How To Learn

I've been watching some videos about learning. A lot of the time, these sources say the same thing: Learning takes time, that is, learning something and getting pretty good at it. There was a specific video that talked about how long it takes us to learn something and get it down  relatively well. Not becoming an expert, necessarily, but knowing a subject enough to have a good foundation on how to do it, whatever it may be. It really caught my attention.

Josh Kaufman talked about how it is widely thought that 10,000 hours are needed to learn something relatively well. However, this is actually only true for if you want to become a legit pro/expert at something that is in a highly competitive field, requiring you to be one of the best in the whole world. But Josh said that in order to get good enough at something so that you're not bad at it (in other words, have a solid foundation on it), you only need twenty hours. He gave four main steps that you need to take in order to do it:

1. Deconstruct the skill

This means taking apart the skill you want to learn and focusing certain aspects of it at a time. Our brains have a harder time getting stuff down (usually) when there's more to be doing at once. Therefore, when we focus on little things at a time and have those things accumulate on top of each other over time, it gets easier in the long run, and ultimately save a lot of time. This makes is possible to fit everything in twenty hours and still be pretty good at the skill overall.

2. Learn Enough to Self-Correct

In other words, know the subject enough that you can realize when you mess up as you go, and are able to correct the problem then and there. It makes sense. I understand that we have to go through trial and error, but what's the point of going through the process of trial and error when you don't even know you've made an error? This also where step one comes in. Once you make an error, because you will have deconstructed the different parts of the subject or action, you'll already know the best way to fix whichever part of the process you messed up on.

3. Remove Practice Barriers

I cannot stress how important this is. I myself can attest to how much of a distraction things can be, whether it be social media, video games and TV, food, or even friends and family. There have been many times that I have sat down to write music or practice the piano or violin and get distracted by a notification that pops up on my phone, or even the thought of anything that can give me something to do when I'm out of ideas for music, or don't feel like trying as hard. These distractions give us a very poor excuse to stop and play a HUGE role when it comes to hindering us from achieving our goals in good time.

4. Practice at least 20 Hours

This, of course, is a step that has to be in here. That's what this is all about! Get those twenty hours in. You can do all the past steps, but there's no point in doing them if you're not going to put in the time. I was very intrigued by what Josh said in the video, and I really want to test his theory. Twenty hours. I think I'll try doing twenty hours of something over the summer. Probably music-related. Maybe I'll make blog posts about it. 

I think what Josh talked about was a very clear explanation of some of the best conditions our brains need in order to learn well. It's all about focus. We deconstruct the subject so we can focus on the little parts that make up the overall picture, and make them easier to correct. Removing the practice barriers helps us stay focused on the goal at hand, and not straying away from it. 

- Christian