The 20-Hour Rule: How to Rapidly Learn Any New Skill (2024)

FAQs

The 20-Hour Rule: How to Rapidly Learn Any New Skill? ›

To get good at any skill, you must practice it in a real-life context, not merely read about it or watch others do it. Because it's easy to get frustrated and give up on a skill at the beginning, Kaufman recommends you commit to doing at least 20 hours of deliberate practice. This is the 20-hour rule.

Kaufman's 20 hour rule goes a little like this: A person can learn any new skill by dedicating 20 hours of planned practice time to that skill. Breaking down practice sessions into 45 minutes of practice a day can lead you to learn a new skill in as little as a month!

Practice regularly: The key to the 20-Hour Rule is deliberate practice. Set aside regular practice sessions and focus solely on the skill you want to learn during that time. Get feedback: Throughout your practice sessions, get feedback from others who have experience in the skill.

For most disciplines, it only takes one hundred hours of active learning to become much more competent than an absolute beginner. The 10,000 hour rule is based on becoming the best of the best: it requires a tremendous amount of practice (and probably innate talent, too) to reach the top 1% in a given field.

Applying the 80/20 Rule to Learning & Development

Write down on a piece of paper what you remember from the course. I will bet you only remember about 20% of the concepts taught. If I ask another participant from the same course, they will probably cite the same 20%.

By limiting the work period to 45 minutes, the rule helps in maintaining a high level of productivity throughout, as cognitive fatigue typically begins to set in after this duration. Following the intense work phase is a 15-minute break. This short respite serves multiple purposes.

Take notes by hand

Taking notes on a laptop is usually faster, but using pen and paper helps you learn and understand the material better. Researchers at Princeton and UCLA have found out that when students take handwritten notes, they listen more actively and are better at recognizing important concepts.

How many repetitions to learn a skill? ›

1-4 repetitions for a gifted student. 4-14 repetitions for a typical student. 14-40 repetitions for a struggling student. 40-200 repetitions for a student with dyslexia or learning disability.

Practice makes perfect

Practice really does make perfect. In fact, it's been scientifically proven that doing the same thing regularly physically changes our brains and how they communicate. The neurons in our brains start to fire and, in time, eventually learn to adopt our desired new behavior.

Our brains are like sponges and whenever we see something it soaks it all in, so technically we are learning by the minute we see something. But to answer your question scientifically it is best for humans to start learning between 3 - 6 hours per day.

A college student must study 2-3 hours per week outside of class for every credit hour. That is 24-36 hours for a 12-credit hour course per week, which is about 5-6 hours per day, depending on if you study every day or six days per week.

To keep students engaged, you must win the battle for their attention every 10 minutes. I call this the 10-minute rule. Every 10 minutes I use what I call a “hook” to refocus my audience on my topic or message. I also organize my material in a hierarchical fashion, because that is how the brain processes information.