How to Acquire New Skills Fast

How to Acquire New Skills Fast

Did you know that it takes the average person 10,000 hours of practice to reach expert status? That’s an astronomical amount of time that most people don’t have to devote to learning and practicing! What if you were able to improve your knowledge of a particular subject and improve your skills in as few as 20 hours? Would you be willing to put in the effort?

Become a More Knowledgeable Person in as Few as 20 Hours

According to author Josh Kaufman, you can learn a lot in as few as 90 minutes a day for a total of 20 hours. The best part of his technique is that you can apply it to any skill. It involves a process known as “rapid skill acquisition.” When practiced deliberately, it can take you from knowing nothing about a subject to holding your own in a conversation about it.

Here is how to acquire new skills fast according to The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything Fast:

Decide what it is that you want to do. It’s the big goals that you want to achieve. Maybe it’s to get into shape to run a marathon, learn a second language, or bake the perfect loaf of sourdough bread. Whatever the goal is, you need to define it clearly.
Deconstruct the skill into sets of subskills. Writing them down in a place where you’ll see them often is highly recommended. It allows you to review your selected subskills and find blocks of time to work on them. Once you’ve completed this step, you’re ready to start practicing.
Learn about the subskill so you can practice it in an intelligent way and make self-corrections whenever necessary. It’s where you’ll put what you’re learning to good use. Making the subskills that you’re learning part of your everyday routine causes you to practice them more deliberately. If your goal is to be more fluent in speaking another language, having opportunities to speak to others in that language helps tremendously.
Remove barriers. Physical, emotional, and mental constraints can be taxing. They can also prevent progress from occurring. Learning what they are allows you to move past them quickly.
Practice for at least 20 hours to become better at what you’re trying to do. Once you’ve passed the frustration barrier stage of rapid skill acquisition, it’s time to put your plan into play. Practicing reminds you why you wanted to develop the skill in the first place. It makes you feel like the effort you put into acquiring new skills was worth it.

There are many skills you can learn quickly. By building them into your daily routine, you’re able to practice them regularly. Before you know it, you’ll be an expert at what you do and be able to teach others what you once needed to learn yourself. Learning new skills puts you ahead of the pack and makes you more valuable to employers, too.

Repeat the Steps Often and Finally Achieve All of Your Goals

Developing new skills helps further your personal and professional pursuits. It provides you with opportunities that weren’t available to you before. You may not reach expert status by practicing 20 hours of rapid skill acquisition, but you’ll be far more knowledgeable about the things that matter to you when you do.