the example chapters and read the review portion which clearly lists how he deconstructed the skill.

Follow this and you will will end up finishing fast and be able to start your next project.

I'm still on this subject. I will re-read 4 Hour Chef. The book is based on Meta Learning at the 10k rule. After that Solomon's book. All 3 books have lots of similar patterns. This time around I'm taking serious notes.

Cool thing about this book is that you realized that all it takes is 20 hrs to be pretty good at something. ie. Chapter 6 who can type at 60wpm per min with a 2% error rate. Not me or anyone I know. This book basically teaches you that all you need is 20 hrs on 1 subject to be better at something that the people around you are not good at. With 20 hrs you are ahead of the curve. 20 hrs could be the difference between you getting a promotion or someone else. Who cares about 10k hrs of deliberate practice. 20 hrs is all you need to be better than the person next to you.

79 people found this helpful

Helpful

Aprisa Chrysantina

Only need to read the first few pages

Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

Firstly, I’m a kind book rater. But I’m really disappointed.

Once I read the first few pages (basically few more after the Kindle sample), I skipped everything. It goes too deep about yoga (I have the working level I need to enjoy benefits of yoga), programming (I’ve given up this one after finishing my master in IT), and few more skills that I’m not interested in. Rather than stretching the book in depth for all the skills not everyone need, why not briefly explain his how then how we (the readers who bought this book for us - surprise!) can implement or apply in our cases, or maybe give a workbook, or simply how we can use the principles he mentioned in the first chapter.

If you haven’t bought this book already, I suggest you to download the sample and that’s it, that’s all Josh had to say.

16 people found this helpful

Helpful

Stephen Ray

Anybody can be good at something. Let Josh Kaufman show you how.

Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

The idea of mastery has definitely confused people, and Josh Kaufman is here to tell you that you can be happily competent if you work at it. It's not long work, but it does require focus and dedication for 20 hours. That's the sort of time commitment the average person could make in a month by cutting down on their TV watching.

Having seen the TED talk first, I felt that maybe the book could have been a bit shorter, but I'm sure that somebody will find the principles click by reading that last real-life example, so I'll let it slide. The variety of skills he developed was interesting, and did demonstrate the techniques well.

Anybody would do well for themselves by reading this at least once and developing a new skill.

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

John Smith

I should have listened to the negative reviews!

Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2021

Verified Purchase

I love acquiring skills, and so I thought this book would be helpful. The only good thing about it is that it shows me that I’m on the right track with my methods of skill acquisition. All the useful information is in the book’s two “ten principles” lists. Everything else is just filler. After those chapters, it’s all a bunch of stories about how the author learned six specific skills. The one on yoga was useless because I don’t care about it, the one on computer programming was useless because I already know it, and so on. I didn’t read more because I returned it at that point.

Helpful

Richardjf

Good book giving a method for fast learning

Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2013

Verified Purchase

This is a good book proposing a method for picking up the essential skills of a discipline. The author asserts that it would take 20 hours of correctly organised, focused effort to learn most things to a competent (but not expert) level.

The book starts by telling the reader the main steps of the learning method. The author then describes his efforts at applying this method at different disciplines: learning to play go (the game), windsurfing, playing the ukulele, a new type of keyboard, a computer programming language, and yoga.

Overall, the method seems sound. It basically involves doing enough research on the topic to find out the essential, core skills and then working out how to learn and practice them.

The book gave me an approach to learning that I could use. I would still have to think hard about how this method could be adapted to
different types of learning, but I'm still better equipped than I was before I read this book!

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

jonago

Practical, well thought out and clearly presented

Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2016

Verified Purchase

I've been working the system since I got and read the book. Simple easy stuff even I can do. Well written in a personal style that persuades you to take an honest assessment of whats holding you back, then you are ready to take up the individual steps and voila you begin to learn and gain confidence.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

ALox

Most of what the first 20 hours is about can ...

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

Most of what the first 20 hours is about can be digested from the first 2 chapters. The additional chapter's concepts are elementary when it comes to understanding how to use the strategies for rapid learning.

Check it out from your local library before buying it if you can; You may get all that you need from doing so.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Mr. J. A. Ball

OK book but not nearly as useful as I'd hoped.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2017

Verified Purchase

I felt the book was a bit light on meat and heavy on padding. A few useful things in there but most of the book was taken up with repeating lists and blow by blow account of using laid out learning processes, which, once done with one activity, was not very useful to be repeated with another. If you are looking to learn any of the things the author chose as learning actions then it could be a useful guide. I did not get as much value from the book as I had hoped for but I did take away a few useful pointers.
I felt a bit misled by some of the raving reviews. I feel 3* is generous.

9 people found this helpful

Mat Brunt

Could have been excellent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 18, 2017

Verified Purchase

I read a minimum of 30 non-fiction books a year - this one started out brilliant, the first couple of chapters are great, but I had to force myself through most of the rest of the book.

I appreciate what the author was trying to do, but I don't need to know the full history of the origins of yoga to understand how the author chunked his initial learning up. Considering the book is about rapid skill acquisition I was left very disappointed, feeling that over half the book was wasting my time.

So if you have the same experience as me, read the book, but be prepared to skim most of the content after the first couple of chapters and before the afterword.

7 people found this helpful

David Finn

All Filler, No Killer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 19, 2013

Verified Purchase

The summary of this book is basically that if you study a particular skill for 20 hours or 40 minutes a day you will acquire that skill. He goes into unnecessary detail about web design & playing the ukulele. There is just pages & pages of this filler. What is in this book could really have been reduced to an online article. It is really an over padded essay & not worth the price. Practice daily & break down the skill into smaller more digestible parts. Why do you need to write a book to say something so simple. Save your money & spend it on something else

18 people found this helpful

A Reader

Stretched out

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 24, 2014

Verified Purchase

The basic idea is good and would have made an interesting blog entry, but I guess you can't make much money from one of those, so the rest of the book is padded out with stuff like the history of yoga and how much he loves his wife and little daughter... Pick it up in a bookshop and skim the first two chapters. Then buy another book - bookshop owners have to eat too.

11 people found this helpful

Caballo Oscuro

Well worth a read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 2, 2014

Verified Purchase

Bought the kindle version because the paperback is printed so small that I could not read it even with spectacles, and the paper quality is awful.
The book is a very good read. I have taken the principles and instigated them in my work place.
I now encourage engineers to get stuck in, make sure your safe then go for it, stop spending ages. what can go wrong is not will go wrong. Would encourage reading as it is not yet another self help book. The free Web stuff pages do not work for me, but that may be me using the wrong browser.

One person found this helpful